My Bedroom

Here are the photos of my bedroom.
The fire burnt through my closet to get to my room. if you look at the outside pictures, you can see where the roof burnt away over my closet as well.
Andy climbed through the closet and rescued a few items for me.
My Grandfather's war medals, the rack from the first buck I shot, and a few other items that I didn't take with me when I went to college, and to Florida.
 My First computer is sitting there on the desk, as well as a few other's that I had collected as peices for my future 'museum'. Oh well.
 The bindings burnt off all of my books. I am not sure if these are going to get pulled out. It could be fun rebinding all of these books as hard covers.
 What would you call this? A Computcicle? Ice Cooling for overclockers?
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Water Damage

Most of the downstairs of the house didn't suffer much fire damage.
It is suffering from a severe amount of ice. It fell below 0 degrees that night.
 Here is the dining room. The water came through the ceiling and coated everything in ice.
 Looking into the living room. Dad says that the gun cabinet is a loss. That really sucks as he has quite a story to tell with it.
 There are (were) pictures of me sitting in this rocking chair as a baby!
 The kitchen is quite a mess!
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Photographs of the house fire.

Tonight is the first night that I got to see any photos of the house in the daylight.
The upper half of the house looks to have basically burned to the floor. One room downstairs also got burned out, as it was the stairwell to the 2nd floor.
 Looking at the back of the house.

 The front view of the house.

 Here your standing just about at the front door of my parents room, looking through to the bathroom. If you where to lean forward and reach out, that is where Dad was sleeping when the fire started.

 This is the downstairs landing. All of mom's genelogy documents where in this room. All of the original military records, limited print books, research notes, letters to family, gone.
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Newspaper Story

The newspaper ran a story on the house fire.
Short and (bitter)Sweet.
This is the first photo I have seen of the house. The caption said it was taken my a high-school classmate of mine.

The New House

Well, mom and dad are moved into an apartment in Centuria. They had to go shopping to get stuff to move in. New beds, blankets, TV, clothes, just about anything you can think of.

One of the first things on dad's list was some drafting tools so he could start drawing up the new house. He faxed me over a copy - yeah, I know, first a cell phone, now faxing!

Here is a copy of the drawing that dad made. Most of the garage and a slice down the middle of the house got cut off.
 

Some of the high points of the new house are:
The living room is almost exactly how the old living room was, bay window and all. My folks wanted to feel at home when they sat down in the living room.
Very open flowing design. The central room in the house is the dining room, just like in the old house.
The opening between the living room and the dining room is very large, and the corners are arched, just like in the old house.
Large great room for us kids to sleep in when visiting with french doors to the dining room and a sliding glass door to outside. Mom also gets to use this room as her computer and sewing room.
Common bathroom to my folk's bedrooms.
Check out them closets, no, count them, and see how big they are.
The garage has a ton of storage in it as well.

I started to 'build' the house using Google Sketchup so we can see the new house before we even clear the old one off the foundation.



This is just a rough rendering. I have to add the garage, doors, windows, closets, major furniture, etc. My overall plan is to add the rest of the buildings and all the trees in the yard properly positioned. This will allow us to 'look' out the windows.

How cool would that be?

Guest Post from my sister.

Hey all,
Thank you for all the kind words and thoughts this week. My parents and all pets are fine. The house however did not make it. Even though my parents had lived there for 37 years and had many memories lost they are very optimistic and my father already has rough sketches for a new home right over the old one! They have had lots of help and the house was insured so they will be ok. It's a shock but most all the sentimental things were scooped up on the way out, retrieved by firefighters, or dug out later.

Also, due to the lack of home I have now added yet another cat to the two we already have at the house. However this cat managed to hide UNDER the house the entire time the house was on fire and then walked around for a day with icicles hanging off of him so I think he deserves a comfy new house! If anyone's questioning the ice... you shoot gobs of water at a house for 12 hours in 4 below weather and see what happens!

So as stated before, they are fine, they have what they need. What I can ask of all of you is to put important papers in lock boxes, put important pictures NEXT to the front door, make sure your smoke detectors work and are in appropriate places, use those little jewelry cases you get your rings in to store your jewels - this is the only way we would have found heirloom rings, and for gods sake, when you smell smoke upstairs don't DON'T send your spouse up to make sure it really is a fire! Geesh Dad!

The Creuzer's send their thanks.

Jennifer

Phone call

Mom just called.
They are all ok. They stopped at Walmart. Picked up 2 cell phones. I have both mom and dad's new phone numbers.

They both sounded upbeat all things considered. Dad said it hasn't really hit them yet though.

They are going to meet the insurance adjuster at Holiday Inn later today.

Mom said that the firemen did a great job hauling stuff out of the house. She still has her ironing board.

It sounds like they will be staying at the Holiday Inn tonight.

Lost parents... FOUND

Ok, now I know how parents feel when their kids are gone and don't call to check in.

