A little breathing room

I am sitting here writing this from my sister-in-law's home. Since I last wrote we have basically moved in with her temporarily. It is far from ideal for everyone, but it beats the hell out of hotels!

Wrapping up flood related BS, over the weekend I had the joy of trying to find things to salvage from the wreckage of our apartment. You can see the pics of the mess here. It was not very fun. In fact it was probably one of the most depressing things I've ever done in my life. I was especially upset seeing as I had to make a frantic drive from Des Moines back to Coralville. It seems the building inspector people were off by a couple days on when people would be allowed back in. I did however find a good chunk of Ian's coin collection among the few things that could be salvaged in the muck. Seeing him happy was worth the trip and the expense.

We have completed all the necessary forms and are waiting to hear back from the SBA about a loan to buy our household back. It's not that big a rush since we don't have anywhere to put stuff. To that end, we are taking what we were able to put up on the second floor into storage tomorrow. We are renting a 10x10 space that should hold it all, plus they are letting us use their truck. It will be a load off my mind having that stuff safe.

Speaking of keeping things safe, do not let my daughter near anything technological. In the past 5 days she has drowned my cell phone in the clothes washer as well as delivering a death blow by Gatorade to my wife's quite expensive digital camera. That SBA loan will come in very handy indeed.

On to brighter news, I finally got to try my batch of beer that I had bottled just prior to the flood. I am calling it Flood Mud to mark the occasion. I though it especially apropos due to the color of the beer and timing of this all. It is more of a brown porter than the robust porter that I had envisioned, but it is such a wonderful tasting beer that I don't mind. The bourbon is very faint and subtle in the back ground while the vanilla is nice and strong up front for now and should mellow nicely with age. Absolutely no odd tastes in there at all. It is a little light as far as mouth-feel and ABV go, but I don't mind a dark beer that I could drink 4 or 6 of on a hot day!

No quotes for now, I am lucky enough to have a 30% signal off someone in this neighborhood, so I am not pushing it to just idly surf.

ttfn