I assume that they are commuter rail then. I'll have to look them up.

Weston is near an MBTA station?

I always recommend taking the right of way if you have it as to behave otherwise introduces risk.

Are you talking about zoning or code?

Code upgrades add to cost but I do think that they benefit in terms of safety. I recently had to replace a hot water heater and there was some solder that was melted off the top. The hot water heater is in a very tight space and we barely got by on code the last time we replaced it by going to a lower capacity unit. We would have had to upgrade the chimney diameter which would have meant making larger holes through ceilings, floors and roof. The plumbing company would only replace with an electric unit which required an additional circuit so it cost a few bucks to do. If I were a landlord, I'd have to pass this cost on - and stuff like this happens from time to time. You don't have to get up to code until you need to replace something or want to uprade something and then find out there there's a big cost to doing so.

On zoning? Sure. In my town, it's pretty easy to build something. I've watched many planning board meetings and the builders usually run roughshod over abutters. We have three large, new rental complexes that look pretty close to finished and at least one under construction. One of them looks like luxury apartments but I'm not sure of the others. I'm curious as to how quickly they will fill up. These things have been in progress for quite some time.

What specifically are you looking for on changing laws for new construction?

I rented in my early 20s for about 7 years. First was a sublet from a friend, then he got back together with his wife so then a sublet from a guy he knew. Then a roomshare agreement. And then into corporate rentals where you did the annual rent dance. And you had to be prepared to move. But the economy was in the dumps back then and it was easier to negotiate. Then we bought our home after the housing market crashed.

I don't know what you can do with a relative supply shortage and corporations squeezing households other than change the laws on ownership.

Do you have to rake the roof? The storms so far this year have been relatively minor and temps are warm enough so that you have to decide on whether or not you need to do it. I do it regularly on a second-story roof. I bought two roof rakes that have three sections each so that I can use four sections to reach the roof. This allows me to do about 3 feet off the bottom of the roof. There are windows above the roof and I can shovel the snow off the upper roof. This is all a fair amount of work as you can imagine though my son will help out with the shoveling if I ask; and sometimes he volunteers. We just got a new roof so I don't know if we need to do this but I'm just used to doing it.

Most of my neighbors don't clear their roofs and I assume that they don't have problems, I do it because of past problems with ice dams. Are you doing this because you have had leaks or ice dams in the past? If so, it's generally a judgement call - will it melt on its own without having to rake it - and I make this calculation every storm. If it's 1-3 inches and we have 1-2 days of above-freezing temperatures, then I may not bother.

The only other approaches that I've heard of are to get a metal roof or a metal roof bottom with heating elements to melt ice dams.

We only have to do one roof because the roof is not steeply angled which means that snow and ice don't fall off quickly. The other roofs are at a steeper angle and don't have leak issues.

I've only been called for jury duty once and it was when I was living in Westboro. I received the notice after moving to NH. That was back in the 1980s. I've never been called since then and I think that it highly likely that I could get it waived if I did get called due to a disability. That is unless I could do it remotely. My son has been called for GJ duty though.

I cleared one car, the lower roof and the driveway last night. Cleared the cars again this morning. I'm undecided on clearing the upper roof. 2 inches forecast for tomorrow so I'm not sure.

Trees. Our last outage was the ice storm of 2011. It's been fine since then when they upgraded the grid. We are near a main road and we have underground wiring. That's a good combination for avoiding power outages.

We got about 6=7 inches in Merrimack. Forecast was 1-2. I'm going out to shovel, clear the cars and clear the roof. Looks like the folks up north got buried. I see lots of power outages too. At least the temps are mild.

I'd love one in NH but there aren't enough Asians here to support it. We go down to Burlington.

It might be a lot of single people or couples who like fresh produce but can't eat a lot of it at a time. My wife is in Singapore right now and she can just walk to the grocery store every day to buy fresh produce, baked goods, etc.

1,200 sq ft townhouse with Liberty. NG bill last month was $93. Electricity was $240 but prices doubled last summer and $120 seems about right for last year at this time. We have had $200 NG bills several years ago during the winter but NG was really expensive and we used a lot of it. This winter has been mild so far.

We have only had bad neighbors once in our 35 years here. They were a young couple and the boyfriend apparently sold performance cars (he'd have exotic cars in the driveway on a regular basis). We only contacted the HOA once as she would let her dog out the front door and he'd run around, poop on our lawn and then run back inside. One email to the HOA took care of the problem.

