Misery Loves company - Home ownership

The flood of 2013.

I don't really know where to start.  The fiance and I were in Pittsburgh for work.  We had a security system and a flood prevention system.  We should have been golden.

It was April of 2013, Everyone in Chicago knew a gigantic storm was heading their way.  And everyone knew when it arrived.  4 AM Eastern time, I got a phone call from the security company.  The water detection system detected water.  That meant there was water in the basement.  I tried to go back to bed as I was in Pittsburgh, I had to show up to work, and there was absolutely nothing I could do.  I kept trying to tell myself, hopefully there was only a small amount of water, maybe the water was coming in from the window wells or something.

At 6 AM Eastern I called my dad.  I knew it was rude to wake him up, but I was getting worried about the house.  The village we live in had been sending us updates on the storm.  The storm sewers were full hours ago and there was "nothing the village could do."  Turns out, my father was awake dealing with his own issues.  Everyone I knew either had their own flooding issues, or they didn't have keys to the house.

Seeing as we had the locks changed after we moved into the house we never fully exchanged everyone's house keys.  My future in-laws didn't have keys, neither did any of our friends.  (this has since changed, Lesson Learned #1)

So I waited anxiously for my parents to be able to get to our house and tell us the damage.  Unfortunately, a few hours into the day my dad calls me to tell me his water problem is under "control" but they can't get out of the house.  I get these pictures from my mom to show what he means.


The black car is parked in the street my parents garage sits on.

 If you look closely, you can sort of see a firehydrant almost entirely under water.

My parents garage.  Obviously, no way they can drive in the street.  They may be able to get a car out of the garage, but then where?

If you look closely you can see a red car with the trunk open and the water almost all the way up to the trunk.  Basically, it wasn't safe to drive.

So unfortunately, we had to wait longer. By this time the storm had died down, so hopefully it was only a matter of time before we got news about the house.

At noon, I told my boss in Pittsburgh that I had to drive back to Chicago.  Our house was flooded and I don't know how long I'll be gone or how serious the flood is.  I suspected I'd be back by Monday as "I'm sure its not that bad."

And so my fiance and I made the 7 hour drive back to Chicago.  We hit Chicago around 5 PM.  It was then that I really got scared.  There was no traffic, literally no traffic. While driving from Indiana through Chicago to the North side of the city we didn't see a single break light.  Oh jeeze I thought.  This is not good news.  Also around 5:00 my parents made it to our house.  They said there was "muck" everywhere on the floor so we definitely got water, but it "didn't look bad."  They commented on how the basement kinda looked like we just threw everything there when we left.  I was confused, I knew we had a few "storage" areas, but I thought I left everything stacked in an organized fashion.

We finally got home around 6 or 7 PM.  The house was freezing, but that didn't matter we had the heat down low while we were out of town.  We immediately went to the basement to see the damage and turned up the heat.  We put on our work boots and decided to see how bad it was.

The facts:
We had wood paneling in the basement. Not my favorite thing in the world but not terrible, it was good quality.  There were water marks 15-20 inches up on the wood.  However, wood is not a reliable measuring tool when dealing with water.  There was a metal filing cabinet that had a water mark 11.5 inches high.  My fiance makes meade using wine bottles.  We store the empty wine bottles on their sides in the basement.  3 of the "levels" of wine bottles were filled with "water." The 4th was not.  The 4th bottle opening was at 13 inches off the ground.  The 3rd was at 10.5 inches off the ground.  So, we got water, we got a lot of water.  Somewhere around 11.5 inches.

We went into the basement powder room and saw "muck" in the sink as well as toilet.  "huh, so the water came out of the sink..... that means .... this... is .... sewage." Beautiful.  We went to the wet bar, there were standpipes in the wet bar sink.  The wet bar sink was full of water because the standpipes made it so it couldn't drain fully.  Definitely sewage.  There is no way anything could come out of the sink except through the drain.  Sewage.... Poop water.  We were walking in poop water.  We are breathing poop water.  omg. But why didn't the backflow preventer work?

TBC....

Used Furniture Grosses me out

So, I'm in Pittsburgh (which many of you already know).  I'm only here for 6 months so I do not want to

1.  Move all my stuff here.
2.  Buy all new expensive stuff.

So I had a few options.  Try to find a furnished apartment (they are as much as $500 more than what I'm paying now, btw it was CRAPPY furniture), Try to rent Furniture (as much as $600 a month on TOP of rent), OR stay in a hotel (as much as $800 a month more than I'm paying now).  So I decided that I could furnish an apartment for less than 3k ($500 times 6 months...)

