Me: "Fan fucking tastic."
...because last roof went on maybe 20, 22 years ago, and who knows what's happened since then?
Got home, had dinner, put on my kneepads, and went up in the attic. I couldn't go up the easy way, which is via the garage--Buttercup is parked there--so I had to get the ladder, go up through the hatch in the hallway, and crawl over to that area so I could inspect things.
Dry as a bone. As the Sahara Desert. As something really dry, dried off by something really drier, then left in a vacuum for ten years and bathed in ultraviolet light just to make sure it was extra-extra dry.
There was no evidence I could see that there was any water dripping anywhere. You'd expect to see water stains, you know? Something showing that water had passed that way--and nothing, not even the barest hint. The dust wasn't even disturbed. Dry--and it rained this morning so I'd expect that if something was leaking, there'd be at least some damp patches. That attic is not so well-ventilated that it would dry off in twelve hours when the concrete outside is still damp.
But there were none.
...which leads me to conclude that it's not coming through the roof. What's happening is, the drywall is sucking up moisture, somehow, in just those few spots. The drywall, or maybe the spackling compound I got from Menards that I didn't like--maybe that's what it is. Something is absorbing water from the air, and the paint is porous enough that it just sits there, being all moist and looking like we have a roof problem.
So, at this point, not entirely sure what's to be done about it just yet. Obviously those patches will have to be redone, somehow, to correct the moisture-absorbing-and-retaining property, but I'm not sure what that is. Probably, have to wait for a good long dry spell this winter, and once those patches are 100% dry, slather some kind of sealing paint over them, and then repaint the entire f-ing ceiling. *sigh*
Could be worse. I literally thanked God it was just a drywall problem.
* * *
558 million years old. Possibly an example of the first animal on Earth. Really cool.
* * *
The crawling around in the attic was strenuous enough that I counted that as my exercise for the day. Maybe I'll do 20 minutes on the treadmill Wednesday or Friday. I haven't been, but I need to up my game if I'm going to get in anything approximating half-conditioned.
* * *
Jeep has turned in more high mileage figures. Kept driving the same way; I don't have the money to fill it up so I dumped in five gallons (and managed to hit 5.000 exactly!) and will fill up on payday, which is Wednesday, and simply add five gallons to the denominator of the equation.
But with the gas gauge flirting with having the low fuel light on, Jeep had 352-ish miles on that tankful. It's about 16 gallons to fill up from there; that's a little more than 22 MPG. If it was 17 gallons (which it almost certainly is not) we're a smidge shy of 21 MPG. I made a mistake and drove to work with the defroster on, when it wasn't necessary. Also, variability in when gas pumps shut off. Etc etc.
21 MPG is still 3-4 MPG more than I get when driving to work at 75 MPH and--as previously stated--the time saved by going that fast is a mere five minutes. Doing this, I can get four round trips to work on a tankful, instead of three. So, yeah.
It occurred to me, though: what do I do when I'm driving in a 70 MPH zone?
The speed limit, of course, in the right lane. What else?