On local flooding and days off from work

The ex called me last night after my kids had gone to bed. She told me that many towns in southern New Hampshire had already decided to close schools today due to the floods we've been dealing with in the last day or so. This includes the town she lives in and where my kids go to school.

She was going to pick them up as usual today but I told her that it would be unsafe to have them with her since she will have just worked a twelve hour shift and would need to sleep. Having two young kids wandering practically unsupervised around the house while she's trying to rest is not good. Plus, kids have needs. They need drinks and snacks and attention. So I told her that I would call out of work today and would keep them with me until early evening.

Seroiusly you don't need to twist my arm these days in order for me to want a day out of work.... I'll happily do it...

Normally she would drop them off at school and be able to go home and get the sleep she needs, picking them up when school is done.

For those of you not living here: It has been raining in central New England since last Tuesday (May 9) and the forecast is more rain all this week, until Tuesday, May 23 when we should finally see the sun again.... I haven't really been out all weekend to assess the damage, except to go to church and to order a birthday cake for V's party next weekend.

Don't get me wrong, I like rain and all (we certainly need it) but this is rediculous. However, so far my apartment, which is on the ground floor is fine. I did lose power for about 2 1/2 hours last night though. When I moved in, my mom gave me an oil lamp and an extra bottle of oil for it. I'd never had an occasion to use it until last night. You would think I'd have matches handy but I didn't. Fortunately I had an old book of matches in the beast that I was able to use.

Reading by the light of the oil lamp was the only thing I could do for a while last night. I felt like I was living in the 1800's. No electricity, no tv, no DVD, no radio, no internet. How did those people survive??? What did they do for entertainment????

14:51 update - Why is it when you are off of work the day seems to fly by but when you are at work the days seem to drag on and on and on and on....

In about an hor or so I'll be going to take my kids back to their mom's house. As you can expect, they were extremely disappointed to have to spend an extra day with me and NOT have to go to school.... ;>)

Other miscellaneous stuff @ 22:00 - I got an art book in the mail today that I ordered from the Science Fiction Book Club. I flipped through the book and this artists drawings are incredible. However, I must return the book. Upon closer inspection, I found that the cover has three razor blade slices in it, likely the product of a careless warehouse drone slicing open a new case of books in order to meet rigorous shipping demands. I emailed SFBC and asked them to send me a postage paid label so that I can send the damaged book back and get another copy of it. I'm sure not going to pay $20 for a damaged book, nor should I have to pay for return postage since I'm only returning it due to their screw-up.

I also got in the mail today an issue of a magazine that I subscribe to that I went out and bought a copy of, since I thought my subscription ran out and I don't want to miss an issue... So it'll be back to the book store and evil empire tomorrow to return a few items purchased over the weekend.

I found out today by looking at my on line checking account that I spelled out the wrong amount of money on the rent check I recently wrote, accidentally shorting my payment by $94.05, even though I wrote the correct dollar amount in the appropriate little box on the check . So unless they ask me before June 1, to correct the error, I'll just add this amount to June's rent.

As I believe I noted in a previous post, my beast has a transmission fluid leak. When I had the oil changed on Friday, I was told the leak is behind the pan and not the gasket as I had hoped. It would cost me at least $300 to have the transmission dropped so the leak could be found and plugged. $300 I don't have and am not willing to pay, even if I did have it. So the search for another vehicle intensifies, since it definitely won't pass the very thorough NH state inspection with such a leak. I'll just regularly check the fluid level and let it ruin parking lot spaces wherever I go from here on out....