We have gas!!

Never have I been so thankful for the discovery of fire than this last week. I woke up one morning and attempted to make coffee with one of these guys:
Put it on the burner. Turned the knob. Nothing. Jack scoured the interior of the apartment (which doesn't take long) and the outside. He turned every valve he found and nothing. No gas. Also, now, no water. (Luckily he figured out which valve that had been relatively quickly.) We realized that we didn't know if the gas had even been turned on. Gettting in touch with the landlord or gas company is next to impossible right now because all of Rome is shut down for August. So for the last...however long...we've been coming to Jack's work to cook and getting coffee out. Yesterday, however, I was poking around under the kitchen sink and found a new valve!! Gas! Fire! Coffee! Pasta! I literally danced around the apartment at the sight of the blue flame.
After coffee and lunch I was washing dishes when Nora noticed a small lake forming on the floor. Apparently poking around under the sink had loosened the PVC pipe/drain and all of our coffee/pasta was washing under our sink and onto our floor.

I've got fingers in the dike of my sanity.

Luckily I've got yummy things to eat, pretty things to look at, and Jack and Nora are here. And they've got fingers too!