Personal Note: OH. EM. GEE.

[nebroadwe]

I was away visiting my parents this weekend and we commented off and on the entire time about the wind, which was gusting fiercely around the house and bringing down loose branches here and there. When I returned home this morning, however, I discovered that I had missed the main event: the three-story maple tree in my across-the-fence neighbor's yard had its top half sheared off sometime yesterday (I suspect) and fell, narrowly missing my house. It crushed the fence and my beloved mulberry tree (きさま！), dropped branches all over my porch, and is currently blocking the sidewalk. It must have made a terrible noise coming down -- I'm rather glad I missed that. I put in a call to the condo association, though I suspect the world is before me in notifying them of the event. But ye gods and little fishes! it's certainly an impressive catastrophe. One of the local woodpeckers has been flying in to perch intermittently on the remaining upright stump, possibly with a slightly stupefied expression ("I swear, I only touched it and the whole thing fell down!").

I am regarding the neighbor's equally tall oak tree with a jaundiced eye, though it appears far more healthy than the maple tree ever did.

Comments

[cornerofmadness.livejournal.com]

yikes. glad it missed all the important things

[artemisrae.livejournal.com]

Uh.... Happy Birthday? (http://artemisrae.livejournal.com/122188.html)

My old boss had an entire portion of her house destroyed by a fallen tree one time - it fell directly on top of her first floor bedroom. Where, you know, her and her husband sleep. It was a HUGE amount of damage, I'm glad it missed you entirely at least.

[nebroadwe.livejournal.com]

Me, too. It's still sitting there; I'm not sure how long it's going to take for them to get someone out to hack it up and haul it away.

[nebroadwe.livejournal.com]

Yeah, big things falling on your roof = :-(. I've been lucky thus far -- right before I moved into my last apartment, the bedroom ceiling fell in, dropping a chunk of brick where I was planning to put the head of my bed. Needless to say, move-in was delayed while the landlord fixed the problem (and I turned the bed around. Obvious warning is obvious.). Later, the pipes in that same neighborhood of ceiling burst while I was at work, but the water missed all my books (and my grandfather's paintings) and just soaked the bed. Moving in to my house, I had pipes burst in the garage, but all they really damaged was some random photographs and a bookcase I'd been planning to discard anyway. Either I'm using up all my luck averted household disaster by averted household disaster or my Lares and Penates really, really like me.

Thank you for birthday 'fic! Whee! Comments forthcoming ...