updates

Apologies for the long delay, but we've hit a couple snags. It's been a bad month.

We thought basement flooding problems would be solved with a three foot wide, fifteen foot long, three and a half foot deep trench in the studio. Sump pump was installed and secured and cemented over. It worked. The groundwater is now redirected through the foundation wall and into the empty field next door.

Now that that's out of the way, the cursed walls of Renard continued to emit moisture - only this time through the sewer and the living room ceiling. It would seem that the upstairs hot water heater has been spewing water, and the new upstairs tenants didn't stem the flow or call the landlord. I guess they didn't know it was such a dire situation. So imagine Brad's surprise this morning to come upstairs to see a lovely waterfall cascading down the living room wall.

It's a long story, but many holes were drilled to relieve the pressure of 70 gallons of water that have all this time been hanging out on top of the drywall. Lovely.

So the studio is dry... but the sewer grate spews all sorts of horror every time the water is used upstairs.

A chain of highly improbably vehicular incidents has left us minus one car and plus hundreds of dollars in parking ticket/boot fees, money that was supposed to be spent finishing the kitchen.

The landlord's younger family members are apparently still under the impression that our house is their playground, and have taken to breaking into the basement and screaming and knocking things over.

Spiders. We have spiders.

The trash-pickers and vagrants of this neighborhood are causing problems with the alley, ignoring the sign painted on our back door, and conducting all sorts of fascinating business just inches from bedroom #1.

There's nothing positive to say lately.