ProPil Pop Quiz #2

ProPil Pop Quiz #2

The second largest city (after Boston) in New England, based on its 175,000+ residents, Providence is only 18.5 square miles. How many hospitals does it have? (No cheating by looking online!)

PS

Haiku as Ode to Exacto Knife

Blade so sharp and, yes,
sharp. You cut like you meant it.
If only you did.

Some Promise

In spite of the economic challenges facing Rhode Island, some folks think the state's got some promise.

Today's NYT spotlights a big urban development project on the west side of Providence, but in fact, the same company undertaking the work is managing a ton of other projects in Rhode Island. The company is headquartered in Bawlmer, where many of us have seen redevelopment projects go a long way.

Here's an excerpt:

Today, Struever has seven projects under way in Rhode Island, including the $150 million conversion of an old Narragansett Electric power plant into a combined museum and hotel. The developer’s total investment in the state is more than $500 million, according to the company’s Web site.

The power plant project is at a site called Dynamo House, right near where we work. Here's the company's online material (referenced above) on its extensive presence in Providence.

A New Mystery

Along with getting the roof fixed and finishing the half-bathroom, acquiring a washer and a dryer is on our high priority list of ASAP business. The washer and dryer that were here when we moved in were beat up but seemingly pretty new. I mean, ignoring the fact that the console was unscrewed from the metal plate behind the washer, so that all the internal wiring was exposed, doesn't it look pretty new?


That, in itself, is a bit of a mystery, but more mysterious is the fact that the washer and dryer (They're actually still in the basement, and we need to strip them down to take them out piece by piece at some point.) are both 27-inches wide -- apparently, a standard size for such appliances.

Problem is, the stairwell leading to the basement -- the only way someone could get a big appliance into the basement -- is a tiny bit less than 27-inches wide. We don't know how they got the big daddies downstairs! Unless A) the previous owner disassembled the drywall on the basement stairs to get the washer and dryer downstairs, which makes little sense, or B) the drywall in the basement is newer than the new-looking washer and dryer, which makes no sense at all based on apparent conditions.


It's a new mystery for us to ponder. As result of our befuddlement, we've become close friends with the Super Wash Center, where we were last night...

Providence is Sticky

Apparently Providence is sticky. This article in the NYT doesn't paint such a glorious portrait, but it suggests college grads don't want to leave the city-state.

Here's the pertinent excerpt, in case you don't want to spend time registering with the Times:

PROVIDENCE (pop. 175,255)

(BROWN; RHODE ISLAND SCHOOL OF DESIGN)

Freshly minted graduates support themselves (and their art projects) with part-time jobs like milling soap, making cheese or working as nannies for professors’ children.

They share cavernous spaces in converted 19th-century textile mills in working-class neighborhoods rapidly rising in value, often to the dismay of longtime residents.

“Providence used to be a place where graduates left immediately, but now it’s gotten to the point where people not affiliated with either university are moving here just to be near a young, creative community,” says Megan Hall, 26, a public radio reporter who graduated from Brown in 2004 and initially lived in a partially converted potato warehouse, where sacks of potatoes were routinely delivered to the building by forklift. “A lot of us can experiment with this really simple lifestyle. We’re not afraid of being poor.”

Ms. Hall still thinks about returning home to Portland, Ore. Most of her friends, she says, talk about leaving but never do. Last year, she and a friend made a radio documentary, “The Break Up Project Performance,” about the city’s incestuous dating pool, which begins with a teary-voiced woman complaining about all the times she runs into her former boyfriend.

“I go to get my morning coffee, and you’re there,” the woman says, sighing. “I see you in line at the grocery store, at the post office, bookstore, the record shop, on the opposite side of the street. Your friends, your flyers, your stupid [expletive] band. It’s all here, and everywhere, and it feels like I’m suffocating.”

Ruffled Iris

The big news of the week was the rain. In fact, it's pouring again at the moment, but nothing like it was this week.


Oh boy. It rained and rained.


On Wednesday, because there was no choice on the way home, I jumped off the bus onto the sidewalk covered in probably 8-inches of running water. There was just no where for the water to go. Then I ran home a block and climbed up into the attic to make sure the plastic trash cans we have up there were catching most of the dripping water.

In other news, we kept working on the plaster/spackling of our half-bathroom wall. We were instructed to get it as flat as we could with a spackle knife, then once it dried, to get a hot, wet rag and rub the plaster to flatten it out even more. Repeat three or four times as necessary. It's getting there.


This doesn't really look like it, but check out Ruffled Iris. That's the color we're going to paint the upper halves of the bathroom walls.

