Okay! Let's talk about some magic words for flood cases.

So I think I mentioned, we flooded last week on Friday evening. What that means, if you've been fortunate enough to never live in a place that flooded before, is that we walked down the hallway on Friday, noticed standing water, immediately started bailing everything we could out, and have spent the subsequent few days with my poor roommates sleeping in the living room and me and T (miraculously, this time spared) in our room for once instead of in the living room with everyone else.

Last time this happened, we bought everyone s'mores and weenies and roasted them on the gas stove, because it felt so much like camping. I'm going to swing by and pick up s'mores tonight, probably, because ffffuuuuuuck this shit. (The electrician just terrified me by suggesting they might have to ask us to turn off all our lights and outlets in order to support the fans and dehumidifiers in here for drying the walls. Fortunately we've dodged that bullet, but I want fucking melty chocolate now.)

T and I own our current place, and this will be our third go-round with a flood incident since we bought it in 2016, so I suppose I qualify as a veteran of this shit now? Hell if I know. But... if I write this out once, maybe this time I won't forget about it, and maybe next time it will help someone else. Probably I should be sanding the rough edges off my committee talk to turn it into a departmental seminar talk for two hours from now, but this is what's on my mind.

This is from the perspective of someone dealing with US homeowner's insurance via water damage, but I have also dealt with this from the perspective of someone dealing with US renter's insurance if that's your bag. (If you don't have renter's insurance and you rent, you should definitely go get some. It's cheap, and it exists primarily to cover your stuff in the event that your landlord or someone living in your building fucks up and you lose all your belongings. It will also cover you in liability if you fuck up the building, which is why some landlords require it. I don't require it for my roommates/tenants, but I did just sit down with M and give her a very dry, pointed talk about what it is and why she might be glad she has it, given our general luck in this house; god knows I was grateful when I needed mine.

I have no idea how this works in other countries, but I'd be happy if folks who have dealt with this want to chime in.

( So your house flooded, you got all the loose water out of your shit, and everything is soggy. What now? )

(no subject)

Right, that mess posted, which means I'm going to sit down and work out my grading. I'm hoping I can use up huge amounts of my Noodler's Bernanke Red, because I've grown to hate it, but I still have like half a bottle and it really is a decent grading ink especially in a stub nib like the TWSBI Eco stub I've put it in.

I mean, it feathers like hell and bleeds, but it does dry real fast and doesn't stick around long in the presence of water. And for grading you don't need a ton of precision... and I won't feel bad about dumping whatever's in the Eco when I'm done with it. Sooner I use the ink I have, the sooner I can go buy more Diamine Meadow and/or a bunch of other Diamine colors to play with so I know exactly what to buy when I make myself a huge bulk order from Cult Pens. (They sell Diamine for like half the price as anywhere else, which makes sense: they're based in the UK. But they also do free international shipping if you order enough ink, so my plan is to work out which colors I absolutely love via ink samples, and then save up and do a big bulk order of everything I want a bottle of.)

GRADING AHOY, I guess.

this grump brought to you by a sullen plate of bell peppers

Occasionally I am grateful to have a spouse and roommates who bully me to eat things when I would otherwise refuse. (I stop eating every time I'm stressed and then wonder why my head hurts and I can't think. I also become violently unwilling to eat anything unfamiliar, which includes most frozen ready made meals. Normally I suspect this is annoying but doable, but during major construction in the house it gets pretty hairy.)

Today I am not grateful, but I am eating anyway, and that will have to be enough.