It's been hotter than Hades here in the Boston area for the past week,
we broke the all time high temperature record on July 19th. And, the
humidity has been so high that if we take something out of the fridge it
immediately is covered with lots of water condensed on it.

Even with our two heat pumps running full bore, it's still noticeably
warm and humid inside our home.

Anyway, last nite SWMBO and I were watching the eleven o'clock news when
we heard a fairly loud "thud" from somewhere in the house. I had no idea
what it was, nor did she, so we just gave each other a WTF look and
shrugged it off.

When we went upstairs for sleep I glanced through the open doorway of a
spare bedroom and saw that one of my mom's original oil paintings had
fallen from its location on the wall where it had hung for probably 25
years or more. It was a rather large painting, about 5 feet wide and 3
feet high, in a traditional wooden frame, it feels like it weights about
ten pounds.

What happened is that the eye screw securing one end of the picture wire
had pulled right out of the frame wood. No one was there fiddling around
with that painting when it fell.

Granted, whoever selected those eye screws to use on that picture 35 or
more years ago picked ones that were about the smallest size available,
the threaded section is only about 5/16" long. But, I can't think of any
reason other than the extensive period of high humidity "softening" the
frame wood enough to cause the the weight of that picture to make the
eye screw pull out.

I've already shuffled a pair of heftier eye screws out of my "hell box"
and will fix things by tonight.

Do you agree with my thoughts about high humidity being the straw that
broke that camel's back?

Jeff

--
Jeffry Wisnia
(W1BSV + Brass Rat '57 EE)
The speed of light is 1.8*10^12 furlongs per fortnight.