Act of God - sorry, what?

Smoke Landscape HDR, originally uploaded by hugeknot.

Well, where to start? Had a very eventful few days and in hindsight it will all be very amusing...

So, a volcano erupts in Iceland and some flights are disrupted, we didn't think it would last long enough to effect our eagerly anticipated journey home (it's been amazing in the US these last months, but we both got cats we miss!) we were mega-wrong with bells on.

Then, in the early hours of Sunday morning we were still up working and the water tank above our bedrooms bursts and water gushed into Sarah's room and the kitchen, the guy who put us up in a converted garage in JC was un-contactable, not sure what we expected really, but that's another story, which will also be funny one day (well actually it's funny now but that's another story even)... So we called the Fire Dept which was quite exciting, by the time they arrived we were actually flooded and the kitchen and Sarah's room were under 2" of water and it was spreading throughout pretty quick. To stop it all we needed to do was shut off the stop-cock but we'd never been told where it was and in our defense it can't have been in an obvious place since the FD guys couldn't find it for ages either! God knows what they made of our space with some of our paraphernalia, Sarah had been doing a project with some rubber breasts which were hanging on the wall, and we have two cat calendars...in a garage...in New Jersey...

The next day our flight got canceled, we had no hot water, no kitchen and only one bedroom - the guy next door was really nice, he made us cappucinos and he had four cats (four!) so that cheered us up. Cue the next couple of days on and off on hold to Virgin Atlantic (seriously we were cut off so often being on hold for two hours at a time was something to celebrate) and the British Consulate in New York trying to make sure we didn't end up being detained for being illegal in the US, deportation would have been fine had it been possible! We were told initially that our earliest flight home would be the 1st of May!!! We persevered on hold the next day and brought it forward to the 26th. Luckily we were flying with Virgin so we have somewhere to stay that only has water in appropriate places like the sink, in Manhattan, which is lucky as even if we'd been welcome to stay where we were, it would have been as bleak and dank as a skanky flooded garage in New Jersey...

The staff at Virgin were a delight, maybe it had something to do with being so happy to speak to a human after listening to their automated toff going on about how great flying with Virgin is for soooo long, but considering they were probably dealing all day with people like the unhinged harpy I turned into when speaking to my travel insurance company, that makes them even nicer. The galling thing was that Virgin Holidays office is right near where I live, these people were literally a four minute walk from my cats...the audacity... I'm ashamed to say, my dealing with the travel insurance company was not so pleasant. I called the shareholders something not nice and rather loudly enquired of the poor woman on the other end of my Skype connection, why anyone ever bloody well bothers to buy any insurance at all. I'd searched the policy for the phrase 'Act of God' and it wasn't there so thought it would be ok, my mum wonders what Richard Dwarkins would have made of that in the same circumstances 'well, I'm an atheist and that won't wash with me, so cough up you despicable bunch of rip-off merchants' (that's how I imagine he'd phrase it). But in clause A.1.49.5 there was some toss about any delay as the direct or indirect(?) result of an order from any government about anything. At all. !@£$%^&*(?

Anyway, got a bit of holiday time at the end of this trip and are free from the bizarre damp studio set-up and it's affiliates, so all being well, home on Monday. Being an atheist like the aforementioned Professor Dwarkins all I can do is cross my fingers to aid this eventuality!! But maybe being such an infidel is a contributing factor since apparently it is immodest women and the godless that cause natural disasters, I do have a couple of low cut tops (lawks!) and I'm utterly faithless, whoops...check this out naughty women = earthquakes ...