Manchester Morgue Reopens At New Temporary Location

Okay, so things are still super weird after my house was murdered by lightningey doom, but I'm set up at a hotel room for now, before being moved to a different location so I can update the site now. Hopefully this new location happens in the next day or two because I'm way too paranoid for hotel living. I have the room paid for until at least Monday, but I'm still hiding my shit when I leave and I'm keeping the do not disturb sign on the door so housekeeping won't steal my computer or my Doritos and Coke. 

Anyway, now that I'm able to type on a laptop, here's the story of the time my house caught on fire. It might be a rushed and sloppy story, but I've told this story to a few hundred people now, and I'm hoping this will be the last time.

This past Tuesday at around 7:30PM my house (or my roommate's house, I should say) got struck by lightning. Everyone was home, I was watching TV with his older daughter - we were 2 seconds from Charlie Day on Conan while my roommate and his younger daughter were upstairs. It was raining pretty hard with a bit of thunder here and there - and yes, I know you should turn off electronic devices in a thunderstorm, but it rained here literally every single day for three straight weeks and I guess we just kind of got used to it and forgot to turn anything off.

So, my roommate's daughter is standing about 10 feet from the TV and I'm in the kitchen about to open the refrigerator. Suddenly the house gets hit by lightning, sparks spray out of the sides of the TV and most of the power goes out. A couple of minutes later we smell a little smoke, but we just think it's from the TV. Nope, a minute later the house is filling with smoke. We all run outside even though it's raining and lightning like an absolute motherfucker. I run to the side of the house and see that it is literally ripped open with flames shooting out of the corner of the house. The lightning had struck the gas line, so there was just a steady stream of gas keeping the fire going. The only good thing is that it struck the outer side of the gas line so the gas was shooting out instead of into the house.

Everyone got out in plenty of time, though the older daughter had been in the shower about 15 minutes before the lightning began which still has us a bit shaken up. Apart from that scare, none of us were close to being harmed by the fire or by the smoke from the fire. It took about 10 minutes after calling 911 before the fire was under control. The fire stayed pretty much contained to that one corner, but the firefighters had to rip out most of the ceiling to get into the attic, so the house is done, they need to basically tear it apart and rebuild the whole house. My roommate has good insurance, so we'll have a weird living situation for a few months, but everything will be pretty normal after that.

I, on the other hand, am an idiot and I kept forgetting to add renter's insurance to my stuff. It's almost like the fire knew this because it stopped before it got to my room, which was practically untouched. I think I'm out a really old desktop computer, my Insignia region free Blu-ray player, a hard drive and a PS3 (which I haven't used for games in over a year, it's become a $300 Netflix machine). This was all water damage from being next to an open window that had water being sprayed over top of it. Nothing of mine was actually hurt by fire. All of my movies, my clothes and both of my laptops are fine, just a little smokey. Now I just have to figure out a way to make my things not smell like a barbecue and I'll be all set. The lesson I got from this: Always have as much insurance as possible and always be terrified of the weather.