mall hotels, phishy stuff, and cousin Oliver

Today I learned that it's not enough to have 600-thread count sheets available at your upscale shopping mall. To stay competitive, now you need a hotel. I recognize that we have already linked traveling with malls by putting them inside airports, but if you aren't going to the Mall of America, are you really going to stay the night? Or are these things for prestigious business travelers who need easy access to Victoria's Secret?

In other news, today somebody in Nigeria did a yahoo search for '2006 emails of indoor companies in western australia.' I know this because it was reported in this blog's web stats when the Nigerian came to visit my May archives. Just so you know, this blog came up twelfth.

And I'm not saying all Nigerians are scammers, but now I'm going to talk about phishing websites. Those are when you copy a legitimate login page and put it on your server in, say, Sao Tome or Principe and trick people into giving you their login information, bank account numbers, etc. It says here that a site called e-gold let their web guys have a little fun, so now their logo doesn't copy right. It really doesn't. I expect the web stats for that are providing some serious entertainment over at e-gold.

Last but not least, apparently the way to make your child star grow up normal is to keep him away from the crew guys. They're animals.

Update: last link repaired.

drugs and TV

Today I learned that the FTC is in charge of testing cigarettes for nicotine content and used to publish reports about it every so often, but hasn't published one since 1999. In 1996, Massachusetts passed a law requiring cigarette companies to report nicotine content and started getting data in 1998. Apparently in the last six years, average nicotine content has risen 10%, so now I'm kind of wondering what's up with the FTC.

In other smoking news, I learned more about marijuana by reading these comments about the pot church than I learned in college.

Last but not least, I read past the highest channel I get in my cable TV listing and learned that channel 157 will be showing "Pants off Dance off" this evening, and this is the description:

Shredding their clothes down to their skivvies while dancing to popular music videos for the chance to win bragging rights and some hard earned cash.

I think that may be all I really need to learn for the day.

* NEWS FLASH *

Jackalopes are REAL!

That was not exactly the topic of the article, but whaddya want from me?

more bamboo

Today I learned that the poplar-backed bamboo up in Phoenix is not snap-together. It's tongue-and-groove, which you need wood glue for. The people at the store really thought they had snap-together, but we went up to actually look at it, and our eyeballs reported differently. I suppose it must be fairly disconcerting to have your customers drive all the way up from Tucson and in less than two minutes reclassify part of your flooring display.

When we got back to town, we gave the three-month-old, pine-backed, snap-together bamboo a sniff at the natural building supplies place and concluded that it very likely would make the whole house smell like pine. To avoid the pine smell, it looks like we'll be using the tongue-and-groove bamboo, so now I need to start sniffing glue. I'll get right on that.

feeling better (and won't shut up!)

Last December we were all set to put down tile, except for the fact that I wasn't doing too well because my laundry detergent was killing me. We put it off, the tile we selected was discontinued, and nothing happened.

Ten days ago we decided we didn't want to go through the hassle of picking tile again, much less figuring out how to install it, so we went to Lowe's and got snap-together flooring samples. Initally the cheap particle board stuff, which several EIs have in their houses (after much airing), smelled better than the real wood, but after a few days, I definitely reacted to the cheap stuff, and the snap-together bamboo seemed pretty good except for being mounted on and smelling like pine. Here's the thing with pine: I don't react to it yet.

Today we learned that these guys have snap-together bamboo mounted on poplar. I have a whole sauna made of poplar, as do several of my friends, so we are all good to go with the do-it-yourself bamboo. We just have to figure out how to get it down here from Phoenix, and that we can do. We're terribly capable unless you make us pick tile colors.

Ok, or get bitten by mosquitoes. I got three mosquito bites on Saturday, and I'd run out of mosquito antigen, and I didn't feel good again until today. What I learned was never to run out of mosquito antigen during monsoon season.