Yesterday as we worked some more on the front yard, Keven McKenna stopped by to shake our hands. Our hands were too dirty, but he did tell us he was running for state senate, that he liked our street because it was quiet. That his street was noisy, he wanted to outlaw boom boxes, but not really, and bribery in the statehouse was too much -- that last part was why he was running. He should have asked about us and listened more, but he seemed like a pretty nice guy.

A friend also shared this community blog. I strongly recommend reading the entry entitled, Enduring Racial Slurs. . . and Laughing. . . in Mt. Hope! *Strongly* recommend. Mt. Hope is a neighboring community.

Grok Fest

Happy Monday, everyone! The trash collectors must hate us.


No, wait. There are two types of trash collectors in Providence. One type must hate us, and the other certainly loves us.

The first type comes in a massive, smelly truck and compacts the trash then takes it to the dump. They hate us, because it's amazing, for each of the past five weeks, we've put out like three houses worth of trash! (This doesn't even include all the junk now stored in the garage, which Nick is going to help us haul to the dump at some point.)

The second type of trash collectors are ordinary citizens. Our old screen door was on the curb for about thirty minutes before being snapped in half and thrown in a pick-up. A box of remnant electrical wires was taken yesterday. There is *so* much dumpster diving going on, it makes me feel like my definition of trash is far too expansive. The roofer's dumpster across the street? A magnet for idling pick-up trucks.

I understand increases in commodity prices have made this sort of salvage work more lucrative, but then again, driving around town in an 11-miles-per-gallon 1988 Ford F-150 to collect it all seems sort of counter-productive.

Ah well... time to get ready for work. Need to stop thinking about trash. I need to start thinking about stuff like this:

The preparation of para diphenyl propiolic acid and some new and interesting reactions of diphenyl and its derivatives

Behavior of two-level tunneling mechanistically alloyed and amorphous crystalline high T [subscript] c superconductor, YBa[subscript 2]Cu[subscript 3]O[subscript 7] - [subscript delta ]

Models of slow intergranular void growth due to void surface and grain boundary self-diffusion

I knew this, but it's really starting to hit home. Brown is a hotbed of brainpower. If you feel like it, join the Grok Fest, at the bottom of this page... click through some theses since 1893.

Floorplan Finally

I found the scanner this weekend! Now, if you're interested, here's the floorplan finally. Hopefully some of the pictures we've been taking will make more sense. Below I've linked to the pertinent posts.

The front door is represented by the big black arrow.


The front door is facing north. The stairs were hard to illustrate, but the stairs up and stairs to the basement are on top of each other, if that makes any sense.

The coiled line in the lower left of the image is the hose, and the drain pipe where RotoRooterMan did his worst. HB is the half bathroom. The toilet and vanity that belong there are still on the screened porch. We need to tile and paint first.

The side and back doors are darkened lines. The driveway runs past the side door (parallel to the bottom of the picture) right to left to the garage.

Now the upstairs...


The small rectangle to the left of the tub with the double line is the closet we tore up for the plumbing beneath.

There's been so much activity in the basement, maybe this is the most meaningful pic.



Center left is the bench Mr. Hackworth will hesitate to sit on some day. Bottom left was where the concrete sink was smashola-ed. W and D represent the washer and dryer. We're aiming to soon replace those. The black box is the Jaws-theme-music pipes (last picture on the linked page) that were replaced last weekend. H is the hot water heater that was replaced, and in that same upper right corner is where the electric work was done on Friday.

Ah well... long time coming, but that's the pad. Also, it's hot, and if it's hot here, I have to imagine DC is ridiculous. Yikes.

Flaming Torches

Last night, we went to WaterFire. Fun times! (If you don't know what I'm talking about, see the Links section at right.)


Ambient music is playing. People are watching. Row boats with spectators are circling in the canal as if in Venice. A dude dressed in all white is standing on the front of one of the row boats handing out carnations to the people on the canal's edge.

See that little guy down there, swinging flaming torches? Wicked! We only had the iPhone, else we'd have better pictures to share.

We also concurred though, what a quirky city! Probably (total guess) 8,000-10,000 people were out and about. We met some of Sue's colleagues and significant others and housemates.

This was the first time we had been downtown at night. We go down there to work, but we hadn't seen that there appears to be a club scene. The bars do fill up. Folks do party.

Like a Cover Band

So the boiler guy did show up at about 9:30PM. He tested the boiler, and he determined (by literally hitting the device!) that our low water cutoff was broken.

The low water cutoff does two things, it shuts off the boiler if there's no water in the system (preventing overheating and fires), and it stops the water from overfilling and flooding the system. There's a float inside, just like in the tank of a toilet.

