brothers

New Volvo C30 on the left, of course.  The one with the license plates on it.  Two differences I've noted (aside from being two model years apart), the wheels, and the new one has a lighter clutch than the old one.  Now if only the insurance people would kindly come fetch the old (drowned) one out of my yard....

Happy Thanksgiving!

I can't begin to list the people and organizations who deserve thanks today (not to mention every other day).  But the biggies for me are my family, who are helping me thru the mess that Sandy dumped into my life, by providing food, shelter, companionship, a sounding board, and even some fun.  Then I need to mention the Red Cross, the Sea Bright Fire Department or whoever it is who is making meals happen downtown, and all the multitude of emergency and utility people, and contractors and clean up guys, and good neighbors who are all in the same boat, but rowing together to make sure our boat doesn't sink.  And the people I work for and with, who once they figure out why I'm not at work at the moment, are supportive even if there's nothing much they can do to help.  And I can't forget all my friends from literally around the world who have called and emailed to see if I'm ok, and listened to the gory details of what happened, and will be there to see me on the other side, when life gets back to some semblance of normal.

To everyone whose lives have touched mine in the last few weeks, my heartfelt thanks.

It's coming together, more or less

All the insulation (soggy mess) is now out of the basement.  The living room ceiling is out, most of that insulation was dry, so they left it as is, only removing the wet parts.  The furnace/water heater combo thingie will be installed on Saturday, the new car can be picked up on Friday (the old one is still in the yard, the insurance company has yet to retrieve it), and the contractor actually climbed up into the attic over the living room to see what kind of a/c circulator is there and needs to be replaced to match the new condensor that will be going in one of these days soon.  He also observed at first hand that there is a leak in the roof, and water damage to the beams and drop area under those beams.  I seriously think he is the first contractor I've ever had who actually went up there to try to see what is happening.

What nobody mentions to you going into all of this is the homeowner needs to front all the money to pay for all this, then haggle afterwards for reimbursement from the insurance companies (homeowners and flood). 

Met our new neighbor this afternoon - the one with the house on the river for which he paid almost a mil and into which he moved three weeks before Sandy struck.  He had five feet of water in his garage, and several inches in the house (it's raised, but not enough), just enough to ruin everything in it.

The guy on the next block who had his house listed for sale for $2.9 mil lost the entire first floor.  Which he had just totally refinished after having lost it thanks to Irene, last August.

One of the neighbors, who has been drunk since I've known him (14 years), has been stone cold sober since the storm hit. 

Tim McLoone and Holiday Express are throwing a Thanksgiving party tomorrow for Sea Bright people who have nowhere to go. 

I'm having turkey day here at my sister's house.  Apple pie is in the oven now, chocolate pecan pie is made, pumpkin pie is made, cranberry sauce is done, all's right with that little part of the world.  I think we're having eleven people plus Pablo.  Short of a full house, but enough to have a festive day.  Maybe it will feel close to normal.

Nothing else does.

Progress of a sort

My electric is on.  My gas meter has been reconnected by the gas company, but all it can run at the moment is the stove and oven, which I have been advised to not try before the plumber checks them out.  Got a quote from the plumber for replacing the heat and water heater with a new energy efficient thingy that does both, about what I expected, then there are rebates for the energy efficient part.  Plus he's going to put it on the first floor, rather than back in the basement.

The fun part is going to be seeing how he gets the old equipment out of the basement thru the little door-hatch that provides access to that area.  To say I don't think it fits would be an understatement.  This could get interesting.

Town still has a 5pm curfew, so even if I had heat and hot water, I wouldn't be able to stay there overnite.  Nor would I want to.  The whole place smells kinda funky, and there's nobody around once the contractors go home for the evening.

I suspect we are not in the big leagues as regards funky smells, tho.  I heard from a neighbor who actually lives in Hoboken that his building's parking garage was flooded, and filled with fish, who then were stranded when the water went down.  And someone who works with my sister said that the cafeteria at St Rose of Lima school was chock full of dead fish, who were not on the menu.  We had no fish in Sea Bright, at least not that I could see.  Lucky us.

Car dealer guy just called, he should have my new car in hand within the week.  So I'll have my own wheels again.  That's good news.

One decision made

Went out car shopping this afternoon.  I wanted to try the Mazda3 turbo rice burner.  Ok, so I tried it.  Then I went down the block to the Volvo dealer and asked them to get me what I had, only newer (and not steeped in sea water).  I told them I'm flexible on time.  They'll call me when they find it. 

Now if only I could get the house repairs under way....the waiting game is driving me crazy.

Water and stories and such

I have a bunch of photos I took as Sandy was coming at us full force.  I even have one which I think is of my car being drowned, at least I'm guessing that's what it is, since that was the only time there were any lights to be seen during the assault.

At the moment, tho, I find I can't look at that stuff.  Now, I don't feel as though I am particularly traumatized by having been in my house for the duration of the storm, but it must be in there somewhere, or I could process the pictures and upload them here.  Any maybe even talk about them a bit.

But no.  Can't do that quite yet.

Instead, I'll tell a story or two. 

One comes from my sister, who lives on (and occasionally in) the river upstream from me, in Little Silver, NJ.  She, or her neighbor, after the storm, found a mailbox in the yard.  It was closed, so they opened it, and found mail inside.  The mail was addressed to someone in Staten Island.  We looked it up on Google maps, and found that the mailbox had traveled roughly 28 miles on the storm surge to get there.

Now, my mailbox is also MIA.  Looked around for it on the grab and go visit, no signs of it.  I wonder if my mailbox floated up to Staten Island in a weird sort of exchange program?

