Down the drain

Pegs and I have a problem with our new upstairs neighbors. I know I said that we would welcome in a pack of rabid wolverines if it meant getting rid of Pigeon Lady, and I stick by that statement. However, the newbies have decided to gut their apartment and completely renovate it before they move in, which is causing a bit of a hassle on our end. The constant hammering, drilling and sawing noises coming from above aren't the biggest problem (at least not for me, since I'm gone during the day). However, the plumbing situation is getting out of control.

The other day Pegs called me up mid-closing at 11:00 p.m. to tell me that there was water dripping into our kitchen from the ceiling. Apparently the workers had failed to notice that one of the pipes on which they were working belonged to another apartment, so they hadn't cut off the flow ahead of time. The result was Niagara in our kitchen.

On top of that, for the last few days we've noticed that the water has been draining slowly in our bathtub, and today it stopped draining altogether. Pegs tried to unblock it using the French equivalent of Drano, and she even tried using a plunger, but the only result was pulling up a bunch of building material and white dust into the tub. I'm not sure how or why, but apparently our tub's drain is linked to the apartment upstairs, and all of the dust and cement flying around up there has blocked our drain. I've already called our building manager, but they warned me that since we're now in the August holidays they couldn't promise that a plumber would be able to come by until sometime later this week. Later this week. Basically, they might as well have told me that I can look forward to going to work on Friday smelling like Tim Robbins' character in The Shawshank Redemption, post-jailbreak. Mmmm, raw sewage.