“Remoted” – Day 522 (Friday)

The Thursday tornado warnings have been replaced with hurricane and severe storm alerts for the weekend. Yay! There is great potential for a wet and wild weekend and not in the fun way. Thanks, Henri, you are a real pip. Time will need to be invested in storm preparedness, just in case. According to the last warning heard, there was 36 hours to prepare.

The mysterious basement
cigarette butt.

Checking the basement during the rain on Thursday had been avoided because I just couldn’t take on one more thing. This morning, a visit was paid to the underside of the house, and there were a couple small puddles. While pushing the water with a broom over to the sump pump, eight screws and a washer were collected from the floor, souvenirs of the water tank installation. I don’t even want to think about the potential issues if those had ended up in the pump hole, and I can't help wondering how many are already in there.

There was also the bonus discovery of a stomped out cigarette butt in the middle of the basement floor, which is most definitely not from me, was not there on Monday when discovering the tank leak, and was not there on Tuesday when the plumbing team arrived. 

Based on my extensive reading of Nancy Drew as a kid, my detective skills are pretty keen, even if it took a lifetime to understand what a "late model sedan" is, which seemed to be a popular vehicle in the books. 

There are a couple conclusions manufactured from the evidence available. One is that someone on the plumbing crew was smoking in the basement and left it behind. Another is that it came in on one of their shoes, courtesy of the dude in the black pickup truck who flings his butts out the window every day when picking up the guy next door. A third option is a ghost. There was the two-week stretch last fall when I smelled cigarette smoke, and with no smokers visiting, the logical conclusion is that it must have been a ghost, and the recent evidence indicates the butt smoking ghost is back. The final potential option is that, in some Disney version of things, the mice who have recently taken up residence have also taken up smoking. It sounds about as logical as anything else going on these days.

On the fun side of things, my brother-in-law’s band played at the stage at Patriot Place at Gillette Stadium in Foxboro. The weather held out so the gig wasn't cancelled like many other bands scheduled there earlier this summer. After choosing a carpool meeting spot strategically located between our homes and just off Route 495, my sister, two nieces and I travelled together to the event.

Scissor pizza and a chicken sandwich.

As for Patriot Place …. That place is pretty nice. There is an outdoor shopping mall area with restaurants with outdoor seating and an open air stage in the courtyard between the businesses. We supped at Citizen Crust where the rectangular "Roman pizza" is served with scissors for self-service cutting of custom chunks. My sister learned about the place on Phantom Gourmet and it was as good as hyped. And I finally made it to the home of the New England Patriots. The next logical step in the progression would be attending a game when the team is present on site.