People here tell us, “This past summer was one of our best summers ever. It usually isn’t like that.” And then now, “This is one of the strangest falls ever. We’re breaking a lot of weather-related records.” Apparently so, because the weather is just strange…snow, torrential rains, 50-60 mph winds…what’s next? (If it’s frogs, I will just barricade myself in the house and scream into my pillow.)

Last night, we drove through torrential rain that sounded like it was going to break through the windshield and then tried to sleep through howling wind. I barely slept because I kept hearing the wind tear things off our roof (I later found out these were shingles). In addition to waking up to a power outage that ran from Tacoma to Everett, our dead-end street of about eight houses was blocked off from the rest of the world because of a fallen tree (see pics below; our house is the one on the right of the tree). Fortunately, our office also was closed because of a power outage. After getting over initial anxieties of not getting any work done, I slept in a bit and then had a productive afternoon of unpacking boxes and cleaning.

Two good things also came out of this:
1. We met a lot of our neighborhoods. With a huge tree blocking our way out, everyone was confined to our little dead-end street and wandered around, marveling at the situation. Since the tree is right in front of our house, people had to walk onto our property to go around it. I am really thankful for this interaction, since I had been feeling a bit isolated, as opposed to being in an apartment where we see a lot of people. We met a lot of really nice people, including the neighbors across the street who invited us in for tea. We played with their little kids and hung out in their fire-warmed basement. The little boy ended up really bonding with Matt. At one point, he even said to Matt, “I love you so much.” hehe…turns out the previous tenants of the house (all renters) were terrors, so everyone is really relieved that we’re here. Funny thing, we met two Filipino neighbors; both of them asked us what nationality we were and also asked how much we paid for our house, where our non-Asian neighbors did neither.

2. Since the damage to the roof is now an “act of God,” we’re pretty certain some or all of the costs of getting it reroofed will be covered by our home insurance! We originally planned on paying the cost ourselves and wondered how we could afford it. Our first estimate for reroofing was $8,000. Even if the next estimate is a little lower, it’s probably not that far off.

So despite a day that started out as a hassle, it ended up to be very good. Plus, now we have our power back (while much of the area still goes unpowered).

Now for the pics…