A tad before noon on a perfect day. Cool, a bit of a breeze, bright blue skies.

Fate hangs in the balance.

Sometime today we will hear whether or not our house passes air quality inspection. Samples are in the lab. We are on pins and needles.

All work to remediate the unpleasantness is complete, the crawl space deep-scrubbed and hermetically sealed, the HVAC air handler disassembled and painstakingly cleaned, all ductwork replaced anew. Five air scrubbers and four dehumidifiers have been running 24/7 for a solid four weeks, raising the internal temperature of the house to right around 100*f for most of that time. One shudders to anticipate the power bill that attends to this; the electric meter is flashing so fast you cannot really see it. Then again, this will amount to but a piffle in the overall cost of things. read more

(Pictured: “Not Everything Will Be Okay But Some Things Will” by the artist aka Stanwyck)

First things first: My one month old immune system seems to be humming along just fine, thanks. Blood counts are all close enough to normal to be considered normal. Once again I am free to shake hands and go about in public without that silly face mask. read more