2 tales

**UPDATE on the water story below**

Here are two tales from my last week.

I've told a number of you about this already, but my first assignment for Stuttering Therapy and Research was to go out in public with two of my classmates as witnesses and pretend to severely stutter to three different strangers. If you are unfamiliar, severe stuttering includes not only frequent, severe speech disfluencies (part- and whole-word repetitions, prolongations, blocks), but also secondary behaviors to try to get out of the stuttering patterns (such as head jerks, interjections, foot stomps, tongue protrusions). Needless to say, I was quite wary of this assignment, though I understand the point of attempting to get a glimpse into what a severe stutterer experiences. I also felt some ethical dilemma with this assignment due to the attempt at emulating what people actually have to go through in their lives. I think my ultimate fear was -- and I will admit, the chance of this happening is quite small -- pretending to stutter to someone who actually does and him/her knowing I was faking. What if s/he thought I was making fun? Anyway, I got through the assignment and experienced some interesting reactions from those I interacted with, including avoidance, giving the answers to my questions to my classmates with me instead of to me, finishing my words or sentences for me, and even physically sliding away from me to more directly talk to my classmates. I am grateful that part of it is finished and I can focus on the paper instead. Plus, we got to celebrate that part being over with happy hour at Beau Jo's with the rest of our year (people I am really enjoying, might I add).

Today when I got home from my morning classes, I discovered a very large pool of water on our bedroom floor. There was no water trail from the bathroom or evidence that the bathroom had been wet (what I thought would be the most likely source of this problem). I called emergency maintenance. It was determined the water was entering our apartment at the wall that is shared with our neighbors. Awesome. Maintenance went to their apartment and could not find the source of the problem either. I was in the office a while ago and was informed they never did find the cause, so I am just keeping my fingers crossed that it does not happen again. Wonderful. Also, since we moved most things from our bedroom floor to our living room, I am just surrounded by stuff right now. I'm not sure what to do with it since we don't know what kind of water this even is. I'm waiting for Brian to get home to decide with me if we need to try to clean the floor or all this stuff or what. We will definitely have to launder our bedding and cloth items that were on the floor. Gross.

**UPDATE**
So earlier this evening there was a knock on the door. I answered it, and it was apparently my next door neighbor (3.5 weeks here, and I have not seen one other person on our hall yet). He has a maintenance note in his hand (they leave them on your door if they come while you are not home) and asks if I got one too and what was going on. At least, that is what I got; I am pretty sure he is not a native English speaker. I explained that they thought the source was his apartment but had not exactly found it. What followed next continues to baffle me and Brian still. The guy says (again, as far as I could make out) that he meant to call because he noticed water on his floor LAST NIGHT but FORGOT! What?! And apparently WENT TO BED?? How is this possible. Then he says, "And when I woke up [makes gesture with his hand about how high the water on his floor was in the morning -- like 4 or 5 inches]." And still, NO CALL TO MAINTENANCE?? Why, oh why, was I the first person to call maintenance after it had completely filled one apartment so much that it went out under the wall into our bedroom leaving behind about 1.5 inches of water?? Does. Not. Compute.