Our Broken Window Story...

I just got these pics sent to me from Hannah, and I had to share them (although the story isn't necessarily "recent"). Last month, Seattle had some major storms blow through which caused loss of power and great damage throughout the area. Thankfully, we didn't lose power here in the U-district, which was a major glory to God -- we had a Christmas party/play/outreach that weekend and the loss of power would have been disastrous. BUT! We did have a broken window! Which, I thought was pretty exciting... hence, the post.

Our story took place on the Thursday night in December when 6omph winds were ripping through the neighborhood, causing the ISI house to shake (let me tell you, it is an unusual experience when your own bed inside of the house is being shaken by the wind that is outside of the house...), trees to bend over and shingles to fly throughout the entire night. Needless to say, sleep was difficult. Around 2am, I heard a crash coming from the second floor, and so, rather excited at the thought of being a hero, and having given up on sleep altogether, I jumped up and ran down the flight of stairs to where the crash had sounded from. One of the young ladies in the house, Sunny, was in England at the time, and sure enough, the crash had come from her room. After Mary Beth and I were able to push the door open (there was a significant amount of pressure building up in the room resulting in the need for force to get the door open), we saw that the window was completely opened and allowing cold wind and rain to blast into the room. We ran over to the window and reached around to grab a hold of the clasp and pull the window back in, only to find that the wind had forced the window to open all of the way and crash against the wall of the house -- breaking a couple of the glass panels in the window (it's an older-style window with wooden frames surrounding the individual glass squares). While Mary Beth held the window in place, I ran and found some cardboard and duck tape around the house (and my jacket -- it was cold!) and then taped the window up. We realized, though, that the clasp on the window had broken completely as well when the wind had wrenched it open, and so there was no way to lock the window shut and keep it in place. I thought about what to do, and then ran downstairs again to look for some twine of some sort. After looking through all of the shelves with all of our equipment and tools for fixing things, I managed to come up with only a funny-looking twine which was white and on a spool. Oh, well. Good enough. So, up the stairs I ran again (all the while Mary Beth was still holding the window in place). I managed to wrap the "twine" through what was left of the clasp on the window, around the table and across the room around the bedposts. I did this several times to ensure that the window wasn't going anywhere. And, by the time I was finished, it looked as though Spider-Man himself had been in the room. Immediately after securing the window, though, I noticed that my hands felt irritated and had little cuts all over them. I couldn't figure out why -- the glass had broken outside of the house, and so I knew it wasn't from the glass. But,before I had too much time to puzzle over the mystery of it all, Hannah woke up and came into the room and insisted that we pose for a couple of pics so that Sunny could see all of the fun that she had missed while visiting the mother-land. By now it was about 2:30am, and so Mary Beth and I called it quits, and I forgot all about my hands. The next morning, the winds weren't quite as bad and so Jeff Nelson came over to "officially fix the window" (the pics show how haphazardly I "fixed" the window -- hey! It was 2 in the morning!). I heard some laughter coming from the room, though, when he entered, and so naturally curious, I followed him and asked what it was that made him laugh. Jeff turned to look at me and said, "You know Emily, this is the most creative use of this that I have ever seen." I noticed he was referencing my "white twine" job, and so I smiled at him and said, "Well thank you, Jeff!" On reflecting what he had said, though, I thought I better ask the question: "Um... what's it supposed to be used as?" He then said with a grin, "Emily... this is what you normally use in a weedwacker."

Oh.

No wonder my hands hurt. Oh well, makes for another good story. And, now I have the pics to prove it.