Incredibly, almost all of our stuff is fine.

This is the entryway to our apartment. The really dark spot is where the smoke came in most heavily from the space between the walls.

Our neighbor's apartment burned out on Sunday. It was pretty bad, but all we got was a ton of smoke. Everyone's fine, but it'll be a while before we and a bunch of our neighbors will be able to move back in. We have wonderful friends who are keeping our cats (one of whom we'll probably call smokey when we get over the shock of her having survived for an hour in an apartment filled with black smoke) for an indefinate period of time and another family from church who live down the block and are, amazingly, letting us stay in their spare room until God knows when. We're waiting on the landlord to put in new windows and clean up our bathroom, which is covered in sticky black tar. They have to fix the roof over the apartment that is on the other side of the wall in the above photo.

I've swept up most of the broken glass in the living room, and my computer works fine, I'm typing this on it, and the living room is a little bit trashed and smelly, but comfortable enough for me to use the internet. We can't sleep here until the windows are put in and the bathtub isn't black anymore. I'll post some more ridiculous photos soon, but we're going out to the bar when Laura gets back from Choir. That's soon. Life goes on.

Please pray, if you're so inclined, for our neighbors. They got hit a lot harder by fire and/or water. We got off lucky, with just tons of smoke and over-eager firefighters to clean up after. In spite of that, I can't imagine that anyone had more support throughout all this than Laura and I, who are blessed with a remarkable network of family and friends, from school, church and elsewhere. I pray in thanksgiving for them.

(Sandalstraps, I was totally about to write a post about music and theology when our neighbor banged on the door and told me to call the fire department. It'll come soon.