All the kitchen cabinets in the Road House feature adjustable magnetic latches. Combined with the self-closing hinges it makes for a very definitive closing action. Adjustment is accomplished by rotating the magnet assembly. When we first moved in, I spent several hours adjusting all the hinges and magnets to get perfectly centered and flush doors. Unfortunately, over time, the magnets rotate within their housings. Today, I took a couple of hours to remove them all, apply a thread locker, reinsert and adjust them. It was not exactly a fun project but having the doors constantly go out of adjustment would have driven me nuts over time.

Visiting from Indianapolis today was our nephew, Gabriel. He arrived in Boston earlier this week to take the CMS Level 2 Certified Sommelier exam which he passed. I picked him up in Boston and gave him a car tour of Boston and Cambridge before returning to Concord for dinner with the family. Nicolai had to leave early for the state wrestling tournament being held in western Massachusetts. Several members of the Concord Academy team of which he is the assistant coach qualified. Jeanine served specialty cod cakes which she prepared earlier in the week. I preferred the other cake on the menu.

Photos of Maya’s previously reported motorcycle ride on a frozen lake have surfaced calling into serious question the intellect which she is otherwise known for. Exhibit A: No helmet!! Exhibit B: Driver is a total stranger!! Exhibit C: Ice is slippery. Rest assured she received a serious admonishment from her parents on the matter.

After more than a week of back and forth, we have settled on what I sincerely hope is a final floor plan for the River House. Changes to this version were the result of moving the main hallway from the left of the stairs to the right. The office now gets a window with a long view of the river, access to the rest of the house is from the foyer rather than the living area, the mudroom gets a window, and we pick up a cleaning supply closet. The trade-off is that the laundry is now smaller and will require a stacked set of machines rather than side-by-side. Because the stairs moved, changes rippled to the second floor and basement. In both cases, this resulted in improvements to the layout. The woodshop and photo studio are now 600 sqft each.

Amputee soccer world cup qualifiers are scheduled for March and will be held in Mexico. Today, the roster for the national team that will represent the United States was posted and Nicolai will be among its members. He is tentatively set to play center midfield. I will be traveling to Mexico for the tournament and there is a good chance Jeanine will be joining me.

During my recent annual physical, my doctor asked me if I was experiencing any health issues that he should be aware of. My only real complaint other than the normal stuff related to aging was the fact that I felt my cardiovascular endurance had diminished far more so than my contemporary soccer teammates. I expressed the same concern five years ago and he ordered an echocardiogram stress test. It revealed some undesirable EKG waveforms but my coronary blood flow was deemed to be good. He thought it would be a good idea to get another stress test to see if anything had changed from my baseline. The results of the test I did today showed the same anomaly in my elevated heart rate but no change from my last test. This test did not include the ultrasound component and based on the outcome, I have to come back again and repeat the whole thing again for the more comprehensive test. The good news is that we live so close to the hospital now that it was faster to walk there than drive. I could also see our house while running on the treadmill. It is located in the clump of trees in the background. Below on the left are my at rest waveforms with my elevated heart rate waveform on the right. Apparently, my pattern shows an ST-segment depression outside of the normal range which can be indicative of reduced blood flow to the heart. According to my very friendly technician, my pattern was identical to the one five years ago and he is fairly confident that a repeat of the echocardiogram will not turn up a blood flow problem this time either.

Last October, my mother performed an Argentine Tango at a dance demonstration held at the Mall of America in Minneapolis. My sister Alissa, who coordinated her participation, just shared a great article that appeared on SheerDance.com. It tells the story of how my parents met through dancing and how it has been a sustaining passion for my mother to this day.

Link to article.

Jeanine and I spent a good part of the day at Kyle’s house. I helped him install two more replacement windows in his basement while Jeanine gave the upstairs a thorough cleaning, a much-needed intervention after all the cement dust we created last week when removing a portion of the concrete slab. Kyle is rapidly picking up many new construction skills and I can assign him projects with high confidence they will be done right. Although there remains much work to be done, the space is starting to take shape and much of the less enjoyable work is behind us.

