I’m posting to reassure all the fans of Monkey Robot that I have indeed survived the flood in Lewisburg (so far). The water was lapping at my doorstep, but I managed to fight off the storm with nothing but a leather whip and a bottle of Vladimir’s Vodka. I just kicked open my door, cracked my whip, threw that vodka into the storm, and shouted “Come and get me!” and the damn thing got scared and sped off to wreak havoc somewhere else.

Well, some of that is not entirely true. Truth be told, even if I had tried to divert the storm with a sado-masochistic toy and a bottle of Russian alcohol, I clearly would not have done a very good job, as parts of Lewisburg are now submerged under several feet of water, including most of South Sixth Street and Kidsburg. In fact, during my adventuring today, I found that the park was not filled with kids, as is usual, but rather, with college students paddling about in homemade rafts—some of them collecting items from their partially flooded houses. It was quite a sight.

In fact, Sixth Street was so flooded that Bucknell forced the evacuation of all the houses in that area, and so my friend and coworker, Jeff, stayed for a night in my room. It was like a camping trip. I borrowed an AeroBed from Nick, the resident next door to me, and slept on my floor, just like a little Cub Scout. The ad for AeroBed is correct—it does sport a “powerful, rechargeable pump for hands-free, 60 second inflation.” However, it’s not quite like sleeping on a cushion of air, and my lower back is now cursing my sleeping arrangements of last night. Even so, I can’t expect a flood refugee to sleep on a simple air mattress.

The flooding began on Friday, which featured a massive, evening-long rainstorm that left all my clothes soaking wet, including my hat, which arrived in the mail Friday afternoon. I was so wet, in fact, that I had to run home to get my second pair of shoes early Saturday morning. Unfortunately, I had chosen to do my laundry Friday evening—before I got soaked—so I didn’t want to waste another dollar drying my clothes; although perhaps I would’ve rethought that money-saving tactic had I known that it would take until Sunday to dry my wardrobe.

Thankfully, rain seems to be out of the picture for the next few days, so maybe the floodwaters will recede and all can rejoice as they clean the mud from the appliances they had to hastily abandon in their basements as they fled from their houses.