I just bought the Carpenter's rap album on iTunes. It's very angry.

Okay, some updates and such...

It's snowing right now. Pretty much anything could go wrong and it would be mostly okay because of the snow.

Our basement is nice and dry now. Betsy and I just watched Parks and Recreation down there and we felt no dampness whatsoever, so it's safe to say that our $1000 insurance deductible was well spent. Tomorrow some guy is gonna come by with some floor samples and we're gonna pick the cheapest one and then our bathroom is gonna get fixed and our basement is gonna get somethinged. I'm not really sure what the plan is but some very professional-type worker guys are going to look at it knowingly and they'll probably nod and point and grunt back and forth and then they'll fix it... whatever "it" is. I have faith in them.

The main order of business currently is the attic. Considering the fact that we have more square footage of storage in our current house than we had in our entire first house, theoretically, the attic is completely superfluous. I ventured up there anyway and discovered that, maybe, the previous owner wasn't quite done moving out. I have so far filled four 39-gallon trash bags. I'm guessing that's about a third of the job done. Here's a brief list of some of the things I've found:

One (1) gi-NOR-mous hamster ball (presumably for a morbidly obese North American hamster),
three (3) screen doors,
a few (3-5) samples of carpet, some in rolls, others just piled up,
one (1) throw pillow that I'm a little afraid to touch,
one (1) purple Teletubby (also afraid to touch),
three (3) small, ceramic unicorns,
one (1) artificial 6-foot (1.8288 meter) tall Christmas tree,
one (1) broken electric football game,
one (1) red Venetian blind,
one (1) garlic press,
and an astonishingly wide assortment of files, papers, stuffed animals, and home-improvement flotsam and jetsam.

You hear about people moving into a house and finding a box of old photographs taken in Paris during World War II or a complete collection of Depression glass or a working antique mimeograph (there are still several piles up there to be moved, so my fingers are totally crossed for that mimeograph), but I'm just thanking the good Lord that I haven't stumbled across any Tupperware containers filled with squirrel testicles, as awesome as that would be.

So, I go up there every day and fill a couple of trash bags and then get all discouraged and quit for the rest of the day. I guess when you take into account all of the other projects around here that need attention (the questionable boiler, the twenty-five year old water heater, the chimney that needs repaired and cleaned, the water spots that keep growing on our bedroom ceiling, the windows that might actually fall out, the giant spider which, I was just informed, has taken over the basement, the approximately eleven trillion leaves that refuse to rake themselves, etc.) a clean attic isn't that big a deal. But it's something I can do without great risk to the rest of the house. That's good to know.

Although I was up there earlier today and noticed that, unless I step very lightly, the entire attic floor shakes in a rather alarming manner.

Thank you,
      Matt Beers