Maya spent the weekend in Camden, Maine with friends from Olin participating in the National Toboggan Championships. Her team managed a 12.38-second run which was not good enough to advance but more than enough to have a great time. Apparently, she also took a hot lap around a frozen lake on a motorcycle with a “very handsome guy”. The motorcycle was equipped with spiked tires and her father was not pleased to learn of this risky behavior. He did, however, approve of the pond hockey match which was also part of the weekend activities.

Plans for our River House are coming along nicely and have remained stable for the last few months. Over the last few days, however, I have been playing with different options for a room we have been calling the Aviary. The original intent was for a 4-season screened-in porch above the main floor (five-window upper section in the lower image). In an unusually long post, I am sharing the thought process behind considering a change in direction for that single room.

What is the problem we are trying to solve?

(1) We are missing a cozy place for Jeanine to read, meditate, and enjoy quiet time or coffee with a friend. This space would have cozy dimensions, ample space for a big comfy chair (or two) and side table, great natural light, great views, and convenient access. No spaces on the first floor currently satisfy these requirements.

(2) The original goals for the Aviary (screened-in porch, “place to entertain small groups”) are not really being met with the current design. 12” thick walls with operable triple-pane glass will never “feel” like a screened-in porch and a lot of work will be required to open and close windows (9 in total) with each use. Unlike our old sunporch this will be a conditioned space which means: (a) when occupied with the windows open, the door should be closed (unlikely to happen in real life) and (b) when unoccupied, the windows should be closed after each use (otherwise we are pumping conditioned air into the outdoors all the time unless we zone separately). It is 90 feet and 22 stairs away from the kitchen and thus will never lend itself to entertaining with food being served. The high glass-to-volume ratio makes it one of the least energy efficient rooms and it will also be one of the least used.

What will be different about living in a home with a fresh air ventilation system (ERV)?

Our house will include a ventilation system that constantly brings fresh air from the outdoors into the house replacing an equal volume of stale air (carbon monoxide build-up, odors). The system will replace 1/3 of the air in every room every hour while preserving a very large percentage of the energy used to heat or cool that air.
During the summer, the humidity will be removed from incoming air and in the winter, it will be added. The incoming air will be filtered for dust/pollen. With this type of system, the only reason to open a window is for ambient sounds or egress. Opening a window will result in more dust in the house, loss of conditioned air, and bigger swings in humidity. If not for building codes requiring egress windows for all bedrooms, I would make every window non-operable.

With all of this in mind, I created a new plan, shown in the top image, which slopes the roof over the Aviary in the opposite direction. It does not present as dramatic an elevation view but solves many of the problems and has a feature that will make for a really nice cozy space for Jeanine. Time will tell if we opt for the change or stick with the current plan or some new variation emerges.

Perhaps the least fun I have had working on the River House is the removal of this pipe and another one just like it. The pipe is principally made of cement but also contains asbestos. Before demolition can begin, all asbestos must be removed from the structure and properly disposed of. Step one, completed last Saturday was to remove the stone tiles and cut through the 4″ concrete slab covering the pipe (3 hours). Step two, completed yesterday was to break up and remove the concrete covering the pipe (2 hours). Step three was to cut out the subflooring covering the remainder of the pipe (10 minutes). Step four, completed today while wearing a respirator, gloves, and a Tyvek hazmat suit, involved breaking the pipe into manageable-sized chunks and double bagging them in 10 mil plastic bags. Next weekend the bags will be picked up by a certified hazardous waste disposal company for a total cost of $300, a tiny fraction of the price had I hired a company to do this job.

Today, my plans to meet with a new colleague over lunch in West Concord had to be changed when we arrived to find the fire department on scene and the establishment closed. We decided to head to the Main Street Cafe where I was thrilled to find breakfast fare on the all-day menu.

Last fall, I was approached by the principals of a group working within Meta (formerly Facebook) with a consulting opportunity. The team is building a robot that installs fiber optic cable over existing power line infrastructure. It is a very cool project and I am excited to be joining the team. It has taken many months, however, to complete the onboarding process which involved joining the Launch Consulting Group which provides Facebook, Google, and others with contract employees and/or contract services. Today, I completed the process which included hours of mandatory training videos, paperwork, and setting up a dedicated computer for the project.

Taken in June of 2014, I just received this photo of me with my nieces Sophia and Rose. Since I am usually behind the camera, I appreciate getting photos where I am in front of it; even if they take 8 years to reach me 🙂