Day 1 --- from Andrea

Restarting the blog:

The Sharps are on another vacation trip of sorts...this one not voluntary, but it is involving motels, or a motel. Sometime in the wee hours of last Friday morning, a little, innocuous looking hose that connects the cold water to our filtered water spout under our kitchen sink, became distended and then cracked. Water began spritzing out and eventually woke me up (I was asleep on the couch after a particularly fun evening of eating and drinking) and came to consciousness hearing an unfamiliar sound that I traced to the sink --- the source of this sound became apparent when I realized I was standing on something wet. The man of the house managed to turn off the water inlet and we mopped up, but by the next day we realized something kind of untoward had happened to our beautiful oak wood floor. And that was just the very tip of an especially ugly iceberg. Our beloved loft is built on a concrete slab and apparently water seeks its level and the course of least resistance and once it gets there... well it couldn't get below the slab. So there we are with 3/4 inch oak, two layers of ply wood and water sitting maliciously atop our moisture barrier and only accessible via total destruction.  It is looking like they will need to rip up almost the entire floor of our unit --- possibly including the bathroom. Cabinets will need to be moved (out of our relatively recently remodeled kitchen) and every thing in our entire house is being moved out for us and stored. I'm sure you can all imagine our shock and distress. 

The down side of all this is pretty obvious. On the up side: we don't have regular jobs we have to deal with, we don't have small children or pets, and we know we can survive out of suitcases in hotel rooms for extended periods of time. Perhaps our criss crossing of the country last summer was just a warm up for this new challenge. This adventure will not involve driving hundreds of miles each day. Perhaps we will reorganize our living space and make it even more perfect. So far our insurance company has risen to the occasion and is taking care of business. They have sent in a company to both perform the demo on the house and also to move all our worldly goods out of our home and into storage. They are housing us at a Marriott Residence hotel and we even have a sliver view of the river. So --- things could be worse. No one has died or been hurt in the course of our leak. Hearing the very sad news about Steve Jobs yesterday certainly puts perspective on the difference between people and things and what really matters. My theory is that blogging might help me get through this trying time. So here it goes......