The Flood: Part Three

Last night I came home and my house smelled bad. I mean real bad. There was a wave of rank-smelling heat that rolled out when I opened the front door. Fortunately most of the smell was kept out of the bedroom, so I headed up there quick and shut the door. Laura came home and we headed over to my folks' place for the evening, watching "O Brother Where Art Thou" and working on the invitations.

This morning, ServPro came back over to take a look at things. First thing: check the temperature in the house. I kid you not - it was 102 degrees in the office. They did some testing in the walls, the boards, and the floor, and found it was dried out, so they shut down those infernal machines and cleared them out of the house. Laura and I immediately opened everything up and started clearing out the heat. It did wonders. Not enough, but it's a start. We also started talking about what to do with our house next. Since everything's upstairs now, we figure when the flooring and walls are repaired, we'll have a painting party (or two) and knock out the whole downstairs at once. Once that's finished, we'll start moving stuff down and put them in three piles: keep, trash, and sell in a yard sale. We might be able to get more money through ebay and half.com, but getting the things out of the house fast is the priority here.

For the clean-up, our next step is to talk to our insurance adjuster tomorrow morning, and to get the drywall all fixed. Never a dull moment.

Oh, I also realized that our tickets to Mary Poppins this weekend were in my desk, and my desk was all boxed up and taken upstairs. I tried looking through a few boxes with no luck, so I called the Kennedy Center and explained the situation. They said, "Sounds like you've got a lot on your mind right now. We'll go ahead and print out new tickets and put them at the box office for you for Saturday." Phew. Crisis averted.