So far I've spent ~ $200.  I bought a blow up mattress that I plan on sleeping in until I find a cheap bed ($60), sheets and a comforter ($100), and miscellaneous items around the apt.  I "splurged" on the sheets and comforter because I think I am going to keep them and use them in the guest bedroom at the house.  The blow up mattress was also a splurge, but I have to sleep on this for at LEAST 1 week (perhaps as much as 6 months) so I wanted it to be nice.  BTW - this air mattress is "a Queen" and all I have to say is BS.  This is NOT a queen while fully blown up.  Its a full.... at MOST.  So, Coleman, liar, liar pants on fire.

Anyway, since I have nothing better to do (and goodwill failed me) I've been scouring Craigslist looking for cheap items.  I have to say most of the furniture grosses me out.  Basically anything with cloth gives me the heebie-jeebies. All I keep imagining is people peeing or puking or having S*X or doing other gross things on the furniture.  I mean lets face it, some people are NASTY. And it just grosses me out.  With a kitchen table, I can clean 99.9% of the germs off of it.  (According to Lysol or whoever).  Which means if I clean it twice with Lysol (or whatever) 99.9% x 2 leaves VERY FEW germs on it.  So stranger's puke or whatever germs are virtually gone.

BUT, I can't very easily bleach an entire sofa.  I may be able to clean the surface of the couch, but I can NOT clean the stuffing or whatever is under the cloth surface.  And liquid can penetrate stuff REAL deep... Ewwwww.

And, even though I can put a slip cover over the sofa, put a mattress cover and sheets over the bed, I still can't get over the grossness.... I know this is a "me" thing, but I can't get past it. :(

Week 1 DONE!

Week 1 in Pittsburgh down, 27 more to go.  In those 27 weeks I have almost a week off for Disney World with C, My first bachelorette party, and my MOH (Maid of Honor) coming to Pittsburgh to see the MU/Pitt game.  Unfortunately, right now, that's all I have scheduled.  (While I'm reading what I write I realize it may  be slightly confusing why I am having a "first bachelorette" party.  The first one is a destination party, while the 2nd one will be in Chicago.)

So everyone should come visit me. :D

Icey Windshield in a Rental

Honestly, I've been pretty lucky.  Today (Wednesday) was the first real cold day here in Pittsburgh.  However, last night was REAL cold.  Cold enough to make all the car windows frosty.  And that is the start of my problem.

But back to the beginning of the story.  I woke up and got ready for work.  I went to the cafe area (like I have been every morning) in my hotel and got my complimentary coffee.  As I went outside to get to my car I realized I could see my breath and there was a TON of frost on every single car in the lot.  I began to wonder if my rental car came with an ice scraper.

Even though I may not be able to drive well in the snow, I have dealt with frost quite often and I know what to do.  So I immediately turn on the car, blast the defroster (including the rear defroster) and start searching for the ice scraper I'm praying the car has.

Of course I can not find an ice scraper, so I got back into the car and sat there until the defroster began to work.

About 30 minutes go by until I finally admitted to myself that the defrosters and heaters in the car do not work.  I can still see my breath in the car, and there has been NO progress on defrosting my windshield.

So I went outside and try to find someone who does not look like they are in a hurry.  I see this gentleman and I walk up to him and explain my situation and ask if he has an ice scraper.  He explains that he does and he'll bring it right over.

Of course he managers to scrape off all the ice in about 3 minutes and I thank him profusely.  Unfortunately the entire endeavor made me about 45 minutes late for work and when I finally did arrive I was frozen to the bone.

I'm calling Avis in a little bit... we will see how that goes.

First day in Pittsburgh

They don't have a computer for me yet, which means I can not do any training.  Therefore, I have nothing to do.  I have already attempted to go to several banned websites including - Netflix, Hulu, Youtube and Pinterest.  For some reason they do not allow Pinterest, but they do allow Facebook.  And thankfully gmail is also on the "allowed list."  However, I'm bored of facebook.

So, I decided to waste some of my time writing C's brother (Navy) a letter.  He started basic last Tuesday and we got his address over the weekend.  In the letter, I told Navy how I was bored and tired.  Then I started to feel a bit guilty because I can only imagine how difficult it has been with doing PT and everything.  After 5 minutes of doing that, I ran out of things to say.  Nothing is really that exciting here.

I have explored the bathroom (they are very nice and new).  The cafeteria looks really nice too!  I've heard that there is a gym here, but I have yet to venture there.  And the rest of the 4 hours I've been here has been extremely boring.

*sigh*

Let me know if you want to send Navy a letter, I can email you his address.  If I figure out something interested to write about I will... until then.