Winter Notes

(I started this post last night but I was so tired from the past two days that I had to set it aside and go to sleep.)

It snowed again Monday. A lot. The TV news said we got 16" on top of last week's nearly two feet. Add in the couple of inches we got over the weekend and Boston got 40.5" of snow in one week, a new record that broke the old one by nine inches or so.

That's much more snow than people are used to dealing with in such a short span of time, and because everything is close together in our urban environment, figuring out what to do with the cleared snow is a challenge. The drifts get pretty high, as you can see.

Sidewalk in front of our house

Late in the morning on Monday the snow slowed down for a while, so I decided I wanted to get going on the shoveling. I knew I'd have to go out again the next day and re-shovel but it's better than having to deal with all of it at once. These storms have also been more challenging because it's been colder than normal and the winds have been strong.

I was able to follow the areas I had dug out last week, though this time the windblown drifting went against me and there was a lot more on the driveway side of the house. I was getting near the end of the driveway and dreading the task of clearing it when our next-door neighbor appeared from around the corner with his snow blower and proceeded to clear the whole thing for me. What would have taken me probably 90 minutes he was able to do in less than 10, which was a huge relief. I really need to see about getting my blower working again...

Driveway results

Yesterday morning we woke up to temperatures of around 4, and we quickly realized that our heat was not working. It had been the night before; we called the HVAC people and it turned out to be a thermal coupling, which is a relatively quick fix. Apparently they can just fail randomly, which is not exactly reassuring.

Yesterday I had to go out to the post office because I had sold two items on eBay. Getting to Medford Square wasn't a big deal, though the walk to the bus stop was tricky because of the variation in shoveling effort by the residents of our neighborhood. Coming back I was the victim of a bus delay that lasted almost an hour; eventually a bus appeared in a spot that isn't an actual bus stop, and a T employee who had also been waiting for the same bus realized it was the one all of us were waiting for and alerted everyone to cross the street and get on it. I haven't had to go into the city, and with the problems the T has been having I'm relieved.

Remember how this looked last week?

I entertained the idea of going to the Patriots parade for about five seconds. It is somewhat warmer today, about normal for this time of year, but with the huge piles of snow on the sidewalks I don't know where anyone is going to stand, and it also means the sidewalks are going to be more congested and it will be harder to move around, and trying to take the T is such a disaster at this point, so I'm just watching it on TV.

The forecast is calling for a small amount of snow tomorrow—lucky us. Beyond that it appears another storm is heading for us Sunday night into Monday. This winter had me fooled, with no snow of any significance until two-thirds of the way through January. Now it seems the weather is trying to make up for that lack of earlier snow.

Festive

Since before we moved to this house eight years ago, the upstairs apartment has been occupied by various unrelated single adults, some of whom moved on when their relationship status changed. This summer two of the three left, and the girlfriend of the third moved in. There were furniture purchases and other expected domestications.

Then about ten days ago I started noticing bits of holiday-related decoration appearing. There's a small window in the front wall of the house, about head-high, that lets light into the stairway going up to the second floor apartment. Vinyl lettering saying "Merry Christmas" showed up on that window, affixed to the inside. A couple of days later there was a package on the front porch addressed to the female upstairs resident. It was a doormat, and because it was wrapped in clear plastic I could see that it said "Wipe your merry feet." Indeed.

I grew up in a house where Christmas decorating was embraced enthusiastically, and I have friends who are equally merry, but I'm not used to seeing it so close by, or so early in the season. The majority of people in the neighborhood who do decorate seem to have an unspoken understanding that visible exterior decorations are not supposed to appear until after the Thanksgiving meal has been consumed.

On Sunday I went outside to get the paper and found that the window in the door leading to upstairs had been covered by a piece of holiday wrapping paper. It blocks the light that comes in through that small window and makes the vestibule dark, but at night when their stairway light is turned on it makes the paper glow warmly.

Last night when I took the dog out, I saw that a couple of rows of blinking lights had been strung on the second-floor porch railing. They were arranged in a straight line running around all three sides of the railing about halfway up it. There were white lights and blue lights (thankfully not those LED ones that emit a weird, artificial-looking light) but they weren't mixed together, and they'd been set up to blink in seemingly random patterns.

