I interrupt my planned post about my three very full days at LeakyCon with this bulletin: while I was in Orlando, Florida, my car was in St. Paul, Minnesota. Why was it there? Well, I drove from my home in northwestern Minnesota to my friend’s house by St. Paul. Jeff was my college roommate, and I asked if he would come with me to LeakyCon, not because he’s an avid Harry Potter fan (because he isn’t), but because I know he loves to travel. If you want proof of his love for traveling, you should check out his blog, and especially his post about the uprising and crackdown in Syria, which details his near-fatal escape from that country. It’s intense.

Anyway, because he’s not an avid Potter fan, he hadn’t read the books or even watched all of the movies. So, I brought my movie collection with me, and we did a Harry Potter marathon for three days. I arrived on Sunday evening, July 10th, and we jumped in right away with Sorcerer’s Stone. We watched Chamber of Secrets, Prisoner of Azkaban, and Goblet of Fire on Monday, and Order of the Phoenix, Half-Blood Prince, and Deathly Hallows, Part 1 on Tuesday. We did all this so that he could watch Part 2 without any confusion.

However, we didn’t drive from Minnesota. Instead, we flew from Minneapolis to Ohio to Florida. Therefore, I left my car at his place, but I didn’t want it to be in the way of his parents’ or brother’s vehicles, so I drove around his house to his back yard and parked my car there. I wasn’t concerned. I knew it would be safe there.

Wrong. Granted, this was no one’s fault, but a freak of nature. While Jeff and I were in Orlando, there was a flash flood in the St. Paul area, and the back yard flooded more than it ever had before. The water level was high enough so that it spilled into my cup holders–destroying garage door opener that I kept in one of them– high enough that the water soaked up into the seats, which in turned soaked my collection of Harry Potter film soundtracks that I had brought along for the rather long drive to and from St. Paul. Thankfully, it didn’t get high enough to do any damage to the engine, and I was able to drive it home. However, the A/C still doesn’t work properly, and the Air Bag light is on continuously, which has never happened before.

If you look closely at the deck, you can see that the water was actually higher at one point than it is in this picture. So, yes, my car got pretty well flooded on the inside. It still smells a bit, actually. However, I really shouldn’t complain. For as much as could have gone wrong on this Harry Potter adventure, this is actually rather minimal, and this is the worst thing that happened. My flight back into Minneapolis from Chicago was delayed an hour, and that’s really the only other thing that I can think of that was an inconvenience on this “adventure”. Because, really, that’s all this flash-flooded-car was: an inconvenience.

I really must thank Jeff’s parents; while I was gone, they were gracious enough take the back seat out to air it out and try to dry it out. They took out all my CDs to dry out the inserts, as well as other items that were inside. They checked the oil and started the car to make sure it would still run. Thank you again!