Why I hated 2008...

No, I'm not kidding we hated 2008. Even though it was the first year since 2005 our family went surgery free. Yeah two of the four were c-sections, but that' really nothing to sniff at either. Maybe a little background here would be prudent.

My name is Trevor and I'm married to a wonderful woman named Heather. We have two boys, Grady and Hayden, aged three and one. We used to live in Calgary Alberta in a wee tiny two bedroom apartment. With the four of us and Dad's LEGO collection, there just wasn't any room for the five of us there anymore. Time to move. Being people in our mid thirties, we decided that it would be better to buy than rent. The summer of 2007 was the middle of a giant housing boom in Alberta and houses, new and older, were selling for three times what they were actually worth. Certainly more than what a thirty year mortgage was worth so we bought a mobile home. Yep, a 'trailer' as some people would call it. It's got a nice big year, almost 1200 square feet of living space and best of all, we'll have it paid off in about six years. Three bedrooms, two full baths, a large kitchen, big living room and our own laundry.

Unfortunately, there isn't a basement to help insulate it during the cold winter months. At least a house with no basement has a concrete foundation to sit on with at least the ground for insulation, we just have a void protected by a vinyl skirting about a millimetre thick. That said, things freeze. At the end of last January we had a cold spell where it was -40 (that's -40 to my American friends) and the water pipes froze. Thus starts the story of why I'm an idiot....

Frozen pipes? No problem, I'll just go rent a portable propane heater. You may know the type I mean, it's like a little jet engine. Hook it up to the propane and light 'er up. I ran that sucker all day, getting more and more annoyed that it just didn't seem to be working the way I thought it should. Maybe the propane bottle isn't as full as I thought it was so let's go fill it up. Great. Good idea. Now I get home and think to myself: "this thing hasn't worked yet today, I should just put the whole thing underneath...maybe the heat isn't going where it needs to." Yeah, that's what I do. Put the heater right under the trailer, open the valve and give it a spark.......FWOOOOOOOOOSH!!!! Thinking back on it, I was probably lucky to get out from under there before the burning underbelly and insulation of my trailer got me. I don't have a panic reflex so no problem...shut the valve off, pull the heater out and go get the wife and kids out without her panicking. So one 911 call and three hours of sitting in the minivan answering all the "what happened?" questions from the neighbors, we decided to head into the mother-in-law's place to have a sleep.

What an idiot. I can also tell you that not only did I even once use our barbeque this summer, if I even get a whiff of somebody using their woodburning fireplace my stomach drops just a little.
That's the end of part one cuz there's quite a bit more, like how we got a brand spanking new laminate floor throughout our home.......