It struck me as something of a half-hearted effort, but perhaps it's only phase one in a larger light-show plan. It's still two days before Thanksgiving, so there's plenty of time for who knows what else to appear.

All Quiet

The upstairs dog has been much quieter since Wednesday, barking only occasionally (and going totally nuts when its owner gets home). I was bracing for a long season of barking, so I am relieved and somewhat surprised. Maybe the dog is more used to being alone than I'd thought, and it was just going through the adjustment to a new home.

Meanwhile, our dog seems only barely aware that there's another canine creature in her vicinity. The only real indication I've seen so far: when we go out into the back hall on our way out for a walk, she has started turning her head and sniffing up the back stairs. I'm sure the two dogs will meet eventually, but I don't harbor any illusion that they will become playmates, because our dog has little use for other dogs beyond sniffing them.

Yappy

We've had some turnover upstairs: two people moved out, one stayed and his girlfriend moved in along with him. It's a three-bedroom apartment, so I don't know what two people are doing with all the extra space, not to mention spending all that money on all that extra space.

The young lady brought with her a dog. It's a pug, and while cute, like many breeds of smaller dogs it barks a lot. It barks when someone leaves or enters the building, it barks when the Mrs. pulls into the driveway, it barks when I take our dog out the back door for a walk and when I bring her back in. So fat it's been just intermittent.

Due to various things, including some work that the landlord had done after September 1st, today was the first day the dog was left alone while both people went off to do whatever it is they do. It was barking when I got up around 8:30 this morning, and it barked pretty much nonstop until around 11, when it took a breather for 10 minutes or so. I kept waiting for it to stop simply as a result of wearing itself out from the physical effects of barking so much.

After that point it was more intermittent, then I left the house shortly after 1 pm and was gone for three hours, so I don't know what happened during the afternoon. I asked our dog when I got home, but she declined to answer; dogs don't snitch on each other, I guess.

It barks in clusters, like this: "yap yap yap yap (short pause) yap." (Five-second pause.) "yap yap yap yap (short pause) yap." And yes, I noticed this; it was hard not to notice it when it was being repeated over and over and over.

There are other dogs in the neighborhood that bark a lot, including a couple that are left outside for long stretches of the day more or less year-round (which could be the reason they're doing all that barking). But they are several houses away at minimum, so their barking is more of a background noise.

It may be that the pug is still getting used to an unfamiliar place; it may be that she hasn't been left alone before (I believe that the young lady previously lived with her mother). And in another month or so it will be time to close the windows, at which point I hope it won't be quite as noticeable.

A Snow Mystery

Another week, another snowstorm: they've been coming through pretty regularly this winter. Yesterday's snow was the heavier kind, and it turned to rain for a while in the afternoon before the temperature dropped again, but the later-day stuff was lighter and accumulated only about another half-inch.

Surprisingly, even though the snow was heavy it wasn't that difficult for me to deal with. The one area that's always a challenge is the bottom of the driveway. The plows come by in groups of three, each one riding a little closer to the edge of the street than the one in front of it, and we always end up with a substantial deposit of thick snow that needs to be excavated to free the car.

After I'd cleared our sidewalk, steps, and made a path to the back of the house, I was working my way through the bank of snow and was a little more than half done when I got a profound surprise. We have a neighbor who plows for a small business across the street, and clears the sidewalks in front of a couple of houses adjacent to the commercial building. I almost always see him when I'm outside shoveling, and he certainly sees me.

He hasn't been the most cooperative person as far as clearing the sidewalks in front of his own house, and on occasion he has left plowed snow in the middle of the street, maintaining that "the city plows will take care of it," which of course means it ends up getting plowed into our driveway after I've cleared it. (He also has a mean dog.)

Yesterday he passed by, then looped around to our side of the street, angled in, and ran his plow across the area I was working on, saving me another 15 minutes or so of effort. I waved and yelled my thanks, and he drove off.

We've lived here almost eight years, and this is the first time this has happened. There were times when I wished he would do what he did yesterday, and times when I considered flagging him down and offering him money to make a pass across the bottom of our driveway. I have no idea what may have motivated him to decide to help me out yesterday, but I'm appreciative of it just the same.

Of course I had to go out twice later in the day and night to clean up after subsequent passes by the city's plows, but those were relatively minor amounts.

