Did you hear that a film version of "Sex in the City" is being produced?

One of the areas for families to live on campus is called Burntvedt Court. This is a series of four buildings, each containing about a dozen units ranging in size from one bedroom to three. In the middle 60s someone got the idea to build these bastions of seminarian family life in a drainage ditch. Located south and downhill of Larpenteur Avenue, an arterial across the Twin Cities, this area long functioned as a locale to which excess water could retreat.

"But it's a *&^)&*@#!^ drainage ditch!" you might say.

"Ah," the reply comes, "have you not seen the wonder of the human mind and his hands? We'll dig a basin into which the water can flow and out of whose boundaries no amount of water could escape."

Stories of first-floor Burntvedt Apartments having inches of water in them are now lower-campus local lore. Twice in recent years, water has breached the walls and made itself at home amongst student's Elmo toys, theology textbooks, and box sets of ‘Beverly Hills 90210’ seasons 1-5. The apartments were refurbished with new drywall and carpeting and students again trundled in with their moving vans filled with past lives, yet the specter of aqua damage still remained until the engineering masterpiece of Summer '07...the Berm. A berm is a bump in the landscape, many of which dot the surface of golf courses (of which I know because I’m an avid golfer, though never at public courses where the proletariat try their hand and a man can’t find a decent caddy). A berm is an earthen pustule intended, in this case, to redirect the flow of water away from Burntvedt, in the same way an adolescent’s zit may redirect the path of his tear, caused by ___ (insert hormone fueled tragedy here).

Well, last night, for the second night this week, the rains came down in a big way. Students got drenched running to evening classes, worms got swept from their homes and out of the tender embrace of loved ones, childrens’ toys instantly became new homes for yet-to-be hatched mosquitoes, and administrators’ new cars got a thorough cleansing.

The berm wasn’t previously tested, but the old ramparts held and water didn’t make its full attack on the virginal defense system. That’s a good thing. And yet the rain came so heavy and so quick that a pool began to gather outside of our first floor apartment. The water rose and rose as we got calls from caring neighbors positioned on higher ground who offered their help in bailing out our abode. Thankfully, the help was never needed.

But as I watched the level rise threateningly to the base of our window, and then recede, I thought about the house in which I live. And I thought about the ongoing work of building blockades, erecting obstacles, and throwing up protective forcefields. And then I thought, maybe I'm crazy to live in a drainage ditch.