Waiting for the Crash

Just got back from getting my second dose of shingles vaccine, and I expect to be miserable soon. The first dose hit me pretty hard and this one probably will too. By tonight I should be a wreck, but I’ll be back to normal on Saturday or Sunday.

I’ve had a lot of vaccines lately, and I am happy about that: COVID booster, flu, two for shingles, and the original COVID vaccines if you go back a bit farther. At some point I become invincible, right?

Sure. Tell that to the pain in my left arm where the injection happened today.

In other news, the home window replacement project took a big step forward. The contractor came over and we measured every window in the house. Then I took the measurements to the window shop and placed the order.

Sadly, thanks to the various supply chain issues, we’re looking at three months or more before they arrive. We’ll get a firmer estimate in two or three weeks once the factory gets back to our dealer. And did you know that the price of glass — just glass — has gone up 60% over this time last year? That’s crazy. Apparently window prices are going up a few percent every couple of months for the last year or more. That’s just barrels of fun.

In related news, the contractor noted a manufacturing date on some of our old windows. I followed his lead and checked a few more, and now I have a hint at when various things were done to the place. In time order, these are the window dates I know:

• 80: (meaning 1980) one window in the laundry room
• 93–2: Feb 1993, the other window in the laundry room
• 94–3: March 1994, most of the windows in the house, including everything in the second floor addition
• 1997: the big, unopenable windows along the back of the house

When we replaced the roof on the back of the house we noted an addition in one corner that I could not find permits for online. It contains the family room (which we call the conservatory) and the laundry room. Given the 1980 date on one of those windows, it’s a good guess that addition was done then.

The other window in the laundry room must have been replaced or added in 1993, but I have no clue why that would have happened.

Based on checking permits, back in about 1994 the previous owner put the second floor on the house, and I think he re-sided the entire place in the process. Most — but not all — of the windows in the house were replaced at that time.

The big windows along the back were then replaced in 1997. Why they waited instead of doing them with the big remodel I don’t know. I also cannot explain why they didn’t install windows that would open at that time. To be honest, though, I’d guess cost. They didn’t want to spend that much money.

In any case, even the youngest windows in the house are 25 years old. Thanks to global warming, those that do not open need to, and those that do open don’t seal well when closed anymore. They all need to go. Both winters and summers will be much better as a result of this change.

There is some other (relatively minor, we hope) work for the contractors as well, but we don’t have a start date for it yet. It’s all small stuff that they can squeeze in when the have time around their really big jobs. Even the windows. Nothing is critical. And it’s a try-out for eventually getting to remodel our kitchen.

The only other thing of note in the last week relates to the infrared camera. I needed to figure out how to remove the logo the camera inserts into the upper left corner of each image. I spent some time in a program named GIMP — an open source image editing tool, similar in some ways to Photoshop — and worked out a few techniques for that. In the process, I created this:

I quite like that, actually, and there are a number of other images I hope to process and share. I also have ideas for other photos to take. Our printer won’t do an image like that justice, but I might work on printing some of these eventually. Somehow.

The resolution of the camera is terrible, but I can scale it up, and things are already so distorted and weird looking you might not even notice.

A short post this week, but sometimes life is like that.

Keep safe and sane!