uh...

Dirty oven fumes bad, hurt husband worse than me. Ate shrimp, got hiccups. Expected that. Then got super bad headache. Coincidence? Who knows.

algae and sex

Today I learned that you would need a soybean farm the size of Florida to keep the US airplane fleet in biofuel, so people are considering alternative crops like algae. China has some extra algae, so I figure we should go for it.

In other news, a Los Angeles Times Op-Ed piece calls Slate.com terminally clueless for not understanding "the mechanics of how two people are supposed to commit a sex act in a stall where legs are visible from the knee down." In a fit of cowardice, this blog has determined that there are some things it just doesn't really need to know.

Other things we don't really need to know are that the #1 most read story at the San Francisco Chronicle this morning was "The 10 worst places to have sex in the city," and that the front page of the Houston Chronicle reports that a third of female online daters are easy.

roof repair and stinky candles

To heck with what I learned - this morning the roofers came and fixed the leak in our roof two hours before another crazy Arizona summer thunderstorm showed up, so yay roofers! I suppose I learned that the air in the bathroom doesn't bug me after a rainstorm now that the roof doesn't leak.

In other news, I learned that the reason I didn't make sense last time I hung around the meat counter at Wild Oats wasn't because of the weather or anything I, personally, was doing. It's the scented candles they keep near one end, right near the organic bananas, which are then coated in perfume, hence the whole deal with peeling them them like you're performing surgery. Then I learned that when the store manager listens to you discuss the candles with actual concern and then asks for suggestions, it's kind of disconcerting. Either the chemicals made the whole encounter somewhat surreal, or I've gotten used to being blown off.

Also, the rest of the world isn't quite sure what you're talking about when you rattle off something about the stinky soap aisle, which I suggested as a good place to relocate the scented candles. They get it faster when you call it the fragranced hygiene products aisle.

yucks

Today I learned that the roofers will probably come to fix our leak by Friday and that roof leaks don't make mold like plumbing leaks. We looked in one wall with a friend's flea-market endoscopy tools, and we didn't actually find any mold, even though we still detected some using our mold-injured EI ESP, which indicates that it's very, very small-scale mold. We can handle that.

In other news, along with everyone else in the country, I learned that the signal for wanting to have sex in a public bathroom is tapping your foot, playing footsie, and running your fingers along the underside of the stall partition. Maybe it's a chick thing, but you could not pay me to touch a stall partition.

Ok, you could pay me. Anybody got any money?

funky flora and state-sponsored stooging

Today I learned that there is an isolated Yemeni island called Soquotra where, instead of developing kangaroo pouches or forty-three species of finches, the plants did their own thing, and you wouldn't want to miss the nifty but short slideshow*.

In other news, the University of Tokyo learned that guys who rode bikes for an hour burned less fat than guys who rode half and hour to the ride start, stooged around for 20 minutes waiting for somebody else to show up, and then rode home. Ok, I made up the part about actually going anywhere because these guys were on stationary bikes, and the part where somebody would actually go straight home if their buddies didn't show up, but everything else was true. The upshot is that now we have a proper excuse for stooging around in the middle of rides, admiring the view and shooting the breeze.


* You might think that I came across that information watching the Discovery Channel or something, but I turned that up looking for landscape edging.

years behind (warning: bad taste alert)

Today I learned that that thing the boys do with their pants, where they tie them on with a belt just under their buttocks, is really, really amusing looking. I'd seen pictures, but pictures don't do it justice.

I did not see this, but I also learned the colloquial definition of skid mark.

a leak and cardboard

Today I learned that we have another leak in the roof. The whole house is only ten years old, so I'm really, really impressed that it leaks already. I think they make these lovely HOA-ruled, cookie-cutter subdivision roofs out of cardboard.

Speaking of cardboard, I tolerate the honey and oats variety of Cascadian Farms' (organic) breakfast cereal. It comes in a cardboard box, is the only cereal my husband found that didn't taste like cardboard, and is the only cardboard-packaged food I've found so far that doesn't make me sick. It's not exactly rotation-diet friendly with something like six ingredients, but I'm probably going to eat it sometimes anyway. I've been getting away with cheating, and cheating is fun.

Ok, I'm totally freaked out by the wet drywall in our bathroom. We think the leak (in a lesser form) has been there for a while now because we could feel it if we hung around in there, but it wasn't a big problem. We've been getting better living here. If I freak out about this, I'll make myself sick. So, this is all going to be fine.

