An Embarrassment to No-one But Myself

So I am willing to embarrass myself in front of you! But first I will set up the tale.

I  went to the gym to do some cardio before my personal trainer appointment. I walked the treadmill for 30 minutes listening to upbeat music on my iPod wearing my ear buds.

Then I tuned, for the first time ever, the iPod into one of the TV's hanging above the cardio area to listen to the President of Israel talk about the current situation with the Gaza Strip.

When I met Son, my trainer, I took the earbuds off, wrapped them carefully around the iPod and put them in my pocket.

Exhausted, I climbed the stairs back up to the condo and as I opened the door, I heard this hissing, water running kind of sound.

First I thought it was my new automatic sensor kitchen faucet. Run your hand over the top and dish washing hot water comes out automatically and continues to run until you run your hand over the top again.

Run your hand in the front of the faucet and the water stays on for as long as your hand is in front of the sensor, say for rinsing a dish.

The old fashioned handle still can turn the water on and off, let you select the amount of water running, and the temperature at which it is running. So if you want to trickle water a plant with cold water, use the handle.

Once one of the plants in front of the sink on the kitchen island needed water, I didn't notice until I was working at the computer in the bedroom and heard the water go on in the kitchen.

I hopped up not knowing what was happening and saw that one of the leaves, needing a drink, had withered and fallen in front of the sensor, turning on the water.

But I digress. Hearing the water running on entering the condo as I returned from the gym I went right into the kitchen thinking the faucet was on in error. Nope!

So I checked all over the condo going into the bathrooms, the closet, the living room etc. Everywhere I went, I heard the hissing to a louder or softer degree. I could not pin point the exact location of the sound.

I know the sound of water running throughout the pipes when someone upstairs or downstairs in my condo stack is taking a shower or running their dishwasher. This didn't sound quite the same.

There is a condo common use pipe running through the closet that once in a great while will make a hissing sound, but this time that pipe was not the culprit.

I circled the place two or three times not being able to figure out where the hissing, water running sound was coming from.

In the past, Gregory and I arrived home from a month in Mexico to find out that there had been a leak in the guest bathroom of the unit above us.

The people do not live there year round, so there was no one to check or find the leak until it had been running for days down from the fifth floor, through our fourth floor walls, through the third floor walls, and into the gym below.

We arrived home to find (with our permission having talked to building management while in Mexico) the guest bedroom close empty, moldings pulled up, holes drilled through the baseboard area every 12 inches, with huge red industrial fans blowing air through the holes to dry out the walls before mildew and/or mold could develop.

Same with the walls and molding of the guest bathroom and the pantry closet in the hall outside the bathroom.

So you will understand why I was concerned about this hissing, water running, unidentifiable type sound coming from various parts of the condo.

I called the front desk, told them about the possible emergency, and asked if they could send someone from housekeeping to help me investigate.

A little time later I answered the knock on the door, ushered in and explained the situation to Wilfredo. He too heard the hissing, water running type sound coming from the various parts of the condo.

He said it probably wasn't an emergency because there was no evidence of water coming into the unit but he would call the building's engineer.

Probably the engineer, on a Saturday at 5:30 at night would not be too eager to come into work to check so I was only a little (a lot?) worried.

I wanted to go visit Gregory and it was getting later so I decided it would be safe to leave the condo for a little while. I went into the closet to change out of my gym shorts and T. As I was taking the shorts off,  I realized that I had not emptied my pockets.

I went out into the hall and took my keys out of one pocket and then ...

I reached into my pocket with the iPod, earbuds carefully wrapped around, only to hear this hissing, water running type of sound.

For the first time ever, I had figured out how to use the iPod as a radio to tune into the various TV's hanging in front of the cardio bicycles around the gym. When I had begun working with my trainer and wrapped the buds around the iPod, I did not turn it off.

Nor did I realize that I needed to turn it off since this was the first time I had ever used the radio on the iPod.

What had happened was that when I was out of range of the gym, entering the condo, the radio had no signal. When radios are not tuned into a channel, they hiss static. This is what I had been hearing!

I was embarrassed but also relived to hear the hissing, water running type sound stop when I turned off the radio on the iPod.

I called the front desk and asked Debrah to tell Wildredo, "The hissing has stopped so maybe the emergency is over." I was too embarrassed to tell anyone (except you) the real reason for the hissing, water running type of sound and why it had stopped.