Home 'n' hearth

Even if it means throwing out 1970's copies of Sports Illustrated and Baseball Digest, Dan Miller reports.

Photos of a house being moved from one street to another in Wellesley.

Karen Wise explains why her entire family is now getting rabies shots, not that she knows for a fact that the bat that was flying around in her house was rabid, since her husband let it fly out, when, as they now know, you're supposed to trap it somehow and let Animal Control test it for rabies.

William provides the blow-by-blow for his neighbor's re-reroofing project, which he started today:

... Luckily I had a huge tarp to add to Josh's collection and the guys frantically started to cover up the house. This was no easy job. Check out the driving rain and the look of grit determination on Bill's face. They got it covered up in short time and now it looks like some of the houses from back home in the Ozark Mountains. ...

Ian and Lis have squirrels living in their walls - or maybe something else:

... "Listen," she said.

Adorable chirrups and purrs were coming from the walls.

"We've got a tribble infestation."

Just ask Be, who planted a bunch in her front yard yesterday.

Eileen begins to ponder purchasing some boa constrictors for her apartment. Before it comes to that, however, she dons her Ninja hazmat suit and declares all out war on the vermin in her vicinity.

Earlier:
Charting mouse elimination.

Nathanael graphs his efforts at de-mousing his place.

John Ford posts fourth-quarter apartment-rent numbers for Boston.

Note to self: Next time you open your bedroom window and use a loose bedpost to knock down some of the two-to-four-foot-long icicles hanging from your front gutter because you and the kidlet think that might be cool, you might want to let the wife, sitting downstairs watching TV, know first so she doesn't think the house is under attack or something. But at least I proved to the kidlet that just because I'm going to do something stupid (i.e., use a loose bedpost to knock down giant icicles), it doesn't mean I'm going to do something really stupid (i.e. lose my grip on the loose bedpost and then have to go outside and navigate the three feet of snow in the front yard to retrieve it or, even better, listen to it bounce off one of the shrubs and crash into a living-room window).

Four months of construction hell that will make you wish you could just burn the whole building down.

As a J.P. resident, the short walk down Boylston St. to the Stony Brook T stop becomes treacherous during the winter because several neighbors rarely clear away snow and ice from the narrow sidewalk in front of their homes.

I know it's a pain to shovel. I'm a condo owner in one of J.P.'s triple deckers, and we share shoveling duties. It's no fun, but we do a decent job of it. These folks, however, don't even make the effort. Perhaps there are extenuating circumstances, but in any event it's a genuine safety hazard. Read more

Ho ho ho to those who go that way today! Hope everone wasn't up too late last night wrapping or celebrating, especially if you have kids.

Happy Chanuka to those who celebrate for more nights than just one. Adam Sandler's classic has been getting a lot of airplay lately; I heard it twice in one morning, I think on the same station (hmmm, did Mix's playlists change dramatically when Lander went, or is that just my imagination?).

Joyous Winter Solstice for those who are thankful the sun has come back to us, a little more each day. Read more

Arlington and Lexington have already announced schools are closing between 10AM and noon tomorrow, 19-Dec. What towns are next?

Post your favorite snow closing resources here too:

• http://www3.whdh.com/stormforce/index.php
• http://media.myfoxboston.com/schoolclosings.html

Kevn McCrea explains how that could happen - basically, commericial property values are plummeting even faster than residential ones:

The result is that residential taxes will rise, perhaps substantially, even if home values continue to deteriorate in 2009. Successful lawsuits from owners of larger commercial properties may exacerbate the shift of tax liability from commercial properties to residential properties in 2010 and beyond.

Because, remember: Prop. 2 1/2 only limits the total amount of money a city can take in in property taxes, not how much an individual property owner pays.

The state Attorney General's office has gotten a temporary restraining order against a mortgage broker who allegedly soaked troubled homeowners for fees he claimed would help him stave off their foreclosures. According to the lawsuit filed against David Coleman of Methuen yesterday:

... Coleman would target vulnerable homeowners on the brink of foreclosure by combing newspapers for victims' contact information in foreclosure notices. He would then allegedly make unsolicited calls to the homeowners where he would offer to save their homes from foreclosure by assisting them in filing for bankruptcy in exchange for a $1,000 cash fee upfront. The complaint further states that Coleman held himself out to consumers as a bankruptcy expert and an attorney, even though he does not hold a license to practice law in Massachusetts or in any other state. ... In many instances, the bankruptcy petitions were deficient and dismissed because they were incomplete or lacked the proper information. Homeowners allege that when they attempted to contact Coleman about these deficiencies, he was either not reachable or, if reached, he brushed off consumers’ concerns. ...

With Plum Island washing plum out to sea, David Robichaud asks the question.