Empire

The title has no relevance that I’m aware of… I’m just stuck on the word, and needed to type it someplace.

My house is cold.

Contrary to modern HVAC ducting principles which have the vents below windows or at least on the exterior wall(s) of a room, when whomever ran the ductwork for this home, the vents were all placed on the interior walls, often above or adjacent to the doorways.

Modern ducting pricipals causes hot air to be shot up below a window, where it mingles with the cool air, creating a comfortable median air temp, which then fills the room.

The evil ducting principles in my home cause the windows and exterior walls to create a chill zone aproximately 3/4ths the way into the room. Heat pours in from the interior walls, creating a comfortable region up against the interior wall. When the furnace switches off, the cold region immediately begins chilling the temperate zone. Also, it is the chill region which gets carried from room to room by draft..thus cooling the whole house.

I have observed that there is no insulation in my garage walls (because I have accidentally broken through the cheep-ask drywall (I would say Sheetrock © as it is commonly known, but the stuff in my garage would be an embarrasement to the tradename). It does have the thin, foil-wrapped foam sheeting on the exterior of the studs. I am afraid that is what I have in the rest of the house.

I have convinced my roomie that it is smartest to close all the doors to all of the rooms to help conserve heat. That, and because the ducts are mostly above the doors in the sleeping section of the house, and because the thermostat is in the tiny hallway connecting those rooms, the heat just pours out of the rooms to the thermostat, kicking it off sooner than we desperately want it to!!

I found a letter dated 10 November sometime this week, from my Title company. In it is a disclosure that appears to be force-placed insurance. I’m sure its because I was slow in setting up an Internet (e-payment) system with my insurance provider, causing me to be late on my insurance payment (but still within their grace period). While it should be simple to remedy — showing current proof of insurance, continious since prior to the home purchase, to the lender — it is going to be a hassle because my original lender sold my note after the first month, so I’ve got to track down which lender actually ordered the force-placed insurance, send notice to them, yada yada yada…

Thanksgiving week my sister and her friend Gale visited my home. This was a week also where I started having coughing spasms. I was able to maintain until they left Saturday morning, then I gave in and went to bed. I’ve only worked 7 hours this past week, having taken sick leave for the rest of it.

My doctor thinks I’ve a bacterial infection, and has given me strong drugs for it. This has settled both into my chest/respiratory system, as well as my joints. The upshot is that I’ve been able to make great web coding advances, and also play Tribes2 for ungodly periods!

How I think I got the infection: Mice.

Back in October and early November, my parents were making the move from their home into their RV (they are buying a home in Arizona, but are living in the RV in Florida at my sister’s until March). This meant they brought lots of stuff to my home for storage. They also unloaded a lot of their belongings ON me — which is nice, because they have mostly nice stuff, but its also annoying, because it gives my house over to “college ecclectic” style, plus alot of the stuff I simply don’t have room/have a use for.

Anyway, during this period I’d come home from work on any given day and find 4 or 5 boxes placed throughout my home, often in the kitchen or my bedroom. One of these boxes on one of these days contained pillow shams, bedspread, matching vanity table covers, etc…a bedroom bedding set.

This was a good thing, because my bedspread is for a double bed and a couple of years ago I upgraded my bed to queen, so finally getting queen bedding is something of a blessing.

As a matter of course, I had been washing all of the fabric items my mom was giving me, whether it looked like she had or not. Just because. As I was pulling these out of the box, I noticed a …mouse pee smell to them. I washed the bedspread first, then the shams and the covers, then a load of other linen in the same box.

Fast forward about a week…

I climbed into bed one evening, slipping under the new bed spread, and felt some grit down by my feet. Frustrated, I threw back the covers and turned on the light to dust off my sheets. There I found a few mouse turds were the grit I was feeling.

I grumbled. Obviously there was mouse pee on the bedding when it arrived, and apparently there were mice in the box as well. I don’t make my bed daily, and the mice, having run of my room during the day scampered onto my bed and made fun chasing each other through the chutes and tubes of my rumpled covers.

Over the next week, I found evidence that they were exploring all of the rooms in the sleeping part of the house, including a couple of turds on my computer desk.

Rewind 10 days…

New covers on my bed, I brought Taco Bell into my room one evening to eat while I lay on the bed and eat. Grilled Stuft Burrito… chicken… mmmmm… *g* I had wadded up my empty wrapper and tossed it to my trashcan and continued to read. After about 30 minutes, I decided to get up. I spun my feet out from under the covers which I had just idly twisted them into and dropped them over the side of the bed. I stood and turned back to the bed to get my cellphone from the headstand.

I saw black crumbs of burrito char on the edge of the bed not far from where I had been eating, and assumed I had scooted them there as I got out of bed. Not wanting to brush food on my floor, let alone waste good food, I poked my fingers at the crumbs and popped them into my mouth.

One of them didn’t crunch like a good grilled tortilla flake should.

I had only bit into it with my incisors, so it was easy to eject it onto the back of a finger. It was dark like a crumb, but oddly shaped. Was this dirt from my pants? Did something fall out of my hair? Where had my hair been that I didn’t know about??

I brushed it off my hand, and the remainder of the crumbs to the floor.

Now I’m quite certain I CAN identify what the dark bit was! I should just be glad I don’t have the Haunta virus.