Next story.  One of my neighbors also had his car on our block when the road got too flooded to get out.  He had a Jeep, one of those big square ones that look so imposing.  Well, we learned during high tide that while Volvos (my car) don't float, Jeeps do.  His Jeep took off around a corner from where he had left it, then floated down the block, apparently to where the river coming up met the ocean, came back towards the ocean, floated back to the river, etc, several times.  When the water finally went down, it had turned around to face the opposite direction from which it had begun its trip, and nestled against a wooden fence.

Another one, from a gentleman who I was speaking with while on line for the grab and go bus the other day.  He had a boat, sounded like some sort of power boat, I am not a boat person so the specifics go right past me.  Anyway, during the storm he had been across the river in Rumson, trying to see with the assistance of binoculars how his boat was faring.  He hadn't taken it out of the water, and was of course concerned that it was ok.  While he watched, it started moving, and floated away down the river, with its owner no doubt having a freakout.  After an extensive search, his boat was finally located.  In Staten Island.

So.  Enough of this for now.

Post Sandy, pre cleanup pictures

Ok, so here's a couple of pictures of what Sandy did to the north beach section of Sea Bright.  These pictures were taken by me on Tuesday, 30 October, the day after the storm.

Looking south on Ocean Ave from my house.  The road is ordinarily black with a double yellow stripe down the center.

Our beach, which used to have dunes and plants and things.  The jetties are showing, we haven't seen those since the beach replenishment in 1995. This is at very low tide.

Looking north on Ocean Ave towards the Highlands bridge.  The foreground is the sidewalk, the road is to the left.

Lands End condo's sea wall deck, or what's left of it.  The only reason it didn't end up in the middle of the street is the street sign upon which it is impaled.

The sand is in the roadway.  The beach sort of moved west, onto the wrong side of the sea wall.

Normal height hydrant up to its waist in sand.

There used to be a double-stairway public beach access and deck here, this is directly across the street from my house.

Here's part of one of the missing decks that were across the street, on the sea wall.  It perched itself on top of the wall, nobody put it there.  There's another piece of it in my back yard.

Ocean Ave north to the bridge.  The sand was over 3 feet high in most of the roadway, and deeper on the sidewalk.

We really got lucky on our end of town.  I thought this was bad until I saw the rest of Sea Bright.  This is nowhere near the destruction that happened downtown, as you can see in the video linked in one of my earlier posts (Nov 5).  For the most part, the houses in north beach are intact, some have severe water damage inside, but many escaped that indignity.  Of course, the ones at ground level suffered the most.  A lot of the residents have lived here a long time, and none have ever seen anything like this storm.  I hope we never see it again.

My house

For everyone asking about my house, here's the story.  I have a bit of siding off on the south side of the house.  I have a basement full of ocean, effectively killing the furnace and water heater.  My air conditioning unit which resides outside (the condensor???) was partially submerged, so I suspect it is also shot.  A bit of leakage in the living room, so a bit of ceiling drywall damage.  Nothing new, not the first time I've redone that ceiling.

The garage roof is sort of shredded in the corners.  It's a small garage, and I was interested to note the roof on it is a couple of layers thick.  The garage door buckled, but I was able to close it yesterday, when we went in for the grab and go visit.

Of course, everything in the fridge died an ugly death.  And my car drowned in the back yard.

Compared with a lot of the other houses in town, I didn't do too badly.  Still, due to various regulations and requirements, it could be months before I can live there again.  Being a nomad sucks.

I'm too tired to post, but....

We went into Sea Bright today to do a grab and go, and cleared out the refrigerators at my house and my Mom's apartment.  What a mess.  My house looks good compared to a lot of what is left there.

Why I'm here at the moment, tho, is to post a link to this video, which is of downtown Sea Bright:

http://youtu.be/4BiWZ7w_vhM

It's about 12 minutes long, and very well done.  If you've ever seen Sea Bright, better have some tissues close at hand.

And for my friends, I will reiterate, my house is not in this area, and is nowhere near this bad.  I'll try to put some north beach pictures up later or tomorrow, when I feel less exhausted.

 

Finally back online!

Rough week here.  Which is probably the understatement of the century.  Tonite I'm tired, so I won't write much or put up any pictures, but tomorrow is another day, and after I finish what I absolutely need to get done, I can get in here and report what's been going on.  But after spending the time since Weds morning in Holmdel at my sister's house, which has a gas stove and water heater but no electricity, and freezing my tuchas off, and eating whatever was expiring in the freezer, we moved today over to my niece's house in Atlantic Highlands, where the power was restored yesterday and earlier today, depending on the exact location.

Warm is nice.  And we went out for dinner to a really fine Thai restaurant on First Ave.  So some things feel better, finally.

And I brought back some Thai duck for Pablo, who gobbled it like he hadn't eaten for a week, which is patently untrue, he's been eating like a horse.  I guess he's a stress eater, like me.

The Sea Bright town meeting was more pleasant today than the one last Weds, and it sounds as though actual progress is happening, and we might be sort of back to being able to go home in a few weeks rather than several months.  I hope.  Everything needs to get a new certificate of occupancy, tho, before anyone can live there again.  Gonna be a long haul.

They said the sea wall was breached in two places, and they are attempting repairs in time for the nor'easter we are expecting on Weds.  Just what we need, another storm.  Kick us while we're down, why don'cha.

Let me say right now, Pablo has been a real trouper through all this, even deigning to be carried in his tote bag across the bridge when we finally were able to make our escape from Sea Bright.  I wore my bright yellow scarf for that hike, yellow for sun and positive thoughts and coming back against all sorts of odds.