Go ahead and say "I told you so"

This one goes out to everyone who said "Hey Nick, isn't that tree in your front yard kind of dead?" Well, it's even deader now than it was last winter. Yes, you told me so.

And to all of the people who mocked us for putting a chainsaw on our wedding registry: I told you so!

An enormous branch fell from the tree in (or, we contend, very slightly adjacent to) our front yard. There was minimal damage. The phone line came down, but we don't use that, and the cable line got stretched such that we lost exactly one channel. Electricity was not affected according to the worker from the power company who came out to check on it when Ashley called.

We think this is our neighbors tree, and we wish they had come over to talk to us about it when it fell last week, but they didn't, so today we went ahead and cleaned it up. Four bundles of sticks and branches, three garbage bags of twigs and two sizeable logs later we're back to normal.

Optimistically, the fact that this branch fell towards the house should mean that the tree is now weighted more away from the house instead. Also, we hope that being rotten will mean that it is more likely to crumble piece by piece or collapse into itself than it is to tip and fall far enough to hit the house. Practically, we have no idea. If anyone knows any arborists, maybe they could drop us a line.

We dug out our house papers from their secure and fireproof location behind the paperback sci-fi novels in the office-which-will-soon-be-a-nursery and determined that (a) homeowners insurance is written to discourage homeowners from claiming coverage, (b) the tree is not indicated on the survey drawing we have, (c) the property line is 6' 7" from the edge of the structure and (d) we are covered for the destruction of our house by aircraft, including guided missiles and spacecraft.

We will break out the tape measure and then start figuring out how to contact our neighbors to talk about this in a diplomatic way.