Everybody got that?

dead camp and auras

Today I learned that such things as psychic camps exist, where people essentially go to summer camp around a bunch of people who speak to the dead. Actually, I'm kind of in recovery from yesterday, so that's what I think I learned. Anyway, the article made some mention of learning to see auras, which, given the name of this blog, you know I took as a personal invitation.

So I visited the top link generated by typing "how to see an aura" into Google, and now I can report that Jesus had a big aura, children see auras all the time, and you can tell children see auras because they look above you rather than at you, although this is not the kind of thing I noticed hanging around my nieces and nephews. After the initial explanation, there were actual exercises to get you going, which consisted of staring at a black dot, which I did ok at because I'm kind of spacey today, and staring at the end of your finger and merging two pictures, which is the kind of thing that always makes my eyes hurt, plus spaciness was a drawback. The result is that if I ever get the two halves of my brain lined up correctly, and I get to see my own aura, it'll probably be white, because white means you're sick, but you're supposed to practice against a light surface. I'll let you know how that goes.

the great outdoors will kill you

I had a really tough day, and only part of it was getting seven mosquito bites, so I apologize in advance for the lameness that follows.

Today I learned that UVA radiation, for which I could not find a definition in terms of frequencies (there are apparently two bands), will kill us all, probably before 2009, when sunscreens will save the world from UVA rays. Actually, one makeup company is pretty sure they have a lock on it, so I suppose we'll all see what happens in a couple of years.

And if I sound bitter, that's because I'll be the wrinkliest 80-year-old on my block, unless after I get better, I get comfortable smearing myself with chemicals again. Do you think those chemicals cause cancer and wrinkliness?

gum, teaching, and an oily computer

Today I learned that chewing gum is an ancient Finnish thing, which gives teenagers chewing with their mouths open a little more credibility, at least until the next time I step in gum. The last time that happened was about three years ago, so I suppose they're off the hook until I can get back out into the world.

Speaking of teenagers and the outside world, I seem to have developed a raging desire to teach high school math. I'd be good at it, except for being blown out of the classroom by body-spray- and hair-product-coated hormone factories. It would probably ruin the fantasy if I actually smelled the working conditions, not to mention the homework papers, so I'm trying not to think about it. This staying home where it's safe thing is starting to drive me nuts.

In other news, you can build a computer that I don't think would blow hot electronics fumes around your house by submerging it in an aquarium filled with mineral oil. And since I'm a physics nerd, I can tell you that the oil will attenuate the electromagnetic fields to some extent, not that most of you care, but it's a thing I remembered, and I'm always happy when I get evidence that my nerd circuits still work. Ok, like wanting to teach math wasn't enough evidence, but whatever.

play dough

Today my husband needed some play dough for a project, so -- what do you mean that kind of thing never happens at your house? Well, if you were sick, you'd have more obscure household projects, and you, too, could have some play dough.

So anyway, today I learned that:

1. If you don't cook it long enough, the dough ends up kind of sticky, but it's really entertaining to throw at the floor.
2. If you cook it long enough, it bounces when you throw it at the floor.
3. The recipe I used might need a little more oil.
4. Homemade play dough smells a little like pie crust. That kind of thing is never bad.

progress

Today I learned that if I walk around in the desert for 2 1/2 hours, the next day I'm kind of spacey. Delayed spaciness indicates that I'm still too sick to get away with that kind of behavior, but I didn't consider the possibility yesterday. I was too busy noticing that I don't get heart palpitations walking uphill in 100 degree heat anymore.

In other news, corn-based ethanol will kill you, and I mean burning it, not drinking it, although I suppose that would work, too. The editorial I read spells out nicely how we're all going to starve to death by 2050 if we burn as much corn as Congress has signed us up for, but here is my favorite quote:

A recent Stanford University study showed that E85 produces so much ozone, a key ingredient in smog, that if it were used in Los Angeles instead of gasoline, it would raise ozone-related deaths 9%.

I gotta revise my previous statement: corn'll kill you! And Congress, too!

combines, vitamin C, camping, and politics

Today I learned:

1. You can get a combine up to 9 mph going downhill, and you can't do anything with a popped drive tire. (video)
2. I finally, after I don't know how long, developed a sensitivity to my tapioca-based vitamin C, right after I ordered more.
3. I thought my tent was nicely outfitted, but apparently I'm a piker.
4. If you will recall, I predicted that we'd get new parties in our two-party system in 2012, but these guys are pushing for 2008. I don't really want to wait for 2012, either, so more power to them.

