I'm Back!

[asdormire]

I don't believe I have been in the forums since February.

 

While I was working down in San Antonio, I received a phone call from my wife at 5 a.m., Saturday February 2, informing me that we had a furnace fire at our house. Fortunately, the damage was confined to the furnace. Unfortunately, the furnace was unrepairable. Also, our church, which owned the former one room school house we were living in, received an emminent domain notice for the building making it unreasonable to replace the furnace. My wife stayed with friends for the next two weeks while I finished my assignment in Texas. When I returned, we moved into a hotel room, and we began looking for a place to live. The church paid for our first month. While I had insurance that should have covered this, the claims agent was a complete jerk. Thank the Good Lord we didn't lose any instruments. We ended up buying a house ten miles south of where we were living and closed on it Friday April 12. I have spent most of the summer packing and moving the possessions we had accumulated over the 14 years we had lived there, mostly by myself, as the laboratory my wife works in also moved over the summer. I really have not had time for extraneous activities. I have not played the concertina much in this period, partially because of the other time restraints, but also because I have a loose reed in my main box, and I either need to take it apart and fix, or send it back to Bob and have him work on it. I have gotten out my old Bastari box with the old action and played that some. Anyway, I felt you all might like an update on what has been happening.

 

Alan

[Mike Franch]

Welcome back! What an ordeal!

[shelly0312]

....wow, what a gruesome story. I am always amazed what people can bounce back from. I think we all welcomed the report if only in making us appreciate the our normal, predicatable lives. I'll try to not complain so much as I play my concertinas every day. Hope all is beginning to smooth out for you folks and there are some jolly, joyful moments in your moving! shelly

[Dirge]

Nice to see you resurface, Alan!

[asdormire]

All in all, I think we didn't come out to bad. While we no longer live in 19th century building, we no longer have some of the difficulties of a building that age either. The schoolhouse had been built in 1880. This house was built in '59, has three bedrooms, a finished basement complete with a dry bar, air conditioning, and is extremely well insulated. The neighbors seem to be reasonable people, though admittedly they are both louder and more lively than our previous neighbors. Of course, my previous neighbors were mostly dead and buried in the cemetery next door. I have a good sunny side yard to put my vegetable garden, though I all ready know I am not going to have as good soil as I had before. Both the the front room and the basement have plenty of room to host a good size session, which is something we haven't had since we left Michigan in 1991. While the mortgage payment is a little more than three times our previous rent payment, it is extremely reasonable. (We had a sweetheart deal before, but that meant I was on call for emergencies at the church and my wife was always doing extra things at the church.) Ultimately, the fire may have been a blessing.