In other news, we had an emergency tenant last night. A nice local man who got sick many years ago stopped tolerating his house and its environs with all the weeds in bloom. He vacated and lined up a place to stay tonight, but didn't have a place for last night. When this happens, you tweak the local grapevine, and that brought him to our doorstep about 9 last night. We offered him our newly-tolerable, recently scrubbed concrete floor, but as is typical with EIs, he found the guest bathroom most tolerable. So a nice man spent the night in our guest bathroom last night, and we all seem to have done fine.

Here are a couple other things I've learned recently:

• You may have noticed that I went from thinking that mask I love would be tolerable in a couple months to wearing it to the store in about a week. That's because I washed all the dust and pollen off it. Sometimes I can be a bit of a moron.
• I definitely still have a conditioned stress response to stores. Until last week, stores were hard. Leaving a store was the end of an ordeal. But now I expect it to be hard, and it's not, so when I get out of the store and realize I still feel fine, I get this thrill, because I went in a store and I survived. So everybody stand back, there's a goddess on the sidewalk.

It's ok. I'll probably get over it.

recovering fine, thanks

I felt better today, but then I went and scrubbed walls, so I got tired and didn't learn a whole lot. Here's what I have:

• I have a minor obsession with pictures of destroyed trails.
• T-shirts make a bigger statement than rainbow leis. (If you ask me it's probably just because it's harder to print slogans on leis.)
• It says here that avocados only ripen after you pick them. There was an avocado tree next to the driveway in our yard when I was a kid, and I thought they were ripe when they fell off the tree and bounced off the Jeep.

the short story

Today I got into something I shouldn't have, so check out the really little monkeys and have a picture of a mourning dove:

the roof, the floor, and grocery shopping

Today I learned that our tile roof leaks up at the peak where there's a crack in the concrete. There are some other issues up there, too, but the guy who looked at it said we could get some quikrete and solve the worst of it. I never had a roof you could fix with concrete before.

In other house related news, it turns out that those two rooms we took the carpet out of last year smell so much better if you mop the floors. I never thought about mopping a concrete floor to make it smell better.

And I am totally in love with that mask I took to the store yesterday. Today I went grocery shopping all by myself and went in the stinky laundry product aisle, the stinky personal hygiene product aisle, and a perfectly good aisle that had a cologney shelf stocker in it. I don't have to wear the mask the whole time I'm in that store, but for those three things and the checkout counter, the mask was the best thing ever. I had an honest to gosh revelation on the way home, too. With some restrictions I'm going to ignore for the moment,

⇒ I can go anywhere I want. ⇐

rainbow bridge update

Before this morning, this was all I knew about the incredibly controversial proposed rainbow bridge. Today I learned that the U of A has pulled the plug on it. I thought it was a city or county thing, but the U of A was going to build what sounds like a big educational science center along the bridge, complete with a butterfly vivarium, above the freeway.

I expect I would have thought that was a stupid idea before I got sick, but having recently ridden across a bike bridge over a freeway near my parents' house, I can attest to the fact that the air directly over a freeway is dreadful, so how long do they think the butterflies would have lasted anyway?

Miss Molly goes shopping

Today I learned that:

1. I tolerate that silicone mask I was airing out better than I do the stacks at the library or the nearby Target.
2. The stacks smell like mold, and God only knows what it is the Target smells like.
3. I had forgotten how the kids stare when you wear a serious mask in a store. I had been using an inconspicuous small charcoal mask that didn't stay on very well, so I'd just hold it up to my face like a hankerchief when I really needed it. With the big mask, maybe I need to have business cards with the url for my homepage or something.
4. I have developed a habit when walking behind other people of sliding off to the side so I don't get in their chemical contrails. Wearing that mask, I moved off out of habit, but I couldn't smell them, and I felt like I'd lost an arm or something.
5. That was weird.

In other news, there's a trail off the end of a cul-de-sac around here that I've ridden on many times that has a sign that says "No motorized vehicles. Pedestrian traffic only." There used to be a few of those green metal fencing stakes in the trail so the local dirt bike couldn't get through, but apparently while I was gone, he got through too many times. There is now a veritable forest of closely-planted stakes. Since it was a bit of a challenge to get my bike through there, I checked with the local cops to make sure bikes were really ok, and as far as they know, I'm good to go.

