Stormy weather

The last few nights have been interesting here in the Chicago area. Lots of lightning, thunder and inches upon inches of rain. It's now the wettest July on record here. We've learned just how much we depend on electricity for simple things. Almost 20,000 people in the area are still without power from last night's storms.On a personal level, I'm really tired of it. I'd like to get some sleep tonight!

-Fran

Getting back to normal

It's been almost a week since the great deluge and we're just about back to business as usual. We still have to deal with insurance matters, and we have to repurchase the inventory that was damaged. The new (replacement) label printer is working and we're shipping out orders as quickly as before the flood.

It could have been worse.

A really, really bad day

When I got to work this morning, I knew something was wrong. This is how the door to the building looked.The landing leading to our store wasn't good, either. And this was the sight that greeted me when I unlocked the door. Apparently some pipes in the upstairs apartment burst. And water cascaded onto our suspended ceiling, bringing it and a deluge of water into the shop.

This is my desk. Poor little mouse.

My desk, again. Believe it or not, the desk lamp did work after we dried it off.

Fran's desk didn't look any better.

Our comfy customer chair was ruined.

Apparently I couldn't get over the mess of my desk.

There was about a half an inch of water all over the floor.

More mess.

My desk, again. It apparently was in the path of the waterfall.

The worst part of it was that our landlord didn't even call us when it happened. We lost a day, the label printer that was on my desk, a good bit of inventory, and our composure. We're really, really sick of winter. And water.