Do it yourself Roof Repair

Tamara and I decided that we needed to take advantage of the incredibly unseasonable weather of the last few days (it was sunny and 60 on New Year's Eve!) to survey and repair the damage to our roof. However, in order to do that, we needed to get ahold of a ladder. We ended up just going to Farm and Fleet and buying one with the theory that this would not be the only time we would need it. Since we needed to be able to drive it home in our car and to store it in our shed, we bought one of those super-folding-extendable ladders like the ones in the infommercials. It reaches up to 18 feet, supports 300 pounds and claims it can make 20 different shapes! It's very cool, even though it didn't come with a scaffold platform.

We finally got up on the roof and discovered that the damage wasn't nearly as bad as we had thought. Turns out that the branch didn't fully puncture the roof, it just broke one of the shingles. The whole shingle was still there, but there was a substantial horseshoe crack in it. The people at Lowe's were, once again, incredibly helpful and knowledgeable, we're really like that store. The manager of the roofing/building material section stopped taking inventory to come over and help us, and all we bought was a $2 tube of sealant! They said the sealant would get us through the winter at the very least, but we should look at it again before next year.

On the wedding front, we're making progress. Tamara has her dress and shoes, we finally arranged for a block of hotel rooms, and we just bought the plane tickets for the honeymoon.

Other than that, it's QUAL QUAL QUAL...

-Tim