Living In A Third-World County?

About a year ago, I went out our (rarely-used) front door to check on something, and a note fluttered to the ground. Dated two days prior, it warned us that a water-main break had occurred, and we would be well-advised to boil our drinking and cooking water for three days. Nice to know, two-thirds of the way through the warning period.

In 30 years, that had never happened anywhere else I lived. I'd heard of it, of course, but it was always someone else's water that needed boiling. It was even more traumatic a concept for Dan, raised in a metropolis. His over-reactive response was to question if we had moved to a third-world country, if the water wasn't "safe to drink" anymore.

Monday, Dan called me at work to advise we had no water, and no one at the Southlake water authority was returning his calls. This time, I knew: I stopped at the grocery store on the way home and bought a jug of drinking water. Sure enough, same note stuck in the doorjamb, only this time, I saw it the same day it was written. So for now, I'm brushing with and drinking bottled water (how decadent-sounding!), until the 3-day time limit expires.