Eventful Week [E]

Tuesday [July 5] we had torrential rain which caused the sewage to back up... in the basement and, through the pipes, even on the first floor. In the basement, it was not that bad since the floor has a kind of a funnel shape and I had blocked all the drainage, limiting the damage to only up to six inches of water in a part of the basement. No books, storage boxes or furniture were really damaged. On the first floor, I had an half-inch of water in the bathroom, that spilled in the corridor and into my office, then dripping back into the basement (damaging a few ceiling tiles). Again, not much damage beside a couple of wet carpets. However, it was a very trying and tiring evening. I worked like crazy to limit the damage, mopping the dirty water and then cleaning up. I worked in a kind of desperation, forgetting about pain and tiredness. I ended up with hand blisters and sore muscles all over my body (five days later I can still barely move!). It was quite a traumatic experience. Today, it is raining again and it makes me nervous. I keep looking at the doppler radar hoping not to see any heavy rain close by.

My wife and I being news junkies, we were also well served this week with the announcement of the olympic bid winner on wednesday [July 6] (I guess Paris lost because Chirac was really too arrogant) and the London bombing on Thursday [July 7]. I guess the people of London were lucky in many ways and it is the proof that the increase security do reduce the risk of attack. Forty something dead with four bombs is a relatively low amount of casualties compare to the Madrid bombing or even 9/11. I guess that the security mesures make it more difficult for the terrorists to mount effective attacks. But it is certainly no consolation for the families of the victims.

I spent the rest of the week running around preparing for Fantasia and working on various reviews for PA#85. With so much work to do, I am not sure I will have time to see many movies and I am counting on getting as many screeners as possible to compensate. I also took a few hours to change a little the layout of Protoculture web site top page. That's the most visited page and I thought it would be more effective to use it to present products instead of just having the updates (now moved to a blog). Have a look if you have time. Now, back to work.

Take care everybody (is there anyone reading this, I wonder).