Boo!

Happy Halloween!


This frightening skull-head thingy is from a pirate bar in Wheaton, MD. Yes, there is a pirate bar in Wheaton.

PS
Radiator fixes forthcoming.

Bessie

We turned her (Bessie, that is) on last night. Sue saw a few snow flurries this afternoon. We have the thermostat cranked up to 57. Maybe we'll get tired of having the house be cold. It's not even November after all. Not sure, but Sue's currently trying to catch up on emails from the comfort of a sleeping bag.





Bessie's a converted coal boiler. So, in the past, one'd have to shovel coal into the bottom door (in the second picture above). Craziness.

In the top door, the bricks are what's called a baffle, slowing down and absorbing the heat in that central chamber. The more heat that can be contained within the central chamber of the boiler, the better with which to heat the water surrounded the boiler - eventually causing water to convert into steam which rises into the radiators in rest of the house.

This is Sue's last week in her first rotation. She's finding, though it's been challenging, she's going to be a little sad to leave it. On top of closing out her rotation, she's also been working her hiney off on a grant application which would fund her for two years... an F... or F-32. December 8th is the deadline.

PS
The graffiti bombers have been working overtime. About once per week I see something new in the Jewelry District. This piece is right across the street from my office building.

Mold Problem

Happy Monday! We had blissful weather up here this weekend. Late on Saturday night it teemed, but it was gorgeous during waking hours. Sue was in Bawlmer with her grad school peoples. I hosted a poker night on Saturday for a few of Sue's cool internship peers. Beyond that, I undertook all manner of house-task.

One job we have been meaning to get to was re-caulking the tub in the bathroom. Previous occupants it seemed had used caulk to cover a mold problem. Instead of removing the moldy caulk first, it appears they just slapped a coat on top. In the four months we've lived here, the mold seeped and grew to the surface. Ick!

Removed the old stuff. Sprayed the heck out of the affected areas with bleach. Left the dehumidifier on in the bathroom for five-six hours. Then caulked.





We need to put another coat on, but this should be pretty good for the time being.

PS
Lindsay, from Sue's internship class, threw a Sunday evening potluck with pumpkin carving. We're all set now!


UPDATED: What's So Radical with the video of Frank's speech - both smart and funny stuff.

ProPil Pop Quiz #4

We'll put a fiberglass roof on there at some point, but ignoring that for the moment... the composting bin's done! It took about 16 hours to plan and assemble. Not bad.

MATERIALS:
5 8ft 2by4 boards
2 12ft 2by4 boards
3 16ft 1by8 boards
2 8ft 2by6 boards
1 25ft roll of PVC "hardware cloth" 40-inch-wide (the green fencing)
1 box of 3-inch exterior wood screws
1 box of 3/8-inch staples

ProPil Pop Quiz #4
All the boards were untreated. Imagining that we already owned all the tools we used (even though we borrowed a chop saw from Jonathan), how much did this project cost?

War Bonds

Happy Friday, everyone! We had our first freeze last night, and it was still only 27-degrees at 7AM. We still have not turned the heat on. It was 50-degrees in the house last night. We could see our breath!

Tonight, fearing that pipes may freeze, and since I'll be home all weekend, I'll be flipping the switch on old Bessie. Fingers crossed!

In other news, on Monday only, Rhode Island is selling $350M worth of war bonds. If they don't, next month the government won't be able to pay the bills. Hopefully Rhode Islanders will pony up. We're considering it. It's like an eight-month CD with a 3% return.

Sue's heading to Bawlmer this weekend to visit with her beloved grad school peers. My big project is to finish up the compost bin (post forthcoming).

Listen Close

Sorry to keep harping on this, but wow... thanks for the prompt, Katie. R.I. has nation’s worst jobless rate.





PS
ProPil Mystery Link #1
ProPil Mystery Link #2 (listen close)

Specials Board

Happy Monday! Sue and I visited Boston this weekend. We went to the Fort Point Open Studio event Lara recommended, in which lots of the artists in this big warehouse-y artist community opened their studios (in many cases, their homes) to the public. Sue liked the studios best. For one reason or another, we saw a lot of photographed penises. Yes. Lots. I did not take pictures of those.


They had painted on the sidewalks and streets to lead visitors to all the massive art-filled warehouse-y buildings. Also, they made little clay towers to represent the smoke stacks that used to dominate the Fort Point part of town. People kept accidentally stepping on the towers, so many looked like canine debris.


Then we got a chance to hang with Lara, Lindsey and Nick. Fun times. Appetizers. Dinner and the Red Sox on the North End. Then, up to Cambridge for bowling.

I thought it was funny that the Specials board was blank. Then...








