Good news: My house, family, and pets are all perfectly fine, we've had power back since Wednesday night, water back since yesterday morning (though, it has to be boiled before use for the next week or so, for safety's sake), and phone lines, television, and internet as of about an hour ago. Life in this house is almost back to normal.

Bad news: Life beyond the west property line of this house is more or less utterly ruined. The water level stopped at the foot of my driveway, highest any flood has ever reached in this town's history. Main street and the village beyond are more or less destroyed by the flood waters, many folks had water 5-6 feet high or more on their first floors. The local Stewart's gas station/convenience store was already bulldozed down, with no plans of rebuilding it, and so far, 36 homes have been condemned in this town alone. I don't even want to think about the neighboring towns...

We've been helping folks out as best we can the past couple days, helping carry out furniture destroyed by the floodwaters, helping to shovel and wet-vac out muck left behind, but even then, a lot of houses will still have to be destroyed, and a lot of families I know probably can't afford to have their homes bulldozed and rebuilt. The future of pretty much every business in town is up in the air as well, outside of the gas stations, we didn't have one single chain store in town, everything was family owned.