And here's a picture demonstrating that deserts aren't all rocks and sand:

drugs, dye, and a new dress

Today I learned that heroin, cocaine, and marijuana were considered a terrible problem all the way back in 1951 (youtube). I was surprised because the impression I collected from various authority figures probably when I was in high school was that drug use wasn't an issue until the hippies came along and started, I don't know, force-feeding people. I mean, I remember them talking about that whole opium thing in China, and something about Sherlock Holmes, but, gosh, that was all a long time ago, or, say, made up.

In other news, I learned not to buy very on-sale printed fabric at the fabric store. It made a dye ring in my washing machine that I half scrubbed off after the second wash, and it came back just as bad during the third wash. I'm now at the point where I'd just as soon throw that fabric out, but I keep thinking I'll get the extra dye out any time now, and then I can have a new dress.

Apparently you don't have to be a housewife from the 50s to want a new dress. Who knew?

another slow day

Today I learned not to go into hardware stores three days in a row. That would have been a no-brainer a few months ago, but with a bunch of new-found abilities, I'm just never sure what I can get away with. Also, it could just be that I've been going out in the afternoons, when the air quality has been lousy, so it's not actually clear that I learned anything. Never mind.

In other news, I found a topo map of Tucson online, so now I can see the ridge I have to ride over to get into less polluted air. After this morning's experiment, I'm pretty sure I should do that part of the riding in the car, thus contributing to the problem.

tax math

Today I tracked down a map of Tucson's city limits (pdf) because there's this one mall on the northwest side of town that's not in them, and the sales tax there is the straight 5% Arizona sales tax. I was reminded of this fact when I noticed that I paid 8.1% on the printer we got yesterday. I needed the map to learn that there are no shopping centers on my side of town that are not in the city limits.

Now I have to do some math: 3% of a $70 (on sale) printer is $2.10. If it's about 22 miles one way to get to the far mall, and I hit all the stoplights on the way so I only get 22 mpg, I'd use two gallons of gas at $2.59 per gallon (this week), so that wouldn't be worth it.

To make it worth it, I would need to spend at least, um, 0.03x = 2G, where G = the price of gasoline, so being accurate and using 0.031, x = $167.097.

Hahahahahahahahahahaha!

[It's my blog, so I can laugh at significant digit jokes if I want.]

Anyway, I don't know my actual cross-town gas mileage or the price of gas next week, so I'm comfortable saying x is about $200. The only things I've bought recently that cost more than $200 were a lot of kapok and a sewing machine, neither of which are readily available at that mall, so I think I'll just stay on my side of town and pay taxes for construction on roads I don't use very much.

things that'll kill you and a little gloating

Rock 'n Roll Marathons'll kill you! Actually what I read was an article about how roller coasters'll give you a heart attack, but only if you had an underlying heart condition to start with, and amusement parks all have signs posted to that effect. But in the last line, a doctor reported that he'd never seen a heart attack from a roller coaster, but he'd seen three during the last Rock 'n Roll Marathon. So, QED.

Also, dust will kill your children, but only if they react to the flame retardants in it like cats do, and honestly, it's not clear to me why they wouldn't. [Update: this LA Times article about PBDEs contains more actual information than the link above.]

In other news:

1. People use vinyl baby bibs. I know babies can get pretty goopy when they eat, but I can't imagine tying a vinyl-fume source around somebody's neck and then expecting them to do anything, much less eat.
2. Wandering around in the desert in shorts and a tank top makes you hotter than if you were to wear your own personal shade. There was a study and everything, so I'm going to have to gloat about the glories of my sunscreen outfit (as seen here). I mean, something good has to come of getting too sick to wear sunscreen.
3. California ground squirrels can beat up rattlesnakes.

death in the weeds

Today I got to wondering why mosquito abatement programs suggest keeping weeds down. I was all set to learn from a Google-search excerpt that weeds are bad because mosquitoes like to live in them, but when I clicked on the link, I found the quote of the day in the first sentence:

The spread of the often-fatal West Nile virus has made all of us more aware of the need for mosquito control in our communities.

I was surprised to learn that you can label a disease 'often-fatal' when about 1 in 150 people who get it get sick enough to die. Also that the author linked to the CDC site at the bottom of her article and failed to pick up this highly pertinent fact.

So I'm going to go out on a limb and say that I'm sure that the author, Janet Wickell, is a nice person, and, since you know I can't pass this kind of thing up, mosquitoes'll kill you!

slow day

Today I learned that Mackeson triple stout smells like alcoholic maple syrup.