Resolved

Okay, the trash got cleaned up today. Our neighbor claims that he was unaware that loose trash not in a bin would not be picked up. He didn't explain why he didn't pick it up until today, but I didn't want to push it.

Messy Situation

We have a bit of a situation with one of our upstairs neighbors, something we haven't encountered before. We put out the trash and recycling on Sunday nights. The trash bin is stored under our back porch where everyone can access it to deposit their stuff. The recycling bin is in the garage; it's larger than the trash bin and I only put it out when it gets full.

On Sunday night, after I'd put the trash at the curb, one of the upstairs people put out a couple of large items: a tall cardboard box maybe five feet high by two feet square, with a big wad of plastic sheeting inside; and a chair mat, like you put under a rolling office chair. The problem was that he put them next to the trash bin, and the city will not pick up any trash that is not in a bin.

I didn't have a direct email or phone contact for him, so I emailed another upstairs resident and asked her to pass along that these items would not be picked up. It was late Sunday night when I saw them, but there was time for him to deal with them on Monday morning. She told me that she had forwarded the message. He also used to live just a couple of blocks from here, so I believed he was already familiar with the city's rules.

He left at some point on Monday morning, and the items were still next to the trash bin. Of course the truck did not take them, and it was very windy that day, so the chair mat got blown into the street fairly soon afterward, where it was run over by a number of vehicles and broke into many pieces. The box was also blown around by the wind, but stayed in the general vicinity of the sidewalk in front of our house. I pushed the plastic pieces out of the middle of the street with a broom, and stacked the remaining larger pieces at the edge of the sidewalk.

The neighbor didn't come home until late Monday night but was around this morning; after he had left I checked and everything was still as it had been left. He was in and back out this afternoon, still no change. I have no intention of cleaning up these items, so I finally decided to leave a note.

I tried out several snarkier versions in my head, such as "Is there a reason why you haven't picked up your trash?" or "You're an adult and I feel like I shouldn't have to be leaving you a not about this..." or "I thought you would have dealt with this by now..." but ultimately I decided it was best to be direct and nonjudgmental: "Will you please pick up your trash from outside?" I suggested he might want to recycle the box, and if so he could put it in the garage. I signed it with "thank you."

Obviously I can't make him pick up the stuff, and I don't like being in a position where I feel I have to guilt someone, however gently, into taking responsibility for their belongings. This is obviously not a crisis, but it's unsightly, and I don't like having to live with careless people. I also feel that I have to tread carefully because I don't want to cause any sort of larger conflict, since we all have to coexist in this dwelling.

Walk Safely

I just did a bizarre and rather obsessive-compulsive thing.

Today's snow was soft and slushy. We got only about an inch, and by the time I went out to clear it around 10 am, it came off the sidewalk easily, leaving no residue behind. A little later it warmed up a bit, the snow changed to rain, and some of it even started to melt.

Now, though, it's starting to cool down again, and anything left on the walks is going to freeze overnight. I just came back from walking the dog, and the business that occupies the corner lot two buildings down from us had plowed their parking area as they always do, but they left the sidewalk untouched, along with an area at the back of their property on the side street.

I walk along these places with the dog one or two times each day, and given that she's getting older, she's been having a little trouble on the slippery spots. After the last storm there were some icy patches that didn't go away until this past Monday, so after I finished walking her I put her back in the house, grabbed my shovel (which was conveniently still on the back porch where I'd left it this morning), and went over to the corner and cleared the slushy areas around the business's lot. I didn't do it just for me and the dog; I also did it for the dozens of people who walk around here every day.

Yard Work

Our next-door neighbor is having a tree removed from his yard today. It's located on the edge of his property between his garage and ours, but the bulk of it hung over our garage, so the tree service needed to use our driveway to get its bucket truck close enough.

As a result we've had a front-row seat for the whole endeavor since about 8:30 this morning. Right now they've swapped the bucket for a giant chipper to devour the branches. Parked in the narrow space between the two houses, it is extremely loud.

Night Music

Our dog has been on a pretty regular walk schedule for a long time. I used to walk her in the morning before leaving for work, and the Mrs. would walk her when she got home. When she started school last fall, I would come home early on the day the Mrs. had classes to take the dog out. Given her age, she gets a couple more trips out to the yard each evening, one around 7:30 and the other around midnight.

