A wet weekend… and not in a fun way! :p

Going into the long weekend I thought I was going to have a quiet one. I thought I might do some editing or a bit more reading for my new novel idea. I did end up doing both of those things, but only in very tiny portions.

The weekend started really well. The launch post for Aussie Owned and Read went up—my regular reader will have seen me reblog it, as well as the second post (all about moi; go figure). Aussie Owned is a book blog; I’m part of the octumvirate* of contributors, which I’m very excited about.

My new t-shirt, being modelled by someone that is not me.

I popped out to a local nerd convention, where I bought myself a Minecraft t-shirt, then had lunch with the significant other; an introvert’s good day, right?

Then at dinnertime the storm rolled through.

Australia has had some extreme weather this weekend. Queensland, not satisfied with nearly washing into the sea two years ago, thought it’d try again with the fallout from an ex-tropical cyclone. Canberra, jealous, got in on the action with its own storm. We’re not on the coast so our problems weren’t as bad as theirs, but my local area got 60 mm of rain in thirty minutes.

A significant proportion of which ended up in one room of my house.

It washed in through the ceiling and poured out light fittings; it ran down one wall of the room like my very own internal water feature. The carpet squelched underfoot; the couch absorbed so much water it soaked right through to the floor underneath. Later, when the electrician removed one of the wall sockets, water came out of the wall.

Amazingly, the television stayed dry. But that’s about all.

So the rest of the weekend was spent first with buckets and all the towels we and several friends could spare, and then on the phone to the insurance company and various tradies. An electrician took light fittings and a wall socket away; a carpet technician is coming back tomorrow to rip up the carpet; a builder came around to do some quick repairs to stop any more rain getting in. Plus I’ve done about ten loads of washing in the last day and a bit.

Tomorrow I have to deal with the insurance assessor and the bank. That may be worse than dealing with the storm! :p

But despite the shellshock I still feel relatively lucky. We didn’t lose power, unlike others I know—which is good, because mopping up in the dark would have been impossible. We don’t have a foot or more of water through our house and the roof is still attached—unlike some folks in Queensland. And I’m insured, so hopefully the gods of bureaucracy will shine on us and everything will eventually be repaired or replaced.

It’s not much of a silver lining. More like pewter or tin. But that’s why I’ve been a lazy blogger this weekend! Forgive me?

* Possibly not a real word.