I hope that you can get your problems resolved. Financial stress often results in family stress and your neighbor might not have had the best examples in growing up and raising kids; nor additional family resources.

We live in a townhouse and one neighbor is out about 80% of the time (she is a single parent and leaves for work at 6 AM and returns at 7 PM and I think that she stays with her parents on the weekends). The other neighbor is gone about 10 hours during the day. So they are both quiet. We have good sound insulation between units.

We also have very strict rules on parking an noise and they are enforced.

The problem with a Condex is that you have a vote and the other person has a vote. One of the things that I look at in condos is the quality of management. Some places have awful management and some places are great. Of course your opinion of what constitutes quality may vary from mine.

Some people or management boards are aggressive about maintenance and enforcing rules which is what I like while others like to minimize current costs and defer maintenance for as long as possible which I consider short-sighted.

I'd go along with the other recommendation to move somewhere else.

I'm going to make garlic chips this afternoon. We picked up a big bag of garlic bulbs from Costco this week. Do those count as Granite State chips?

The number is quite meaningful for the stock market.

Must be why the consumer confidence number was higher than expected this week.

We have Comcast at 200 MBPS for $50/month including fees and taxes. It's on a 2-year contract. We're in Merrimack but I have a friend in Nashua that has 400 MBPS for $50/month. We both call and demand the $50/month price every two years.

Several Asian countries acknowledged over-dependence on rote learning in the 1980s and 1990s and worked to try to get the creativity that the US had in a lot of different areas. So yes, critical thinking. A good example is the Singapore Math books that you can find in Barnes and Noble. The elementary school books would give a lot of parents a tough time. These textbooks are really cheap but they have very challenging problem sets.

We have kids for 12 years and I don't understand how kids learn so little math (or other subjects) in that amount of time. There are school districts in the US that are world-class but the average seems to be poor. I think that NH does well compared to the rest of the country. I used to follow the TIMSS studies out of Boston College and recall that Asian countries did particularly well in their testing.

My mother told me stories of working in rice fields and women delivering in the rice fields and then going back to work. I don't know if she was serious or not. She did a lot of the survival stuff and we used to go to Chinatown to buy live birds and she would butcher them in the sink. She was a single parent of four kids and worked two jobs to support us so we grew up without any supervision.

The modern world is considerably different and demands different skills and abilities and a lot of our young people have those abilities. It almost seems natural to them.

We used the Socratic method around our house to teach and to get an idea if the kids understood something or not. And to see if they could connect things together that were not inherently obvious.

I agree with what you wrote. Modern parents try to treat their sons and daughters the same but there are influences beyond parents. The question is: can the schools provide the spark to make science interesting and approachable without having someone with a strong math and science background at home?

Perhaps in better school districts. I like the idea of everyone knowing this stuff as then parents can help their kids learn this stuff and talk about why it is interesting and useful.

My wife and my mother fit your description of their schooling. My wife grew up in an Asian country in the 1960s and the teaching was rote learning. Both struggle with technology expecting someone else to do things for them.

My mother resented her father giving her many brothers money to go to college but not paying for her to go.

If you can get kids to do reading and math early, then they can learn on their own with only a little help. There are a lot of good self-programmed materials out there and kids have the satisfaction of learning or discovering on their own. I am somewhat of a fan of the unschooling philosophy as I have seen it work spectacularly well.

My son has the same issue. He goes in once every 2-3 months. I think that their normal requirement is once a month but the pandemic changed that. He had to work in the office daily when he started out but could work remotely after two years.

I bought a power meter for about $20 and it's handy to get an idea of what appliances use. It may make sense to upgrade appliances if you were thinking about it anyways. I upgraded the computers that I use and the new ones take about one-tenth the power of the old ones.

We switched to LED lighting many years ago and that did make a difference.

We went to synthetic clothes (mostly) about ten years ago. These clothes dry quickly and it has reduced the amount of washing and drying as they are less dense than natural fibers and about 70% of the wash is hang-dry instead of using the dryer. We have a very long closet in the basement and hang dry on the hangers.

We have electric baseboard heat in the basement. We've been here since the 1980s and I turned it one once for a few minutes to see if it works. My office is in the basement and I have a small, electric space heater but most of the time I just get used to the cold. Even moreso with the high electricity prices. My wife is away in Singapore for five months so I'm using her office in the living room when it is cold outside.