For the past few months the dog has been waking us up between 6 and 6:30 most days; 7 is late for her. That means she wants to go out again around mid-afternoon. For a week or two, she has been needing to go out again an hour or so after her mid-evening yard visit, and during the past week she has woken us needing to go out around 4 am. These temporary changes in her schedule are not totally unprecedented, but they are somewhat unusual.

For the past several nights I have been taking the dog on another walk around 11 pm, hoping to prevent more 4 am wake-ups from deep sleep. At that hour the neighborhood is pretty quiet, with the exception of motorcycles and the occasional tow truck or flatbed from the garage nearby. We walk on a side street because there are fewer distractions (these things make a difference when you're hoping a dog will focus long enough to do what it needs to), and I have discovered that we have a neighbor who is an accomplished pianist.

This person has been playing or practicing at this late hour each night this week when I've walked the dog down this particular side street. Their windows are open, and the sounds are flowing out freely into the night. I don't recognize any of the music being played, but I would characterize it as neither pop nor classical; it reminds me of Scott Joplin more than anything else.

The houses in our neighborhood are spaced only about ten feet apart, so the playing must be audible to the player's immediate neighbors, but from more than a couple of houses away it can't be heard, so I have been stopping in front of the house for a minute or so to listen. It's quite a pleasant change from the typical outside sounds we hear during warm weather.

Early Morning Encounter

Since I'm not on a regular schedule these days, the morning dog walk occurs whenever the dog decides she needs to go out. This is generally anywhere from 6 to 7:30 am.

When I used to walk the dog before leaving for work, we would sometimes encounter an elderly neighbor, returning from somewhere (perhaps an early-morning visit to the grocery store?), who would slow down alongside us in her car and call out, "He's taking you for a walk!" She did this every single time she saw us, as though (a) it was the cleverest thing anyone had ever said, and (b) I hadn't already heard it countless times. I've pointed out many times that the dog is a "she" and not a "he," but given the circumstances it's not surprising that information didn't stick. (Also, my father regularly made the same comment about our next-door neighbor and his German shepherd 40-odd years ago. The dog was huge, and it was much more appropriate in that context.)

This morning I went out with the dog around 6:30 and we saw the woman again, though this time she was standing on the sidewalk in front of her house, as though she was waiting for us. Of course she said "he's taking you for a walk" again, and I nodded in response. Then she abruptly said, "I have a cat."

I replied, "Yes, I've seen it." It's a big orange thing that sits on the front porch and eyes the dog warily as we walk past. The dog is afraid of cats in general, which is pathetic, and I find it quite amusing to see her get nervous as the cat gives her the evil eye.

She said, "The orange one?"

Me: "Right."

She: "That's not my cat."

Me, confused: "Well, it's on your porch all the time."

She: "That's because I feed it."

And that, apparently, was the end of the conversation, because she did not offer anything more. The dog and I went on our way. For a moment I wondered if maybe I was dreaming, and hadn't yet gotten up to walk the dog. A couple of hours later, after I'd gotten up for real, I realized that I haven't seen the orange cat in some time. Usually once winter ends the cat is outside frequently, glaring at us as we pass. So maybe it isn't her cat after all, and has found another porch on which to perch.

Bitchin' Camaro

This vintage machine (it's a 1968) appeared last week in the driveway of a neighbor's house. I spotted it while walking the dog, and coincidentally I noticed a sign offering guitar lessons appeared at the front of the house around the same time.

Early Morning Surprises

The dog's been going through one of her phases where she needs to go out during the wee hours. We think she wakes up because she's cold, or hears a truck pass by outside (she's always been particularly sensitive to the sound of diesel engines, which goes back to her days being transported to and from the race track in a truck), and once she's awake she realizes she needs to go. Lucky us.

As I was pulling on some clothes at 5 am, making sure I dressed warmly enough, I could hear a low noise coming from outside, nearby, that sounded like some sort of engine. I figured this is what had awakened her.

When we got outside, I discovered that the source of the noise was a Bobcat shovel, being operated by the negligent neighbor I mentioned last week, to clear his sidewalk. (At 5 am; thanks for that, dude.) It only made me more angry, because HE HAS A FRIGGIN' BOBCAT (or at least has access to one), making it super easy (relative to the rest of us snow-schlepping schlubs) for him to clear the walks.

