Milestone

I turned 50 last week. There's a lot of significance attached to that, whether we like it or not. When you turn 40 you figure that, roughly speaking, you've reached the approximate halfway point of your life. Add another decade to that and, on average, most people will be past their halfway point.

Of course there are exceptions. My paternal grandmother lived to 90 and her mother lived to her mid-90s, so genetically I have some longevity in my favor. But the odds are also much higher that one's quality of life in the "second half" will be worse than the first. It's hard not to start taking stock of one's health, and all the things that could go wrong.

I don't smoke and I drink responsibly and in moderation. My blood pressure is reasonably low, my cholesterol numbers are decent (but could be better), and I don't have arthritis or any bad joints (yet). On the other hand, I am lazy and don't exercise. I am slightly overweight, though my weight has been stable for nearly a decade. My father developed diabetes in adulthood, as did his mother, so I have to watch out for that possibility, but I don't have the greatest diet and I snack a lot.

I'm at much higher risk for skin cancer than the average person, so I have to be vigilant and see a dermatologist twice a year. (I hate heat and humidity, so not going outside isn't a problem for me.) Both my grandfathers died of lung cancer; as a child both my parents smoked and I was exposed to a lot of secondhand smoke, before anyone realized how harmful that is.

I could arrange these things on a board in pro and con fashion, to see the bigger picture. My lack of physical activity will probably end up affecting my quality of life in twenty years or so in terms of mobility, and may also put me at higher risk for heart disease. This is serious, and I know I should do something about it.

But today, right now, I feel good. I have minor issues, but overall my health is good. I know people who have had hip replacements before reaching 50, and thankfully I haven't had to deal with anything like that. It's somewhat true that age is not a number but a state of mind; there are things we can't control, and things we can.

Part of me wants to see what would happen if I just kept going the way I am, without making the effort to exercise, but it's not like I'd get a do-over. I guess it's time for me to think about taking better care of myself.

Fan Fail

Have you ever heard the thing about reversing the direction of your ceiling fan? You are supposed to run it counterclockwise in warm weather to facilitate cooling.

I was having an email conversation with APB about air conditioning and fans, and she mentioned this. Unfortunately, it doesn't work, at least not in our apartment. We have one ceiling fan, in the kitchen. I use a stand fan next to the AC unit in the room adjoining the kitchen to try to move some of the cooler air into the kitchen.

I tried running the ceiling fan along with it, but it made the kitchen warmer. And out of curiosity, I switched the fan back to clockwise and tried it again. It also caused the kitchen to get warmer, but not as quickly as when it was going counterclockwise. If the room was larger, or if the opening between the rooms was wider, I think the results might be different.

An Observation

Hiccups seem to go away as soon as you stop thinking about trying to get them to go away...

How's the Weather?

This week, miserable. All week. I don't enjoy summer the way most people do. Even when the weather is more tolerable, I'd rather be inside. I've just never been an outdoors person, and I consider the sun to be an enemy in roughly the same way a vampire does. Growing up we had a pool in our yard, but if I wasn't swimming I was indoors, either reading or building model cars in the basement, where it was cooler.

So when it's this hot and humid, we leave the house only when necessary. We also have to manage our dog's time outside; she's almost 12 and has always been sensitive to heat, but she isn't smart enough to realize that she shouldn't be outside on days like today. The poor thing is wiped out after only a couple of minutes of walking, even in the shade.

We've had another issue this week: flies. Since Sunday we've had nearly a dozen of them in the house. We don't know where they are coming from or what's attracting them, but we have a suspicion that it may have something to do with the folks upstairs, who disposed of some truly vile-smelling garbage last weekend. When we take the dog out there are flies in the back hall, which suggests that they may be making their way downstairs from above.

False Alarms

Our upstairs neighbors (three single adults share the apartment) have had a couple of incidents lately setting off the smoke alarm while making food. This wouldn't necessarily be a big deal, except that any such occurrence triggers the alarms in the whole dwelling, including the ones in our apartment, the basement, and the front and back stairways leading to the upstairs unit.

These are the LOUDEST smoke alarms I have ever heard. They are piercingly loud, obviously meant to awaken sleeping residents immediately, and in addition to the beeping there's an electronic voice that repeats "FIRE!" Fortunately they haven't gone off while we are asleep, but when we're awake they just startle the crap out of us, and they are so loud we are forced to cover our ears. There's one about six feet from the desk where my computer is, so if I'm sitting here it's essentially right above my head, which is what happened the last two times.

They have gone off twice in the past week or two, and in both cases it seems one of the upstairs folks put something in the toaster oven and then returned to his bedroom, forgetting about the food until it was too late. (I was able to figure this out because, mixed in with the alarm sounds, I could detect his footsteps as he hurried from his room at the front of the house to the kitchen at the back.)

Utility Work

Our utility provider has had a contractor working in our area for several weeks, replacing and rerouting the gas main that runs under our street. So far the inconvenience has been limited to occasional road closings, and when that happens there is always a detour available.

Last week we got a notice in our mailbox that the contractor would need access to our basement in order to connect the house to the new line, and after that the utility company would have to come into the basement and both units to relight all the pilots. We were instructed to call the foreman to arrange a time for this work. I set up our appointment for today.

The crew started digging around 8 am, for both our house and the one next door. As of 4 pm they are still at it. I had no idea this would be an all-day process; when I was told the contractor needed access to our basement, I assumed it was to do something that would take only a short amount of time. But there's a trench from the middle of the street right up to our front steps, where the gas line connects to the building.

It's not like I need to be anywhere, but it does mean that we don't have any gas service at the moment, and I don't know if we'll be able to get it restored today after the workers are finished—if they do finish today. And as an incidental consequence of the work being done, we're unable to get out of our driveway.

Update: We got our gas service back, but we had to call to get someone to come out. The regular National Grid customer service line operates only from 7 am to 5 pm weekdays, so I pushed the button for "gas emergency" and explained what was going on to the phone rep, which got the results I needed. The tech who showed up told me that the contractors are notoriously unreliable about remembering to call for service to be renewed after they've finished their work, which is good to know for future reference.

The Reentry

Oh, hi there. Yeah, my brain took a few days off. I guess that's what long weekends are for, right? I got my stitches out this morning, but I'm still healing.

I'm also in the midst of rewatching the three seasons of Arrested Development that aired on Fox (since I haven't seen them since they were first shown), to get ready for the new episodes on Netflix.

I'll be back soon with more fun stuff.