Ok, that was kind of weak, but somebody told me I couldn't go to bed until I learned something besides that mahjong'll give you seizures.

going home and convenience foods

Yesterday I learned that the reason we arrived home from my parents' house last year at 2 am was because they have dew in the San Francisco Bay Area, and you have to let your canvas tent dry before you can pack it. I totally failed to learn that last year, so this year, I got up at six, started packing things, and then sat around and chatted for 3 1/2 hours while we waited for the tent to dry. Then we arrived home at 2 am. Also, gas last night in Needles, CA, was $3.79 per gallon, but twenty miles away at the top of the road to Lake Havasu, AZ, it was only $2.58. The people in Arizona have a handy sign in California so if you were to be practically out of gas in Needles, you'd do your level best to coast down to see them.

Now my husband has pointed out that Needles frequently has one of the highest prices in the country.

Today I may learn something else later, but what's really sticking with me so far is that you can buy 44 Ziploc® bags for $16. They have fancy vents in them so that you can steam your food in the microwave and they even come with recipes. Then, as the ad I saw demonstrates, you can throw the bags away.

So, for the cost of a glass bowl with a lid that you can use forever, SC Johnson, which has a FAQ assuring us that microwaving food in plastic is perfectly safe, would like you to buy a six-week supply of petroleum-based landfill decoration.

a different hike

Today I learned that there's a sign in the Ghirardelli store at Ghirardelli Square that allows as how the TSA does not allow jars of fudge sauce in carry-on luggage, not that I was in danger of buying fudge sauce. Also, if you do it right, you can go on a ten mile walk in San Francisco that involves something like 2500 stairs, you can park for free at the marina, and sometimes it's even sunny in San Francisco.

We only went 5 1/2 miles. It was fine. I evaded a baby hickey, too, but that was later.

We're going back to Tucson tomorrow because we've been blown out of town every day for something like a week now, and we're dead tired. I'll report in on Sunday, hopefully with something more interesting than Sunday afternoon B movie plots.

And there are two 'r's in Ghirardelli.

books, the mall, carrots, and ADHD

Today I learned that I can read a paperback book in a quart zipper bag indoors. I also learned that the Great Mall in Milpitas, CA, is far more tolerable than the mall I tried going to in Tucson. Before I even got sick I used to get seriously lost in indoor malls (not anywhere else), and that didn't happen until the end this time.

In the spirit of being sort of confused, here's an article about how kids say food tastes better if it comes in a McDonald's wrapper, even if it's carrots, and here's another one about how yanking some kids' tonsils cures their ADHD.

I'd be feeling all proud of myself for surviving a trip to the mall if we weren't doing so poorly outdoors around here. We're about ready to go home.

killer soup and the zoo

I've spent the last 24 hours learning that something I ate at the sushi place last night didn't agree with me. I suspect the miso soup because just before I ate it, I decided not to remember why I wasn't supposed to eat miso soup.

To get away from the construction fumes today, we went to the San Francisco Zoo. It looks pretty run down compared to when I was in sixth grade, so it was kind of a bummer. The happiest-looking beasties were the guinea pigs, prairie dogs, and penguins. A bunch of the other animals were huddled around their heat lamps because the sun completely failed to make an appearance up there today. Sun would have helped with the overall experience, but it wouldn't have made up for the empty pens and hand-written signs on the enclosures.

I'm usually the first one to excuse things like hand-written signs because you can change the information on them quickly and easily, thus improving your average zoo nut's experience, but these didn't convey nifty information so much as budget cuts.

neat rocks, a big bird, and dinner I didn't make

Today we went for a walk in the Pinnacles National Monument, where we saw an endangered California condor. Condors are ugly, and the one we saw looks like it's molting.


Then we ate dinner in an actual restaurant, which many of you are aware is not usually an option, but we found a sushi place with a tile floor before the dinner rush, so we went for it. There we learned that:

1. My husband can eat soy sauce again, and since soy sauce is mold-injured EI kryptonite, that was a pretty big deal.
2. I'm not sensitive to real tuna, only canned tuna. I have been informed by a reliable source (my father-in-law) that canned tuna should only be fed to cats, so this is no big loss.
3. I got a little drunk on chemicals, but that didn't make dinner any less fun.

construction fumes, processed food, and trees

Today I learned that it's the house three houses down on the other side of the block that's dismantled to the studs that is fixing it so I can't hang around in the tent during the day. It could have been the house on the diagonal that's getting its siding replaced, two houses closer than the stripped one, that was doing me in, but a walk around the block made the whole thing pretty clear. We spent the day in the kitchen, which in the overall scheme of things, is not a bad way to go, but there's no coffee table.

