What is that sound? Are they Back?

Oh noooooo!!!

The construction workers are back!

They are taking their little moving platform up the outside of our apartment building again!

This makes year 3 of our tour of hell. They've been "fixing" the windows on the 30-odd stories of this building for what seems like forever. Apparently some people have very wet windows - on the inside - so the windows are being sealed on the outside. This of course means less air movement on the inside, but couldn't that have been the problem to begin with?

In Egypt, in the Valley of the Kings, where all of the ancient mummies they could find still in Egypt have been gathered they are also having problems with water - on the inside. The humidity in the underground tombs is destroying the 5000 year old mummies. Living humans have recently discovered that this is from the living human beings that are visiting the mummies. Tourists are unwittingly destroying the mummies they are coming to see. It's that whole "humans are 62% water" (percentage info from Science Fact Finder) - warm water that tends to send moisture into the air when people... live and breathe. Most of the mummification efforts were actually to get rid of the wet parts of the human body. The internal organs that would stay wet after death and start decomposition of the body were removed and put into jars or boxes separate from the body. The ancient Egyptians knew about this humidity of the human body problem, can we not learn from this?

Back in our apartment building, many of the suites in this building are not occupied for months at a time, which should mean less of a problem, but people leave all their windows and curtains tightly shut when they leave, so the moisture that was in the air when they left sticks around and festers while they are gone. Other people like to have very warm apartments. There are many people living here that are originally from the Middle East or the Orient and they like their homes to be very warm. Unfortunately, in this climate we frequently have close to 100% humidity in the air - and yes, a lot of rain. Heat up that much water, and yes, you will grow mold quite easily.

So have we had a humidity problem in our suite? No. The difference here is we Like fresh air. We always have at least one window open. We don't keep the place too warm - we grab a sweater when we feel cold. And we have no mold. But this winter we did have a bit of humidity for the first time in 10 years - easy to remove as soon as we saw it, but that's new. Our windows were sealed in last year's round of construction. Can we bonk someone on the head for this? Actually, a mangled coat hanger to the vents around the windows has helped... the ones that were sealed last summer by the construction workers going up the side of the building in their
little
noisy
platforms...