9volt battery for smoke alarm: mar06 date, over two years expired/old.

Painted unsafe/unuseable railings.

Re-attached lighting to structure, concealing exposed wires.

In August, we never received the rent invoice, which included billing for electricity. So in September's invoice, this sum was past due. Nathan called to request this paperwork on Friday. Then on Tuesday he called again, and Shirley claimed the paperwork was included in the September invoice. This is false. I opened the envelope myself.

Should this matter be important, we would pursue more aggressively. Bottom line here is that we have learned that their office and accounting are disorganized. We're going to pay the bill, but we do want to understand the mysterious reckoning we call "Shirley Math" that entails 4 photocopies of 4 electric company accounts, in which we apparently pay some portion of 3, including a light outside that we can't find, and the unoccupied unit in the basement. Since the sums are so small, I'm not concerned, but I do bet the reason it's so convoluted (not to mention secretive) is nefarious or sleazy. I'm sure we'll get more examples in the future so missing this one is not a big issue.

Finally the poisons! First it's flea spray, deadly to exoskeletons, going into voids. The active ant nest by the door gave way to writhing agony. And I injected some right into the entrance I'd found by the front porch. Up to this point I had food-based poison that I misused by applying to the nests. It must be used more sparingly in feeding areas. I have a third poison, some heavy stuff I'm reluctant to throw down. We'll see how effective the flea spray is. I treated window frames and other seams in troubled spots. I saw death.

Today I think I discovered evidence of a 2nd nest on the west end of teh house, by the door. 15 ants is a sign of something, yo. It's to the left of the door entrance.

So far as I can tell, the landlord has three meters for his three units in this house. So why do they send me all four electricity bills? (One for a streetlight.)

I can't figure out their billing math in any case. By my calculation, the bill is 92% of $86.84 (our bill), or $79.60. Throw in 1/4th of the 45% of the streetlight (whose billing period is only about half ours, based on move-in date), and that's ($16.76 * 45%) /4 = $1.88 so i think the bill should be $81.49, but it's $66.

I'm going to track this in my spreadsheet, and save the documents. I bet I'm paying for the unoccupied unit, which it questionable, but we'll just proceed with the accounting and perhaps it will be a wash.

Lots of ant activity outside today. Left a dot of gel Maxforce on either side of the porch, and sprinkled some granule Maxforce on the northeast grounds. An hour later, one of the gel dots was all gone! The other was getting attention.

At least the gutters are clean and tree is trimmed back now.

I have a deadbolt in the door, but I will have to widen the shaft hole to actually install it. At least cosmetically it doesn't say "insecurity". So we're back where we started.

Also did some prep work on the stair railings, scraping some loose paint with a putty knife. Will need better prep tools. Installed two more shingle treads.