Remember, remember, the rants of November

Acquaintance “Hattie” has befriended some neighbor kids. There are four of them, 6-12, living in poverty with their dotty grandmother. One of the girls asked Hattie to teach her to knit. Hattie gave the girl yarn and needles. The grandmother remembered that she used to like to knit and appropriated the yarn and needles for herself. This really annoyed Hattie, and I agreed with her. However . . .

I gathered some cool toys left over from when my niece was younger and told Hattie I was bringing them over for the neighbor kids. When I pulled into the driveway, Hattie’s grandchildren came screeching out of the house, opened my car doors, and grabbed the toys, yelling “Mine! Mine! Mine!”. Hattie had not informed me that her grandchildren were there. She had obviously told them that someone was arriving with presents. Hattie has frequently complained that her grandchildren are spoiled and have too many toys.

Later I put together a box of plastic beads (I have many from a hobby) and bought a spool of elastic beading thread for the neighbor kids. Hattie took the beading thread and used it for a project she was working on, for which it was completely inappropriate, and then complained about it. The kids got the beads, but no beading string.

Why does everyone think they have dibs on gifts intended for these kids? I’ll understand if the kids turn out to be bitter criminals.

So I presume that even though the plumber wasn’t able to repair it, he was at least able to isolate it from the main?

That IS good news.

Yeah, the fire suppression system is on a separate feed from the regular house water. Each has their own valve.

The funny (or sad?) thing is that when I talked to the plumber last night, he said to turn off the house water but not the sprinklers. I think he assumed the leak was from an in-system humidifier. I didn’t know which valve was which, so I turned 'em both off. Good thing! (And for the record, I don’t have an in-system humidifier.)

You are so right about that. Did you know that you can rent a pump that will empty a waterbed and suck the water out of the I-don’t-know-what-the-stuff is called so that it only takes 1 person to move the mattress? I only learned that AFTER we had spent flipping hours draining it and then rolling the mattress to squeeze the water out of the fibers.

Showers are always a good thing, but what is this in-system humidifer that you speak of?

Apparently, you can get a humidifier that is hooked into the house HVAC so that during the winter, it puts some moisture into the air. I’m guessing it’s also hooked into the house water to supply the moisture, but I’m not finding anything on that.

I have never heard of such a thing before. The things I learn here are amazing.

One of my bragging points to my friends in AZ was that I had an AC unit AND a swamp cooler. Everyone was always very impressed. …but now I’m confused again. Why would you need a humidifer in the winter? From what I’ve been told, water usually falls from the sky in the winter which adds moisture to the air.

That sort of that thing seems like it would sell very well in Phx, because of how swamp coolers and AC units work.

(windows closed for AC, and open for swamps)

Forced air heat is very, very dry.

I honestly didn’t know that. Its always dry in Arizona, except for the monsoon season (summer rains), and sometimes during the winter. Today, it was 74 and no clouds to be seen.

Which leads me to my rant. Bill flew home tonight and took Lucky with him. Their flight was delayed for almost 3 hours due to bad weather.

Which leads me to my other rant, we couldn’t fly home together because we wanted to have 2 cats with us.

In cold regions, winter air is already quite dry because cold air can’t hold as much moisture to begin with. Add the drying properties of forced-air heating, and you’ve got nosebleeds and cracking skin. Winnipeg in winter is the worst place I’ve ever been for that.

why the hell is CO Q-10 so expensive? :mad:

I don’t even know what it is but keep hearing it’s really good for me so I bought a bottle.

I use tons of lotion in winter because it’s so dry. I’m also extremely staticy in winter, so much so it’s my habit at work to stand up from my desk and immediately touch the cube divider to ground myself. Work is way worse for that though I’m not sure why.

Lately one of the ladies has been having issues and she brought a humidity meter in, we’re at 0 humidity according to her thing, it would not surprise me.

When the landlady had the new furnace installed, she had a humidifier added to the system.

Which was great - no more constantly bleeding knuckles. It made it tough to take the dog out though, when the sliding glass door froze shut thanks to ice that had built up from the stupid thing. And the idiotic placement of the ductwork in our house.

Yup - I think Calgary alone keeps the manufacturers of Static Guard for clothes in business. I would love to have a humidifier on my furnace.

Yesterday was the first time my dad spent celebrating his wedding anniversary without his wife. Mom died in June. I feel sorry for him that they were married for 46 years and he misses her. But I wish to god sometimes I could tell him to stop acting like that emotionally and physically abusive cunt was a saint. Her tombstone says beloved wife, mother and grandmother. The beloved mother is big fucking lie. I have forgiven her for my own sanity. But the spot on the back of my skull where she threw me against a metal bedpost when I was ten still aches like mad sometimes.

Your second sentence there probably contains the answer to the question in your first sentence.

I don’t want to decorate for Christmas yet. Ideally I wouldn’t even start until the 5th of December. I don’t know why the rush in my house. It’s not up to me. I’m so outvoted.

An old friend posted a link from some Christian site on Facebook, that says “Hi Devil! Keep your hands off MY children! Signed, Jesus! Can we have 5000 likes for the devil to keep his hands off God’s kids? Share!”

Gah. Really. If this site gets 5000 likes, the Devil’s gonna respect that and stop molesting kids or something. Uh huh.

First, the underlined part does not happen everywhere (mediterranean climates are notorious for their ability to avoid it); second, if you have the house closed up tight and the heating on, the air does dry up even when there’s water falling from the sky outside.

Cheap carpet.

The notorious tweeter, Jesus H. Christ, needs to respond to that. :slight_smile:

FFS handyman, after going batshit about anyone who actually lives in this house leaving anything in the shared corridor even for a few hours because blocking the corridor is a fire hazard, how in hell do you think it’s OK to leave a massive pile of broken crap in there for 9 days, because you were gutting the top flat after the resident idiot moved out?

I need to get a chest of drawers outside, because I got a replacement desk yesterday and I can’t fit it in my room, so its now almost totally blocking our flat corridor- plus I walked into it twice yesterday in the dark which did not improve my mood- but I can’t get it outside, because there’s so much shit left right outside our flat door. We have no way of getting in touch with you, bar phoning the agency, and asking them to call you, and I’ve been patient until now, but they’ve been shut all weekend, and you’re apparently on holiday today, and I need to get this fucking thing out of the flat!

I mean, you’re apparently so hypocritical about this that only the day before you dumped a massive heap of cardboard, polystyrene, wood, and general crap there, you ‘removed’ a tiny stereo the guy from the other flat left there for a few hours because things “shouldn’t be left there”.

This guy is apparently the landlord’s mate, so we have no choice over who is sent round- the same guy sent a group of other guys in to look at the mold problem we had the year before last, in my housemate’s bedroom, in the middle of the day, when she was in there off sick, without notifying us or even knocking.