I know my little mountain bike tracks will likely drive the stake planter nuts, but dang if the barriers don't make the trail more and more entertaining.

pregnancy, math, and reading

Here's a quote from an article about the Canton, Ohio school board deciding to add contraception information to its abstinence-only sex ed program after it was revealed that 13% of female students at one high school were pregnant in 2005. Apparently their health books are from 1988:

"If we had math books from 1988, reading books from 1988, as a parent, I would be furious," said Patty Rafailedes, a physical education teacher.

I recognize that 18-year-old books would be falling apart, but my first thought upon reading that quote was: They CHANGED math and reading??

tent-related trivia and homework

In the first step toward making my untreated nylon dome tent a reality, today I learned that that little screw on the side of the removable bobbin case in my sewing machine is for adjusting the bottom thread tension. People who know anything about sewing machines know how to adjust the top thread tension, but if you adjust the bottom, too, you can sew two layers of ripstop nylon together and it'll actually look good instead of just sort of working.

I also learned that the longest diameter of a hexagon is twice the length of a side, but the short diameter is √3 times the side length. I suppose I didn't learn that for the first time today, but my math skills are rusty. I'm pleased that they come back ok, and now you all have an example for your kids of someone using math for something other than homework.

Speaking of homework, there was a homework scene that took place at a Circle K in a classic movie, and now Circle K is offering additives like vitamin C and ginkgo for soft drinks. So, um, strange things are afoot at the Circle K.

And have another monsoony picture. A photographer friend of mine took it, but with my cheesy camera, and I have no idea how to crop it, but check out those layers of mountains sticking out of the rainstorm:

bamboo, Sprouts, and mattress tufting

Today we went to a natural flooring store and learned that in the high desert, some bamboo flooring will delaminate. If you get solid bamboo that doesn't happen, but with the tongue and groove and snap together kinds that have layers of other wood underneath the bamboo, it can. Rumor has it that we're low enough in Tucson that it probably won't delaminate, but we're going to ask the nice lady at the store to check with the manufacturer tomorrow.

After the flooring place, we checked out Sprouts, the new natural food store out near the far away Wild Oats. It is, to my eye, exactly as useful as the Sunflower we drive past on our way to the closer Wild Oats, except it had the frozen hash browns that that Wild Oats stopped carrying.

When we got home, I tufted the homemade kapok futon, aka the giant pillow, with a ten inch (25.4 cm) long needle my riding buddy gave me before she left town. I suppose that means I learned to tuft a mattress, but mostly what I learned was that that needle is freakin' sharp.

roofing contractors and stuff that blows up

Today I learned that during monsoon season, roofing contractors get behind upwards of a month, so your leak had better be able to wait. I have concluded, by standing on my kitchen counter and sniffing in the direction of the water mark on the ceiling, that there is not enough mold to worry about right now. The carpet is a bigger problem.

The carpet is a much bigger problem. The carpet reeks.

So, I'm going to keep reminding myself that a 30% chance of rain around here means a 30% chance of getting hit by it, and hopefully when it does rain on us again, it won't rain too hard.

Now, to properly appreciate the stuff that blows up, most of you need some background. In some branches of physics, we keep various materials and equipment very, very cold. Instead of using ice cubes, we use liquid nitrogen, which is -320 F (-196 C, 77 K), which we store in giant thermoses called dewars. The liquid is boiling in the dewars, so you have to have a blow off valve so the vapor can escape. If you keep a little pressure in there, it boils slower, so your stash of nitrogen lasts longer. If you keep the pressure too high, the dewar blows up. You can also blow one up by essentially breaking the thermos so your nitrogen gets too hot too fast. However, it's not that hard to keep the valves in good shape and not damage the dewar walls. I mean, they're steel.