I figured that my folks would either stay at Grandma's house with Auntie Laurie and Therese, or at the Holiday Inn because the sheriff gave them a voucher for the night.

I talked to Jennifer midmorning today, and she had spoken with Laurie, who hadn't seen my folks today. She called Holiday Inn, and they said that they didn't check in because they don't allow dogs. Jen called Mary Wallin, who had driven down to the house last night, and they weren't there either.

Great, where are my folks?

I gave Lenny, the mechanic a call, he had been out there last night. He said that a Karen or a Kim from Milltown had come and picked them up for the night.

Ok, a lead. I called the Karen I know that mom works with. Nope, not there, they are in Osceola. I called Karen, my great aunt or some such relation who lives in Milltown, nope, not her either. But, she had just heard the news, and had just tried calling the house.

I called Jen, let her know that I couldn't find the folks. Then Karen from Milltown called, Good news, they have been found, they are at Walmart, looking at cell phone stuff.

So, I know my folks are alive and well. It was cold last night, it got down to 6 below, and it's currently 1 degree outside. I have yet to talk to them today, but I talked to somebody who talked to somebody who talked to them.

Gotta love small town comunities and global communications. It took me half an hour on my lunch break to find my folks, 1800 miles away.

Jen should be getting there in a few hours.

House Fire

I got a phone call from mom last night. The house is on fire.

Mom and dad are fine.

They got all the pets but one cat out, and he may show up yet. They grabbed some stuff, like mom's laptop, some of the family photos, etc. Mom didn't get her track phone charger though, so I haven't talked to her yet today.

It looks to be an electrical fire at this point. The fire department was fighting the fire in 5 degree weather. At one point, they ran out of water, and called for water trucks from 4 other towns.

A bunch of neighbors showed up, Lenny the family mechanic from a few miles away - he let mom use his cell phone in the towtruck to call Jennifer after mom's track phone battery died and the phone in the barn quit working.

My sister said that Aunt Laurie stopped by the house this morning, and the top story of the house is gone. Jennifer is going up there today, bringing some hats and gloves and whatnot. I asked her to take some pictures when she gets up there.

If you are family/friends, and want to get a hold of mom or dad or to pass a message along, email me at thefamily (at) creuzer.com (no spaces, change (at) to @) and I can give you a good contact number for them when we get one figured out (like a charger for the track phone). I don't know what mom has for phone numbers for family, I don't know if she has her address book or not.

I will keep updating here as I find out more.

23000 miles on the truck.

Well, I rolled over 23000 on my Escape yesterday. And I had my first problem with the new truck, and of course, the one thing that goes wrong isn't covered!

My new truck wouldn't start yesterday. I had to call Katie to come give me a jump start so I could get to work. The lights where fairly bright, but there was no power for the starter. I grabbed my multi-meter, and the voltage was 11.5 volts. When I opened the doors, the voltage dropped down to 10.5 with the door lights on.

Last night I got one of them hydrometer battery testers that measures the specific gravity of the battery acid. Sure enough, 1 cell was completely dead.

1 new battery later, I have to turn the truck on, let it warm up, let it idle for a minute, turn on the AC, let it idle some more, and it's going to drive funny for a while while the transmission re-calibrates itself. Gotta love technology!

Electronics hutch base plans

  A while back I bought a computer hutch that I am using as an electronics hutch. My plans for it involve raising the whole thing up about 25 inches or so, and using a high bar stool with it so I can stand and work if I wanted to.

I thought it would be best if I 'put it together' using Google Sketchup. The joints are a little more complex then they need to be, as I like to build things where the fasteners don't bear the load, they just hold everything together. Idealy, the screws and such just keep it from wobbling around, and the project sits together by itself.



 Here is my pile of cut wood. I realized after I had cut everything, I read a demension out of sketchup as 16 inches, when it really said 1.6 feet. Oohps. Now I have to go get a new 2x4 and recut those 4 peices. Bummer.

22000 hundred miles on my new truck.

Mom, why did you email me your weather?

Cold... it was 45 in my kitchen this morning. I went and bought some fish tank heaters for my aquariums last night, but the water was so cold that I am afraid to use them. I am concerned that the heaters will warm the tanks up so fast that it may kill the fish. Fish don't like drastic temperature changes and I am looking at 15-20 degrees or even more in how ever fast it takes the little heater to work.

It looks to be warming back up a bit for this weekend. So maybe if I am lucky I won't end up with fishcicles.

It's Freezing Cold

Well, it's a Cold day in January! It is freezing cold out. Literally. 32 degrees outside right now.

That means it's in the mid 50s in the barn, where I live.

The cats where all curled up with me last night. Normally sister sleeps at the foot of the bed, but her and brother where curled up tight last night.

I am curious as to how cold it will be in the bathroom tomorrow morning.