I should have posted something back in September, but I was a little distracted.  So I'll try to give you an update.

Finished the project, and in one sense, it succeeded.  I furnished, decorated, stocked the pantry, and built a pretty cute warddrobe and paid rent on a minimumwage budget.  I also kept all my receipts, and had hundreds of hours of videos documenting all the purchases as well as other projects.

Avoided any major drama, but with two weeks left to film on location my phone/camera stopped working.  Just stopped, no warning.  It was insured, so I was able to get it replaced with the same model, but the delay made what should have been a leisurely move out into a highstress, literally there til midnight finishing up the the cleaning, situation.

I moved back into my parent's home, donated all the furniture and other things I no longer needed to either Goodwill or people who could use them.  Got everything unpacked and stowed away... organized the bathroom, washed the car (my grandfather's old car that I once again have use of), my *new* phone was out of juice, so left it to charge, and went to my brother's to watch cartoons.

About 2 hours later, my sister called in a panic to tell us the house was on fire.  Specifically my room was on fire...  The room with my phone and computer and back up portable harddrive and all that paper documentation...

Before I continue, the family is all fine, no significant injury.  My room on the other hand is a pile of wet ash.

On the plus side, my dad had decent insurance, so while the event was a bit emotionally traumatic, financially, we're ok.  But for the first few days, I really had no idea what insurance would cover...and reason to think I had lost absolutely all my data, files, and artwork.

For the first month, we couldn't even get back into my room to see what might be recoverable.  When we did get the go ahead, we decided it was prudent to move from least to most contaminated area, which meant starting in the basement and leaving my room for last.  (Normally home owners/insurance hires people to do a lot of what we're doing...more on that in another post.)  But essentially I was told it would not be cost effective for professionals to try to dig my files out, so that's what I've been doing for the past three months.

Up through Thanksgiving, I was also working full time which significantly slowed things down, since the electricity had to be turned off at the house, we needed daylight to work.  But between the stress of the fire and some extra stress at work, I quit my job and have been focusing on digging out my room, salvaging what we could from the basement, and inventorying everything for insurance.

I think we're getting towards the end of that process.  I found and sent my backup harddrive to a data recovery company, and for $3,000 they think they can salvage about 70% of the videos.  Insurance doesn't technically cover that data, but may cover enough other things I can live without to make up the difference.

Thankfully, I also have the videos through December as well as my current writing projects backed up on my laptop, so I can/will release at least some of the project.

My main issue now is just mental exhaustion.  I'm going to focus my time/energy in the coming months on getting AmoebaInk back up and running, some of it I'm looking forward to, but other parts not so much.  I was able to dig out of a fair bit of my business files, but it's so water/asbestos/mold damaged, I'm taking photos and trashing the original pages.

There will be some videos...but probably not quite as many as I had originally envisioned...at least not at the level of detail I had originally intended.  But in some ways that's ok, possibly better.  The point was never to make the exact purchases I made.  That's neither practical not plausible, becuase you're not me.  The point was to show examples of thrift shopping, decor, etc. and talk about tight budget issues.  We can still do that...

...once I have my head on straight.