Without further ado, here is an account of how not to handle a dewar, and here is one about dewar maintenance. All I have to say about these two stories is holy cow.

uh oh

Today I learned that there is a water mark along a seam in the ceiling of the kitchen/living room area, so we have a leak in the roof. I'm hoping that it's only a tiny leak right above the seam, so that it's only that strip that's affected. Also, we live in Arizona, so I'm hoping that it dried out pretty fast between storms and that there isn't much mold up there. I do expect some mold because I don't feel perfect, but I'm pretty sure we'd know if there was a lot of mold.

The good news is:

1. We have practically no stuff that could get contaminated during a repair job,
2. We don't have any furniture to move,
3. I already made a great tent to live in while the repair work outgasses, and
4. I'm very pleased that this didn't happen last year when we were sicker.

I'm going to have to change my name to Mollyanna.

wall contents, plums, and eyebrows

Today I learned that regular caulk doesn't make me nearly as sick as whatever comes out of the seam in my shower when you scrape the old caulk out of it. Just so you know, there is safer caulk out there, but I would have had to wait for it since the nearest source is in Phoenix.

In other news, I'm allergic to plums now, but it'll go away in a couple months, so that's a minor setback. A big major setback is that according to this New York Times article, to keep from scaring small children with your hideousness, now you have to go to a professional eyebrow groomer. So let's see here, now I'm blowing off:

1. the hair stylist,
2. the nail salon,
3. the place where they rip your hair out using hot wax,
4. shopping malls, and
5. the eyebrow groomer.

So it's a good thing I stay home a lot, or they'd be publishing pictures of me and wondering about my lineage like the Maine mystery beast.

And two more words before I go: eyebrow extensions.

kissing bugs, flooring, and the ultimate detox

Today I learned that kissing bugs are pointy-looking bugs that sometimes fly but tend to suck their victim's blood for ten to fifteen minutes, lying next to them, during the night. Most people don't react to their spit, but some people get a little welt or something, and a few people go into anaphylactic shock. You can imagine which categories EIs tend to fall into, so I think I'll try my best to stay away from them.

In other news, today I sniffed the flooring samples we picked up at Lowe's yesterday, and the cheaper ones smell better than the pretty ones (that I can't find a picture of). If I have any trouble with any of them in a few more days, we'll be good and put down tile, but cheap and glueless has a lot of appeal. Oh, yeah, and as problematic as the carpet is, it sure is soft when your feet are accustomed to a concrete driveway.

In still more news, I learned that if I go for a 45 minute bike ride in 95 degree (35 C) heat, I detox pretty hard. The bad news is that I can't get too far in 45 minutes, but the good news is that I can ride for 45 minutes in 95 degree heat. If I feel good tomorrow, I'm going to do it again.

random stuff update

Yesterday I learned that it can take fifteen hours to drive from the SF Bay Area to Tucson, so I need to make a smaller, easier-to-deploy traveling tent so we can stop along the way. Technically we could have pitched part of the big tent as a 10x10, but we shipped it home because it's freakin' huge. Also it wasn't clean enough to live in because the other thing I learned is that you can't keep notepaper on your plastic coffee table in a tent on a driveway in the SF Bay Area because the underside of the paper gets moldy.

Onward to today:

• Very early in the morning when we arrived home, I learned that there is yet another mourning dove sitting on eggs in the extremely popular nest in the vine off our patio, and we killed two more doves by having big windows that reflect the sky.
• You can buy a fancy stainless-steel electric range with big dent prominently positioned on the oven door for roughly $500, but it's not clear why you'd want to.
• I can shop in Lowe's if I use my charcoal mask, but I'm not going to do it often.
• The silicone mask I hung up outside two months ago is almost sort of tolerable, so in another couple of months, I might actually be able to use it.

Also, Tucson is nice and warm. I recognize that this time of year, many places in the US are overly warm, but California was cold. Warm is nice.

cheapy post

Today I spent most of the day trying to get organized to drive back home, so I didn't learn a whole lot. I'll probably learn something tomorrow, and I'll tell you all about it on Thursday.

