The task that never ends...

So in my last post, I complained about my inventory, among other things. As the title here might imply, it is an ongoing challenge and just when you think you're over the final hurdle, the race officials hand down a ruling that says you've got to take another lap or two.

I should note that I'm not complaining about my plight as a means of generating pity. There are few things I find so loathsome as being the object of other people's pity. Even when my situation is bad, and even when I complain about it, it isn't ever for the sake of getting people to feel sorry for me. (I'm the first to admit that there are many people in far worse situations, and that in the grand scheme of things, I have a lot working in my favor.) The primary reason for my whining is generally to inform other people what I've been up to, and why I might be in a foul mood if I should happen to take a harsh tone at some point in our conversation.

So the latest update to the tale is that since the original tally of all the items in the house was completed, the next step in the process has been to take all those hand written notes and convert them into a readable format so that the insurance adjuster can actually decipher and dissect the list, and then decide what is going to be covered when all of this is said and done. A simultaneous hurdle in this step is that as I am typing up the list, I also have to figure out where to find all of the items were when they were damaged, where a suitable replacement can be found, and how much that replacement is going to cost given local market pricing. (Local market pricing means I have the dubious honor of going out to local stores and tracking down items one at a time and listing the cost plus local sales tax.) This is a particular challenge in a house populated not only with my more modern items, but also with a bevvy of antique items owned by my grandparents prior to my arrival. Pricing all my art supplies made me remember just how expensive all those art supplies were in the first place! (For some classes, I now realize that I spent more on art supplies in one semester for a single course than I spent on all of my other course materials for the same semester combined!)

I also get to talk to contractors about the repair process... What I want, what I don't want, what I would like to change since we've ripped out all of the plaster and have to re-frame the roofline and half of the upstairs anyway, might as well make any reasonable changes while they are at their least expensive and most hassle free!

Aside from the list, my life is boring. I pretty much do nothing but work on the list and other fire-related crap every "spare" waking moment. Nothing else to report. Hope you have a great day!

Just a quick update...

So after the recent events, there is not a great deal of new information to report, but here is what I have to offer, most of this is going to be fairly obvious and straightforward, but at this point, that's really all I've got left.

1. Living in a hotel sucks. A lot.
2. Living in a hotel that doesn't include the two channels I watch the most, (Comedy Central and CNN) because they are not deemed "family friendly" and having to get my daily fix of both real news and fake news solely through online outlets REALLY sucks. A lot.
3. Completing a line item inventory of everything you own so that you can submit it to an insurance adjuster for approval SUCKS. A LOT. (Side note: I don't care who you are, or how you live, but I can guarantee you that until you have to do an inventory of everything one item at a time, you have NO IDEA just how much nonsense you actually own.)
4. Completing said inventory in a house where the temperature hovers somewhere around 125 degrees because it has been taken off the power grid so that it can be entirely re-wired (it was an electrical fire, after all,) while the house is full of generator-run heaters and heat circulators in an attempt to dry out the plaster, in the middle of a summer heat wave is more than a little sucky as well.
5. Finding out that the plaster couldn't be saved anyway and had to be ripped out the day after the inventory was done is more than a little irritating.
6. Finding out that the contractors have ordered up a full-blown crane so that they can just cut off the entire roof and put it in a giant dumpster in sections is a strange combination of fascinatingly cool and horribly disconcerting.
7. Watching all of the work that I've put in over the last 6 months be utterly destroyed by the fire, the firemen running in and out, and the water that they used to put out the fire was horribly depressing.
   
8. Homeowner's insurance seems like an expensive hassle... Until you need it... At which point it becomes TOTALLY AWESOME. Spend the extra money on the mack daddy of insurance available to you, because if you ever have a claim of any real magnitude, you want to be able to know that in the end it is all going to be ok!
9. That said, knowing that my house is going to be re-wired to current code, re-insulated to current code, having almost all of my home repair and upgrading projects handled as a result of this incident, (from a new roof, new siding, new plaster, paint, refinished hardwood floors, etc... The list goes on,) is TOTALLY awesome.
10. While it might seem kind of awesome in theory to get to shop for all new clothing, fixtures, and furniture, in practice, when it has to be done ASAP, and all at once, it is a huge headache and becomes a chore much more rapidly than you think.

So that's the update. Now you know.