Fire & Fireproofing!

On Monday, we had a fire.
NOPE. I'm not kidding.
The maintenance guys literally lit part of my kitchen on fire!

The beginning... moving things around and opening the wall above the cabinets.

So first... they moved the fridge out and then the washer/dryer. After that they ripped open the area above the washer/dryer to get to the pipes and the space above the cabinets, the vent for dryer lint also runs along the pipe-line, so they cut it open to pull it out of the way. Evidently the hot water pipe was the one leaking, so they ran the upstairs and downstairs hot water in order to drain the pipes then turned the water off. This is where things got interesting, he used a saw to get the old pipe out, besides the insane noise (banging, clanging, sawing) nothing bad. But then when he grabbed the new piece of pipe and the blowtorch to solder... well... he lit the lint vent on fire!

I didn't see it. All I heard was oh Sh......, Da....., Ahhhh!! Then, the guinea pigs started squeaking the loudest I've ever heard, as the smoke billowed from the kitchen (luckily towards the open window), and the maintenance guy bolted to his truck and grabbed the fire extinguisher.

The fire occurred up there...

Thankfully he put it out before it hit the kitchen cabinets or the drywall... just burned lint and some of the vent tube. He replaced the tube at the end of the day. Upstairs it stank all freakin' day long! (The air return is in the kitchen for the whole house unit). It was raining and 45* outside but I opened every window in the house, I couldn't handle the smell.

It was a pretty intense day. Funny moment- he came out of the kitchen and asked if I had gotten the smoke detector to turn off. It never went off because of the open window venting the smoke out... what he heard was the guinea pigs!

(as for the A/C.... not that we need it at the moment thanks to this random cold & rain front we've got going on! They recharged the frion, said it was empty. We'll see if that's the case, if not they get to hear from me or Quinn, AGAIN.)


Fast forward to Wednesday...
I'd been bugging Quinn about joining a Sunday School Class, but we never found one that we felt "fit" us, so then I learned about the churches Journey Groups (Like Chi Alpha's Fusion Groups, aka: small groups that meet in homes off campus). I looked them up, but none of them felt right. Until a couple of weeks ago... advertised in the church bulletin: "New Journey Group beginning May 19th for newly-weds and soon to be newly-weds. Called AC/BC (After College, Before Children)" PERFECT! And it's on Wednesday night so no other conflicts. We went last night and had a blast, every single couple is in Maryland because of military or government work reasons, even our host family was prior Army (now NSA). So we fit in amazingly well. The book we will be studying is "Fireproof Your Marriage," and yes it is based off the movie. The study is 6wks, but they are hoping to keep this journey group running for an unknown amount of time. So I'm hoping we've found a place to stay until we move next year =)

The host family is so nice. They remind me a lot of my mom and dad, they've been married for 27yrs, their children are 20 and 22, and their house is a "refrigerator right's" kind of place. AKA- Kick off your shoes, help yourself to food/drinks, need something ask for it, etc. I loved it.