I did learn one one thing. There's a new, expensive magazine out that covers extremely expensive beauty products and treatments. I read about it in this nifty article by Peter Carlson of the Washington Post, and he wrote the following excellent quote:

Let's say you have fat arms that droop, giving you what NewBeauty calls "the bat-wing-like appearance." You can hide them by wearing long sleeves. Or you can pay $3,000 to $10,000 for armlift surgery that removes the fat and tightens the skin and makes your arms look fabulous, except for the scars that run from your armpits to your elbows. But that's no problem -- you can hide the scars by wearing long sleeves.

illegal immigration and my big mouth

Today I learned that organic farmers are having trouble harvesting their crops because all the help is stuck on the south side of the border. Somebody in the government had better fix that or I'm going to take the Sarah Connor (of Terminator 2) self-defense course and become a coyote.

In other news, school is about to start, and the local biology teacher got to attend a lecture by a neurologist about how people learn. Among other things, she heard that women have more symmetrical brains than men do, and somehow that means more connections to the language part of the brain, so on average, women say 24,000 words in a day, whereas men average 7,000. However, when I looked around the internet to find a reference, all I found was this guy's effort to find a reference, which he didn't really find, so it sounds like an academic legend.

straw into gold

Not that this makes petroleum products any easier on my liver, but today I learned that you can make oil out of pig manure.

When I was in elementary school, some old people (you know, probably college-age) came to my school and gave a presentation on conservation and recycling that included the information that by the time we were old enough to drive, there would be no more gasoline. The boys, as I recall, were pretty upset by the revelation that they might never learn to drive, but since these same people informed us that we could make leg warmers out of our boyfriends' old sweater sleeves, I decided that I would wait and see.

The other thing I learned today is that people have been predicting that we'd run out of oil in ten years for 75 years.

In other news, I mentioned that my husband pushed me up a big hill last weekend, and if you want to see sort of what that looks like, check out the picture accompanying this article.

airports and doughnuts

All I learned today is that you can tell customs agents at the Detroit airport that you contaminated the plane you came in on with a biological agent and not get arrested for anything. Also, you can make $11.50 per hour making doughnuts for Krispy Kreme.

So have a monsoony picture from last year:

driveway living

I recognize that not very many of you are living in a tent on a driveway, but I feel obligated to keep you up to date on the tips and tricks of it anyway. So today we're going to discuss what happens when you knock a glass of water off your coffee table/clothing bin onto a concrete driveway with a reasonably large population of dormant moss.

Obviously you try to sweep the concrete, which kicks up an enormous cloud of dust containing recently-watered, dirt-inhabiting mold spores. Then you have to take the whole tent down to the frame, wash everything, and put down that tarp you didn't get around to airing until today because you thought you were ok on the driveway without one for five and a half weeks, but turns out those damp mornings when you felt bad, it was the moss causing problems, and you (and your husband) have the intelligence of, well, moss.

bias alert and a headline

Ok, so on The View, or maybe the Today Show, either of which I would watch if you paid me, although either one would probably do bad things to my blood pressure, they said that hair dye increases the risk of lymphoma. Apparently a new study reports an increase in risk of 1.19%, so that instead of 13.6 women in 100,000 getting lymphoma, 17 would.

So that's not a very big increase. Most people will be able to dye their hair until they end up drooling in a nursing home and not develop lymphoma. The thing is, any one of the women who does get lymphoma and dyed her hair will very likely feel guilt and remorse for giving herself cancer over something like hair color, which when you're sick, seems kind of irrelevant.

It's better not to get sick, but if you do get sick, it's much better if you don't have a big stick to beat yourself up with. I'm just sayin'.

