General Listening Quiz

Listen to the recording on disaster cleanup services and read along with the conversation. Review the key vocabulary and the sample sentences.

Sam: Hey, Henry, how’s everything going, and what’s with the flowers?

Henry: They’re for my wife.

Sam: Oh, a wedding anniversary or something?

Henry: To tell the truth, it couldn’t be worse. [Oh]. You see, I have to pick up my wife up from the airport this evening, but while she was gone, there were a few minor mishaps.

Sam: Oh really? What happened?

Henry: Well, I had some of the guys over Friday night to watch a basketball game on TV, but one of them got all excited, and started horsing around, waving his arms, and he accidentally knocked over my wife’s 250-year old Chinese porcelain vase given to her [Oh no!], given to her by her grandmother, and broke it beyond repair.

Sam: Man, have you tried . . .

Henry: . . . super glue? Yup, but she would be able to tell in a second I was trying to pull something over her eyes.

Sam: Oh, wow. You’re in hot water now.

Henry: If it had only been that.

Sam: Oh, there’s more?

Henry: Yeah, you see, the water from the vase spilled all over the manuscript of a book my wife has been writing for the past two years and blurred the ink over many of the pages. [Oh no.] And so one of the guys had the bright idea of drying the pages by the fire while we watched, uh, the rest of the game, but a spark from the fire must have blown out and burned the manuscript to a crisp.

Sam: But what about an electronic file copy? Had one, didn’t she?

Henry: Well, actually, her computer crashed the day before while I was playing some computer games, and I haven’t been able to get it to work since.

Sam: Man, are you in trouble now. [I know.] You’re gonna [going to] have a hard time digging yourself out of this one. [Yeah.] Ah, so I get it now. You’re buying the flowers for her as a part of some kind of peace offering, right?

Henry: No, not at all. They’re for my funeral.

Sam: [laughter]

• mishaps (noun): accidents
  – There were a few unfortunate mishaps while we were on vacation.
• horsing around (phrasal verb): playing around or wasting time
  – Hey! Stop horsing around and get to work.
• to pull something over someone’s eyes (idiom): to deceive or hide the truth
  – Don’t even try pulling something over my eyes. I’ll be watching you very carefully.
• be in hot water (idiom): be in bad trouble
  – Oh no, you broke the window! You’re going to be in hot water when mom gets back from the store.
• digging yourself out of something (idiom): trying to explain or justify the causes of a situation
  – There’s no way you’re going to be able to dig yourself out of this one. It was your fault, so just admit it.