Whispers of the Past

This old house stands near the town where my wife grew up. She recalls it from her youth as a charming cottage, once home to an elderly couple, many years ago. Now, it appears to have been unoccupied for decades. The curtains in the window lend an eerie and unsettling touch to the scene.

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Oof, long day. But, amongst many other tasks, we got a big piece of cheapo carpet to throw down on the living room floor so the cold air stops seeping up between the floorboards.

Of course buying the carpet is the easy part, clearing out the entire room to lay it is the "fun" part.

It's from a 4m wide roll (we hoped for 2m wide), so there's no doing it one strip at a time either :)

TIL that people with lupus often cough. I hear coughing from my downstairs neighbors regularly, and I know one person in the couple has lupus, and I suddenly had the idea to see if the cough is related to the lupus after hearing the neighbors have an energetic visit from friends last night that struck me as characteristic of healthy folks.

It turns out lung issues are common with lupus, as is coughing. I get it now, my one neighbor has a permanent cough as a symptom of her immune illness.

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Photo taken in 2007.
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Spent the last few nights thinking maybe it was time to get my eyeglass prescription checked and then one of the lightbulbs in the overhead fixture went out last night, and it's clear I just need fresh bulbs.

Tomorrow morning at 8am, my house building is going to have the furnaces inspected. This is a good thing as it's our landlord upholding their responsibilities.

The furnaces have been running around the clock in below freezing temps for two months now, and who knows when they were last inspected?

The downstairs neighbors learned through their adventures in trying to get out of the lease early that a sublet cannot be listed as the building has not had a compliance inspection since 2019. We just got an email saying that whole-building inspection will happen in mid-April.

I'm guessing the landlord is open to the neighbors leaving earlier. Really, there's no issue renting a space in this town. Demand outpaces supply.

My downstairs neighbors are a cis-het couple, he’s the big grad student, she consults for non-profits. They are both about 28, which is half my age. He got offered a fellowship in Seattle for the summer, so they want to get out of their lease two months early.

The landlord is being a dick, naturally, but the part I like is that the kids have learned that their unit has not been inspected since 2019, and is thus not in compliance, and the city wants to send an inspector.

I have several features I would very much like to show an inspector both in the basement of the house, and my apartment.

There was another stink bug relocation to the balcony from the sitting room. This one was large and clearly spotted marching along the section where there is floor padding.

These critters are amenable to walking onto a stiff sheet of paper, and don't react or run around if they are lifted gently.

Above this room is where there was moisture coming through from the roof leaking. I think the attic houses both stink bugs and lady bugs. Compared to insect populations I have encountered in other apartments and houses in my lifetime, that's much more bearable than several other options.

Basement exploration. This was mostly potato storage. It has a big hole in the wall for dropping potatoes down a chute into the cellar from the outside.

If you're wondering how thick our foundations are, they are two chicken food sacks thick!

Some forgotten preserves down there to sample as well.

I'll need to route drain pipes through here and do some creative fixing of the floor above. Maybe a good place for a heatpump exterior unit.

About a week ago, I watched a video where I learned most traditional Japanese homes do not have central heating. And there is a phenomena connected whereby elderly people are killed by the temp variance between heated and unheated rooms, often the bathroom.

My apartment bathroom heating vent never puts out heat, and that window has the worst gaps. I have been shutting the bathroom door to prevent the bathroom air from chilling the rest of the space. It's now 49F (9C) in my indoor bathroom, and I am bundling up to go in there and use the toilet.