Letters to you

Today I had the chimney cap fixed so raccoons don't crawl in and get trapped next summer like they did last year. While I had the contractors out, I got the external facing board behind the concrete front stoop (as well as the concrete front stoop) replaced. The board was rotten and had a hole in it through which mice could get into the insulation, and the concrete was crumbling in parts, so it was about time to get it done.

We did not, however, replace the door assembly yet, although that needs to be done too, and plans are underway. Aside from the fact that parts of the door frame are falling apart, the threshold is cracked and there's a hole in it where mice chewed it. The cracked threshold has been reinforced with wood and I will fill in the crack and hole with putty and then sand and paint it, but it really needs to be replaced.

The irony doesn't escape me that the threshold of the organizer of Walking the Thresholds and co-organizer of Crossing the Thresholds is cracked. Just to be on the safe side, we will have a new threshold by Thresholds.

(Heh)

As some may know, the A/C died last week. After several rather expensive attempts to fix it, I decided to replace it. Last week the heat wasn't quite as bad - it actually would cool down at night when there was a cool breeze from the open window. I had already missed a couple of days of work waiting around for the first repairman (who didn't fix it), and was annoyed that I'd missed two days of work for nothing.

I didn't want to miss any more work, so I asked rialian to hire someone and deal with the logistics the following week. He called someone to look at it, and we decided that it was old and trashed enough to get a new one. Because I'd already missed two days of work, and because the weather was still cooler than now, I asked Rialian to make the second (installation) appointment when he would be available. So... he made an appointment for this Thursday. What I didn't know was that by Monday, the temperature would go up 15 degrees... (hence, self inflicted - the Thursday appointment was my own doing!)

The temperature increased yesterday to what felt like 100 degrees. The humidity caused it to feel quite a bit hotter than it was, probably (I didn't check the actual temperature - I was too busy dunking my head underwater). We've kept the windows open, put tubs of fresh water for the cats, drank copious ice water, placed fans in every room, placed ice cubes on our wrists, and splashed water on ourselves and the cats. I'm worried about leaving the cats alone, or I would have slept elsewhere (there are several offers of places we could sleep). I told rialian to crash at the house of a friend who offered, but he didn't want to leave me alone in the hothouse.

My mom's life insurance check arrived in the mail. At first I thought it was some sort of ad. You know, the kind that say, "This is not a check - you may have won this amount" or "Get this amount as a rebate if you buy our million-dollar product". But it was not an ad - it was a check. After the initial reaction of "I don't want this money from the insurance company. I want my mother back", it began to sink in that I had a Check (TM). I should have kept my thoughts more of a secret from my house. My house knows when something like this happens. It always knows.

The week after I received the check, my A/C died a dramatic death. We found oil under the unit, and no refrigerant in the unit (we don't exactly know where that went, because there was no refrigerant under the unit). The A/C man who came by replenished the refrigerant for which he charged me quite a bit, but failed to find the leak. Five minutes after he left, the fan died and the refrigerant was down two pounds. We called him back. Several hundreds of dollars worth of tests later, he still hadn't found the leak. He was going to do some more tests, and was starting to recommend a new unit. I'd about had it with him. He was strange, slow, and possibly trying to get more money. I called him back and told him we were giving up on getting more tests. He called back and dropped the price on his new unit proposal by a thousand dollars, and offered to do the last test for free. I thought it sounded like a good deal. Too good. No dice.

So... Rialian hired another company who had serviced laurelinde's unit when it went bad. I wanted to get a second opinion. Of course, this one was even worse (money-wise) than the last. He gave me a choice - try to fix this one (if he could) which would cost about the same as the last guy charged, and give it another 5 years of life (maybe), or get a new one. At first I wanted to try to fix the old one. But then, the prospect of never having to worry about this ancient appliance again began to look attractive. He examined the inside unit as well, and also the furnace, which came with the house in 84 when I got it. It's probably around 50 years old. No parts exist for it outside of a junkyard (reminds me of Smurf). It still works, it's not emitting noxious fumes, and there were no holes that he could see in the coils. However, the coils were layered with about 2 inches of rust, dust, and debris, so he couldn't really tell.

