(Lack of) Progress Report -- Week 19: ICE STORM

Progress accomplished this week:

--Much of tile laid out in shower last weekend/Monday, including decorative trim. Even though it hasn't been grouted yet, I can tell it will look very very nice when it's done.

Obstacles encountered this week:

--But that's the only thing that got done this week, because Lexington was right in the middle of the bad ice storm that swept the Southeast. The nasty stuff started falling Tuesday, and when the street began to look like an ice rink, I shoveled and scraped a path from the addition to the workers' truck and told them to get home so I wouldn't have their deaths on my conscience. That evening the ice built up so much that tree branches and entire trees started falling all over the city, knocking down power lines. We lost power Wednesday morning, and Kentucky Utilities is saying nothing besides a recorded message that it may take "weeks" before the power is restored. Yikes.

I can't complain too much, because we are safe. Jonathan's office has a nice little apartment on the second floor, so we packed up the kids, cat plus litter box, two pet rats, and two fishbowls full of guppies and are camping out there for the time being. The schools have been closed all week long so we are enjoying plenty of, er, quality time with the kids.

Poor Wagner calls us periodically to ask, with hope in his heart, if the power is back on. I assure him that no matter how much HE wants the power on so his crews can get to work, WE want it on even more.

When we drew up the design and bid for the renovation project, we contemplated at great length including a whole-house backup generator that would cost roughly $10,000. We ultimately decided against it, due to the expense and our assumption that we wouldn't need it all that often to make it worth the cost, and besides we would always have Jon's office to stay at if we lost power at the house. Oh well. As Jon pointed out to me, we can't second-guess that decision just because of some temporary (I hope!!) inconvenience, and even if we had decided to get the generator, it probably wouldn't be up and running at this point.