>Taco Bell doesn’t disappoint.

Only because you go in with such low expectations...

Eh, I'll skip the reminiscing. Cheap bourbon does go well with dark chocolate however, or TJ's dark chocolate peanut butter cups.

I've had this sort of conversation about 'shortcuts' a lot. Before we were empty nesters we made bread in a breadmaker often, at least once a week. For challah we pull it out before it bakes to braid it and bake in the oven. "Purists" will go on & on about how they love the feel of kneading bread and would never use a breadmaker, but very few of them would make fresh bread every week!

Dumplings are similar, a fun rainy day project, but also great to pull out of the freezer whenever you're feeling the need. Sauce is also critical: soy, vinegar, simple syrup, microplaned garlic & ginger, and sesame oil.

We make them too, but it's a whole lot easier just to buy a bag of them at BJ's or 99 Ranch. The Ling Ling instructions are actually the opposite of your method, they call for some water and a little bit of oil to start with so when the water is gone it browns them.

You need to plan ahead my dude! Ain't nothing like frozen dumplings to hit the spot late night. 10 minutes in the pot and you're ready to go. I could probably write a book on DIY late night snacks...

Monica is somebody I know from the community. Look at her Instagram and see if you like her work.

https://www.instagram.com/monicaplotkainteriors/?hl=en

I'm going to call it now, Solomon will be De Blasio to Fulop's Bloomberg. He'll show you all just how good a mayor Fulop has been for JC, despite his foibles.

Public transport routes play a big part in this.

The whole Carepoint thing is a horrorshow but there's good doctors and other caregivers in the system. But to a large extent these hospitals exist to get Medicaid dollars from people who don't have many options. Most of the non-emergent patients to Hoboken Hospital come from poor North Hudson areas.

They simply have no adult concept of economics. What I can't figure out is why no one expects farmers to provide for free the food they grow with labor and capital.

The best I can figure out is this is a "cultural memory" throwback to the medieval system when "landlord" meant literally the man who owned the land that you built your house on. He provided nothing and thus had no expenses, and likely inherited the land. Modern rental housing is a capital and labor intensive business. It's not magic. I'd love to hear the Comrades here explain exactly how they think it should work.

Beware of getting an eviction on your record. You may not ever be able
to rent another home, it's just too easy today for even mom & pop landlords to access credit, eviction and backgrounds checks. Zillow and Apartments.com are happy to do it at the tenant's expense. And you better have a job where your wages cannot be garnished by a court award against you.

I recently had a tenant whose life destabilized and she couldn't pay, she gracefully left owing a few months rent. I am not pursuing her about it, it's the risks of the business. But if someone jerked me around just because they thought they could, I'd do all I legally could to make their life hell. Assume your landlord will do likewise.

Your idiocy and ignorance knows no bounds. Most of those "places to live" would not exist if those hated landlords didn't build and maintain them, in my case with those non-existent skills. I'd say move Communist USSR or China, but those places no longer exist, they found that Marxism didn't do a better job of housing people than Capitalism. Seems like Venezuela might be your speed.

Do not listen to the people promoting their outer belt neighborhoods if you want to move for your social life. Places like the Heights, Bergen Lafayette or Bayonne are pretty good quality of life if you already have a partner or can't afford to live Downtown or Hoboken in the style you require, which in this case means having parking. But if you want the easiest access to the densest NJ social life, Manhattan, or even Brooklyn, choose Downtown or Hoboken if you can.

FWIW, my wife commuted for several years to St George Staten Island from Downtown, took her about 35 minutes.

Wow, that sounds extremely cool but something that's not installed other than as part of a major reno.

Lol, yes that's true, and I sometimes have to tell tenants to get their conditioners out. But no the the ACs are out. The really stealth heat leak is when people don't actually shut their windows all the way. They close it so that there's no opening at the bottom but very often the sashes are not meeting in the middle and air is blowing through. You have to be sure the two sashes are meeting properly and use the window locks which pull them together. Every fall I have to go around the house checking each and every window to make sure it's actually closed.

What do you call a really cold day? One of my sources said we were at 7°, it's a really cold day in my book and I've lived in the area my whole life.

I assume you have more than one room per floor, how is the heat distributed around?

Wow that's a lot of space to lose, especially assuming they studded out the brick wall with at least 2*4 for insulation.

Exactly so. I imagine the size threshold of where it works to be rather small, but mine are 450' and it works fine, without the complexity of boilers or expensive & finicky direct vent mod-con tankless boilers. Also, doing the direct vent on an attached rowhouse can be pretty difficult.

Only unique place left that comes to mind is Nicole's. There used to be so many more diverse cheap eats joints. I really miss the Polish places on Grove, and the Chinese place where Grand Szechuan is that had a lunch steam table.

That's bizarre, it's not that complicated! Thermostat closes a 24v switch and the relay in the boiler turns the pump on, opens and it goes off. If it's not the thermostat its the relay.

I put suspended pex hydronic radiant under my 2" thick terrazzo kitchen floor when I renovated it and removed the baseboard. Works like a charm, warm on the feet.

>I’d suggest playing with temp differential if possible. There’s pros and cons to high vs low, it really depends on your priorities. Noise vs energy efficiency vs equipment stress.

Like I said, because it's just a fan not a compressor system or boiler, there's no efficiency hit or equipment stress to the cycling. The fan noise is literally like having a table or box fan in the room, but some people are more sensitive to noise than others. My MiL freaks out about noise, she runs from the kitchen if you turn on the range hood! But she does the same if I turn on the lights, it's a great way to get rid of her...

Huh, it seems an 18k BTU 2 head minisplit will only need a 20A circuit! But as I've found with the current project, sizing heating for these uninsulated & leaky apartments is not easy, it would suck to spend all that money and still not have enough heat for the cold snap.

>It's about 20 years old.

Lol, that's 'new' to those of us living in 120-160 year old houses!

Ughh, that sounds like incompetence rather than a real equipment problem. Surely they simply replaced the thermostat? PSEG is giving Nests away!