The building I work in at my university dates from 1904. They've been installing new fire sprinklers, which I presume will keep us safer than the old ones. They thought they were done today, and warned me there might be a few drips when they did the test of the new system. I came back from class 1.5 hours later to a flood in the two rooms next to my office that went all the way down the stairway into a room below us even. We are now getting unplanned new carpet in two lab rooms upstairs. The dean came in and followed the muddy trail to see what was going on. We were mostly lucky: we think the sound booths are OK, and there weren't many computers in these rooms. The workers were very considerate, and very sorry, and they did all the work of moving the furniture and cutting the carpet out. It was an unexpectedly exciting day. My department now has three independent sources of water damage going on. #AcademicChatter #Linguistics