The New Year Is Upon Us!

Welcome to the year 2012, where we've already seen events of disaster and destruction in our household. Literally days into the new year, our condo neighbors had a pipe bust that caused all sorts of flooding in our building with loads of damage to boot. I got a knock on my door on Monday the 2nd from some flood damage repair folks who said they were offering to check and see if there was any damage to our condo. I didn't think there was, because I hadn't seen any water come through the shared wall we have with our neighbors. Lo and behold, both our walls and our brand new tile were wet and in need of drying else they suffer severe damage.  So, we had them come and bring some fans in to see what they could dry out.  A few days later, they ripped off our baseboards, drilled some holes in the walls, and brought in some heaters, hoping that it would accelerate the drying.  We had a rollercoaster of "it's getting better, everything should be fine" and "if it doesn't get any better we're going to have to rip out your tile" for about a week and a half.  Not to mention that the machines they brought in caused the temperature in our house to rise to the mid-90s if we didn't open all of our windows.  Oh and did I mention that flapping plastic "tents" keep you up in the middle of the night so you get some of the worst nights of sleep in your life?  Well, they do.  I wish I'd taken a picture of the makeshift dome/tent thing they created to try and isolate the heat on our tile to dry it out.  It made using our kitchen a pain.

But, ultimately, it dried with no apparent damage to walls or tile, and someone else's insurance will pay for it.  More than anything I feel bad for all of our condo-mates that got affected.  The repair people said that if there was a lottery to be had in all of the damage that was done, we would have won with how little there was.  Our neighbors from where the leak sprung seemed to have the worst of it as far as I've been able to make out.

Now that the literal dust has settled on that event, we're hoping to move on with our lives with business as usual.  Except BETTER THIS YEAR THAN LAST YEAR.  I'm of the opinion that we should always seek improvement, even if things were pretty good before.  And that's what I'd consider 2011: a pretty good year.  Still, I see lots of room for improvement.  I'd really like to do more writing this year than I've done before.  Whether it be on our blog, a different blog project, or just some fiction novel (and even picture book) ideas that I've been tossing around my head.  I'd like to make 2012 a much more productive year for my downtime than 2011 was.  We'll see what comes of it.