Tag: 2020

So far, I’m giving the side-eye to 2020.

The good news is, I’ve been reading; re-reads, so the TBR isn’t dwindling, but progress!

As y’all know, we’ve had record breaking drought and jaw dropping bushfires down under, but Mother Nature has relented, in her own twisted way, and for the last week or so, we’ve had rain.  So much rain.  This time last year, our YTD rain was 5mm / .2 inches of rain.  This YTD: 92mm / 3.6in.  For a Florida girl, it doesn’t amount to more than an afternoon thunderstorm, but for Melbourne it’s a godsend.  Except that the majority of that rain all came in one day – last Sunday – and not before the hail. OMG the hail:

One of the hail stones MT grabbed out of the garden, compared with a quarter.

All of its friends, stoning my garden.

MT and I might be a little odd, but we were at the back door, videoing the icy golf balls falling from the sky, running outside (this was MT – I have my limits) to put boards over the fish ponds and generally oohing and ‘holy crap’ing.  When it was over though, MT discovered that our skylight in the bathroom was no more.  Smashed to smithereens by a hail stone or stones unknown.  Less fun, but really, in the grand scheme of things, no more than a drippy, albeit expensive, nuisance.

So, we caledl the insurance company Monday, and they sent someone out to temporarily patch the roof/skylight until the assessor comes out tomorrow.  And, here’s the punch line:  he patches the skylight with the orangest tarp you’ve ever seen resulting in a whole new look for our sea blue bathroom:

Rave? Bordello? Old-school photo developing room?

The glow on a sunny day is so intense it pulses out the door into the hall.  It’s hilarious.

In Bookshelf news, the hail storm ended up putting paid on our planned progress to cover the next corner of the library, though we did make some headway.  This bookcase, which is really two bookcases stacked:

came out, revealing something we should have remembered – that the bookcases were installed before the room was painted.

Oops.

Luckily, we still had the paint, and we always have painting supplies, so this was not as big a show-stopper as it could have been, or the hail storm proved to be.  And we did get some temporary shelves up above the fireplace:

Our neighbor is back home tomorrow, and MT has everything setup to get the new rails installed, so maybe we’ll be back on track this weekend, though I’m not holding my breath: we have family in town, and my SIL, my niece and I are going to see Cursed Child on Saturday, an all day affair, and Monday MT and I are going hiking for my birthday, which is on Tuesday which is also the first day of the school year and therefore my first day back to work.  Fate can be such a fiend sometimes.