Home 'n' hearth

Hi, everybody.
Hope you're all having a happy holiday/Easter weekend. Mine was sweet--saw a lot of my family this weekend. After an enjoyable day outdoors on Saturday, I went over to my family's house last night, where we had a scrumptious dinner and the additional visitors were my 18-year-old nephew and his girlfriend, who goes to Brandeis and is very smart and attractive, and we had lots of great food and lots of talking, joking and laughter among ourselves. It was wonderful fun.
Early this afternoon, we all went for an equally fabulous buffet/brunch at Changsho, a local Chinese restaurant near Cambridge's Porter Square, which we all enjoyed to the fullest, as well as more talk, fun and laughter.

Betsy takes the family dog to the vet for the last time:

... I feel very sad about having to make this decision. But I do also feel I made the right decision. Marianne trusted me to take care of her, to protect her, to love her. And she was right to trust me, because I did all those things.

I miss you, Marianne.

You need to put your wishes in writing! The Massachusetts Medical Society has a downloadable Health Care Proxy form that lets you specify your final wishes - and designate somebody to ensure they are carried out:

www.healthcareproxy.org

Charlie asks:

Is there anything more pitiful than the look your dog gives you when you've just finished a sandwich without giving her any?

Need to vent and complain and help others - use this

I've been finding ants swarming around my kitchen for the past few days. Not any sort of harmful kind, but just the annoying tiny black ones. You know, particularly annoying because they do stuff like weave across the floor in a perfect squiggly line, parade around waving a crumb like a head on a stick, and so forth.

So this morning I found about 5000 ants in the cat food dish. One of the cats seems to find them sort of amusing and fun to paw at and the other cat is terrified of them. I emptied out the cat food dish, cleaned it thoroughly, and vacuumed up about 4999 ants (one went squiggling under the stove). Hey, they were alive when they got sucked up the hose, so that means I wasn't responsible for killing them. Well except for the one who marched one by one across my toe who I therefore had to smash. Sorry, Buddha.

Fondofelves discusses the challenge of getting her mother out of the hospital and into a rehab center.

Eric discusses the challenge of getting his newborn into the hospital for an MRI to figure out the cause of a mysterious swelling in the back of his head before the end of the month:

... Jen held her ground with the coordinator, let her speak her piece, then asked if she had spoken with our docs this morning. No, she said, but was going to call them after speaking with Jen, and the neurologist was making his diagnosis from the paper he had in front of him. Jen asked her to please call them, because they seemed to think that this required more urgent attention. She agreed. ...

Rose is not impressed with the proposal to turn the old Assembly Square Mall into a "new urban village:"

... This new "urban village" is going to be at least as problematic as IKEA in terms of traffic and overloading public transportation. Will MBTA improve the bus service along that route? Will this place be pedestrian friendly? Will everyone living there have to own a car? Will there be coffeeshops, convenience stores, etc. in this forced village? How high will the residential rent be? Will anyone be able to afford it? Or will the city just be catering to the wealthy? ...

I was taking the trash out this weekend behind my Cleveland Circle condo building, when I noticed some shelves, a mattress, a bunch of framed prints, a couple of stacks of clothing, all leaning against our trash barrels. In my building, a combination of units that haven't changed much since 1924 and overpriced renovated units housing Longwood transients for a few months at a time, this isn't an infrequent occurrence at the end of the month. At the end of every month since I've lived in Brighton, I've found myself trying to understand the mindset of people who leave a houseful of almost new items for the trash collector when they move. I mean, I'm finally at a point in my life where if I moved, getting $20 for my couch is hardly worth the hassle. But the idea of leaving a perfectly usable item for the landfill is just unfathomable to me when so many nonprofits will come and pick things up with a phonecall or e-mail.

Karl has a close friend who is near death from breast cancer:

... I was lying there on my side and reminiscing about the fun we'd had the past few years. Before I knew it, my tears had created a fairly large wet spot on my pillow under my upper cheek and forehead. ...

