More pictures and stuff

First, an update on the Curse of MangoMinster. I'll let Mom tell you, since the Curse really affects the parents of the judges, not the judges themselves.

I had read Mango's post concerning the Curse of MangoMinster, where the MangoMomma as well as the parents of the 3 of the judges had been struck with various maladies. I was reading this just before getting ready to go skiing, and I couldn't help but wonder if I should take the precaution of wrapping myself in bubble wrap before I left the house. However, we seemed to be a little lacking in the bubble wrap department, so I figured I would just take my chances. What could possibly happen, right? Famous last words; I should know better, especially since the FIS Freestyle World Championships are being held (in part) at Park City this weekend, and the entire resort was crawling with, ah, devotees of the Slopestyle and Half Pipe events. (If you have no idea what I'm talking about, it's okay. It's a generational thing, and if you don't know, you're probably happier not knowing.) Anyway, in spite of all of that, the snow was great, we were all skiing well - it was a good day. As we drove home, I was silently congratulating myself on having escaped The Curse. I should know better. Really, I should.

We pulled into the garage and there is water POURING from the ceiling. Uh-oh.

I dash upstairs, fully expecting to see the kitchen/living room flooded, and the dogs sitting on the couch like a life-boat. Gary, meanwhile, having seen all the Farmer's Insurance ads, quickly turns off the water main. I get upstairs, and nothing. I check every room in the house, and there are no leaks, no floods, no nothing. But clearly something is leaking pretty seriously. Gary called a plumber friend of ours, and in the course of the conversation, Gary thinks that maybe it's related to the pipes that go to our outdoor spigots - apparently there have been issues with them in the past. Our plumber friends comes over, is able to access the pipe in question, and apparently the solder where one part of the pipe is attached to another part (I'm all technical and handy-person-ish, if you can't tell) is gone, and there is an inch gap; water had just been pouring out of it.

To not make a long story much longer, our friend was able to fix the pipe, and we have a big heater/blower in the garage that we turned on, drying everything out. There are some access points in the ceiling in the garage, and those are opened so we can get warm air on the other side of the drywall, and see if we can avoid things getting moldy. It could have been WAY worse than it was; we definitely count ourselves lucky. And if the heater does its job, we won't have lost anything other than a few cardboard boxes, and (worst-case scenario) a car cover.

But did the Curse of MangoMinster strike again? I'll let you be the judge. However, I am going to wrap myself in bubble wrap and cover myself in locust repellent (I am told the potential for a plague of locusts before MangoMinster wraps up is quite high) until MangoMinster ends.

*whew* Mom can yammer on, can't she? You'd think with all that drama, that Mom would have taken some pictures or something, but no. Apparently she was 'too busy' while the water was running, and there was nothing to take pictures of once the water was stopped. Or so Mom says.

So.... I'll just have to amuse you with some bitey-face pictures. And for those of you who have been wondering how Mom gets these pictures? She's got a decent point-and-shoot camera (with a bunch of different settings for different lighting and stuff), and she takes about 300 pictures a day, deletes about 100 right away (blurry, just a picture of a foot or something, etc.) and then sorts through the rest, cropping, tweaking, etc., etc. And then she narrows it down to a few that 'amuse' her.















Happy weekending!

*kissey face*
-Fiona and Abby the Hippobottomus