Saturday, July 23, 2011

The best and the worst

The best part about this flood? Finding all the stuff we forgot we had, or hadn't been able to find, and also reorganizing the house completely. The flood forced us to reconsider how we were doing things with items, as well as reconsider if we actually need certain pieces of furniture.

The worst part about this flood? Finding all the stuff we forgot we had, or hadn't been able to find, and also reorganizing the house completely.

Yeah, the best and the worst part are the same thing. It has taken a lot of work to decide exactly how we want to put everything together post flood, especially since I basically deemed our collection of books ineligible to be close to the floor in case of another flood. This led to the biggest part of our reorganization, as the vast majority of our books were in our basement. We are still waiting on furniture for my office, which was upstairs, so that I can put my portion of the books upstairs. We have also reorganized a large part of our kitchen and bathroom as a result of the flood, because some items from downstairs have moved upstairs. Overall, its coming together much more quickly than I anticipated. This makes me happy.

Earlier this summer I posted a recap of a True Blood episode. Since then, I have kept watching True Blood, which is quite interesting this season. I have also been watching Food Network Star, Switched at Birth, and my first season ever of the Bachelorette.

Switched at Birth is one of my absolute favorite new shows. I hope ABC Family doesn't do to this show what it did to Kyle XY, which ended on the worst cliffhanger I have ever seen. For those who haven't seen it, Switched at Birth is a show about two teenagers in Kansas City, KS who were switched in the hospital as young children. One became deaf at a very young age and lived with a single mother. The other lived a life of luxury, and was the one who discovered the families' secrets.

Since the first episode, the mother of the deaf daughter lost her job, and subsequently moved into the guest home (which is situated above what looks to be a 5 car garage, I think) of the family of daughter who discovered that they had been switched. Since the show started, both of the teenage girls have fallen in love from boys of the "opposite world" at least once, they have discussed issues of addiction to both alcohol and gambling, as well as enlightening the viewer to the deaf community in general.

I studied ASL in college, so this show is especially close to my heart. I spent a year immersing myself into the language of ASL and the deaf community, and therefore when deaf are portrayed on television, I take note in how the language is handled. I am happy to say that this show remains very true to deaf culture, at least in my mind as hearing citizen, and does an excellent job interweaving this into the plot that leaves the viewer not even questioning if it is being done well.

The only downfall is that this show likely won't appeal to large audiences, because most of the plot lines are based in general teenage issues. This is probably meant mostly for the teenager, someone in college, or someone interested in learning more about the deaf community or just how to communicate with those who are different than you. I love it!

Wednesday, July 6, 2011

Why I shouldn't be allowed on Tanga

Dan sent me a link to a super secret thing on Tanga I can't talk about because it *might* be a Christmas gift for some people. But, anyway, at the bottom of the page was a listing for these

http://www.tanga.com/products/green-red-or-violet-laser-and-presentation-pointer--3

And this is what happened
Me-I try to avoid Tanga. Cause then I want to buy stuff.
Dan-I just get the email.
Me-Yeah I can't do that either. Cause I'd still get tempted
*scrolls to bottom of super secret page, finds laser pointers*
Me-These were on Tanga last time we looked. Can we get one for the cats?
Dan-No
Me-This is why you shouldn't let me on Tanga. Cause I find stuff to buy. And last time we looked at Tanga we decided to get one of these for the cats.
Dan-The cats are fine. And I really shouldn't let you get on Tanga.
Me-Cmon! You lost their other really nice one!
Dan-*walks away*

Zee Flood

 I have been promising this for a little while, so here goes. At the end of May, we had a flood. Now, we have only owned our 40 year old house for two years, it is nowhere near any of the city's 3 rivers, and so we never really saw this coming. We had a small flood at the end of April that affected some of our basement, but we were able to get all of the water out through some suction and dehumidifiers.

After the first flood, we had a plumber and our foundation guy look at the systems in the house. The plumber (growl) found nothing wrong with the plumbing system (more on that later) and said it was a foundation issue. We then called our foundation guy, who came and looked at our foundation and didnt see an issue. He said putting in a trench could help, so we did that and the next several rain storms everything was fine.

We then went on a cruise at the end of May for our 2nd anniversary. We watched the news a bit while on the cruise, so we knew the Midwest had gotten slammed with storms, especially Joplin. I was actually considering having my husband drop me in Joplin so I could help, but then I got sick on the cruise. When we got to the mouth of the Mississippi River on May 25th, at around 10, I texted the girl watching our house and my mom to find out how the weather at been. At that point, everything was fine in our home.

