R.I.P. Sump Pump ?- 2007

I have been delinquent in blogging, yes. I do have an excellent reason. Two Mondays ago, our sump pump passed away. I went downstairs to see if I could determine why our phones were not working, and as I opened the door to the finished basement, I immediately understood why: the bottom step was completely covered in water and it had worked its way up to the very crest of the second stair. All told, we had 14" of water in our basement. Our cable modem was swimming. That's why the phones were out. And the internet. And just about everything else.

Sooooo, now we have a naked basement and I'm typing this on Dada's poor work laptop. Phones are back up and so is the internet. The tuner in our TV is dead, but that happened from the electrical "surge" we had in June when something very, very close to our house was hit by lightning and fried a lot of our stuff. Now we had two dead computers. Haven't tested the printer yet. Dada's holding out hope for his stereo system. I'm not so optomistic. It was submerged. As were all our electrical outlets. At some point when we have the soft and hardware we'll be needing, I'll post the pictures I took of everything floating. And then of the garbage at the curb. Bless the trashmen. A little beer goes a long way...

Anyway, now we get to re-do the basement the way we want it. We plan on doing tile this time. And we'll need new drywall for the bottom 2' of the walls. And some more insulation. And more appliances. Hehe. How convenient that there is a Best Buy opening up near our home!

And for those of you who were wondering, yes, the poker table survived intact. Smart move to put metal legs on it. We lost both couches... I keep teasing Dada that it was an expensive way to get a futon- I'd been campaigning for one for quite awhile. We needed to dispose of those couches anyway. Wendy, one of them was the one we bought out there for $20 while you guys were in Alaska and we had your truck! Served us well. No shame in any of the stuff we lost, that's for sure. Cleanup continues and we are having fun planning the "new" room.

Blogging will be incredibly sporadic for awhile and I apologize. We're going to be picking out a new laptop for ourselves instead of a desktop, so anyone who loves their laptop, feel free to send us tips/ suggestions as to what to buy.

Also R.I.P. to Dada's guitar which has a funny shape to it now but he's thinking about trying to have restored, all his climbing gear, most of our photo albums, tons of children's books, and many art supplies. Discouragingly, most of that stuff was in plastic Rubbermaid bins, but the water was so high that it popped the lids and invaded anyway. Please learn from our mistake and don't store anything of value on the bottom shelves of bookcases if you have even a hint of possible water damage! Our wedding album was also down here. The restoration people dried out the pictures but the album itself was ruined. The pictures smell funky, but it's wonderful they turned out as well as they did!

Just wanted to let you all know that we're hanging in there and what we were up to. Dada also got his wisdom teeth out yesterday morning, so we are staying busy. We love you all and hope things settle down sooner rather than later! Hehe! Happy end of August! Be well and know we're thinking about all y'all even if you don't hear from/ about us for awhile!