buckets, string, rubber bands and paper clips part one

In the early years of our relationship, premarriage, The Lovely Belle and I came home on Friday night to find the temperature and pressure relief valve dripping from the water heater, getting all my good crap in the garage wet.
Belle is smoking a coffin nail in the garage, I'm hanging out eyeing  the dripping water heater.  (it's getting all my good crap wet. I need a way to keep the drip from hitting the floor, me thinks. Water is stressed, it has tension, tends to cling to anything nearby.)
 What do I have in the house to solve this problem? Ah yes.
So I head through the door into our townhouse to find a bucket and some string.
Belle asks where I'm going. "Just wait, you'll see".
So I came out with some string and the mop bucket. Belle asks, "what are you going to do with that?", as I tied a length of string to the TP valve on the water heater.
Cutting the string to about a 6 or 7 foot length, I tied the other end to the bucket handle, and walked it out till I could set it on the floor with the sting pulled taught.
Next drip hit the floor, so I rotated the string loop around the valve a bit till the next drip touched the string.
It went down the string, hit the bucket handle and dripped into the bucket.
Come Saturday, the bucket was almost full, so I emptied it. Sunday the same. Immediate problem solved.
 Monday, I called the landlord to tell him his water heater was leaking.
All my good crap in the garage dried out. Landlord sent a plumber and everything was right in the world again, until undocumented worker gangbangers started moving into the complex.
We moved.