So what's the excuse for not doing it for the past three weeks? I know the guy hasn't been on vacation or anything, because I've seen him plowing after each storm, as the snow got higher and higher on the sidewalks in front of his house. People are such assholes.

Also, I never got back to sleep after I finished walking the dog. Not a great way to start the day.

Drifts and Piles

Gee, more snow. Quite a bit more, in fact—this storm left about ten inches. As a result, the drifts in front of our house are getting kind of high. Today, after I finished shoveling, I got my camera and took a few pictures:

Here's the big pile at the corner of our driveway, with a secondary pile visible behind it. These are mainly from clearing the driveway and the sidewalk, plus what gets tossed in by the plows that has to be removed. (We live on what the city considers a key artery, so we never have to worry about the street being plowed, but the flip side of that is the excess that comes in whenever a plow passes.)

The pile in front is now about as tall as me, so six feet high. After the first big storm in December, I had a cleared space from the sidewalk in front of the steps out to the street (that dip in the middle to the right of the tree), but it got plowed in so many times I lost the will to keep it clear.

Here's the pile on the other side of the driveway. Technically this is in front of our neighbor's house, but he doesn't mind me throwing it there.

The driveway is long enough to hold four cars, but we have only the one, so we don't bother clearing the whole thing, because, hell, I'd still be out there. This leaves enough room for a second car to park behind ours, and a wide enough walkway for one of us and the dog.

This is the walkway on the opposite side of the house. Normally I do two shovel widths, but one was all I could handle today. This tends to turn into solid ice (from melting snow dripping off the roof) soon after a storm, so we tend to not use it until there's a thaw.

And this is the house of a neighbor that I have to pass each morning on the way to the bus stop. He owns a truck with a plow, and he usually uses it to plow the sidewalk after storms. This is less than ideal, since he can't clear around the pole with the plow and I guess he's too lazy to get out of his truck and use a shovel, but it's better than nothing. After the storm two weeks ago he didn't plow, so I've gotten to enjoy walking in the street each morning. Today it looks like he actually plowed snow from the street onto the sidewalk, making it worse, which makes no sense. I may have to send this picture to the city.

The Scourge: Aftermath

It was a long, exhausting week, but at least it's over. The preparations left our apartment in near-total disarray; it's a lot like those last couple of weeks when you're getting ready to move. And since the pest control folks will be back this Saturday to inspect and, if deemed necessary, apply additional treatment, we can't quite put things back to normal yet.

If there is anything that can be considered "good" about this sort of situation, it's that it became an opportunity for us to evaluate our stuff in a way that typically only happens when you're preparing to move. We've done some culling and decluttering, and we will continue to do so during this week, and then hopefully we'll be able to put everything back together again.

I've also decided that, after all this stress and work, I'm just not going to want to deal with a tree this year. I'll pick up a wreath for the front door, and I'll be hanging my cubicle lights at work tomorrow, and that's as festive as I feel like getting.

The Scourge Adjacent

You may have noticed that I've been slightly less bloggish this week. There are two main reasons for this. First, my workplace has an annual meeting each year around this time, and this year we had to form groups several weeks before the meeting and prepare a presentation, so I was partly preoccupied by that.

But the bigger reason has to do with the upstairs neighbors. In August one of them moved out, leaving behind a special gift we just learned about this Monday: his bedbug-infested mattress. The upper apartment is on two floors; half the third floor is a bedroom, and the other half is used as an attic space. When the guy left, he tossed his mattress into the attic part, and no one knew about it until last Friday, when someone else attempted to move into the third-floor bedroom. She went into the attic and saw the mattress, and promptly freaked out, completely justifiably. (It probably goes without saying that she won't be moving in after all.)

On Tuesday morning a pest control professional inspected the house and confirmed the presence of the bugs. He also confirmed that our apartment doesn't have any, which was a huge relief, but it won't stay that way unless they treat the whole house as soon as possible. That's going to happen on Saturday.

The prep involves lots and lots of laundry, which then has to be stored in plastic bags. As we do it, we're leaving the bags down in the basement. Everything has to come out of our dresser drawers, the whole place has to be vacuumed, we have to buy a protective mattress cover to use after the treatment, all the furniture has to be moved out away from the walls, and all the switch and outlet plates have to be unscrewed from the walls, so the insecticide can get inside. We have to be away from the apartment for eight hours, but we're going to go stay at my mother's overnight and return the next day.

