What does Basketball and a Backed Up Sewer Have in Common?

Well, it describes this past weekend! We went down to Normal, IL for a basketballgame between the Illinois State Redbirds (my alma mater) and our rivals, the Southern Illinois Salukis I had not been down there for several years and it wasd neat to see all the changes down there, lots of building going on, the local College Hills indoor shopping mall had been transformed into more of an outdoor mall, one of the local watering holes (Rocky's for any former or present Normal townie or ISU alumni) had been torn down and in its place was a children's museum and one of the favorite pizza places was remodeling the adjacent building and move into a bigger place with more seating. We didn't get a chance to go to Micheleo's to see if the pizza was as good as I remember, but we did go to Avanti's, the local Italian restaurant for their spaghetti. It was as good as I rememered it to be, as well as the yummy bread.

We stayed overnight, so we wouldn't have to drive the 2+ hours home. We took our time coming home and when we got home, we really didn't suspect anything. But I decided to put a load of laundry and when I walked into the laundry room I discovered all this dried dirt and who knows what all over part of the floor. Since, it was warm out and all the snow melted really quick, we thought all the snow melting caused the sewer to back up. Well, we decided to flush toilets and run water to see if that did anything. Well it didn't so I proceeded to start the washing machine. Then since my wonderful husband sai he'd clean up, i decided to take a walk since it was so nice. Well, when the washing machine emptied , the sewer could barely handle it, so much of it I guess came up the floor drain. At least that was soapy water which helped clean more of the floor from earlier. Kevin had planned to stay home the next day and get a p,lumber out there, but after the washing machine backed up, he had to call the plumber right away. Of course, it was a Sunday, so the rates were sky high, but this just could not wait. So about an hour later, a plumber came over to grout the sewer between the front yard and inside. The previous owner had told us every few years it needed to be done and since we will be here 3 years in May, I guess this was unfortunately on schedule. It turned out the tree roots had wrapped around whatever it wrapped around and was the cause of the back up, so I guess the roots were cut back and now everything is fine except for having to spend $450 that we had not expected to spend. Don't worry, no pictures of that!