Hurricane Sandy

This has definitely been a very interesting end to October! The whole month has been really rainy, although I guess that's fairly normal for October, but it seemed to be extra rainy this year, with the exception of a few hot and sunny days last week. Then seemingly out of nowhere, last week we got word that Hurricane Sandy was forming in the Caribbean, and was headed straight for the East Coast. We've had hurricane weather and tropical storms in the past, but I was really worried this year because we lost some shingles a few months ago in a wind storm, and I discovered what appeared to be water damage in our upstairs ceiling back in September. We contacted the insurance company right away at the end of last month, and they had someone come out to look at it...they said it was indeed water damage, and made arrangements with a restoration company to get it taken care of, pending approval of the claim. Well, for 4 weeks now we've been waiting for the claim to be approved, and when I found out about the storm, I called on Friday to see if we could get an emergency tarp put on the roof, which is what they did the last time we had water damage from missing shingles (the roofs on these houses do not seem to be the best!). The restoration company said we needed to contact the insurance company before they could come out and do any emergency work. According to the insurance agent I then spoke with, they don't do emergency work, but I was advised to go to Home Depot, buy a tarp, and put it on the roof myself. Obviously, not what I wanted to hear...if I wanted to climb up on the roof and nail down a tarp, I would work in the roofing business lol! And in addition to not being what I wanted to hear, this information was also not correct, according to the NEXT agent I spoke with. However, by the time I was told that the information was wrong and they DO perform emergency work, which I am well aware of because they've done it before, the storm was on its way through and we discovered more damage in the ceiling, including a leak that was creating a puddle all over the floor. So we were not happy to discover that, but luckily because we only have to pay our deductible, it's really just more work and more money for the insurance company and the repair company, not for us. But the insurance company will definitely be getting a letter from me, that's for sure. There is no reason we should have had to wait for over a month for the claim to be approved, and then on top of that, to be told they would not perform emergency repair work 2 days before a hurricane, on a roof that is already missing shingles and has water damage. But I do have to say we were much luckier than a lot of people out there may have been; I can imagine there was flooding and fallen trees and, even worse, deaths from the storm, so an easily fixable roof and ceiling is nothing to complain about, in the grand scheme of things. And believe it or not, Josh and I actually had a lot of fun in the past couple of days. We were both off work yesterday and today..... unfortunately we had to use general leave for it, but since the government was closed, we literally couldn't go to work. We went to Buffalo Wing Factory on Sunday afternoon before the rain started, to watch both the Cowboys and Chiefs games. The Cowboys game started off as a total blowout, and then in the second half, they actually showed up and really played great (well, relatively speaking). Not as good as they could have, but good enough that they nearly won the game. It would have been an amazing ending if Dez Bryant's fingers hadn't been out of range of a touchdown. Bummer, but better than the Chiefs game, that's for sure. Started off really well, but they ended up getting killed. By the time we left the restaurant around 7:30pm, the rain and wind had started, and we headed home before it got too bad. By Monday morning, the heavy rain was starting, and the wind was picking up. We met up for lunch with my in-laws at Red Hot & Blue, one of the few places that was open, then stayed in the rest of the day with the puppies....spoiled babies didn't have to be in their crates much at all these past few days! We had enough food and water in the house that I wasn't too concerned about the storm in that sense, but all the stores were completely sold out of water, that's for sure! I think that happened everywhere around here. I didn't foresee the power going out, we've never had any issues with that since we've lived here, but since we have a gas stove and heater, I knew we'd at least be able to use the stove to cook, and stay warm if it got too cold. I remember a snowstorm back in Beaverdam when I was in middle school, and we were out of power for 2 weeks. Since we used electricity for the stove and the heat, I remember it being a very long, very cold 2 weeks lol! So we are definitely fortunate to have gas heat and stove, that's for sure. I saw on Facebook that some friends in the general area had lost power, so around 7pm I thought I better start cooking dinner just in case. And sure enough, literally the second I turned off the Foreman grill and the stove, the power went out. So we got out an apple-scented candle, turned on the flashlight app on Josh's cell phone (gotta love advanced technology!), and had dinner by candelight. Normally we would be watching TV but since we couldn't do that, we decided to play Scrabble instead. It almost seemed weird to be playing the board game version as opposed to Words With Friends on my cell phone, but we had a blast! The dogs weren't crazy about the power outage, they almost didn't know what to do with themselves, but they finally settled down; Toby ran upstairs and hid under the bed, and Lucy wore herself out running around the living room. After about 2 hours, the power came back, and we cuddled up on the couch to watch a movie. But we left the game out so we can continue playing, even with the power back on :). It'll probably be easier to see the score tiles on the board now, that's for sure! The heavy rain and wind continued all night, but we woke up to no further damage in the ceiling and the power was still on, and all four of us are safe and sound. So I have no big complaints at all about the past few days. I hope everyone else out there stayed safe as well! Unfortunately, trick-or-treating tomorrow will be cold and rainy for the kids, but it looks like November will start off dry, and hopefully with some new shingles on our roof!

With the flash it looked like the power wasn't even out!