PS
We were up in Boston to celebrate Sue's 30th, which is tomorrow! I did a ton of work on our new composting bin, which will show up in a post either later this week or this weekend.

Poor Red Sox!

Negative Spiral

I suspect Governor Carcieri is on his way out. Below is a follow-up to this week's earlier posts about RI economics. If you don't feel like reading, the takeaway is RI has the second worst unemployment rate in the nation after Michigan, and indicators point to continued deterioration.

State jobless rate hits 16-year high; 50,200 out of work
01:00 AM EDT on Friday, October 17, 2008
By Lynn Arditi

Journal Staff Writer

Rhode Island’s recession deepened as employers slashed payrolls for the ninth straight month and the state unemployment rate last month climbed to 8.8 percent, its highest level in 16 years, a government report released today shows.

Jobs in September shrank by 1,300 and the ranks of the unemployed swelled to 50,200 — the highest on record, according to the state Department of Labor and Training.

(The state unemployment rate for the last three months has averaged above 8 percent, which prompted state labor officials to offer another round of extended unemployment benefits, expected to begin mid-November.)

During the last nine months, the state has lost roughly 12,600 jobs and the unemployment rate has jumped more than 3 percentage points, from 5.7 percent to 8.8 percent.

The latest job numbers come amid reports this week that the national economy is on the brink of a deep recession, which one forecaster predicts will not hit bottom until the third quarter of next year. A recession is generally defined as a prolonged, broad-based decline in economic activity.

Economists have been saying for months that Rhode Island — where the unemployment rate in July and August was the second-highest in the country, behind Michigan — is already in a recession. (Rhode Island’s unemployment rate in August was 8.6 percent.)

Now, as the national economic forecast darkens, economists say, the country’s smallest state will have fewer out-of-state tourists, fewer people eating out or shopping and generally less demand for the goods and services that Rhode Island exports.

“Those are your customers,” said David Wyss, chief economist at Standard & Poors in New York. “When your customers are doing badly, you do badly.”

Even the local housing market, which during the boom years attracted buyers priced out of the Boston market, no longer commands the same interest since Boston-area house prices have also fallen, Wyss said, and high gas prices discourage longer commutes.

Massachusetts yesterday reported the state lost 3,800 jobs last month — the third month in a row of job losses — and the unemployment rate ticked up one-tenth of a percentage point, to 5.3 percent.

Nationwide, jobs have fallen now for nine months, and the national unemployment rate last month remained unchanged at 6.1 percent.

“This recession looks like it’s going to be pretty bad,” said Andres Carbacho-Burgos, an economist at Moody’s Economy.com who covers Rhode Island. “But it’s not going to be as bad as people lived with in the early 1990s — provided we don’t get hit with even worse bad news.”

Rhode Island is forecast to lose another 7,700 jobs, and its payroll employment by then will have declined 5 percent off its peak in January 2007, according to Moody’s Economy.com.

During the 1990-1992 recession, Rhode Island lost more than 40,000 jobs, or more than 9 percent of its payroll employment, according to Moody’s.

Jared Bernstein, a labor economist at the Economic Policy Institute in Washington, said the Rhode Island economy is suffering from a “collision of a bunch of bad things.” The collapse of the housing sector, problems in financial markets, the state’s long decline in manufacturing and a slowdown in income growth, Bernstein said, have created a “negative spiral.”

Rhode Island last month reported job losses in manufacturing, retail and wholesale trade, professional and business services, and health care and social assistance, the state reported.

Retail trade employment was down 1,900 jobs from a year earlier, the steepest drop of any sector. (Nationally, the Commerce Department reported this week that retail sales plunged in September to their lowest level in three years.) Jobs in “other services,” including auto repair shops and hair stylists, reportedly declined by 1,400 from a year earlier.

Employment in the professional and business services sector, which includes temporary help agencies, shed 1,200 jobs since September of last year. Temporary workers are considered to be an “economic indicator” because they tend to rise when the economy is growing and fall as it contracts.

State labor officials yesterday said that the rise in the three-month average unemployment rate to above 8 percent provided the trigger to request permission from federal labor officials to offer a second round of state benefit extensions to Rhode Island residents who have run out of unemployment benefits.

State unemployment benefits normally last up to 26 weeks. The state already has granted one extension for up to 13 weeks for jobless residents who run out of their regular benefits and have also exhausted the extended benefits offered under a federal program approved by Congress.

The latest state extension provides up to seven additional weeks — for a maximum of 20 weeks — of extended benefits for jobless residents, said Raymond A. Filippone, the state labor department’s assistant director of income support. State labor officials will notify eligible residents by mail if they qualify for the extended benefits, he said.

