Ah, the joys of home ownership, puffer. Primarily, I'm glad nothing important was damaged, except your nerves perhaps. LOVED the dog grooming comment. Need a stunt man? Ummm...Jeff? <---experienced "volunteer"

Wasn't gonna do this, but it might make you feel better to know it could have been worse. Early 70s, urban architect had designed rural VT woodframe with pipes in outside walls. Doh! They froze. Late nite arrival to basement full of water. Bucket brigade out the front door in 20-degree temps.

I'm also impressed with your speling abilities: loose vs. lose. Mygawd, you're a grammatical hero in my book. You finished high school, didn't you? I can tell.

I used to teach. The head of the school. (I won't mention names) decided to save money over the Christmas break by turning off the heat in the building where I taught. The pipes were in the ceiling. Of course we had a hard freeze over the holiday and the pipes froze and burst and made a horrible mess. It cost multiple times what he saved.

re. spelling. I was hoping that you wouldn't notice how I spelled "ladder", that is, latter. As in, I climbed the latter of success (sic).

Puffer

a house we once lived in had a kitchen that was a wing off the main house. no insulation. the pipes froze one winter. big mess!!! i had to crawl under - big claustrophobic trigger! - to take care of it. but there was an up-side. discovered it was log construction under the clap-boards and modern aluminum siding. the floor joists rested on sandstone blocks. you could see bark and axe marks on the logs. i even found old crockery down there. i did some research. turned out the kitchen had originally been a one-room cabin and was 170 yrs old.

pretty cool!
Lee

That's funny, puffer. Didn't notice the "latter". Is that more of the selective memory sh*t?


Segue: One of the guys PM'd me with a question about the vaccine, so I'll share here. Shingles is a strange animal. The vaccine is about 50% effective, whether or not you've had it. I think FDA says 60+, others saying once you reach 50. Efficacy wears off over time.

Usual recurrence is about 7 years, so I didn't expect this after three years. Jury's out on those with surpressed immune systems. I've heard it both ways since it's not a completely inactivated live virus, yet people with HIV are most susceptable to a full outbreak. And that's my world of ironies.

My problem now - if I can bitch for a moment - is, though the lesions are healing very nicely - only a couple weird pizza areas now - I'll still be dealing with residual pain (and "postherpetic neuralgia"...how's that for a mouthful?) for at least another month and the painkillers don't take care of it completely. Sounds really f*cked up, but I'm alternating between the damn codiene...and Aleve. A bit like people who say, "But you don't LOOK depressed!" "Well, your leg has healed! You should be feeling better!" LOL..."F%^&k you. How'd you like my pizza foot up your...?"

MY goodness. I AM grumpy, aren't I?

Well, hell. I'm jus' gonna be a partial mess for a while. To wit: got out early on some of the yard stuff today post-Sandy - jus' blow'd around stuff and a mow - but otherwise was dealing with an undercurrent of pain all day...feels a bit like Chinese water torture (no, not waterboarding...sometimes I'd wish for that or an amputation instead!).


Okeydokey, we can go back to burst pipes now. MUCH more fun. Like the claustrophobia diversion. Goes well with the vertigo.

Ohgawd Jeff. That's brilliant! Obviously I really needed some laffs tonite. Your timing is perfect.

If it makes you feel better about Sandy, a blog comment I saw:
"We're all gonna die!!!! Oh wait. That's Dec 21st. Nevermind."

Occurs to me that Staten Island might be fun right about now. No?

Seriously, hope you and the family are safe. Lived thru Andrew and Wilma. They were no fun during or after. (Wind/rain/roof noises scared the sh*t outta me). Three weeks no electric post-Wilma w/high heat and humidity. Your BBQ is your best friend. If anything positive, the neighbors really banded together afterwards.

You're damn right I'm grumpy. Well, I'm trying to stay that way, but you're making it impossible. No, I kint spel either.

Re Felix. That's why I love the "unofficial" audio. He steps out of the capsule, wind blowing and says, "Awwwwww geeezus f*^&K!" First few times I played it I was laughing so hard I was reduced to tears. "I'm gonna throw up! I'm gonna throw up! I'm gonna throw up in my helmet!" Okay, as if anyone missed it.



I mean, is there something seriously wrong with me? I've been watching this for weeks and I still think it's about the funniest damn video I've seen.