The Flood

On Friday, August 28th, I went to work at my usual time and made it by 7:20 am. At 8, Jen called me and said that our basement was taking on water. I immediately drove back home, thereby spending three hours on the road for 40 minutes worth of work.
By the time I got home, Jen and our neighbors had rounded up help. People were extracting our carpet in the finished part of the basement, while others were using shop vacs and squeegees to take care of the cement in our unfinished part. We ended up having to take up some of the carpet and dispose of the padding underneath.

Fortunately, our builder had enough foresight to install a french drain. Unfortunately, since it hadn't been used in the 2 1/2 years we've lived here, it filled up with sand. If it had been cleaned out and made to work properly, we could have avoided most of this mess. We did eventually get it cleaned out and put a sump pump down inside to drain the water.

Another stroke of luck was not having our bathroom finished in the basement. Since the trap for the bathtub needed to be lower than the foundation, we were able to uncap the pipe for the bathtub drain and let water flow down into our lift station (another sump pump).

It's now Monday, August 31st, and the french drain is still taking on water at a rate of 2 gallons every three minutes. The basement is mostly dry, with the only water in the trap for the bathtub drain, which still continues to flow down to our lift station.
Our neighbors, the Excells, had a much worse time dealing with this little mishap. Their basement was almost completely finished, and they took the brunt of the flood. A local disaster recovery company came to help take care of their basement, and initially they sucked out 875 gallons of water within 5 hours.
Jen and I would like to thank all those who banded together to help us and our neighbors, the Excells, during our time of need. We are really going to miss our neighbors and the area in general when we move to California.

Handle With Care

What X-Man Am I

If this gives any indication on my day at work, this is my second post of the day.

How Army Literate Are You?

Here's another test that I recently took.

The Army Brat / Veteran

You scored 95 points on Knowledge out of 110! Very Good!

You were nearly there. You got most of the answers correct, there were only a few you didn't know. This makes me think you either grew up around the army (and followed your family from one duty station to another) or that you used to be in the military and you're just a little out of touch with the newer military vocabulary. You've proved that you're very familiar with most of the army lingo though. Well done.

Take The 'How Army Literate Are You?' Test at HelloQuizzy

Since I've never been in the military, and nobody in my immediate family has served (with the exception of my brother-in-law, Scott) I would have to say that growing up by Hill AFB influenced me more than I thought.

Query Running

I run several queries at work to make sure my team is doing what they're supposed to. Most of these queries take several minutes to run, during which time I can't use Clarify (Citrix app) to do any other work. During these times, I like to get online and take funky tests. My most recent was the Nerd Test.

Check out my score.




So, I'm a nerd. I'll post more when I find something funny or interesting.

Quick Update

People have asked why I live in Preston and work in Ogden, a round-trip of 160 miles. I love being able to look out our front window and see pastures and fields. It also helps me control my road rage to share the road with less people. Living in Preston is therapeutic for me.

I served an LDS mission in Poland and lived in Warsaw for 18 months. I loved big city life, always having entertainment and good food within walking distance, and awesome public transportation. After coming home, I realized that that kind of a life only appealed to me before I had kids. Now that I'm married and have young sons, I feel much safer living in a small community, even though people drive down our road faster than the posted speed limit.

Finally, I love living in Napoleon Dynamite land. FREAKING AWESOME!

A couple of days ago, when I had returned home from work, I went out to water our front lawn in the early evening. When I looked over at my wife's candle lilies, I saw what I thought was the world's biggest wasp. When I got my camera and zoomed in on it, it turned out to be a small humming bird. I thought it was pretty cool, as we don't see many of those in Preston.