… if the place is about to shut down anyway, giving up half of one’s (soon-to-be-nonexistent) salary in return for a stake in the business isn’t such a bad deal, is it? Basically a zero downside here.

This storyline puzzles me: do the Forths live in a universe where insurance companies doesn’t exist? I’m not sure I’d give ours a 5-star Yelp review (do they actually have Yelp reviews for insurance companies?), but in the end we did get taken care of.

Other than the fact that we had an ice-covered tree rather than ice-covered statues, and of course no Christmas lights, this looks bizarrely similar to what happened to us a couple of weekends ago.

Ted, first report it to your insurance company, then give them time to compile a list of all the technicalities with which they’ll cut down on the amount of payment you’ll eventually see.