We're more than a bit shell-shocked by all this, but we're trying to deal with it. I would advise all of you to be vigilant and do what you can to protect yourselves.

Beep. Beep. Beep.

One of the upstairs neighbors set off the smoke alarms about a week ago. We're not sure exactly what happened, but in the past former residents did things like leave something in their toaster oven too long, causing it to go off.

This only merits mentioning because the detectors are hard-wired, so if one goes off, they all go off, including the ones in our apartment, and they are painfully loud. When it goes off, we literally have to cover our ears until it stops. The dog isn't too thrilled, either.

And then, as a bonus, there is one detector on the wall at the very top of the stairs going up to the second floor that has been beeping once every 30 seconds or so for the past week. You can hear it anywhere in the house, even in the basement, even from outside. It's not loud enough or frequent enough to keep us from sleeping or anything like that, but in the lack of other sound (from the TV, for example) it is fairly noticeable, and after a while it's kind of maddening.

I emailed one of the folks upstairs, and she said she doesn't know why it's continued to beep all this time. She's asked the landlord to come around and deal with it, but who knows when that will happen?

Under Construction

Hi, we're back. We had a nice, relaxing weekend, plus the weather up here in the Northeast has been fantastic since the last heat 'n' humidity wave left over a week ago. People apparently are still pissing and moaning about what a lousy summer it was, but hey, guess what? It's still summer. Yeah, check your calendar. And September tends to be one of the nicest months around here (assuming, of course, there aren't any hurricanes).

Only one thing marred the weekend: the people next door are having their back porch rebuilt, and whoever they've hired must be in a really big hurry to get the job finished, or something, because they were there working all weekend. Yesterday was the only morning I was in fact awakened by construction noise (to wit, a table saw), and that happened around 8:30 AM, which is not a horrible hour.

Saturday I slept in until around 9:30, and Sunday until 10. The work started right around 10 on both those days, so I do think they were trying to show us some consideration. It just wasn't particularly conducive to sitting out on our own back porch enjoying a leisurely cup of coffee.

Treats

When we lived in Somerville, we never had a single trick-or-treater on Halloween in eleven years. I think it was mostly because we lived in a little dead-end street, even though there were some kids who lived in adjacent buildings. We always bought candy, just in case.

After we moved, it was nice to be part of the neighborhood Halloween experience. Two years ago, one of our upstairs neighbors came down and we pooled our candy. We all sat in the vestibule with the outer door open, so people could see that this was a house they should visit. The dog greeted each group of kids, thinking they were there to see her.

Last year we went to California to visit the Mrs.' sister, so we missed Halloween. (We had a dog-sitter staying here who did give out candy.) So this year we were ready for the festivities again: the Mrs. came home at the beginning of the week with six bags of candy, and she even got a costume for the dog, a queen's cape and crown, highly appropriate for a dog we refer to as "her highness."

The first group of kids arrived, and one of them, perhaps around ten, sized up the Mrs. and said, "You're tiny." (She's 4' 11", which is tiny by adult standards.) Nobody likes a Halloween smartass, but he got candy anyway. It was such a nice night that we decided to sit out on the porch. We kitted out the dog in her costume, though she didn't much care for the crown.

By now we know quite a few of our neighbors, and some of them stopped by. One family is kind of the charter members of London's neighborhood fan club, and as they came around the corner, we could hear the mother saying, "Oh, there's London!" It seemed it was as important for them to say hello to her highness as it was for the kids to get their candy.

At one point all the kids were standing on the porch and London was giving them the sniff-over. One boy, around five, suddenly exclaimed, "She's trying to sniff my penis!" Well yes, I suppose she was. Oops, sorry about that. The grownups had a laugh, the kids got their candy, and they went on their way. See you next year.

Leaf Sweeper

This morning while walking the dog, I saw an elderly woman on the opposite sidewalk sweeping leaves off her lawn and sidewalk and out into the street. I suppose that's one way to get rid of them, but besides the lazy and un-neighborly aspect of this behavior, it seems fairly likely that the wind will eventually carry them right onto her property again.