The building I live in has a mail chute.

Our hospital has a (very well padded) pneumatic tube system that I think is still occasionally used for sending stat fluid and tissue samples to the lab -- the elevators are pretty good but sometimes wonky, and folks on the 12th-15th floors like being able to send a sample down to the 5th floor in a few seconds instead of send a clinical staffer who's got a billion other things to do trotting off down the stairs. They're the last holdouts, but when I started here the tubes were in regular use by everyone.

My forever house should have a wraparound porch, treehouse, claw-foot tub, washer/dryer, HEPA filter air cleaners in all the rooms, solar panels, a full bar, a library, and a couple of supplemental bookshelves in all the other rooms too. Fireplaces can be functioning or non-, but there should be at least two mantels. And a spiral staircase. And a dusty attic with an old dollhouse and a birdhouse and trunks full of vintage clothes and linens.

And a dusty attic with an old dollhouse and a birdhouse and trunks full of vintage clothes and linens.

I thought this went without saying.

A carriage house would be nice, too. With a second floor full of bedrooms for staff guests.

Pneumatic tubes are still normal for hospitals. RRUCLA is maybe five years old, and they had a system put in. No one wants to walk the small stuff to the labs if they don't have to, and crap like that.

I want a pneumatic vacuum cleaner pipe in each room, so you can just carry the hose around and plug it in when you clean. That way the compressor is loud down in the basement.

I want not only a screen porch, but also a catatorium where the cats can go out via a screen tunnel to their own little outdoor room.

Theo - my parents have that vacuum.

Yeah, the one of our schools that was a geodesic dome had that vacuum system, and I liked it a lot.

But apart from a few things, this house totally is my dream house, still.

My fancy New Orleans relatives had that vacuum system in the house they kept living in after they divorced. But that was one of the most fucking splendid houses I ever got to kip in--backed out with a gazebo on the bayou, swimming pool, interior courtyard with gas lamps (typed gay there...that's Freud all over), living room with ceilings two floors high and a balcony around it, killer kitchen...

Yeah, I'd have been gay and stayed living with my gay opposite gender ex to still have a bit of all that.

I'm pretty sure I was recently at a Costco around here with tubes.

ETA: google agrees with me.

What neighborhood were they in, ita? Sounds like maybe Bayou St. John? Or Park Island?