Thursday night the 14th our power went out. No heat, no lights. Our power just returned, a little over 5 days later. This is me with three pairs of socks on, two tshirts, two pairs of pants, a fleece jacket, stocking cap, and three doggies shivering next to me under three layers of blankets..

As the year wraps up, I’d thought I’d pass along some updates from the previous posts:

• Earnest is still a little stiff-legged but is slowly getting better.
• Riley has made an almost complete recovery and is back to his happy self.
• All the moldy rotting insulation and ducting has been removed from the basement and all new insulation and ducting should be installed hopefully by next weekend.
• Our first insurance claim has finally been delivered. We signed it and sent it back today. This hopefully means we are going to see cash within a week. This claim includes repairs for the garage as well.
• We have already started the process of an additional claim to cover the water damage in the bedroom area and it looks like most of it may get approved, along with an allowance for electrical problems we are still seeing in the bathrooms.
• We have no plans for the holidays other than to (perhaps) relax in a heated house. This in itself would be a lovely present.

And on that note, Linus presents us with the true meaning of christmas:

We went to a greasy spoon tonight to try to unwind from a grueling week of dealing with doggie injuries and contractors under our house starting flood cleanup.

When we got home, we decided to play the fun game called “What the hell is that hissing noise and the water gushing from the wall?”

This is the aftermath of that fun game. We are currently waiting a few more hours for the joint cement to set on an emergency capping I made of the hot water line after finding a leak in the elbow joint. That’s after ripping half the wall apart and smashing the sink into pieces to get at the leak….

[update: capped. success. it can now sit until the plumber that was originally coming out to look at our other issues can now properly repair this one too.]