Ok, since that was sort of serious, I have a headline here that shouldn't be funny, but it is:

Fremont ham store robbed at gunpoint

meth, a safe house, ATMs, and things I don't understand

Today I learned that:

• Making a pound of methamphetamine, which is worth roughly $27,000, makes five or six pounds of toxic waste. Since meth makers are not exactly environmentally conscious, sometimes they dump the waste into the dirt, and the way you decontaminate the dirt when that happens is by incinerating it.
• Here's a perfectly good article about somebody with MCS in the mainstream media that took me six months to discover.
• ATM thieves in Malaysia grabbed the check deposit machine instead of the ATM.
• ATM thieves in Arizona used a forklift to yank the correct machine, but they were observed in real time on the security camera, so they weren't that hard to catch.

So, what do I find confusing about all this?

• If meth labs are so toxic, do the people who run them get sick and die, or do they get caught before that happens?
• Where do ATM thieves find a forklift that no one will miss? Or do forklift owners not really care as long as the forklift is on time for work? And how do you drive a forklift down the street to a bank, even at four in the morning, without anyone noticing?

cold drinks, sodas, pop, whatever

It says here that soda makes you fat, in case there is anyone on the planet who has missed that particular bit of information. Then, right on the same news site, published on the same day, it says that during heat waves, people drink more soda.

So, heat makes you fat.

Thank you. Thank you verra much. I'll be here through the weekend (at which point I expect to head back to Tucson, which could make me fat).

on a role

I don't really want to get into the animal rights end of this article; I just have to point out the quote of the day, which is right now posted to the right of an eye-catching 'News Bulletin' label at the top of the Arizona Star's homepage:

Animal activist Rodney Coronado was sentenced to eight months in prison and three years supervised probation this morning for his roll in the disruption of a 2004 mountain lion hunt in Sabino Canyon.

Speaking of Sabino Canyon, the Forest Service paved the main road up the canyon so they could run trams up it, and more important, I could ride my road bike up it, but it's looking a little worse for wear after recent storms.

I also learned that you can put backpacks on pigeons that collect pollution data as an art project. I just can't say I would ever have thought of that.

play structures and Magic Erasers

Today I learned that the plastic used in those play structures I fussed about last Sunday is actually polyethylene, which is the safest kind. Last week, I was detecting the chemicals used on the kids. So, holy cow. And I could still smell the rubber sidewalks if they were in the sun.

In other news, people worry that Mr. Clean Magic Erasers could have formaldehyde in them. I'm confident that I could clear that up by sniffing one, but if people are worrying about easily detectable (for me) formaldehyde levels, I suspect they have a lot more to worry about if they wear polyester (e.g. polar fleece), wrinkle-free treated cottons, or sleep with a puffy, polyester-filled comforter. Or, say, have wall-to-wall carpet.

Not sure how to identify the fabric in something you cut the label off? Good news! It says here you can burn it, and that'll help you figure it out.

a big hill and Kaballah water

Today I rode my road bike up a really big hill. When I was healthy, I could do this hill in 30 minutes. Today I did it in 27.

This is not to say I'm in better shape. The only reason it didn't take me all day was because I had my trusty assistance fast guy with me, and he spent a lot of time with one hand on my back, pushing me up the hill. The very best part was when we got near anybody who smelled like laundry detergent, he would push me like a kid on a swing, sacrificing all his momentum, so I'd fly up past them. It was excellent. The only bummer was when we got to the top, about ten motorcycles went by (a common Saturday occurrence), and then the air was so bad I had to get the heck off the ridge before I got much of a chance to bask.

Before we went on this expedition, I wasn't at all sure I wanted to know how my present performance would compare with my past, but what I learned is that it really doesn't matter. I got to draft off a fast guy, ride up a scenic road, and as a bonus, I actually got to the top. So apparently, the end does justify the means.

The other thing I learned today is that Kaballah (or kabbala) water, at $3.80 for a 1.5 liter bottle*, is supposed to be better ordered than ordinary water, so it can reverse chaotic stuff like cancer. It sounds like you have to drink something like three bottles a day for six months to cure cancer, but it may depend on how bad your cancer is.

And you all know the cheaper way to make water orderly, right? You freeze it.


