Alright. Spent 6 days in Mexico dealing with dental stuff. Interesting experience, and in truth I could have done the whole thing in 1. My own bumbling caused quite a delay (my local dentist is closed Fridays, and Monday was a national holiday). Was totally unaware that Dallas got clobbered on Tuesday. Not a clue. So Wednesday I'm flying home and my flight got delayed from 1320 to 1440 (and then a bit more). Flight delays happen, I get it, and this one was honestly rather convenient for me. Unfortunately, upon landing at 1610 they didn't have a gate for us, so we got stuck in the penalty box for one-hour-forty. That's a long-ass time to sit on a plane waiting for a place to unload. It sucked. Other planes just had stair-cars come out and buss them to a terminal, but probably because we were international that didn't happen. Eventually they got us to a gate, and then we waiting 10 more minutes for some clod to figure out how to work the jetway. Parked us 15 gates from customs, and by the time I got there it was a one hour wait to get through that. Basically from wheels on the ground to walking out the doors of terminal D was 4 hours.
A $45 uber ride later, this is what I came home to. That's my bedroom window in the center.
It took ten minutes or so to find a path to crawl through to get to my door. Here's what I had to contend with. Yes, that's a balcony leaning up against the door.
This happened at 0620 on Tuesday morning. Apparently the HOA head had the fire department out to check on me to find out if I was trapped in there (I do appreciate the sentiment). My car would normally be parked directly underneath the tree, and nobody could make out whether or not it was in there. The FD apparently concluded that there was no car so I was probably not home. The good news is that, aside from a skinned knee from crawling through the tree, one broken window, and a lost pair of prescription glasses there was really no damage to me and mine. Power didn't even go out (unlike a third of Dallas, some of which are still out).
As many have probably noticed I'm rather keen on engineering disasters. I'm also very well versed on Champlain Towers South, more-so than most, and building collapse is always somewhere rattling around in my noggin. The window it took out is less than two feet from where I sleep. Had that been the thing to awaken me the debris blocking my doorway would have probably been the only thing preventing me from running through the parking lot with nothing but a gun, wallet, phone, and morning wood.
The good news is that the power is still out at the shop, so all said, I only used 1 day of PTO.