We're in escrow on a house, and we're totally on the fence about it. On one hand, it's nice enough; on the other, it needs significant new construction to reach its full potential, and the estimates came in higher than anticipated. And that might be OK if we loved it more—if the dishwasher was near the sink, if there was cross-ventilation in the master bedroom, if there wasn't an oven in the pantry.... To complicate matters, another house that we like has become available again. It doesn't require work, but it's more expensive, with higher property taxes and likely a much higher insurance premium. So we stew on it. We have to decide on the first house by early next week, and the second house in a day or two.
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Here's the bathroom in a house we're not considering. As a visiting friend said, that tub looks like something you'd cook an egg in.
Speaking of which, I skimmed J. Kenji López-Alt's "How to Boil the Perfect Egg" in the New York Times, hoping I wouldn't have to memorize a new method. But he said that 87% of the time (in his results), steaming eggs rather than boiling them resulted in clean, easy peeling. And that was indeed the case when I steamed five eggs today. P.S. You can skip the article and go straight to the instructions.
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Last spring, I signed up for the Criterion Channel, because I liked the defunct streaming service, Filmstruck, it grew out of. We always forget to watch it, however, with the exception of Hedwig and the Angry Inch, which had a limited run on the site (with terrific bonus material at the end). The other day, Adam notified me that Criterion had charged our credit card $200. Annoyed at the auto-renewal, I canceled our subscription.
The confirmation email said our service would end in May, at the one-year mark, with no mention of the new $200 charge. I fired off an email demanding a refund, and when that was ignored, a tweet. The tweet elicited a new email address, so I tried that one, too. Eventually, a representative explained that the company can't prorate the first year—and she didn't even acknowledge the new $200 charge! I started typing up a fiery response, and then, in a clear sign of personal growth, I paused to look at the invoice email that Adam had forwarded. It was from Criterion Environmental, the company that did the radon test on the house we're considering.