When It Rains, It Pours

I am once again blogging after a long relapse. Its not that there's nothing going on here, its that there's too much going on and pretty much none of it is house related. And none of its good.

I am going to be unemployed at the end of May. For the second time I am working at a K Mart store that is closing. Our last day is tentatively set for May 24. I worked at Princeton K Mart and they closed, so I swore I'd never work for K Mart again. I went to work at the one here in Vincennes last May, and now, not even a year later, they are also closing. That's 7 total years of my life I will never get back.

To add to that, my throw out bearing is going out in my car so I'm putting a new clutch in (it doesn't really need the clutch, but there's 80,000 miles on it, I've only had it for 5,000 miles, so we figured it'd be best to replace it now) and shifter that will work better with the new clutch. I also had to have more brake work done. James got a new truck. Its a diesel and he had to put a new thermostat and oil pressure gauge it, which somehow caused the radiator to spring a leak, which cost over $400.

We're getting a new (used) fridge this weekend. James parents got a new one and we get their old one, which is actually better than the one we have now. Bad news is James wants to drill a hole in the hardwood floor in the kitchen for the ice maker. I told him no because when we gut the kitchen it's not staying there. He said the kitchen won't be redone for a few years so we'll just fill the hole in later if the fridge ends up somewhere else :(

I got overcharged at Kohl's the other day. The cashier didn't give me a receipt though so I'm just out the 20 some dollars.

I have an "emergency" doctors appointment later today. I have a skin problem that looks like blood spots on my skin but its not bleeding, and its been going on for over a year but has gotten worse in the last three weeks so they wanted me in ASAP.

Most likely nothing will be done to the house till this summer. Instead of being "house broke" like many housebloggers are, we are "car broke". All our money has been poured into our cars to keep them going. For what we've put into them we could have finished the dining room and almost finished the bathroom.

Like I said: when it rains, it pours. One bad thing after another.

The only good news: I'm on spring break. No classes this week. My midterm grades are in and they're all good. Oh, and I just started the third book in the twilight series which took me forever to find because they're still selling out as fast as stores get them in. Now I have to find the fourth one.

Happy Anniversary!

Yesterday was our 1 year wedding anniversary! It was an absolutely beautiful, burning hot day (I think the temp was 94, but James says 97). We had an outdoor ceremony in a small field at the barn my great grandpa built (and where all our family reunions are at) in Stewartsville, IN. I found out later that this is also where my grandma and grandpa were married.

This picture was taken in the barn and is one of my favorites. And it was not taken by the wedding photographer...go figure, right?

And for fun, this is what we looked like 5 years ago when we started dating.

If we were still dating today would be our 5 year anniversary. This picture was taken at his going away party shortly after we started dating. (He was going to basic training for the Navy).

And history kinda repeated itself this year...about an hour after this picture was taken we went with a friend (who had not been drinking) to see the flood water on the White river because no one had seen the water as high as it was then. This year we also went to see the flood water because it was the highest it has ever been...although we couldn't get within a mile or more of that same place we went before because the boat isn't ready for the water yet. And the river shattered it's record high.

Flood Pictures

Today I decided to post some pictures of the flood. I have a lot more taken from different areas than where these were. The water is now starting to go down some, and the National Guard has pretty much left the area. For a week we were seeing the National Guard everywhere, and we are very thankful for all their hard work. These are random pictures that were e-mailed to me. The first is due to levee breaks on the Wabash river, the rest are from the White river.

This is Westport Auto. Taken from a boat. They started moving their cars on Thursday (last week, not this past Thurs.) evening, and got them all moved by Thursday night. The levee broke and flooded their lot the next morning. Their cars are in Kmart's parking lot (my work) and they are selling lots of cars there.

This is Highway 358 going to Davies County (Washington, IN...taken from helicopter). If you look in the right side you can see the water over the road. Also on the right at the bottom of the tree line you can see the water running over the levee.

Edwardsport. This is not very far from where we camped on a sandbar in the river on our honeymoon last year. This was also taken from a helicopter. The river is the squiggly line between the trees in the middle of the left side. The power plant is in the brown spot in the middle of the upper part of the picture

This is Highway 67 looking from Edwardsport to Bicknell. Bicknell is top, Edwardsport is bottom.

I also found lots of pictures of Lake Lawrence in Lawrenceville, IL (just across the river from us) but I'm not going to post those because they are mostly all of people's homes, and I'm not going to put their flooded houses on here because I know if our house was under water I wouldn't want some one to do that to us. I think nearly every house on the lake has some water, but some are all the way to the roof and one even looked like it was starting to collapse. On top of that a water main broke in Lawrenceville, and all the stores in Vincennes ran out of bottled water because several other towns were already under boil order or without running water. And as fascinating as it was to see the water that high, I hope that it never happens again.