Amy supplies the answer (and the photos):

1. You wake up, walk into the hall and your feet are wet and you hear "squish, squish, squish"
2. There are trucks outside your house that say: flood catastrophy relief ...

Joel is nearing the end of his nightly run in Kenmore Square when he tries to get by a family with a small dog:

... Like a teether ball, this little Shitzu wrapped around me like three times. This little, four pound dog, just thrown through the air, then slams into my legs. Not to mention the fact that the old lady never let go of the leash. Oh my god. She, obviously, got pulled with me but her resistance rocketed the damn dog back towards her. SO, like a teether-ball with a hundred and something pounds of tension, the little damn dog rocketed back towards the owner. ...

Rod wonders:

Is a $471 gas bill for the month of January just the cost of owning a 3-storey house in Somerville, or is there something seriously FUBARed with our heating system?

348 Therms in 30 days seems like a helluva lot, but is that just what I have to look forward to every winter?

Chris, who lives in Cambridge, reports the water's back on after last night's Kendall Square pipeburst. In a note to Chris's comment, Helen adds:

There's a hole ripped at the intersection of Broadway and Main, at the service entrance to 1CC/the Marriott Hotel. Obviously this was no well planned street work; I can imagine that the dirt went flying yesterday (figuratively and literally) as workers dug to find the leak.

The pipe itself was exposed, and as the aforementioned workers were not paying attention to me, I stood right next to the hole to get a good look. All I can say is: wow! The pipe hole has to be at least two feet by eighteen inches, perhaps even larger. There was water still coming out of the pipe hole, but at a much slower clip than (I imagine) yesterday.

Chris proposes a way to end all the cone/chair battles:

[F]rom late December to mid-March, create assigned spaces. Such spaces could be adjudicated in whatever way seems appropriate - through a lottery, through a market-rate fixed cost, or tied to units and property tax payments. Those without space to park would need to find alternate arrangements. ... It may not be a perfect solution but would keep people from beating each other up over plastic cones.

Warm temperatures after blizzards can mean only one thing, as Jo reports: ice dams:

... When I walked into the silent kitchen the first thing that I heard was *drip*. I looked at the tap in the sink. Touched the tap, dry as a bone...*drip* - behind me. My kitchen is an addition and right where it meets the original house water was dripping all over my beautiful wood cupboard, running down the face and inside the doors and pooling on my unfinished hard wood floor. F*CK! Ice dams have struck. Thankfully I stored my roasting pan on top of the cupboard so it had about 2 inches of water in it that was thankfully not on my wood cupboard and floor. ...

Christine's house is also dammed:

We woke up to dripping at 7am this morning. The corner of the house where our bedroom meets the kitchen seems to be made of Bounty Paper Towels because it's just absorbin' away... and dripping into our bedroom closet. ...

Bruce reads about an armed robbery less than a mile from his home in Roslindale and concludes it's Tom Menino's fault:

... Wake up and smell the donuts, Tom. The innocent people of your city are under attack, and have been rendered powerless to do anything about it - all in strict accordance with your despicable, feel-good, do-nothing, liberal la-la land, citizen disarmament policies. Way to go, jackass. ...

If you ever buy a domed house, be prepared to invest some major time and/or money in rebuilding your roof:

... I finally finished the shingling in August of 2004. I did not work on the roof at all from mid-November 2003 to May 2004 though, so I only spent about 8 months on it. Of course, this was almost every dry week night and Saturday for 8 months. I have no guess as to the number of hours I spent. A rough guess is based on the number of triangles I had (80) and the time to do each one. I suspect I spent about an hour removing the old triangle stuff, and hour with the spacers/sheathing and an hour roofing it. So that would be about 240 hours total. However it doesn't count all the time spent with flashing, moving ladders, collecting debris, etc. ...

And once you're done, don't be surprised if some flying squirrels (but no talking moose) use the disruption to move into your second-floor wall.