June 16, 2002

• The Verrette's Are Home!

  
  

  Oh, my, am I FULL of stuff to write about, or what?  I'm about to burst!

  
  

  We have never been able to take real vacations until just recently, and I'm hooked on the whole concept.  I can't believe I made it to the ripe old age of . . . Hmmmm, should I tell?  Aww, heck, my b-day is on Tuesday and I'm shamelessly hoping for Happy B-Day Greetings - so I'll spill the beans - for 2 more days I'm 38 years old.  Then I'll be the age that no one believes when you say it - 39.  Have you ever noticed how bad the *9* birthdays stink?  People believe you when you say "I'm 30" or "I'm 40" - I guess they figure why would you lie about a big _0 year? - but as soon as you say "I'm 29" they get that look in their eye and nod and smile like they got the joke.

  
  

  But, as I was saying, I have discovered the wonder of the vacation and I have decided that there's no place like away from home.  We had a blast in Florida this time.  We didn't go back to Pensacola though and I had really hoped to take Tim to some of the places that Mary and I discovered last January.  I guess this means we'll just have to go back.   

  
  

  This time around, Tim's brother got married in Navarre to a lovely girl - Amy.  I'm pleased to welcome her to the family, and I'm very excited by how much she and I have in common.  Not only our last name, but interests, ideas, and goals.  I also let her in on the Xanga secret and she subscribed to my site.  Wasn't that totally cool of her?

  
  

  My Mother-in-law takes vacationing VERY seriously.  She planned more activites than any normal family could cover in a month.  We didn't manage to cross everything off her list, but we covered quite a bit of territory and enjoyed evey minute of it.  She had rented a cabin for three nights at Lake Holly (don't swim in the lake, there are alligators) where there was a swimming pool, miniature golf, a clubhouse with pingpong and fuze ball (did I spell that right?) horse shoe pits, and of course major fishing opportunities for the guys.  I don't mind fishing, but I refuse to touch the bait or the fish, so the guys quickly determined that they were better off without me along in the boat.

  
  

  Of course, we also spent a lot of time at the beach.  I don't know how many photos I have, but after the first several rounds, I put the camera in Mom's hand so there ARE pics of me in amongst them.  I'll sort it out and post some over the next several days.

  
  

  Coming home was another big adventure.  While we were gone a storm tripped the circuit breakers for about half our house, including the laundry room where our commercial sized upright freezer sits full of meat.  Oh, yeah.  Have you ever smelled a crime scene?  This should be fodder for a short story some time down the road.  By the time we arrived last night, there had been an inch of blood standing in our laundry room for long enough that gross doesn't begin to describe the scene.  If I'd been a little more prepared I could have whipped out the microscope and used the opportunity to teach the kinds bacteriology.  But, being a wimp about such things, I totally broke down.

  
  

  After the first few moments of shock, I remembered that my home owners policy includes a clause that in case the home is uninhabitable, my insurance will pay for a hotel room until the house is brought back to livable condition.  So I called the claim center.  Not only was my adjuster willing to send us immediately to the nearest place with room service - he also insisted that we immediately cease and desist all inclination to try to clean the mess ourselves.  Within an hour of the time I placed the call, a professional disaster cleaning service representative was in my home and on the job. 

  
  

  The man worked until after 2:00 this morning and I have tears in my eyes as I type this, I'm so grateful for the service he provided.  We didn't leave our home last night because it was so late by the time we could have that we were too exhausted to drive anywhere.  We set up airfilters to remove the odors and lit candles in every flavor we could find.

  
  

  I can't say enough about how efficiently and quickly our insurance company (State Farm) and the cleaning service (Servpro - a nationwide company) responded to our crisis.  The service that we received was superior to anything I've ever experienced before.  It looks like the only thing I'll have to do is some price hunting to determine the replacement cost of the things we lost in the disaster.  How cool is that?

  • 3:34 pm
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