And as far as I know, Mt. Carmel is still OK. They were worried about the water breaking the levees in East Mt. Carmel and on the southside of town, but I haven't heard any more about it, so I'm assuming they are ok for now. I do have a picture of the train bridge on my phone and as soon as I get a memory card for my phone I'll post that one. It was taken by my best friend and the water is level with the tracks on the train bridge, which I don't think has ever happened.

Too much to do and too little time

Well I haven't posted in over a week, but it's been a pretty productive week. I am almost done with the disaster in the spare bedroom, scrubbed the floors (on my hands and knees with a brush), got all my winter clothes put away and all my summer clothes out, started working on the landscaping in the front of the house, and I have done about 50 loads of laundry. And today I got a job. Pretty easy. Filled out the application, had the interview and was hired...all within 2 hours! Of course I have already worked for the company before so it went a little faster. That's right, for any one that knows me, I went crawling back to K Mart. After swearing I wouldn't and saying that they can kiss my ass before I work for them again, I went back. I need a job and no one else will hire me, so I'm putting aside what they did last time and I'm going back to work there. Yep, I'm an idiot.

The reason for putting the spare room in order and scrubbing the floors is so that the room can finally be set up as a bedroom because some one is staying with us for a few weeks. James friend is coming home for a few weeks to work in the recruiters office here (he's in the Marines) and is going to be staying here. So I am busting my butt to get that room to somewhat resemble a bedroom (you know, doing things like putting the bed together and de-junking it so you can actually move around the room).

Earthquake!

Now that the internet is working right again I can explain the last post. We had an earthquake this morning. It was a 5.2 (officially...when I posted before it still wasn't official) and the center was close to here. We were still in bed, but awake when it hit and I knew it was an earthquake but we still checked to make sure it wasn't a tornado. We looked around the house to make sure nothing was broken, and luckily nothing was. The dogs were scared, the laptop was almost on the floor, and a piece of trim on a bookcase was sitting at an angle. When the sun came up I checked out the foundation (it's 130 year old brick that already needed some repairs) and sure enough it absorbed most of the shaking which caused damage. There are bricks that are recessed now, morter broken and laying on the ground, gaps, and cracks. Which means that we need to reinforce it immediately because they said that this happened on a fault line that has been inactive so there is a good chance of another possibly stronger one coming.



Right after it happened I turned on the TV and they said it was felt in Terra Haute which was about the time my cousin called to see if we were ok. He said they were all fine down in Princeton. I then called my parents and my mom was laughing! She said there was stuff falling all over the place and flying across the rooms, and it sounded like an explosion there. And they were already having aftershocks. It turns out they were right at about the center of it. The center was between West Salem and Allendale, IL and that's about where they live. I called my best friend who lives in Allendale and she said it scared her and there was stuff falling off the walls but they were ok too. It turns out that it was felt all over the country...Chicago, Nashville, Detroit, Minneapolis, Louisville!



When we had the last earthquake in 2002 they said we weren't suppossed to have any more again. Now they're saying there may be more. That means I'm going to put off hanging the giant mirrors that we have (they're each about 3-4 feet tall and 3 feet wide) and I'm going to move my huge glass collection to a safer place (Not sitting 8 feet up in the air on the open top of the cabinets!)

I think I jinxed the weather

On Wednesday it was warm (mid-70's) and sunny. I got to open the windows for the first time this year! I looked at the thermostat to see what the temp was inside and noticed that the thermostat was set at 57...not off, but 57.

Me: Why did you set the thermostat at 57? Why not off if you're going to set it that low?
James: Thought about turning it off but left it at 57 in case we get a freak snow storm.
Me: Yeah, ok, like that's going to happen.

It's now Saturday and our high is 45 with a chance of snow tonight. And it was 57 degrees in here when I woke up. Open mouth, insert foot...I should have never made my last comment.

And now James gets to say "Told ya so"

Everything went well with the surgery tuesday. I have always been scared to go to the dentist, so the thougth of going to an oral surgeon flat out terrified me. They were great though. Very understanding that I was really nervous, so they gave me the "happy gas" and numbed me twice. I didn't feel anything. Its now itching and my jaw bone hurts where they jambed the needle in. And I didn't like what they had to say about my next visit. Apparently 3 of my wisdom teeth are impacted and one is decayed because its "unbrushable". I didn't even know that I had one that had come in all the way...he said thats because its so far back I probably can't feel it, and because its so far back there is no way to get a toothbrush back there. So on my next visit I will be put under and have my teeth cut out. and its going to cost a fortune. And I mean a fortune. So as soon as I find a way to sell our boat I'll be having that done. (Any one wanna buy a boat?) I'm really not looking forward to it, but they said if I don't have this done soon I'm going to have even more problems.

I added a twitter yesterday for the fun of it. So now I can share what I'm doing with out having to post multiple times a day. I plan to get back to the dining room Monday. James is going to get all the paneling out of the house for me this weekend so I can actually move around again, then Monday I am going to work on getting the hundreds of nails out and repairing the plaster. Should be fun...this will be my first time to repair plaster!