Of course, he said, "I'll give you a package deal on a new furnace and A/C unit".

I have the money now. I may not have it later when the furnace actually goes, which also could be a dangerous thing. If I do it now that's one more thing I don't have to worry about. So...

My house always knows when I can do something like this. How does it know? How can it know anything - it's just a bunch of old wood and plaster. Or is it...?

We started noticing a smell upstairs in Rialian's computer room yesterday. I looked all around the room and found nothing. Then I sniffed where the upstairs vent is, and, well, pew.

We're guessing that either the mother got trapped somewhere inside the house and died indoors, or one of the babies died a couple of days ago. I left for work today without having found anything.

We found two more babies up in the chimney last night- and then they disappeared before we could get to them. They'll probably die too now. We were hoping to get them over to the rescue place, but this morning there was only silence in the chimney. Also, the smell upstairs was worse this morning. I'll need to identify where and how they're getting in and find the bodies (if possible - what if they're in the vents?)

I should have called animal control when I first heard them, but I was afraid they'd just kill them. I'd heard noises around the fireplace for a while, and I knew there were some sort of animals in the chimney. I sealed off my fireplace and they weren't bothering anything, and I thought they would get out the same way they got in. Wrong.

Last night we were admiring a newly arrived copy of "The King in Yellow" by Thom Ryng. rialian read the the hillarious introduction to the first edition and then the more serious introduction to the second edition (because by the time of the second edition, the world had taken a turn for the serious, and some of the contents of the play were scarily applicable to it). Presently, I wandered into the kitchen, whereupon I heard a sound I never want to hear: "OH DRAT!!!" rialian had heard a dripping noise behind him. When we looked behind the couch at the large window, we saw that water was dripping down from the ceiling (leaving a brown stain and puckering in its path).

The irony that we were looking at a Lovecraftian book when this happened did not escape anyone...

The last time I had a similar water intrusion was a very long time ago, but in the dim recesses of my memory I recalled that it had something to do with "the A/C ductwork". That wasn't entirely accurate, but based on that, I began to shop around for someone to clean the ductwork, thinking that dirt in the ductwork may have caused condensation to form (I don't know HVAC systems very well).

rialian and also someone at work informed me that it was probably the condensate drain line (not the ductwork). I hadn't had the ductwork cleaned in about 15 years, though, so I thought maybe this was a strong hint to just go ahead and get it cleaned, whether or not it was the direct cause of the problem. So I called the A/C people and told them to do both (and to service the entire system while they were at it). So much for my shredded pocketbook.

The A/C people are scheduled for Friday morning. Meanwhile, we will roast half to death, since we can't run the A/C or the ceiling will cave in. As it is now, I can repair it with joint compound, drywall tape, spackle, sandpaper, and paint. If it gets worse, I'll have to get someone to replace it. I'm wondering if I should wait till later to clean the duct work, since probably cleaning the drain line alone would solve the immediate water problem - but no, I was supposed to clean it every three years and haven't for about 5 times that long. It has to be done now so people don't get sick.

A number of electronic and mechanical systems are failing of late. My computer printer died and had to be replaced. One of the wheels fell off of my push mower and now needs repair (the wheel wasn't a part that I assembled - it came pre-assembled and needs a special tool to repair it). Meanwhile I picked up a new one. My bike is finally repaired (it was broken to begin with, which was why it cost $18 at the thrift shop). My washer and dryer are making odd noises and don't seem to be up to speed, and will need repair. And the roof needs to be redone. Suddenly it needs to be redone now, because the tree guys dropped a branch on the gutters and made an existing situation (rotten gutter beam) a little bit worse. I'm not sure where I'm going to get this money after the Zombie Bathroom repair, but I guess I'll scrounge it up somehow.

The good news is, my new printer works with Debian - the driver was already there. Yay!