In consultation with our trusty inspector, we determined we'll be filling the boiler with water ourselves throughout the heating season. It's an old boiler, so we don't want to spend the pretty penny it'll cost to replace the cutoff device.

After the boiler guy swung through on Friday night we tried to go see the new Batman movie. We went to one of the only remaining drive-in movie theaters in the country...


Unfortunately, Batman was sold out. On each screen, they show two movies per night, but the way it works, most folks come for both movies -- like a cover band and the actual band. We didn't know, so we tried to show up only for Batman.


We're psyched to go there eventually though. Apparently, you can park and picnic outside your car. I guess one just has to hope for good weather.

To buoy our spirits, it was time for ice cream.


Sue got brownie batter. I got mint chocolate chip. I should have taken a picture of the cones, but they disappeared so suddenly!

It Showed Full

BEFORE




AFTER




It's lightning outside, and our windows are open. We're waiting for the oil boiler folks to come back. They're supposed to be here between 10PM and 1AM.

The water gauge, indicating how much water is in the system (the pipes and radiators) is never supposed to show full, because we have steam heat. There's supposed to be water enough to make steam, but not water enough to fill the pipes and leak from the radiators onto hardwood floors. This evening it showed full.

We let the water run through the boiler, as we're supposed to do every other week during the cold months -- to release sediment from the pipes -- and it's showing at 9/10ths full at the moment.

Mazing

Happy Friday, everyone!

Our oil company folks are coming to service our boiler at 8AM. They'll also be installing an emergency shutoff switch. The electrician is coming at 9AM to replace our circuit breaker panel and meter. They'll both probably be in the basement most of the day. After that, we'll have no more contractors scheduled. As Sommy used to say, "Mazing."

Sue's dance performance on Wednesday went very well. We both voyaged to Pidge and Ridge, and the husband (of the husband-wife duo that runs a belly dance studio and shop) met us there. He is from Turkey and knowledgeable about belly dancing. He stayed for most of Sue's two sets, and throughout the performance, he repeatedly made approving comments, as if he were not expecting such high quality dancing. His wife called back last night to offer Sue another gig already!

We drove forty minutes to North Kingstown last night to purchase a butcher block table (5 feet by 30 inches) for the screened porch. For the time being, we'll be using the table in our dining room, because the screened porch is packed with boxes and packing paper, plus our half-bathroom toilet and vanity.

North Kingstown is in the local news these days because of Elizabeth Beisel.


Before we left for Ms. Beisel's hometown, we had dinner at a quirky place in Providence with a quirky name.


The food was very good, and across the street is Not Just Spices -- a small grocery that sells imported Indian foods.

Getting Louder

The drumbeat of economic doldrums is getting louder in the Ocean State. Below I've linked to two of the most emailed articles in the ProJo today.

RI Economy at Its Worst in 25 Years

The CCI measures the behavior of 12 economic indicators each month and compares them with what they were during the same month a year ago. The changes indicate whether Rhode Island’s economy is growing, contracting or stagnant. Any indicator above the neutral value of 50 means the economy is growing, anything below means it’s shrinking.

For 11 of the last 12 months, the index has languished below 50, and during January, February, March and May, the monthly values sank to 8.

Heating Oil Hit Record Price in RI

The average price was $4.749 a gallon, the highest price ever recorded by the state Office of Energy Resources. The agency surveys local dealers each week to determine an average price in the state.

That average is up 3 cents from last week and up $2.10 a gallon, or 79 percent, from one year ago.

I Mean, *Right*

Right (and I mean, *right*) next to Harpers Ferry, WV, is Bolivar, WV. See the red dot?


It's not called Bolivar, as in Simon.


To the natives, the town is known as BAH-liver.

And several blocks south of us here in Providence is Rochambeau Avenue, presumably named after Jean de Rochambeau who made a long march during the Revolutionary War starting from Providence.


A statue of Rochambeau in DC stands right (and I mean, *right*) in front of the White House.


In Providence, the avenue, however, is called Ro-SHYAM-bo, in honor of a different man.

PS
7) Many of the children in Providence are very excited. There's a veritable buzz. Our neighbor works in the Providence school system, and she returned as we were watering the front lawn this evening to report she had seen Tom Brady speak! He's the new school superintendent...


...the older gentleman in focus.

Ends and Odds

It's been a little humid recently, but it's feeling less so outside. That bodes well for our bike ride to work. Sue's currently working at Rhode Island Hospital, which is just down the street from my office, so we've been riding our bikes to work together. A few additional ends and odds:

1) Sue will be dancing in her first Providence gig this Wednesday for a 10-12 minute set where Pidge meets Ridge. (Yes, there is literally an intersection where Pidge Road turns into Ridge Road in Providence. Actually, I think the intersection marks the dividing line between Providence and Pawtucket to the north.)