The next morning we decided, instead of staying in New Orleans for an additional night as we had planned, that since I was miserable I needed to get home. About 4 hours into the drive, we got a call from home, saying that our house was flooded. We kind of thought (and hoped) it was just a small flood like we had in April. Not.So.Much.


 
 The above 3 pictures were the first pictures I got from my mom in the immediate aftermath. Its kind of hard to see how deep the water was at this point... (We were 9 hours away from home at this point. and I had a fever already.)




Taken by my husband's mom.

You can see my father in law's foot is basically covered by the water here. Yes, it was apparently this bad.


So, the short story here is, we had a group of wonderful family and friends that came and got all of our stuff out of the basement, and put into various other places in our home. My poor cat (He is the black, white and brown one in the pic at the top) got moated by the flood as well. And then we got to stew over whether our homeowner's insurance was going to pay. They did, by the way. This is because (remember that plumber) our flood ended up being classified as a E3 water loss. This basically means it was a sewer backup. In our flood in April, I was convinced something was wrong with our sewer system. But since the drains were all dry, I was ignored. Well, in this flood, water continued to come in for 2 days. This is because the insurance told us they wouldnt send anyone out until the water started coming in, but they also didnt advise us to use a plumber of any kind. After 2 days, I was like fine, lets just call a plumber. They fixed the water coming in problem in about 25 minutes, and it turned out it was due to roots in our sewer system. This is a common problem in older homes.

So, whats the moral here? IF YOU HAVE A HOME THAT IS OLDER THAN (WHO KNOWS) GET YOUR SEWER SYSTEM CHECKED! We seriously ran into several friends that had this same problem after determining what our problem was, and it was homes mostly older than 10 years with trees that were getting up in age on the property. So thats my little bit of advise for today. Get your sewer system checked. I even have a fantastic sewer specialist whose number I can give to you if you are in the Fort Wayne area.







Saturday, July 2, 2011

Stupid laws

This was a website I frequented in high school when we were sat in the computer lab for hours on end but only had 30 minutes worth of work to do http://www.stupidlaws.com/

However, now I am actually LIVING it. Indiana decided to pass a law that prohibits drivers from texting. Ok, whatever, its not like we have actual important things going on in this state (like our educational system falling apart), so a texting law was SO needed. But this post isn't about the texting law. I rarely do it (OK now I never do it) and I doubt it will really affect me. BUT...what gets me is what is being said about it by the cops.

http://www.wane.com/dpp/news/local/texting%2C-driving-ban-in-effect?ref=scroller&categoryId=20000&status=true

In the first paragraph, it says "Officers say voluntary compliance is key" to the law being successful.

What?

So...in other laws...voluntary compliance ISN'T key?! So what IS key in all of our other laws? People tattling on one another? Police actually paying attention (which is another post...I know there are lots of good officers out there, but there are a small majority who don't do their jobs)? SOMEONE TELL ME WHAT ELSE IS KEY PLEASE! Last I checked, every time I followed a law I was complying voluntarily. No one is holding a gun to my head (which would be THEM committing a crime) getting me to follow said law.

If someone could explain this to me, I'd greatly appreciate it.

I will be posting tomorrow the story of why my allergies have been so bad in great detail. There will also be a moral to my story.

Til tomorrow.

Friday, July 1, 2011

True Blood Season 4 Ep 1

Before you read this, if you are NOT a current True Blood fan, go here and watch this video

http://www.people.com/people/article/0,,20504479,00.html

You back? Caught up? Good.

The season opened with Sookie in a fairy dimension after falling into it at the end of last season. They keep offering her this weird fruit stuff, but she doesn't fall for it. She also sees her grandfather that she has believed to be dead for 20 years (Which is fairy time is a week). Long story short, fairies (or faeries?) aren't quite the lovely people we would expect them to be, and as Sookie tries to escape they turn into something that looks more like goblins. To escape, she has to jump in a gorge, Grandpa following her all the way.

They fall through a portal into Bon Temps, fairly close to the cemetery where Grandma, and Sookie's parents are buried. Grandpa quickly falls to dust because he had eaten the fruit stuff (No, I don't have the explanation for this). Sookie runs to her home and finds it being remodeled. The construction worker (construction, shudder) calls the police on her. The policeman is her brother Jason, who explains that she has been gone 12.5 months (Which felt like 15 minutes fairy time).

The regular hijinks of True Blood ensue after this point, and we get caught back up with all of our main characters. I think my current favorite is the evolution of the Jessica/Hoyt relationship...I just can't help but root for those two!

In all, I think it is shaping up to be a pretty good season. I will generally post more lengthy blogs than this one, but I didn't feel like writing "We met back up with so and so and this happened" 15 times, so this was easier :).