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Post by kerouac2 on Apr 26, 2020 16:08:04 GMT
The building dates from about 1798 and is a mishmash of uneven stones covered with stucco.* Every apartment is certainly unique because the walls, floor and ceiling are not straight. Because of this, things that are straight appear crooked, such as the bathroom tiles or the little fluorescent light on the wall in my big closet which looks completely crooked when you examine the ceiling above it. Whenever anything is done in my place, they have to come with laser pointers to measure the areas because a metal tape measure is useless.
* When they ripped off all of the old stucco during the last refurbishment, seeing what was underneath made you wonder how the building was still standing.
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Post by lagatta on Apr 26, 2020 18:04:18 GMT
Our building is MUCH younger than yours, a little over 100 years old, early 20th-century. It is also very crooked because there is an underground stream (there are many on the island of Montréal) and the whole thing had to be shored up about a decade ago and the ground floor flats actually demolished - the building was on metal stilts. Our co-op consists of two typical Montréal buildings - ours is a sixplex (twinned triplex). Unfortunately, while the neighbouring buildings including the other part of our co-op, had kept its original dark-red brick, some idiotic owner or speculator "renovated" the building with ugly orangish/yellowish brick popular in the 1960s, but at least we don't see it much inside. This area isn't very old by central Montréal standards; the oldest buildings date from 1880 or so. It grew up, like Mile-End just to the south, due to the building of the CPR (Canadian Pacific Railway).
There are much older buildings at the very northern edge of the island, including a historic church, but that was a separate town.
The neighbours here are fine; one is a grump who dislikes me and many other people, but leaves others pretty much alone. However, in years past we've had some very tough characters nearby including a guy (drug dealer, think also pimp) who set his pitbull after me just for a laugh. There was also a crackhouse on the other side of the street and pitched battles with metal chairs, knived and god knows what else. The police finally clamped down at that point and all those characters are gone now.
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Post by Kimby on Apr 26, 2020 21:18:52 GMT
Our neighborhood is undergoing a major turnover, it seems. Almost all the people who were there when we built our house in 1985 have sold, many of them recently, as they have become empty-nesters and snowbirds who just want a low-maintenance condo or town home for their summers in Montana.
The new owners are mostly young families with kids, so it's a whole new feel. I don't mind at all. But it's weird to now be the old-timers instead of the new kids on the block.
Our new next door neighbors moved in in October, just before we were heading to Florida for a month. So we mailed them a welcome note addressed "To Our New Neighbors" since we didn't know their names. We gave them our names and contact info in case they needed any help or any information about the neighborhood. They replied by email that they'd been very busy with moving in and starting new jobs and looked forward to meeting us. We got home a bit before Christmas so I sent them a Christmas card (we do a photo card) and said we looked forward to meeting them in the New Year. The snowdrifts piled up and we each did our own thing all winter. The Kimbys spent half of February in Florida, and then I went to Arizona to see my widowed brother-in-law, and then the Coronavirus pandemic settled in.
Our new neighbors are a young medical couple, he's an ER nurse and she's an ER physician. We see their vehicles coming and going at odd hours, seems their shift must start around 10 pm. When they are around, they tend to have LOTS of lights on, when they are gone, none at all. A while back, Mr. Kimby got up in the night to pee, looked out the window and saw flames leaping at the neighbors' dark house! He shook me awake and threw on a coat to run over there and try to put it out or call 911 if he couldn't. As soon as he got outside, though, he could hear loud voices coming from their hot tub, at 4 AM. Really loud, they seemed to be arguing, but more mad at their employer than each other. We heard the word COVID and the hospital name several times. The flames must have been some sort of mood lighting, or gas appliance. Needless to say, Mr. Kimby quickly aborted his fire-fighting mission and came back to bed. Shortly after that, we began noticing very bright purple lights in their living room window which faces our kitchen, deck and our hot tub. We speculated what they could be. Not an incubator for baby chicks, because they are only on about 12 hours a day. Must be grow lights, but for what? A corona virus victory garden? Medical marijuana?
Other times we have seen strange shifting outside lights and sounds like there was a party but no cars and no visible people. The houses are about 300 feet apart, so we aren't in each other's faces, but they have some curious habits...
Wondering when we'll ever meet our new neighbors...
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Post by kerouac2 on Apr 27, 2020 3:53:29 GMT
Kimby, I think your neighbours are extraterrestrials and like to relax in their own lighting when they take off their human skin envelopes.
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Post by bixaorellana on Apr 27, 2020 5:02:04 GMT
Kimby, there are UV lights for disinfection that are purple. Is it possible that your neighbors are coming home &, for convenience or whatever, are undressing in the living room and leaving their clothes there to disinfect?
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Neighbors
Apr 27, 2020 14:01:30 GMT
via mobile
Post by Kimby on Apr 27, 2020 14:01:30 GMT
Interesting suggestion Bixa, but it’s in the living room window, right up against the window, and a long ways from either entry door of the house. Wouldn’t you expect something like that to be located in the garage or foyer?
I googled “purple grow lights” and found that unlike the full-spectrum fluorescents of my college years, newer LED grow lights are available in parts of the spectrum that encourage different types of growth. Cheap single color red and blue LEDs both encourage short height and early flowering, which when combined produce a purple colored light, that incidentally makes color-perception impossible for human eyes.
