3 things means my run of bad luck is over, right?

(OK, so I have not had the camera out much lately and I am reaching back into October files for something to accompany this post. Deal with it!)I would like to say that we spent a quiet weekend at home, except that it wasn't as uneventful as I would have liked. On Saturday we found out that our backyard is prone to freak wind gusts when we came home and discovered our 2-month-old behemoth barbecue flipped over and lying face down in the snow. It's heavy enough that I can't even budge it, so I have no idea how the wind could have caught it, but... never underestimate Mother Nature. Thank goodness the natural gas line was intact! Chad is afraid to look to see what kind of damage there might be; the wheels are off, at any rate, and I'm sure that's not the worst of it.

Then, Saturday night, we discovered water dripping through a speaker in the living room ceiling. Although we were running the washer at the time, there was no evidence of any problems with the washing machine. We think we've traced the leak back to the laundry room sink, which we had never really run hard until Saturday. You'd think the plumber would check it for watertightness prior to the drywallers coming in and building around it, but I guess not. We called our builder and he left his poker game at 10:30 on Saturday night to come take a look. The plumber is at home working on it right now, and I'm sure it will be taken care of, but I was just saying how happy I was that we are through with the tradespeople stampeding in and out of the house and settling into a normal routine. Now the plumber is back, and will have to be followed by the drywallers making 2 or 3 trips to patch the ceiling (which needs to be cut down in order to do the work) and then the painter... ugh!

Finally, I got an email yesterday saying my big 2009 project at work is on the verge of being cut from the budget. A lot still has to play out, but I would be so disappointed if that happened. I don't think it would mean I'd be out of work but stranger things have happened... right?? Yikes.

Anyway. Moving on... hoping this is a better week. To be fair, the weekend did have some highlights. It snowed a ton, and it was wonderful having cars parked inside a garage so that they did not need a 20-minute scrape-down session prior to going anywhere. And number two, surveyors were marking out the lot two doors down from us on Friday, and it looks like a new house is ready to go up. I can't tell you how thrilled I am to see the neighbourhood filling in, and it's perfect that they're going to build during the winter when it will be least disruptive to us. Plus... here's hoping that they'll build something humungous that will block the freaky winds from our back yard!