In other news, by following links from Fark, I learned that people in the UK "use an enormous amount of processed food, like ready meals, compared to most countries." I expect the US is not most countries, either, and that's why we spend so much time worrying about food components from China. That first article also says that trees are major producers of methane, which is a worse greenhouse gas than CO₂, so it turns out that trees will kill you.

freezing cold beaches and rocks

Today I learned that if you find a beach covered in rocks the size of cobblestones, when a wave retreats over the surface, it clatters like giant marbles settling. Also, when the marine layer (really thick clouds) completely fails to burn off during the day, it's not as chilly on the beach as you might expect. Maybe I should rephrase that -- it's not as freezing cold as a Northern Californian might expect.

We ended up at the beach on a cloudy day because the air on the driveway doesn't agree with us during the day. We're not exactly sure what the problem is, but if we can't work around it, we're going to have to go home.

And in case you needed to know, my local newspaper printed an article all about $160 eyelash conditioner.

cow paths and sleepy babies

Today I learned that Saguaro National Park wants to eliminate some trails so it can focus its trail management money on the good trails. There are some pretty badly eroded trails out there, and according to the article I read, some of them were designed by cows, so that could explain it. The locals are upset by both of the plans the park put forth, each of which will eliminate a different one of my favorite trails, but honestly, I'm not sure what the big deal is. It's not like there won't be any place to wander around, so I think we'll get over it.

In baby news, the trick to putting down a crashed baby is to do it very, very slowly and know what position he wants to end up in. If you screw up this procedure, you have to start over from scratch, by which I mean returning to the screaming because he's tired stage.

I hope that last sentence made sense. My niece and nephew are pretty much chemical-free, but they can go places I can't, so I inhaled some extra chemicals trying to get my nephew re-crashed. It's a good thing he likes the great outdoors, even if it does get chilly here in the evenings.

untutored potty help, bisphenol A, and bears

Today I learned something involving a toddler, the big potty, and inexperienced potty help. I'd tell you more, but eventually the toddler will learn to read, and then I'd be in trouble. This story did, however, make my mother laugh hard enough that I don't suppose she'll need any more exercise for several days.

In things that'll kill you, the group of scientists who have been reporting that plastic will screw up your hormones issued a formal statement about it, to which the plastics industry responded that these same scientists have been saying that for years. I feel compelled to note that the plastics industry has been saying plastics are safe for years.

And last but not least, I'm quite pleased that I didn't read this article about bears breaking into houses around Lake Tahoe and rooting around in the refrigerator before we went to the mountains. I might never have slept.

the big update

Last week I learned that:

• A week at a ski cabin (three bedroom, two bath house) near Bear Valley costs roughly half as much in the summer as it does during ski season, and you have very few neighbors on the weekend. You don't have any neighbors during the week.
• There's a train museum in Jamestown, CA, and on weekends they run the old steam train on a six mile stretch of track, much to the delight of train buffs, many of whom appear to be toddlers. That was where I learned that the water tower from Petticoat Junction currently has a roof on it.
  
  
  
• Sierra Redwoods are bigger around but shorter than Coastal Redwoods. The sheer size of the trunks may be more impressive to people who didn't grow up around Coastal Redwoods, but the idea of having one of these branches fall on you definitely impressed me.
  
  
  Also, my standard go-out-in-the-Arizona-sun outfit is pretty serious overkill in a grove of 300 foot (100 m) tall trees.
  
  
  
• If you get distracted while holding a six-month-old baby who does not currently have his pacifier in his mouth and has thus latched onto your chin, you can end up with a big, round bruise: your very own baby hickey. I'm pleased to report that I was only a witness to the baby hickey.
• Lake Alpine is a little bit east of Bear Valley, and you don't have to walk too far to get up to Inspiration Point, which appears to be made of concrete. It turns out that volcanoes can spew some combination of little rocks and ash that ends up looking remarkably like sedimentary concrete to the untrained eye but is actually called breccia, and I know that because we brought along the family geologists.
  
  
  
• Speaking of nerds, one of the geologists told me that there's a string of cornsilk for every kernel on a corn cob, and that's how they get pollinated. I felt compelled to confirm that information with the botanist, who told me to look up "corn flower," so sure enough. I also found this nifty page entitled "Sexual Dysfunction in the Corn Field"
• If you take a 2 1/2-year-old on a paddleboat ride on Lake Alpine, they'll hand you a SpongeBob life preserver complete with handles.
• If a bear comes to your cabin in the middle of the night and wants to get at the trash, which is stored in a locked room off the porch, it makes quite a racket ripping the door molding and siding off the house. It stepped daintily over the car seat that was out there, however, and you can see that the stroller was also unharmed.