Monday, January 07, 2008

A new season of indoor soccer starts

Well, I never did close out on my last season of indoor soccer here, did I? My last post on soccer was providing some updates on our improvement as a team. The season after I posted about there (that would be "S3" - i.e., session 3 for winter 2007), my team actually won the division! We finished with a 7-1 record, with the only loss being our first game, and with a victory over a team that hadn't lost in over two full seasons! It was great. We didn't have a huge offensive output but the team played a very tight defense. To put in terms of the table from my last post, the Average Joes averaged 5.13 goals/game and our opponents averaged 2.13. Sweet :-)

Tonight, we started our first indoor season as the Average Joes for this year. We skipped the first session (November-December) because a number of us were injured. Some of the guys played together on other teams, but the Average Joes held off.

Our game tonight ended up with close loss - 7-9 - to a team that had a couple of phenomenally good offensive players. Now, the shocking thing is, I actually scored 4 (maybe 5) goals (I say it that way because the fifth goal seemed to be an own goal by the other team, but my own team insisted I take credit for it as I was standing right next to the guy)! I couldn't believe it, to be honest (and still don't). Just had some great passing and I managed to get myself into the right place a few critical times, I guess.

My knee (which if you know me, has been bothering me since my outdoor season) didn't bug me during the game, which was a great thing. I'm hoping it doesn't start bothering me any time soon.

This will obviously impact my running, but I'm still hoping to get in 4 or so runs on average a week. Of course, our recent plumbing disaster has also put a (temporary) crimp in running.

Sunday, January 06, 2008

More plumbing woes

An update on my house's plumbing situation: First, the insurance company finally called us back - on Friday, though! It took them over three days to get back to us on a problem that was going to get more and more expensive the longer it took to get started on a "real" cleanup. Idiots...

So the first contractors finally showed up Friday about mid-day. It was the "remediation company". Apparently their responsibility is to assess the water damage and then perform the water cleanup. The contractor started his investigation, thinking it wasn't too bad (we *had* cleaned up quite a lot in three days, you know?), but later on said, "Well, this is much worse than I thought." Duh....

The net was: The floor in the bathroom upstairs (tile) will likely need to be removed, the cabinet pulled out; the floor just outside of that bathroom will need to be dried out with their special drier; the carpet there will probably need to be replaced; unbeknown to us, the water had also made its way into the floor in my daughter's room so that will need to be dried out. On the first floor of the house: the linoleum will need to be removed; the soffets will need to be removed; the cabinets (at least some of the) will need to be removed and probably replaced; the sub-floor will probably need to be replaced; the floor in the toy room and family room will need to be dried and the carpets replaced; we will have to have the ductwork all cleaned to ensure moisture is removed.

Looks like we will be staying in a hotel at least for about a week while this goes on because there will be no access to the kitchen. My hope is that the hotel stay will only be necessary during the clean up and not the construction.

As for the construction - that will be separate contractor. It's still not clear how this all works in terms of identifying the cost and approving.

We also need to put together a list of the items destroyed by the flood for reimbursement. That's going to be a big part of today.

In the midst of all of this, I haven't managed to get in a run since my road race on Monday :-(. My soccer team has their first game of the session tonight, which I'm planning to try to play even with my bum knee (which hasn't been bugging me as much for the last few weeks!).

Thursday, January 03, 2008

Plumbing pain

So as I posted the other day, the family and I ran the Belle Isle Fun Run on New Years' Eve. A good start to the day of partying, right???...

That night, we all went to our friends' house for a New Years Eve party - mostly eating, drinking and playing video games (lots of Guitar Hero among the kids and the parents).

We left and drove home through a minor snow storm at about 1AM...

My son and I were the first two to walk from the garage into the house - he opened the door in front of me and I was right behind. As soon as he opened the door, I could hear a sound I did not like at all - the sound of a LOT of running water with splashing.

We walk in and there's a veritable waterfall coming out of the light fixture over the kitchen table right onto the table and, from there, it splashed all over the kitchen. Realizing it was obviously coming from the second floor, I ran upstairs and found that one of the supply lines under the sink at the top of the stairs had apparently broken.

The water had flooded that bathroom floor, seeped into the carpet right outside of that bathroom and made its way down to the first floor (the kitchen is right under that bathroom). It was coming out of the light fixture over the kitchen table and also the one over the sink. From the sink, it made its way onto the floor in that area and seeped into the carpet in the dining room (which we really use as a toy room). From the kitchen table, it made its way into the carpet of the family room... At this point, that's 5 rooms affected so far...

So the family starts cleaning up the water as best as we can - the kids' initial reaction of, "Oh my god, what's going on??!!" quickly transitioned into a heroic effort to help my wife and I clean up (yay, kids!)

I realize that the basement needs to be checked so I go down and find... Water everywhere. Oh goodness...

So we finally get the kids to bed at about 2AM after they've immensely helped with the cleanup and we really start to dig into the basement. We finally feel like we have the bulk of the water cleaned up by about 5AM and decide that we need to get some sleep so we head to bed, where neither of us can sleep but we each got about 45 minutes in. The prime problem we had at this point was that the furnace (which had gotten damp but which didn't seem to be otherwise that affected) would not stay on; we could hear it light but it would then not start the blower. By the time we got up again, it was 54 degrees in the house. I turned off the thermostat for a while and turned it back on and the furnace finally did come on. Yeah! At least something good!

So we get to spend New Years Day trying the best we can to clean up the mess. Luckily, we have incredible neighbors and they sprang into action with us to help figure out what to do about the carpets and what we needed to rent in terms of equipment to help with the drying.

My wife called AAA about noon on New Years Day and now, almost 48 hours later they still have not called back or had any contact whatsoever! I am extremely angry about this at this point - we need some help figuring out what we need to do next to deal with this problem.

Of course, on top of this all, I've been battling with a cold of some sort since Monday evening as well. What joy...