* I can't confirm the price of Kaballah water anywhere on the internet, probably because I can't get the Kaballah Centre's site to load. That may have something to do with recent media attention, or it could have something to do with the fact that rabbis say there is no such thing as Kaballah water.

this just in

Mid-size SUVs get worse gas mileage than the huge ones. I recognize that that still doesn't mean that really any of them get good gas mileage, but that was just not what I was expecting.

Ok, you can all get back to whatever you were doing.

email roundup and poisonous beverages

This morning, because of a spoof email I received, I learned that the .st domain is from Sao Tome and Principe. I had no idea they existed, or that someone discovered oil in the Gulf of Guinea, although if somebody had done something with the oil, I don't suppose I'd be getting spoof email from there.

I got another email with the subject line 'big albumin,' which I'd use myself except for the fact that everyone would assume it was spam.

In other news, it says in this article that according to the Centre for Science and Environment, and thus Indian lawmakers, Pepsi and Coke products contain unacceptable levels of pesticides. At first I was confused because I had assumed that everything either company made was entirely synthetic so it wouldn't contain pesticides, but then I remembered that the non-diet drinks should at least contain corn and maybe sugar.

You know what EIs use soda for? Dissolving corrosion. Then you can use the bottles as reusable ice packs for when you're, say, living in a tent and using a cooler.

earthquakes, beer, and hearses

I suppose I could have learned something useful today, but here's what I have instead:

• Because I seem to lack the ability to sit still, I missed it, but the earthquake my mom felt yesterday was a 4.4.
• There was some doubt in a courtroom, apparently, but it has been confirmed that Miller Genuine Draft really is beer.

Also, if you registered your car as a noncommercial hearse in New Zealand, you'll be getting a phone call.

local pesticide and past life regression therapy

Today I learned that the county sprayed for mosquitos last night, but I'm pleased to report that they did it in West San Jose and Saratoga, an area well south of my tent. I will now be paying better attention.

I also learned that the stuff they spray increases the toxicity of the stuff householders use, which ends up in the creeks. As to how that works:

PBO [piperonyl butoxide] apparently works as a catalyst for chemicals that have run off into streams, according to the study, which reported the increased sediment toxicity was 'relatively modest.'

Also, the reason they're spraying is because they've been finding West Nile infected mosquitos in people's untended swimming pools. All I have to say on that is that if you have a swimming pool you can't be bothered with, you are lucky if your neighbors don't lynch you for running a mosquito farm. Talk about standing water.

In other news, according to Professor Lynn of the SUNY Binghamton psychology department, past life regression therapy may well help people deal with their problems, but that doesn't mean they've actually experienced previous lives. Sometimes patients and their doctors get all wound up about the previous lives instead of just making the patient feel better, which brings us to the story of a Canadian singer who believes she is the reincarnation of Marilyn Monroe. That's all well and good; she seems to want to be known for her singing, not for being Marilyn Monroe, so she's doing fine. It's her therapist who's decided that the singer's daughter is the reincarnation of Ms. Monroe's mother and has a book out.

driftwood and more bald squirrels

Today I learned that the exciting winter storms around here in the last two years dragged all kinds of driftwood onto the beach, and people have made gazebos and things out of it. You can get an idea of some of the structures by squinting at the picture at the top of this page.

In other news, judging from the hits this blog has been getting, information about bald squirrels is 1) interesting and 2) kind of hard to find. So if you're looking for the bald squirrel in Cleveland, check out Saturday's post. The article I linked to said the Cleveland squirrel has mange, which is caused by mites burrowing into the skin. That causes inflammation and secondary infections and can kill. But apparently you can also make bald squirrels by feeding them peanuts and sunflowers seeds, which don't contain enough calcium.

So that is currently everything I know about squirrels except for this: if a squirrel habitually runs around a tree trunk instead of up it, the third time it does that, any dog with a brain will run around the other way and chomp it.

I learned that from my namesake while still holding the end of her six-foot leash.