Thursday Post Without Title

Good afternoon, Stroock's Books. 

More rain sleet and snow in New Jersey last night, making for a wet morning here. Bit by bit New Jersey's reservoirs recover from the Autumn drought. This blog believes the public works types are dragging their feet on saying such, as an ongoing crisis benefits them departmentally and personally. Think of the increased budget outlays. 

Thursday Downer, because why not? Reader(s) will recall a month ago our exterior sump pump drain line froze up in extreme cold causing the interior pipe clamp to loosen from the pump and splash water all over the utility room. A water alarm went off at 4 AM and scared us awake. The problems were easy enough to fix and fix them we did. Nevertheless, we've been worried about the system ever since and have been checking the connection daily. It's just a clamp, and it came undone because of the extremely unusual case of water being pressured back down the pipe and being pumped back up over and over again. The pipe is clear, the clamp is fine. But still. 

This is worry. This is OCD. This is, and God help us we hate using this term PTSD. We walked into that utility room at 4 AM, alarm blaring, water spreading, not understanding what was happening. For the record we handled the situation perfectly, waded right into the problem and fixed everything in 10 minutes. Even so we fretted a lot about the sump pump last night with the rain, we fretted too much. And of course this morning we went down to the utility room to check. All systems functioning perfectly. 

February 12th marked the 8th anniversary of the death of our grandfather's second wife, famed jazz pianist Barbara Carroll. Our step grandmother, we guess. Here she is playing at the renowned Algonquin in Manhattan, our grandfather's favorite haunt. Click on over and enjoy. 

Yesterday we edited and added to three scenes in World War 1990: Thatcher's War and began two new scenes. Day one of the Battle of Waterside is over. Day two is about to begin. This should see IRA and UVF gunmen battling in the streets.