Thanks so much to all of you who reached out this week … all across the country and all with well wishes and concern… We are all fine and only minorly inconvenienced, and wish those more affected a safe and speedy recovery!
What follows is a personal story from the week!
Small Things Like Water
The small things in life, like running water are frequently taken for granted…. at least in our homestead….
Monday morning at 9 am, the running water at the Kvale homestead suddenly gave up the ghost and froze! Been living in the same place for 20 years, first time ever ….. Home built in 1928, not its first rodeo, but fingers crossed for strong pipes and no unwanted sprinkles.
Break In – Water back on at noon yesterday! No leaks so far!
Thankfully the Electricity at the house never missed a beat… so far.
On to the Office
With power grids going down across the city, the decision was made to head over to relative’s for a water break, from there just a short walk to the office to check things out and power down all the equipment…
With the 16 year old’s dog in tow on a leash … as we entered the very empty building (we were the only ones there) the noise coming from the building became clear …
“Please exit the building, do not take the elevator!”
Just as the Brain is processing this repeating message, two of the sprinkler covers in the front lobby portion of the the building, blow off … crash to the floor … garnering our collective attention followed by what sounded like and explosion as the sprinkler pipe about 10 feet away let go …
Here is a carefully taken picture:
Building manager probably does not appreciate this, so shhh don’t tell anyone!
The reason “Carefully” was mentioned above when taking the picture, just to the left – out of the picture area, where the water is seeping, is the entire building electrical closet….. water and electricity really work well together….
For the record, a frantic call was made to the building manager who originally thought the break was “Outside” the first floor due to a spotty cell connection… cannot make this up… third call after being disconnected…
No this is inside the lobby, but only on the first floor lobby area and not in the bank also on the first floor!
About 20 minutes later, an engineer shows up and we wait, again just trying to get to our floor to shut down important electrical devises from experiencing rolling electrical outages….
Help is on the way, will be there in 15!
30 minutes later, help is again on the way will be here in 15…
Dog picked up by relatives! She was freezing…
Let’s check the emergency stairwell closest to our office and on the opposite side of the leak….. looks great but there is ANOTHER small leak that is squirting across the exit near the office emergency door…. of course freezing almost immediately….
Around 5 pm, the engineer, a buddy at the office and myself agree the farthest elevator from the still spewing water pipe would be safe to go up 5 and 6 floors…. Finally, the machines will be safely shut down….
Office door open, the shutdown commences…. but not fast enough…
Entire three block grid goes down…. and it is Dark Dark…back up generator for office had already exhausted all gasoline from earlier black out…
All machines on battery back up commence beeping, of course no monitors are plugged into the battery back up…
Two desktops softly shut down, server goes down on its own due to a battery backup system… luckily…
Deep breath, time to head down the emergency stairwell… again, pitch dark… very Poltergeist feeling…
With only cell phone light in hand…. a slow walk turned into a faster and even slow run as the creepiness increased !
Emergency door in sight on bottom floor, the sprinkle is felt from the smaller leak… slip slide to the exit and boom the light from outside….
Today we intend to turn our machines back on if the Electricity stabilizes…. yesterday was still sputtering….
Next week we talk interest rates… but thought you might appreciate the adventures from the week! Thanks again for all the well wishes…much appreciated!
John A. Kvale CFA, CFP
Founder of J.K. Financial, Inc.
A Dallas Texas based fee only
Financial Planning Total Wealth
Management firm.