2) Thanks to the Bareses' introductions to friends in the area, we are likely going to be involved in a Dragon Boat race in September. Turn down the volume on your computer, then check out this site. Fun times.

3) The Providence Animal Rescue League is across the street diagonally from Brown's Advancement building. I've gone over there a couple times at lunch. They have a ton of kittens right now, and the canine residents have been about 50% pit bulls and 25% pit bull mixes. What does this say about Providence? I don't know.

4) The conference last week was pretty cool. Lots of nice, smart people, and the speakers were thought-provoking, especially Andrew Savitz and Daniel Shapiro, who directs the Harvard International Negotiation Initiative. Note the e-dress of the latter.

5) A response to a recent comment. Hee hee, Carrie... while most of the stuff in the house is definitely *ours*, some is earmarked for us individually. The closet we tore up this weekend is (unfortunately) mine. Boo hoo!


Sue's is on the left with sliding double doors. Mine... well... it's got all that plumbing in it, and we're trying to determine what to do about the floor. Maybe something on hinges? I'm currently living out of the closet in what will be the guest room.

6) The answer to ProPil Quiz #1 is below.


What cheer? Our pick-up day is Monday.

One Month Now

We've been in Providence for one month now. Pretty crazy, since it feels like no time at all.

Sue went to Berkley, MA for a dance seminar from 11-7:00 yesterday. About fifty women attended the event. There were three hours of class plus a performance at the end of the day. Apparently, people oohed and aahed at her solo piece during the performance.

She achieved some useful networking as well (She may have a restaurant gig this Wednesday!), but overall, it sounds like her experience at Sahara Dance in DC set the bar very high. More to come on this front.

Before she left, we grabbed some new tools, and while she was gone, I installed the plywood in the bathroom.


I also spent the afternoon emptying some boxes...


...but there're still lots more to go.


Happy Monday, folks.

Comments on ProPil

Several folks have reported problems leaving comments on ProPil. We love your comments, so here're a few thoughts and an article:

1) Blogger is owned by Google. For this reason, if you have a Gmail (Google mail) account, leaving comments is very easy. If you are signed in to Gmail, Blogger will automatically recognize you and allow to comment under your Gmail name.

2) Even if you do not have a Gmail account, you should be able to leave anonymous comments by choosing the anonymous option under Choose an Identity unless...

3) If you have pop-up windows blocked, Blogger's Comment function may have problems. Depending on your browser, you'll have to choose to allow/enable pop-up windows broadly, or specifically on the ProPil site.

And here's an instruction page.

Persevere and never fear!

It Ain't Pretty

We also installed our first piece of drywall, AKA sheet rock, when the plumbers were working. We re-used two-by-fours and a piece of sheet rock from the basement walls we removed.

This is where the half-bathroom mirror was...



...and we fully realize it ain't pretty, with all the patches and spackle and stuff. Hopefully a good sanding job will flatten it all out, before we prime and paint.

House of Mysteries

Saturday was focused on plumbing. Two nice guys came at 9AM. They left at three o'clock after taking on two big jobs.

First they replaced all that cast iron in the basement with PVC. Here's a pretty cool before and after.



That scary collection of pipes under the half-bath, and the one we score-stuff-smashed are all bye bye now.

The white pipes above lead to the toilet in the half-bathroom and the kitchen sink, where the plumbers installed a new kitchen faucet. See our cheapola basin in the place of the concrete one we broke apart?

The plumbers told us lots of things, but a couple that stick out:

1) The cement board we laid in the half-bathroom on Friday was good for the tile, but it wouldn't strengthen the floor. They recommended 3/4-inch plywood screwed with deck screws into the subfloor. (We'll be implementing their suggestion today with any luck.)

2) For plumbing fixtures (like faucets), they told us to go to a plumbing supply shop. The fixtures look exactly the same as Home Depot fixtures, but all the fittings inside are brass whereas Home Depot's fixtures have plastic fittings. (Our kitchen faucet's water flow is not entirely cylindrical.)

We also ripped up the flooring in what will eventually be my bedroom closet, in order to re-do the shower/tub plumbing system in our upstairs bathroom.



They replaced the gasket (the circular piece) and the pipe leading away from it -- the white one. They weren't planning on replacing it, but we discovered a leak that had everyone baffled since we first inspected the place.

In the foyer downstairs, some of the popcorn ceiling had come down due to moisture. The moisture was caused by a slow leak, but we couldn't see the leak. Was it the toilet? The sink? The tub?

