Winter 2014...Christmas, Thanksgiving And A Leaky Roof...

Christmas
Christmas came and went without any issues. We decided to use bags to pack all of our gifts this year. It solved a lot of problems and was very convenient for both us and our family. The big item this year was Mom's dress form. Mom worked with a dress form in the past and had always wanted one. They're not so easy to come by in our local brick and mortar stores, so, I had to rely on my favorite online retailer (known for the smiles on the boxes) to come through for me. It took about a week and a half, but, they did indeed come through for me.

My camera disappeared sometime in August. I wasn't sure what had happened to it, but, when the roof leaked, I had to move things around and in the aftermath of the leak and the subsequent repair, I had too much on my plate to be concerned about my camera. The camera did eventually turn up in a box in the living room sometime in December. It was apparently the unfortunate victim of a bout of summer cleaning.

After the holidays, we discovered that our new neighbors are not particularly clean people. Apparently, they have issues with a variety of creepy crawlies and rats. The exterminating service that we use to keep our ants under control, has visited our neighbors a couple of times to deal with issues over there. We smelled a dead animal of some sort (presumably rat) in our house one day and I went down to our basement investigate. I didn't find any dead animals, but, the smell of death seemed to coming through the common wall that we share with our neighbors.

Thanksgiving
Thanksgiving came and went without much fanfare. Mom cooked a lot of food, but, due to conspiracies all around, there were fewer than expected guests. We managed to dispatch all of the assembled goodies -- except a couple of pies and the sweet potatoes. Mom has vowed to make less food next year.

After Thanksgiving , the roofing company stopped by to peel off our old roof and put on a new roof. The weather lately has been brutally cold, rainy and generally miserable, but, amazingly, on the day the roofing company came, it was a relatively nice day. Once the roof had been fixed, Mom and I spent a day patching the damaged ceiling and wall. We opted to put on gear to protect our mouths, eyes and hands from whatever was lurking in the ceiling and walls. We looked a bit silly standing outside on the porch with a bag of demolition debris and dressed as if we were handling toxic waste, but, I'm glad we took the extra precautions.

Once the ceiling and wall were patched, Mom painted the wall and ceiling. Since this is the second time I've had to deal with a leak in this spot, I'm feeling a bit leery about putting my shelves back on the same wall. I've left the wall empty for the time being as I'm not sure what to do next.

Roof Leak
Just before Thanksgiving, my ceiling decided to start leaking. I went to my local home center and picked up a big orange bucket to place under the leak in my ceiling. I've also had to move some of my DVDs as they were under the leak. Then, I cashed in the coins my coin jar and called my local roofing company for an estimate. After the estimate, it looks like I might need to dip into my emergency backup coin jar. After twenty years, and a handful of patches, my roof has given all that it has to give. I'll need a whole new roof. I would have preferred to buy a new roof in the spring, but, I really cannot wait. The roofing company is booked solid, so, I'll have to wait until after the Thanksgiving holiday to move my bucket.

After I moved everything out of the way of the leak, I began to assess the damage. Fortunately, the carpet was not damaged. Unfortunately, there were a couple of notable issues with two of my DVD box sets...

The Buck Rogers (Gil Gerard) box set was apparently right over the leak in the ceiling and was in really bad shape. This set has clear plastic panels mounted on a cardboard back which fold out and everything fits into a plastic slip case. There was not only water damage, but, there also appeared to be some mold on the cardboard. Some of the DVDs (which were of the double-sided variety) exhibited a spotty discoloration that couldn't be removed with bleach and were obviously unplayable, so, I decided to just discard the entire set. Anyway, it gave me an excuse to repurchase the series on recently-released single-sided discs.

The Ken Burns Baseball box set was near the leak and was completely soaked inside and out. I discarded the outer cardboard box and wiped off all the water on the outside of each of the individual DVD cases. I carefully removed the slip sheets and allowed them to air dry. I was considering replacing the set, but, decided against it when I couldn't find a suitably cheap replacement set at my local video store -- they're asking $100 for a used set. I checked each of the DVDs in the set and they were all O.K. If necessary, I could even go the extra step of replacing the original DVD cases with new cases, but, so far, I don't see a need for that.

So, aside from the loss of a cardboard box and one box set, I managed to survive my leaky ceiling without too much trouble. By the way, the image for this post is from the cover art for Tokyo Godfathers.