I'm still so sad that our cottage was washed away. It turns out that my Grammy is dying too. I feel really bad that a good friend of mine won't talk to me anymore. I'm also really sad that another good friend can't find work and is risking losing everything, and I also know someone close to me that was made to go from full to part time status. Another dear friend needs to leave her home of 46 years...

There is a lot of good stuff too, but right now I am sad for the things that make people sad.

"That woman can't seem to find good "wood" anywhere."

Looks like I jumped the gun with my last journal. Turns out she had termites and her mansion wasn't up to hurricane codes either. So she is going to build something similar which I still think is incredibly wasteful but not as bad as demolishing a building just because she could. At least she let habitat for humanity take what they want.

Last week, we brought you the story of Elin Nordegren's curious-at-the-time decision to knock down a $12 million mansion. It seemed, at first glance, a rather conspicuous display of wealth -- I've got so much money I can demolish a mansion and build a new one! A divorce from Tiger Woods, it seemed, was the gift that kept on giving.

Well, turns out that there was a pretty good reason for razing the estate: termites. A report in People magazine indicated that the 1920s-era mansion fell short of current hurricane safety codes, and combined with a termite infestation, that was enough to warrant blasting it down to the sand.

Also of note: Nordegren offered a local Habitat for Humanity chapter a month to take whatever it could from the mansion before demolition. (No, don't go all, "Oh, so generous, donating termite-infested wood!" on Elin. It was a nice gesture.)

Still, as you can see from the pre-demolition photo, that was a good-lookin' little shack there, regardless of what evil lurked behind its walls:

Courtesy of Pacific Coast News

Apparently Elin thinks so too, because she's filed plans with the Palm Beach County Department of Planning, Zoning and Building that seem to indicate that the new mansion will look a whole lot like the old one. There'll be nine bedrooms, two kitchens, two Jacuzzis, a pool cabana and a three-bedroom guest house.

Tiger Woods, meanwhile, will somehow manage to suffer through his day-to-day life in his meager $50 million-plus bachelor pad.

To start, I couldn't even throw away our Christmas tree today. Mike and I missed the day the city came out to come and collect the trees for re-use. We could have just left it at the curb and they would have land-filled it but I insisted on going out, buying some rope, strapping it to the top of the car and bringing it to Shoshone Park so it could be re-used as mulch. To me this just made so much more sense than the easy way, so I am completely disgusted with Tiger Woods' disgruntled ex wife who bulldozed her $12 million dollar home.






I'm far from perfect in many ways, but I would like to believe that no matter how much money I had, I wouldn't do what she did. If I had 12 million dollars, I would never dream of wasting it just because I had 100 million more. Money is power, but not happiness, good luck to her if this is what she thinks will fill her void.