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Basement Clearing
Sunday, 21 April 2013 14:49It Ain't Over Yet
But the flooding through the floor is reduced. ServPro came at 9am this morning and proceeded to remove some thirty years of my life -- or at least vast chunks of it -- from the office and storage room. And then they removed the sodden carpets from the kitty room and the office. Frankly, the bill at this stage isn't bad. I think from the lead guy's comments that most people balk at the charges, especially at the weekend emergency rates. But with Finals Week here, doing this on a Sunday when I could glance at the materials coming out and pull the few things and treasures before the rest was discarded, $650 for 3½ hours of work by crew of two -- cheap. Because we couldn't have physically done it, nor had the capacity to dispose of it. Really.
On the other hand...
What was once a couple of nice cozy rooms downstairs is now a mixture of barren yuck. We don't know yet what can be done to minimize a repeat of this disaster -- we both know that it can never be totally eliminated. Not with this house on this ground.
Tons of soggy trash pulled out, in piles, bags and boxes, included years of clip files -- newspaper and magazine articles that I was always going to go back to. Of course, in 2013, if I get a notion about any of these ideas I can use Der Google and often find what I was looking for without any kind of massive search.
And I found right off the bat a couple of things that I was looking for, so good for that.
But, I've lost:
-- Much of my Collection of archaic and ancient software boxes.
-- Years and years of beautiful National Geographics. Also some Byte and PC Magazines that would have interest only for comparative LookAtThat! value.
-- An old box that had my original boxes for much of my 1980s era Nikon cameras -- The Nikon F3 (times two), lenses, Speedlights, etc.
-- My college era collection of inappropriate magazines. Ah, misspent youth and research.
-- Bunches of waterlogged electronic parts for old projects, like putting a IBM PS/2 motherboard in an original IBM PC case, big external 5.25" floppy drives (both IBM and Zenith), a couple of spare monitors, tubes of 64KB and 2556KB memory chips.
-- Boxes of 5.25" and 3.5" floppy disks, and bunches of microcasettes from conferences and classes in the 80s and early 90s. Most of the data is available on other media. Hopefully.
-- Lecture notes from Hope College, GVSU and my early years at WMU. Some class notes from college and grad school. Presentations given on overhead transparencies, both LaserJet and colored markers on the old infrared sheets. A number of books.
We are living in half a house. Permeated with the odd scent of a hospital grade disinfectant to discourage bacterial growth from all that groundwater. There's stuff on the floors upstairs that never should be up here, stuffing the place to the gills. Several bookcases left downstairs whose contents are still on their shelves -- we may lose many more books to come, but there's no place to store them, even in boxes. So many boxes disposed of in haste by necessity.
Yes, We're Grateful, Dammit!
Just in West Michigan, let alone the Midwest, there are people who are REALLY flooded. Wiped out. Cars left floating in the middle of the street. We know this is minor, that things can be replaced -- or forgotten about again because we were never really going to go back to them. That we can make the downstairs nice enough again.
We're glad that we hadn't succumbed to getting a new fleet of kittens already, because all this chaos downstairs and overcrowding upstairs would be SO difficult with little brainless stupid silly ACTIVE kittens. (sad sly grin)
But the upstairs is nice and dry, and should the flood waters reach inside our first floor, then West Michigan will all be underwater.
We will survive.
Round Two begins once the place stops flooding and we can begin the process of drying it up. Later this week?
Dr. Phil
But the flooding through the floor is reduced. ServPro came at 9am this morning and proceeded to remove some thirty years of my life -- or at least vast chunks of it -- from the office and storage room. And then they removed the sodden carpets from the kitty room and the office. Frankly, the bill at this stage isn't bad. I think from the lead guy's comments that most people balk at the charges, especially at the weekend emergency rates. But with Finals Week here, doing this on a Sunday when I could glance at the materials coming out and pull the few things and treasures before the rest was discarded, $650 for 3½ hours of work by crew of two -- cheap. Because we couldn't have physically done it, nor had the capacity to dispose of it. Really.
On the other hand...
What was once a couple of nice cozy rooms downstairs is now a mixture of barren yuck. We don't know yet what can be done to minimize a repeat of this disaster -- we both know that it can never be totally eliminated. Not with this house on this ground.
Tons of soggy trash pulled out, in piles, bags and boxes, included years of clip files -- newspaper and magazine articles that I was always going to go back to. Of course, in 2013, if I get a notion about any of these ideas I can use Der Google and often find what I was looking for without any kind of massive search.
And I found right off the bat a couple of things that I was looking for, so good for that.
But, I've lost:
-- Much of my Collection of archaic and ancient software boxes.
-- Years and years of beautiful National Geographics. Also some Byte and PC Magazines that would have interest only for comparative LookAtThat! value.
-- An old box that had my original boxes for much of my 1980s era Nikon cameras -- The Nikon F3 (times two), lenses, Speedlights, etc.
-- My college era collection of inappropriate magazines. Ah, misspent youth and research.
-- Bunches of waterlogged electronic parts for old projects, like putting a IBM PS/2 motherboard in an original IBM PC case, big external 5.25" floppy drives (both IBM and Zenith), a couple of spare monitors, tubes of 64KB and 2556KB memory chips.
-- Boxes of 5.25" and 3.5" floppy disks, and bunches of microcasettes from conferences and classes in the 80s and early 90s. Most of the data is available on other media. Hopefully.
-- Lecture notes from Hope College, GVSU and my early years at WMU. Some class notes from college and grad school. Presentations given on overhead transparencies, both LaserJet and colored markers on the old infrared sheets. A number of books.
We are living in half a house. Permeated with the odd scent of a hospital grade disinfectant to discourage bacterial growth from all that groundwater. There's stuff on the floors upstairs that never should be up here, stuffing the place to the gills. Several bookcases left downstairs whose contents are still on their shelves -- we may lose many more books to come, but there's no place to store them, even in boxes. So many boxes disposed of in haste by necessity.
Yes, We're Grateful, Dammit!
Just in West Michigan, let alone the Midwest, there are people who are REALLY flooded. Wiped out. Cars left floating in the middle of the street. We know this is minor, that things can be replaced -- or forgotten about again because we were never really going to go back to them. That we can make the downstairs nice enough again.
We're glad that we hadn't succumbed to getting a new fleet of kittens already, because all this chaos downstairs and overcrowding upstairs would be SO difficult with little brainless stupid silly ACTIVE kittens. (sad sly grin)
But the upstairs is nice and dry, and should the flood waters reach inside our first floor, then West Michigan will all be underwater.
We will survive.
Round Two begins once the place stops flooding and we can begin the process of drying it up. Later this week?
Dr. Phil
