Welcome back!

Oh yes, we're back and better than ever. Well, actually, colder than ever. Check out the "deer in headlights" look mama's got going on!
Our building reopened to much fanfare and a crappy typed memo from the condo board president welcoming us home. Grrrr. I'm truly thankful to all the people who worked really hard in really cold, miserable weather to get us back in as quickly as they did, but I don't need to read a sheet of no new information from this guy to tell me that. Maybe had the letter explained what happened, or perhaps outlined the steps they are taking so it doesn't happen again, ok, that makes sense, thanks I appreciate it, and I won't wad it up in disgust. But a two page hand out saying "welcome back and gee isn't our fire department great, thanks electric company!" is a little overkill yes? Maybe I'm just crabby from not sleeping in my own bed for the last 4 nights.
Our unit is fine, no damage whatever, (except for all the food I had to throw out because there was no power for 4 days -- YUCK!) and there is only the faint lingering smell of burnt plastic in the halls and on the first floor and garage. I think you can smell it all the way up here because although the fire was in the basement, the smoke filled the garbage shoot that goes up the whole building. One lasting effect besides the smell is the cold. The whole building had no power for four of the coldest days all winter. I know I've been saying, this has been the coldest week/day/month/year/ever for a long time, but this weekend was once again in the negative double digits with the wind chill, and the snow keeps coming. Ok, I give, it's winter, global warming-shmarming, I get it, ENOUGH! So long rant short, it takes a while to heat a building this big from zero. It's cold. We are wearing sweatshirts, and the heat is cranked on high (we are usually sweating bullets with the heat on low, and usually turn it off at night otherwise we'll fry in our beds.) but it could be a whole lot worse.
And yes, mother, yet another reminder of why my plans to move to Hawaii will continue to be put on hold. I cannot imagine what we would have done if we did not have the support system that we do. I mean, I guess I can imagine, we would've gone to a hotel or something, but it would've been so much worse than what we ended up doing, which actually worked out great. We hung out at Grandma and Farfar's another night, drove to tia Hez and tio James's place and hung out there and had a really nice dinner that Heather made for us. Then Heather and James even gave up their nice cozy bed so we could sleep there, and they took the guest room. (and Domi of course decided to befoul the nice clean sheets with pee. Ugh. He hasn't had a leaky diaper in ages, of course it had to happen in someone else's bed! Huggies! Why have thou forsaken me? Grrrr!) Overall, not too shabby, maybe we should be stranded more often? Um, that was totally a joke, there's no need for freak winter lightning to strike me down sideways through the window.