What you see here is a kitchen sink full of sludge. To be precise, this is a kitchen sink full of sludge after some extensive cleaning efforts – so you can imagine just how much sludge was originally there. The sludge was also on the floor.
The pipes were being cleaned – and so I got a nice present waiting for me when I got home yesterday. Nothing says “happy Friday” quite like sludge, I think. The downstairs neighbours got it even worse.
(And yeah, yeah – I need to get this sink replaced – not that it would affect the occasional sludge-fests all that much – I need to do a lot of things to this place. Such as buy it out, for example. Anyone who cares to send ideas my way should also send money.)
Natalia A. 
Geez-a-loo! There’s something very Zen about doing that kind of mucking out. Don’t know whether you can get a good pair of rubber gloves where you are now, so here’s my favorite brand–they are super-thick and last a long, long time. http://www.amazon.com/Spontex-Bluettes-Small-Size-Gloves/dp/B000GCPZO8
oh, lord. I’m so sorry. Did Alex tell you about our khruschyoba plumbing issues? I came home from work last year to find six inches of *nasty* scummy water on our kitchen floor. We had just gotten most of it bailed out when it flooded again. When the zhek plumbers finally came a couple of hours later, they just laughed at us for being foreigners who intentionally came to Russia.
Yeah, he did mention it. Or something to that extent. I had a hilarious time cleaning that stuff up!