Apparently when the flooring in the closet was repaired, replaced or first installed, a nail had been driven into the lead pipe beneath...


... see the brown hole? Perhaps the pipe wasn't punctured, but over years, as the pipe corroded a little from the inside, eventually, there was a hole in a place that made no sense.

While he was sawing away at the floorboards, the plumber also accidentally nicked a pipe, due to an unexpected turn in the copper underneath the closet floor. This caused a pretty major (but brief, thankfully!) geyser in the closet and leak in the downstairs ceiling. Sigh....

Along with the double-wiring of outlets, we are solving the House of Mysteries.

Plumber Prep

The plumbers are coming tomorrow morning, so this evening we did some plumber prep in the half-bathroom downstairs.





Even though its dust is carcinogenic, the cement board looks clean. Next step is mortar, then tile, then grout, then sealant.

To be illustratively continued...

Retahdedness

Yesterday afternoon, I swung by the house before going to the opening event of the conference (which is about 40 minutes south of Providence). The electrician explained, as he took apart the light switch in our bedroom, he had been shocked with 220 volts. He said he's often shocked a little with 110, but 220 was a much stronger dose.

He didn't understand why, since 220V is enough to power a washer or a dryer, and this was just a light switch. Then he figured out what was going on...


...and it wasn't good. In fact, it was very dangerous.

Whoever did the electrical work in the house must have been an amateur, and apparently, he or she incorrectly wired the outlet in the bedroom (i.e. made a mistake), disabling the circuit that led to it and the rest of the switches and sockets upstairs that came later in the circuit.

Instead of figuring out how he or she had messed up, the amateur got creative. He or she double-wired the outlet, by digging a trench in the drywall and hiding the wiring inside the trenches with plaster. This double-wiring was also found downstairs.



There's a metal box behind each switch or socket, and it houses the wiring to power the fixture. The wires running through the walls were simply curled over/around one wall of the metal box in order to supply a double dose of electricity.

Just because a fixture isn't working doesn't mean the fixture has no power running to it. Anyone who tried to disconnect one of these fixtures in a typical fashion could have been electrocuted to death, the electrician warned. He also explained that this was a major fire hazard, and he had never seen such a thing before.

It also explains why I couldn't figure out the map of the breaker box downstairs -- many of the switches and sockets in the house were on two lines/circuits/breakers. They could only be powered down (or up) with multiple circuit breakers.

The electrician is doing very well for us. Our kitchen circuitry is now updated. He installed a ceiling fan/light fixture in our bedroom and more, but due to all the surprises, it seems he's not going to be able to fix as much as he expected to, before he has to move on to another job on Friday. Hopefully today he encounters less retahdedness.

PS
The conference center, Whispering Pines at Alton Jones, in Exeter, RI is gorgeous. It's sort of a shame we're talking shop there.

Electric Refuse

The electrician came again today. He said the house has some dangerous wiring, and whoever used to work on it took short cuts. He removed a bunch of electric refuse from the basement ceiling and walls.


After cutting up all that wiring, nothing in the house that was working, electrically-speaking, seems to be disabled. That's much different, of course, from saying everthing in the house (electrically-speaking) is working, but it is amazing that all of that junk above served no purpose.

In other news, Sue co-led her first group as an intern today. I'll be attending a three-day conference starting tomorrow with all the corporate and foundation officers from the Ivy League, plus Stanford's and MIT's. It's an annual event held at Alton Jones. Should be a great learning experience.

PS
Thanks to all for their continued support, and congratulations to Sarah for her super strong finish to summer school!

Vanquished!

She was a worthy opponent, but she is no longer. Vanquished!


As of Sunday afternoon, all we have to do is fit some new plywood into the space left by flooring we removed, and cut a hole in it, so as to move the toilet back (yes, a whopping two inches). Then cut and lay the cement board. That will be enough to let the plumbers do their job this weekend.

Our electrician, David, started today. He's replacing outlets and light fixtures and that sort of thing until he receives word from the city that he can re-do our fuse box or breaker panel or whatever those metal boxes are called these days. The biggest win was his replacement of our front exterior lantern.

As you suggested Uncle Buzz, we're going with the 200-amp service. David said, it'll prepare the house for whatever we or the next owners want to do with it. He also said, if we were going to install central AC ever, the 200-amp service was necessary.

We watered our front "lawn", too. Over the weekend, we put a mother lode of work into it. Here's what we started with, a horticultural graveyard...


...and in a couple weeks, we'll show you all that we did. You probably can't tell but a good portion of the greenery in the picture is weed in full repose. The work we put in is fantastic, but the results were not immediate. One day we hope it will begin to resemble the backyard.