From Mycelium Running by Paul Stamets:

"The powerful enzymes secreted by certain fungi digest lignin and cellulose, the primary structural components of wood. These digestive enzymes can also break down a surprisingly wide range of toxins that have chemical bonds like those in wood. Such mushrooms can be classified into 2 subgroups: brown rotters and white rotters. Only about 7 percent of mushrooms are brown rot fungi; of those, about 70 percent are polypors. Brown rot fungi's extracellular enzymes break down the white, pulpy cellulose, leaving behind the brownish lignin (hence the name. These fungi cause checkered cubical cracking and shrinking in wood, which is commonly seen on downed conifer trees. Examples of brown rot mushrooms are:...

(insert long list of mushrooms along with their Latin names here)

...and dry rot house wreckers (such as Serpula lacrymans and Serpula himantiodes)."

One of the astounding things I noticed when I first removed the bathroom wall was that all the fiberglass insulation had turned to dirt. Not just crumbled insulation - dirt. I think they may be onto something here in terms of bioremediation.

( Mushrooms have been used to restore decommissioned logging roads to a natural state. )

Dag Frakking Gonnit and Bah Humbug. This contractor has got to be slower than plate tectonics. I've been really patient and positive toward him the whole time, really I have. I want to maintain a good relationship since he is an excellent and trustworthy guy and a good handyman, and I have a lot of little things that need to be done. I need to know a trustworthy person like him who won't rip me blind and abandon the job. I know he's been trying and has had a good reason every time there's a delay.

But Geeeeeze.

I contracted with him in AUGUST, and he's still not done and he keeps saying there's only about TWO DAYS WORTH OF WORK LEFT. Last week he was going to for sure attach the ONE LAST THING in the bathroom before the inside part was complete. The light fixture. But his electrician is even slower than he is, and has been a no show twice. So this week it's STILL NOT ATTACHED. It wouldn't bother me so much, but it's the LAST THING DAMMIT.

Then there's the outside. He said he would get the siding back up and the yard cleaned up LAST WEEK and THE WEEK BEFORE THAT, and THE WEEK BEFORE THAT (and so on). Instead, every time it snows maybe 2 flakes or he has a sniffly nose or his kid is sick or his father in law's house needs work, he stays home. Then yesterday, he finally showed up, and realized that some of the siding had become bent, so he had to straighten it out and maybe replace a few strips of it, so he STILL DIDN'T FINISH, has to come back today.

He left me a note (bless him, he always does when there's a delay unlike some contractors), saying they'd come back today and GET IT DONE. We'll see. If they do, so much the better. I've hesitated to post anything like this since I DONT WANT TO BE NEGATIVE about it, but, well, uh, so.

THEY BETTER GET IT DONE TODAY OR I WILL SLAY THEM IN THEIR TRACKS. And such. Probably not, since I want him to do some other odd jobs around the house. No wonder his reference said he worked for him for 15 years. It probably TOOK HIM 15 YEARS TO FINISH.

Ok, I'm back now.

Dezombification proceeds apace. I don't think we'll actually have a usable bathroom downstairs by tonight, but I saw the contractor today and he's closed up the gaping floor (I can no longer see the crawlspace now), and was talking about putting in the rest of the insulation, the walls, and new bathtub that he bought yesterday. This means he might be almost ready to reattach the sink. Thus will Sithreal's commode be restored. He likes to use the sink, which is easily washable. When that was taken away, though, he began to use the chair, which is not easily washable. Therefore I'm greatly looking forward to Sithreal getting his friend Mr. Sink back. I'm not sure when this will be completed, but he seems to be moving right along now. There's still a lot to be done with the house before its midlife crisis is over. It is approximately 70 years old, so after I'm done it should be good for about another 70. Right after this I'll have to have the crawl space and attic insulated (before winter of this year). Then I have to start planning for the roof and gutters replacement (probably next year), furnace replacement (putting that off as long as possible, probably financed through the gas company), wiring and light fixtures checkup, interior painting, floor refinishing and trim, laminate flooring for the upstairs, tree trimming, shed replacement, and repair for a section of outdoor piping (probably a couple of years after the roof).