Flood Watch 2013

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The Chao Phraya River is extraordinarily high, and dozens of provinces up-stream of us are flood disaster areas.  This means that there is a hell of a lot of water slowly but surely headed our way -- expected to reach us around October 15-17.
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Piled upon that horror is the fact that a period of High Tide will start around the 16th.  Our elevation above sea level is so low that a high tide retards the emptying of a high river that is trying to rush huge volumes of water out, therefore the river water seeks other outlets -- such as low-lying riverside communities like ours.
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Most of our valuables were moved up above ground level during the Great Flood of 2011, when water came up over our knees in our ground floor living quarters.  We had help moving the bed and treadmill (after knocking a hole in the ceiling to reach the unused second floor), but the treadmill was more damaged than we had thought from its brief wetting as we tried to move it up.
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The treadmill soon died, so I bought a new one later, a huge, heavy, quality one.  It sits on our ground floor and is the only valuable thing that is threatened now by this year's floods.  Our options are: 1. to hire a knowledgeable guy (the one from the store who set it up for us) to take it apart so we can move it upstairs (since it is too wide to move through doorways when assembled and too heavy), although we question whether the upstairs floors are robust enough for it; or, 2. wait until flooding actually comes to our ground floor and set it up a few feet on bricks.  Either option sucks, and my back aches just thinking about it.
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So, we are watching the river and the news, waiting for the apocalypse to come.  Stay tuned.
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-Zenwind.
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