To everyone who sent me their birthday wishes, in 1 form or another, thanks for everything! I really appreciate all the care and consideration you have shown. It's nice to know that even if you're stuck in the middle of nowhere, there are people thinking about you.
Anyways, another brief update. I'm back in Nebraska and damage assessment of our equipment gave us a pleasant surprise. Nothing was serious damaged and mechanically, we should be up and ready in 2-3 days. Which garners a huge "PHEW" from me since we could have been looking at half a million dollars worth of damages and a 3 week turn around time. It turns out that we had stuff stuck in our equipment and that pluggage meant that any fire water that entered the system ended up pooling in the equipment instead of flowing out. That meant that the actual damage was really limited to a small area. Thank god for small favours.
As some of you might know, there was a huge storm last week in Chicago. I was trying to get home when the brunt of it struck. City driving was never this scary in my life. The winds got up to 70mph (~100kmph) and visibilty was about half a block only. It was the first time I've ever felt that 20mph was a dangerous speed. I guess I shoulda known it was going to be a bad storm cos everywhere in the Midwest was suffering from the same thing. And it was raining the momemt I crossed the Illnois state line from Iowa. The previous night, while I was still in Nebraska, I saw the storm clouds circling in a very classic hurricane pattern. I'll post it when I get a chance to upload pics.
Well, other than that, my Chicago apt is now 50% cleaned, 75% livable (with 100% cleanliness tolerance, 90% if you have a 75% tolerance) and almost ready to receive my first guests next week. That's gonna be a fun, to have some time to spend with family. Oh the owning that we'll see.
Once again, thanks for all the wishes and thoughts guys (& gals)! Much appreciated! A real lift in a depressing place. QQQQQQQQQQ (and that makes 10 total)!!
