I Knew An Old Lady Who Swallowed A Fly

 Several months ago I saw our neighbor to the right of us, Daisy, getting a new roof. Within a week or two I saw another neighbor down the street getting a new roof. After speaking with Daisy, I found out she had filed a claim on the roof due to hail damage. Since our roof had recently suffered a leak I decided to contact our insurance company (AAA) and ask them to send someone out to inspect our roof. Here's the part that references that song, "I knew an old lady who swallowed a fly" - a chain of events had been set in motion. The AAA adjuster climbed on our roof and when he came down he told me he did see evidence of hail damage and was going to initiate the claim. Then he looked at our siding, and said that some of it had been the target of a malicious gang of unruly hail (my words, not his). He was going to add the siding in the back of our house to the claim. He said the rest of the siding looked okay. I posted here on Nextdoor.com asking for referrals for a roofing and siding company. A nice lady named Sherry offered one, and I ended up calling them. Stonebridge Roofing was the company, and they came out and we picked the roof shingles and siding. They did the roof first, and when they went to order the siding they found that it couldn't be matched because it was so old. (I know the feeling). AAA had no choice but to okay doing all of the horizontal siding on our house. Here's another example of neighbors sharing information for the benefit of other neighbors: A few months ago our good neighbor Bennie contacted me about Radon. He had his home tested and the radon reading was high enough to warrant remediation (see Mom, I still have my vocabulary, or at least some of it). He suggested we get tested, but at the time we had a lot of issues to deal with so I put it off. I will miss my wife, but the dogs survived. Just kidding - I wanted to see who is really reading this. A few weeks later we saw that one of our neighbors behind us, Jackson, had done the Radon remediation. You can tell because of the long vent that's required. I bought a Radon kit on Amazon that included the lab analyzation. It's a simple test - take out your number 3 lead pencil. It's actually just a packet of what looks like charcoal. You set it somewhere in the basement away from the furnace. It sits there for 2-6 days, then you mail it in for testing. It takes about a week to get the results. We tested 4.1 despite the fact that 2 years ago I put a giant mask over the front of the furnace. The U.S. indoor average is 1.3 pCi/L, and the outdoor average is 0.4 pCi/L. If your result is greater than 4.0 pCi/L, the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) recommends you take action to reduce the radon level. I just ordered a 2nd test from Amazon. If it also tests over 4.0 then we will have the remediation performed. It's around $1,000. One of the effects of prolonged exposure to radon is lung cancer. My mother had the right idea. She sealed all of our furniture in clear heavy plastic. When she died, her 50 year old couch was like new. I've asked my wife to hermectically seal me in clear plastic to keep me safe from Covid, Monkey Pox, and now Radon.