More expensive LEDs can combine these two in a way that does not interfere with color perception, helpful in a large greenhouse where the lights are hung from the ceiling. For small operations, the cheaper lights are more cost-effective.
So I conclude that our neighbors may be growing marijuana, which is legal for medicinal use in Montana. Efforts to make recreational use legal are being hampered by the difficulty of signature-gathering during pandemic isolation.
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Post by bixaorellana on Apr 27, 2020 15:37:48 GMT
it’s in the living room window, right up against the window Maybe my suggestion is correct and the neighbors just want y'all to see them.
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Neighbors
Apr 27, 2020 15:59:00 GMT
via mobile
Post by Kimby on Apr 27, 2020 15:59:00 GMT
Unless I point my binoculars at their windows, we can’t see much of anything from 300 feet away. I don’t want to be caught being that nosy, so willl just live with the mystery for now. It does appear that there may be a glass structure with the lights at the top... I noticed this when I ventured nearer to collect Pearl, who had wandered too far and was not inclined to respond to my entreaties to return.
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Post by bixaorellana on Apr 27, 2020 18:19:29 GMT
Were you so tired from chasing Pearl that you had to lean your weary forehead against their living room windows, of course protecting the glass by cupping your hands over your eyebrows?
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Post by onlyMark on Apr 27, 2020 19:33:47 GMT
Kimby, just a thought, but if you are in an unlit room and stand a couple of metres or more back from from the window when using the binoculars, you are very unlikely to be seen. I believe this from a former career when at times I had to perform 'observations' on a neighbouring property.
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Neighbors
Apr 27, 2020 19:42:15 GMT
via mobile
Post by Kimby on Apr 27, 2020 19:42:15 GMT
Were you so tired from chasing Pearl that you had to lean your weary forehead against their living room windows, of course protecting the glass by cupping your hands over your eyebrows? I resemble that remark, bixa! 😄
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Post by kerouac2 on Apr 27, 2020 20:20:52 GMT
Now I'm wondering if that is another auto-correct joke or if you really meant it.
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Neighbors
Apr 28, 2020 4:36:47 GMT
via mobile
Post by Kimby on Apr 28, 2020 4:36:47 GMT
Intentional malapropism, K2.
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Post by casimira on Aug 24, 2020 14:07:40 GMT
At present my husband and I and one other married couple that we have been friends with for around 25 years are the elders on the block where we live. In the last few days with the storms approaching all the younger neighbors have dropped by or called and or texted us letting us know that if there's anything we need etc. to please let them know. It reaffirms me to know that we are surrounded by some really good people. By and large that's been pretty much a constant since living here with some notable exceptions. By the same token we were able to let the two or three newer young people currently living here who have never experienced a hurricane and tell them what to expect in the way of flooding, loss of power etc.
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Post by kerouac2 on Aug 24, 2020 15:45:36 GMT
I am now the old person of the building, since my older neighbour died almost ten years ago. But even when she was there, I was still the senior resident of the building, since I have been here the longest. I guess I don't look too decrepit because it is generally my neighbours who tend to ask for assistance or information when required.
I have spent most of the last 5 months pretty much alone in the building, because just about all of the others have "evacuated" to places that they consider safer in these troubled times.
School starts next Tuesday, so I know that one of the families will be back, but the other one is apparently moving (at least that's what Tarek told me), even though they are very much attached to this area. When they arrived here, they came from an address on the same street only about 100 metres away, and now they are moving to the street in back, also only about 100 metres away. I think it might have to do with Tarek's profession. He is in construction and is obsessed with painting, tiling, redoing the plumbing etc. Once he has done everything that there is to do, he needs to move on to a new place.
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Post by kerouac2 on Aug 25, 2020 14:19:45 GMT
Well, wouldn't you know it? My new student neighbours started moving in today -- two charming girls for once, so that might be an improvement, too soon to tell -- and I was not even able to walk past their door without being asked for assistance.
"We don't have electricity yet. Could you please charge this phone for us?"
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Post by casimira on Aug 25, 2020 16:50:31 GMT
One of our neighbors just dropped me off after a successful trip to go and get a dozen sandbags to have on hand should we need them for the pending now Hurricane status "Laura". The city has several locations where they have volunteers at the ready to load up one's vehicle with them. It was supposed to be limited to four bags per person but, when we got there the young woman at the gate asked, "how many do you need?". It was a very efficient and organized operation I gotta say.
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Post by kerouac2 on Aug 25, 2020 17:41:38 GMT
Four bags sounds almost worse than useless. They are a pain to carry and what would you do with just four of them?
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Post by casimira on Aug 25, 2020 18:20:39 GMT
I agree. I guess they felt that they had to set some kind of limit as people might likely get greedy and take away too many and maybe try to exploit the situation and sell them to people if they got desperate enough. It wouldn't be unheard of I'm sad to say. The bags are not that difficult to carry. Each one weighs maybe 25-30 lbs. We have a stash of them from last year but some of them are a bit ratty. If it wasn't for the asshole guy who created the "concrete jungle" across the street we wouldn't be having this discusssion at all. I have made sure that everyone in this neighborhood knows who he is so, he is on people's radar. He and his brother are converting another residence in our neighborhood into a similar type of monstrosity. Sooner or later it's going to catch up with them.
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