Peace and Quiet

Barclay Square is in the middle of a roofing project.  This week it is the turn of Building 5, our building.  It is noisy.  It is incredibly noisy and that is probably accentuated by being in a second floor apartment.  We had a key to Jeff and Susan's house and I asked if I could crash there for some of the time this week.  I made it through the first two days when the roofers were mostly at the far end of our building.   But today at 7:57 am the banging started overhead as they stripped the old shingles off.  Our doors were covered with tarp and so were the windows.  We had already moved our plants and deck chair to safety.

Jim is able to block out the noise as he keeps working on his projects.  I am not able to do so and thus am so happy to be sitting quietly in Jeff and Susan's living room.  I have books and I can still get wifi here from past visits.  I just sat on their deck for a bit to get my daily Vitamin D--impossible to do at our place yesterday with workmen all around us.  I have brought along a lunch although they offered me some options from their freezer.  I have checked their crockpot for them and will follow instructions of turning it to high later in the afternoon.  

Jim will golf this afternoon so he will be gone anyway.  It's a long day to be away from home but I am thinking it is better than tolerating the pounding.  It will only get worse when they install the new shingles.  I hope today is the worst of it because they were right overhead this morning.  They finish up for the day by 5:00 or so.  

We had to park our car away from our garage this week because access was unavailable with shingles waiting to be cleared away.  That is not a major problem because there are visitors' parking places around the complex.  

I am glad we are not paying for a new roof although I guess we are paying for it with our rent increase.  If it were a single family dwelling the noise would not be going on all week--and even for weeks when there are sounds from Building 4 and Building 6 which are just not as bad when they are not directly overhead.  

Our Sporting Life

 We watch a lot of sports on TV.  When I complain about seeing the same commercials over and over again (Draft King, Progressive, Amazon) I realize that the reason is that we watch a lot of sports. 

 We have been watching the Mets and I have become a Mets fan because we can get them on SNY--Sports New York--our local broadcast.  And now NFL has started up and there has been golf although the PGA is done for a while.   Jim still tunes in to the Golf Channel and gets the Asian tour or the Champions (seniors) or the women who are still playing.  Not the infamous LIV events however.  I wonder if they will be broadcasted at some point and if we would boycott them.

The Mets--It has been fun to watch their great pitchers--DeGrom and Scherzer--although injuries kept them out at various times.  We chuckle at Vogelbach, the large designated hitter whose running style is not his strength.  In fact, once Jim pondered if Nido would bunt and I was proud to point out that Vogelbach was on third and a bunt was unlikely!  The last few nights the Cubs have taken on the Mets and won.  I think Jim is still a Cubs fan; my allegiance has changed.

And then there is Notre Dame football--two losses already this year.  It was understandable that they lost to number two-ranked Ohio State in an away game in a very noisy stadium.  But last week they lost to Marshall in a home game.  Poor Marcus Freeman, the first head coach to have a 0-3 record at ND ever!  And now Buchner, their quarterback, is injured and out for four months.

A crisis is averted we hope when during the NFL Kickoff game last Thursday, our audio feed suddenly changed to Spanish.  We followed some Google instructions and managed to get all the on screen instructions in Spanish too!  Jim chatted with a very helpful xfinity person on Friday and when the audio switched to Spanish on Sunday, he was able to correct it on his own.  Why is the TV doing these arbitrary changes?  We do not know!  It's only on NBC and only during football--so far at least.

We happily watch all these events from the comfort of our living room with our large TV screen.  We don't envy anyone sitting in the stadiums fighting traffic to get to the games and sitting in what could be super spreader Covid events.  We're glad we can be sports fans together--although it would be nice to be cheering for winners.  

A friend mentioned that I had not been blogging much lately.  Maybe this topic is a sign of our rather limited life these days.  And maybe limited is just fine for now!