The Flood: Part Seven

So things are looking up now. I mean, the house is still a wreck and is hot as all get out, but the repairs are getting scheduled. Over the weekend, Laura and I went by Home Depot and priced out some carpet. The insurance company had given us almost $600 for the carpet cleaning and restretching and all, and the cost of new carpet came in a just shy of twice that, so we're excited about that. I was expecting around three times that for the new carpet, so I'll take the lower price. They're coming in tomorrow to do the measurements. Of course they can't tell us when in the day they'll be arriving, so it could be as early as 9 or as late as... well... 8, I guess.

Also, we got the estimate from the drywall guy and the damaged parts of the work come in at just about what the insurance company gave us, so we went ahead and scheduled that for tomorrow too. Happy days!

Tomorrow night we're hoping to head out to pick up some paint and get ready for a big painting party over the weekend. More details to come!

The Flood: Part Six

So the drywall contractor came by yesterday. Laura and I really liked him - he used to be a ServPro-type guy, working on drying out homes after a flood. He said he likes fixing homes up more than taking them apart, though. He specializes in working after floods to repair any damage that's going on.

I was able to get him the estimate material from our insurance guy, and so he's working up an estimate with that information too. While we've got him here, we have a few spots we're going to have him work on at the same time, just to make things look a bit nicer. He said he'll put those in the estimate too, though they'll come out of our pocket. Not bad, though, since the insurance company's already paying to get him out here, so these will just be add-ons.

I'm thinking it won't be able to start tomorrow, though, since we still have to clear the estimate through our insurance guy if there's any price difference, and I suspect there will be. So instead, tomorrow Laura and I are off to take a look at carpet places and see what we can find.

Happy 4th of July!

Happy 4th of July, all!

The Flood: Part Five

Not much to report today. Yesterday was the insurance guy, and I told you all how that went. Laura was able to set up a meeting with a drywall person for tomorrow at noon, and he said he had no problem coming in on Monday to start working on it. That's pretty awesome! I was hoping to have it done by the end of next week, so clearly the beginning of next week is a better plan. My only worry is that the estimate's going to come out higher than what the insurance guy gave me and we're going to be delayed trying to get that resolved.

Comic: A God Somewhere

After the first review I did for Empire, I decided I might try to review a few more comics as I read them.



A God Somewhere was recommended to me by another website as another good, non-standard-superhero tale. This story is, essentially, about a young man, his best friend, his brother and sister-in-law. The young man is in a horrible accident and becomes a super-powered man. He can fly, shrug off bullets, summon feats of massive strength, etc. All good stuff.

The story follows the other three characters primarily, and generally focuses on the hero's best friend and how he takes his friend's changes. The hero starts by saving people and helping people, but slowly the power of who he is corrupts him. He starts to see himself as a god above people, able to do whatever he likes. The friend tries to balance the horror that has happened with the fact that he still feels for his friend as tragedy upon tragedy compile.

Overall, I thought the story was good. Not great, but good. It's one I would read again, but it would not make it onto my stack of best comics I love reading again and again. I felt like the story rushed some key parts. It was at its best when it was delving into the philosophy of what it would be to be the only superhero in the world while everyone else was "just" human, but as the story went on, those parts were farther and farther apart. I was disappointed with some of the predictable nature of the plot. I really didn't feel like the story surprised me at any particular point, but it was fun to read how it all worked out.

In short, it's no Empire, and no Midnight Nation, and won't earn a place on the shelf next to them, but it is worth the read and I'm glad I picked it up.

Brains: A Zombie Memoir

So this morning I woke up, picked up my new book, Brains: A Zombie Memoir, and started reading while waiting for the insurance adjuster to arrive. The adjuster arrived around page 150 and since the book's only about 180 pages long, I finished it off before heading in to work today.

It won't be winning any literature awards, and it's clearly an attempt to cash in on the zombie craze that's going around, but it was still a pretty clever take on zombies. The basic premise is this: the zombie outbreak has hit, and our main character is pretty quickly turned into a zombie.

Only he realizes he still has the capacity for higher thinking. He's managed, somehow, to keep his intelligence and his ability to write (the book is his memoir). This doesn't prevent him from craving brains - he consumes quite a few people throughout the course of the book - but it does let him think about what it means to be a zombie, and whether there are other 'thinking' zombies like him.

He does, of course, find some. From a zombie who was a nurse in life and has taken to patching up zombie corpses so they'll last longer, to a kid zombie whose motor functions don't seem to be degrading and can still run. Speech seems beyond them, but they put together some hand signals and start working on the zombie revolution. The humans are winning the war against the undead, after all.

The group of zombies, some thinking and some not but kept around for other reasons, start heading to Chicago where they hope to meet the doctor who created the zombie virus. Meet their maker, as it were.

The book is told in a black-humor style and keeps action happening at a good pace. There are a few surprises in it, but by and large it's pretty easy to see where the story is going. The characters are all surprising vivid for zombies, each one with its own personality that follows through to their actions, though all of them have the overpowering urge for brains.

Its this last piece that's talked about the most. The craving for brains, wrestling humanity with canabilism, and the journey that the main character goes through as he's trying to figure out just where zombies fit in God's plan, or in scientific evolution, for that matter.

Overall, if you're not a fan of zombies, this book's not going to turn you into one. It's a popcorn book meant to entertain and it does a good job of that. I'd recommend it to people who want a quick, brainless read (get it!), and to people who already enjoy the zombie genre.

The Flood: Part Four

The insurance adjuster came by this morning to take a look at the place. It went pretty much as I expected - he cut me a check, gave me an itemized expense report for how the money was calculated, let me know that if the price came out different on any particular part to get the receipt over to him and we'd work out the details that way. The amount didn't come out as high as I wanted, but when I was hoping for a mere $250,000, I guess maybe I should have been more realistic.

Next steps are to get in touch with the drywall folks and get them out to take care of all the walls. From there we can start painting the house, and then worry about the carpet.

Oh, and best news of all: no asbestos. Lab results came back negative. Happy days!