Two Kinds of Fans

Happy Friday, peoples! I guess this post mainly covers two kinds of fans.

1) People are going to be completely f-ing bonkers at work.

2) Finally...




PS
Updated Primordial Mounds.
Updated Previous Pertinent Post.

Then Again

Then again, there does seem to be progress underway. The first picture below is reposted from Broken Windows Theory in August. The second is how the building looks today.

Year From Hell

I was telling Brandon and Jon today, Providence is making me more pessimistic about the economy - and the state of the country actually - than I expect I would be if we still lived in DC.

Rhode Island has the second highest unemployment rate in the nation, and somehow the feeling of economic stagnation has seeped into the place. I'm not so sure what to make of it, and in fact, I don't think it's "bad" exactly. It's a very real feeling I gather on the bus, at work, and around the neighborhood that I expect the natives associate with daily life.

In DC this weekend, by contrast, everything was hustling and bustling. In MoCo (Montgomery County), Ballston, and Northwest... construction all over the place. Packed restaurants. Shiny cars. Nice landscaping. People wearing snazzy clothes. Flat roads. No litter. Dogs carried around in leather bags.

In Providence, it is not like that. It's beginning to make more sense. I'm continuing to read articles like this:

URI Index: Local economy remains stuck in recession
1:26PM Tue, Oct 14, 2008
By Jack Perry

Business staff, Providence Journal

Rhode Island's economy continued to deteriorate in August and indicators suggested the state's recession will continue well into the near future, according to the Current Conditions Index created by University of Rhode Island economics Prof. Leonard Lardaro to measure the present economic situation.

"Stating that weakness across the board will continue may well be an understatement, since both the national and global economies weakened significantly in September and have deteriorated further in October," Lardaro said.

The index retreated to a value of zero in August, after being set at 8 in July. The index also was zero in June.

A value of 50 is neutral. Anything above 50 signifies expansion while anything below that signifies retraction.

The Current Conditions Index 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.
In August, all the indicators were negative. For example, government employment fell by 2.8 percent compared to last August. Single unit permits fell by 43.3 percent. Retail sales fell by 1.4 percent.

Lardaro said if any "good news" could be gleaned from the index, it was that manufacturing wages fell by only 0.2 percent, although it still remains below $14 per hour.

"This year continues to be a record setting one for Rhode Island's economy," Lardaro said. "I have no doubt that 2008 will ultimately come to be labeled "Rhode Island's year from hell," as we continue to set new records for all-time worst performances."

Lardaro said that prior to 2008, the index had only registered a value of 8 a few times, and never for more than a single month. This year, 8 has become the norm, he said.

Also, the index has registered zero twice this year. He said that looking back to 1980, the index had never reported a zero indicator until this year.

The decay in the city is remarkable. Here's a picture of a street light...


...and a better-than-typical specimen of near-omnipresent graffiti.

Furry and Feathered

The weather while we were in DC was splend-tastic. Furry and feathered friends were out in force. Nature's little arborists, squirrels, hiding acorns. Chipmunks flitting about.

At one point, about 100 black birds descended on the backyard, squawking and such.


(Enlarge the picture with a click.)

Across the street, early in the morning, a doe and two young deer were just hanging out, which is rather abnormal.



PS
Darned Redskins. Tighten up, fellas! Brandini, you were wondering how it happened. If I had to choose, I'd blame the offensive line the most, or I'd point to the Rams defensive line's strong play. Admittedly Campbell was a little less crisp than he might have been, but he needed better protection. Without looking at any stats, run blocking was good, but pass protection seemed soft.

Water Ricocheting

Meg, you were asking. So as promised...

My mom's basement has leaked for the 31 years I've been alive. This weekend, back in the DC metro-area, we were hoping to fix the problem once and for all.

After many iterations of engineering fixes, grading the house, sump pump upgrades, system failures, and wringing out basement rugs, most everything stays dry, but her workroom (See the pegboard?) has been leaking - three feet underground - from the back corner of the storage space.



The downspout closet to where the basement is leaking accepts about 1/3 of the water that falls on the house, because of how the roof is set up. A lot of water. So we dug underground, thinking the drainage piping was cracked.








The pipes underground seemed totally fine. No cracking. No water. But when we put two hoses full-blast in the gutter, we noticed that a little bit of water was ricocheting off the squared bottom of the black connecting piece and then overflowing. The water was running down the side of the house. If it were a lot of rain, perhaps the amount of water ricocheting was pretty dramatic?

We're not positive that that is the problem, but we're hopeful. Fingers crossed! We fixed it with some aluminum sheeting.