Work post!

Things are so slow at work I'm a) taking time off, and b) I virtually ran out of things to do yesterday in the office. This left me in the awkward and wonderful situation of being bored. As a result, I threw out things I could, reorganized my desk and files, and tore through my old training materials.

I learned something - I'm better at what I do.

I realized my work was better when I had a series of requests to go through materials. Oh irony, while I wrote the preceding sentence I got an email from a coworker. I had just sent him a recent (1 year old) response to a damages claim, and he responded it "was very helpful." It actually was pretty good and conveniently had arguments on most major damages claims subject areas. But I've seen a lot of my old work recently and it was nothing like what I, effortlessly, pump out today. So I knew I had gotten better.

Yesterday I realized not only I wasn't using these old training materials, but I had no reason to. I've converted from someone with pages of cheat sheets to an attorney who does his case law research from scratch on each case (mostly). Granted this may be easy in my field of law, but instead of pulling cheat sheets on anything but very basic law (i.e. McDonnell Douglas 3 part test for discrimination disparate treatment analysis), I go into random recent cases in the forum applicable and pull what case cites they are using. This wasn't something I planned, but found made better products and I made the research easier with practice.

I suck less, and think that's awesome. Or at least that's how I perceive it and feel about it today.

Floodlands and the river above

Last time we had major rain I had a minor basement "flood," when a back drain was clogged with trash & debris so the water came up over the step and got the basement carpet wet. I cleaned out the drain area, and the next rain showed no problems at all.

The DC area has lots of flooding now with some record nipping rainfall. I can't drive the parkway due to flooding.

I can't lose, at least that's what I'm arguing now, as I'm going to check for flooding later this morning (cleared with work).

Flood: I win. I file a claim on my insurance, which includes flood coverage, for "damages." I would investigate the ramifications of this, but since I intend to renovate and remove anything that might be damaged - the repair entitlement could just go into the renovation budget.

Flood: I don't lose. If I don't win per the above, since the stuff all goes anyway, wet isn't terribly important.

No flood: I win. If in this rain there is no flooding, then I'm able to point this out to tenants, and one fear of basements is the flood. When I have backflow valves in the drain/sewage lines, and a history of "no flood here while others were under water" then I can note that history (but not claim floodproof because that would be arguably a warranty subject to damages?)

(no subject)

Went to my house during lunch, but with the parkway closed due to flooding it took ages to get downtown and back. Overall I got good news - no water came in any door, all the drains worked. One exception is the drain from the porch roof which is too slow, but it overflows the pipe only to spill into the other drain in the front porch.

The one water issue was in the test pit in the back of the house. Somehow that filled with water - presuming it filled up from outside. That makes me think the plan of not having a sump pump is a bad one even though in weeks or months there has been no water issue. Curiously the test pit I saw mud in earlier shows no change, making me think the prior mud came from water coming in the back door - I thought it didn't reach the pit, but perhaps I was wrong.

It occurs to me I could be an awesome landlord, and save money, for if there ever was a flood I could temporarily take the tenant into the upper house.

A friend had their basement flood, and were screaming about how happy they were they paid the additional flood / backup insurance (it aint cheap yo). So I'm also happy that I have no fear and going to keep paying for flood insurance. Hell I may bump it up.

No leaks seen in the ceiling, so I'm confident in my new roof (and skylight).

2pm meeting tomorrow with the contractor to lay out the ginormous work expansion.

On a related to housing note, I met with an accountant today to set up a contract for the coming year. I re-ran my numbers on the very rough, computing my tax liability with my current stocks sales, with the tax liability if I sell enough stocks to do the rest of the reno budget. If I, ROUGHLY, throw in the impact of my settlement costs and additional mortgage interest, it looks like I about break even without any deductions for reno work etc. I spent a lot of time updating my cash, investment, and tsp files. I've been saving and investing money for about 20 years of government service, and I am not displeased with the results. Also, running numbers and linking cells in workbooks is kinda fun.