The Humble Abode

As is common with most people, we needed a place to live after getting married. The male domestic engineer (hereafter, Engineer R) had been living in a two room apartment in a different city. And by two rooms, we mean "the living quarters" and "the bathroom." Thankfully that apartment sold to another buyer this past week. Although, full disclosure, this did necessitate placing the bed from that apartment in a yet to be revealed location. Engineer R had hoped to sell this bed, but was unsuccessful. Having no other place to put the bed, it was sent to the confines of an unsuspecting basement. We plan on returning on a moonless night and removing it to place it up for sale again.

The current beds we sleep on are a pair of twin beds pushed together. The setup is quite similar to what was employed on TV shows in the 1950s.

Lucy and Desi

This is actually a decent setup in theory. It is like sleeping in a king bed, but you get separate sheets and blankets. As long as you do not fall into the thin gap between the beds, it is altogether an enlightening experience.

I will add that one of our beds is much firmer than the other, which sometimes has its challenges. We may need to do some experimenting with various mattresses from the other bedroom in order to reach a more optimal setup.

But that is an experiment for another night. As for now, we want to introduce our first domestic experiment.

I don't know about you, but I like to personally know everyone that is living by me. Now, lest we get confused here, I am not talking about getting to know someone in a friendly or neighborly sort of way. I am speaking about the pursuit of knowing all the available facts about a person, much like a government agency collects information about all of us without our knowing it. A desire for satiation in this regard is what led to what we called DEFO, the Domestic Experiment For Occupancy. 

The aim of DEFO was not to collect surfeit knowledge about everyone in our complex. After all, you need to start out with some simple exploratory research. Hence DEFO. The experiment works as follows:

1. Choose which apartment you want to spy on.
2. The goal is to figure out if someone lives in said apartment.
3. Put on a disguise. (See below).
4. Put a piece of packing tape near the base of the door.
5. Wait a few days.
6. See that the tape is unmoved.
7. Calculate the probability that this occurs given the hypothesis that no one actually lives in the apartment.  
8. Determine that probability to be very small (say less than 0.001).

Conclusion: We have statistically significant evidence that no one lives there. At least not anyone that uses the one and only door in and out of the apartment. Although, they could be accessing the apartment via a window, which is not unheard of in these parts. 

Disguises courtesy of Engineer J.

As part of our surveillance, we were able to confirm that a different apartment indeed had someone living in it. The resident spotted was about 5’10” and had a long brown full Moses. He was rather thin and was wearing a brown T-shirt with the words "Ninja Turtle Power" printed on it. Engineer R avoided engaging the quarry since he could have been armed and dangerous. (I am unsure what that Ninja Turtle diety is, but it sounds ominous). Bearded men are usually up to no good, you know. I mean look at Donald Trump. Wait, he doesn't have a beard......But if he did, it would probably be armed and dangerous. After all, that hair of his probably contains a B-52 bomber plus 43 chemicals that are know to the state of California to cause cancer. And let's not even get started on Aunt Hillary and Uncle Bernie. They have no doubt both had beards at one point in their lives. Or at the very least they have spoken with a bearded person, which is also dishonorable.

The next apartment we need to get intell on is the guy that lives above us. He may or may not be a man of significant girth, and we are pretty sure he has the sinuses of a congested rhinoceros. In fact, we have started to call him Tino the Rhino.

As alluded to above, Tino has a problem: He is a dreadfully load snoring machine. And a dreadfully loud sneezing machine. If I snored or sneezed that loudly, my head would need reconstructive surgery. Nevertheless, each evening we are graced with the dulcet tones of a jumbo jet preparing for lift off, and each morning we are met with the equally appealing sounds of said jumbo jet having an avian mishap. Obamacare needs to find this guy a good otolaryngologist. And ain't no bronze level coverage gonna fix this case of severe sonorous snoring. 

Tune in next week as we explain our adventures with riding a two wheel contraption for two people, a no wheeled contraption for two people, a one wheeled contraption for one person, and a no wheeled contraption for one person.