more mold and birdy death

Today I learned that the drain part of a dishwasher can be kind of moldy all by itself, so that can slow down the decontamination process until you figure that out. That is, assuming that you're like a dog with a bone when it comes to mold.

In other news, living in a subdivision full of blooming acacia trees on a windy day can interfere with your mold-sniffing activities, and if you buy international conventional produce, you're killing cute little birds.

mycotoxins are bad, m'kay?

Today I learned that unless you spend a lot of time rinsing or soaking dishes with mycotoxins on them, you have to wipe every square millimeter very carefully or you can re-contaminate your freaking dishwasher with two fancy-shmancy adjustable measuring spoons and some little cookie-cutters with hard-to-reach surfaces.

I also learned that besides making my chest hurt, mycotoxins give me a seriously bad trip.

washing dishes in a strong oxidizer

Today I learned that when ammonia fails to make your old mycotoxin-infested dishes safe, you can use 40% hydrogen peroxide to get the mycotoxins out of your newly-contaminated dishwasher. Then you can go out in the back yard and wipe down all the dishes the ammonia in the dishwasher failed to clean.

The reason I thought ammonia would work was that another moldie (i.e., a person injured by mold mycotoxins) consulted a doctor somewhere in the upper Midwest for $100 an hour, and he said ammonia would decontaminate your moldy stuff. For free, I will tell you that we had much better luck with a 40% hydrodrogen peroxide solution. Now, maybe I didn't do a fair test because a dishwasher can't actually rub the dishes with ammonia like I did personally using the hydrogen peroxide, but there was no way I was going to stooge around wiping dishes with something that smells and stings your eyes like ammonia. I'll stick with the little burn marks above my gloves, thank you.

problems with dishes and potentially sloths

Today I learned that if you try to get the mycotoxins off your old dishes that were in storage, you can contaminate your dishwasher. We poured in a cup of janitorial-strength (10%) ammonia when we ran it, but the dishes still sniff-test like there's something not quite right. Tomorrow we're going to dip them in 3% ammonia, and follow that with 30% hydrogen peroxide if that doesn't work. Then we're going to decontaminate the dishwasher.

So tonight I almost learned something about sloth fossils, but now it got too late. We'll see what tomorrow brings.

some good stuff, some cabin-fever induced crackpot theories

Today I learned that:

• The guy who told the world that the Mars rovers would have to start taking extended naps to save money spoke too soon, so theses will be saved.
• Pima County (the land of desert-grown cotton) (it's where Tucson is) is going to exceed ozone limits now that they've been lowered, so the county is encouraging people to avoid driving. I suggest that we use existing technology to achieve toilet-to-tap water recycling* to increase the supply of chemicals in the water, thereby increasing the chemically sensitive population, and then more people will stay home and whine about the air quality. With fewer drivers and more public concern, it'll surely improve.
• You can train fish to come when they're called, so there is some interest in training little fish, turning them loose, and then calling them when it's time to kill them and eat them. If you attribute any intelligence to fish at all, that plan starts to sound like the plot of one of those a diabolical short stories that gives you nightmares. From another point of view, I'd rather get to swim around in the ocean for a while before being killed and eaten instead of being confined to a standard aquaculture sea cage.
• Fish farming is done in standard aquaculture sea cages.
• In Los Angeles, people make bullet-proof buildings.
• You can make jerky using a box fan and paper air conditioner filters. Right after paper air-conditioner filters are made out of food-grade organic paper ingredients (wood pulp? recycled paper towels? dryer lint?), I will consider trying that recipe.

*No one I am aware of wants to use existing technology for potable recycled water. They all want to use future technology, which, based on the government's assessment of what is safe, I'm sure will be perfectly safe. I only have a ten-stage water filter under my kitchen sink because I like the way it looks. Really. Ok, not really.

not the best day ever

Today I learned that we really have to supply our dryer, which is in the kitchen, with its own filtered air source. Some thought has clearly gone into this system since you frequent readers already know that dryers pull 200 cubic feet per minute (cfm), but the point was driven home this afternoon when I did laundry and developed cramps in my back and neck from a combination of pollen and air pollution that got in, and that's not something I want to repeat.

In other unfortunate news, from an interesting article about a book on the abandoned luggage of deceased denizens of mental hospitals, we have the following uncomfortable quote of the day:

The photographs, in fact, speak far louder and more clearly than the authors’ strident prose, for what could have been a uniquely affecting work proves to be almost unreadable.

public spaces, immune suppression, and thesis projects

Today I learned that there are a bunch of public spaces in and around buildings in San Francisco, and the Chronicle made a map. Then I learned that corticosteroid injections, which suppress your immune system, used to be a popular way to keep from having hayfever, but the side-effects sound icky. Also icky is that thing where you take steroids to suppress your immune system. I mean, those readers who have had organ transplants have a pretty good reason to have doctors fiddle with their immune systems, but retraining your immune system to avoid allergies seems like a much better idea than taking a shotgun to it.

And in bummer news, budget cuts are going to curtail the Mars rovers' activities instead of age, and we hope those readers whose theses are affected will still get killer theses out of it.

vacuum pipe and new traditions

Today I learned that there are 2x4s between the studs in our walls, but instead of being aligned like the studs, they're lying on their sides so the stud finder has a hard time picking them out. The good news is that if you need to stuff a vacuum pipe in there, you can perform surgery on these things that leaves unobtrusive scars in closets. Also, I appear to be less sensitive to whatever is in the interior of walls than I used to be.

Other than that, we learned that getting take-out sushi on Easter looks to be an excellent candidate for a new holiday tradition.

cubic feet per minute

Today I learned that you can't get a 400 cfm air cleaner for less than $450. This is only interesting if you want to pressurize your house against pollen and run your 200 cfm clothes dryer at the same time. See, I could get a 200 cfm air cleaner, but those all report cfm before the filters, so I'd have to run it in parallel with my regular pressurizer, and I'd have to build it a fancy box, the details of which I'm too tired to explain.

So, have a picture of some shooting stars.

playing catch up

Yesterday I learned that the door frames in my house are made of particle board. I've only ever seen wood door frames. I mean, that the baseboards were made of what looked like compressed toilet paper didn't surprise me too much, but I just wasn't expecting brown cardboard door frames. And they're twelve years old, and when you unscrew a hinge so you can paint behind the edge of it, which has never before been done, it'll kill you.

Today I finally watched Tuesday's The Daily Show and found out what all went on with Barack Obama's pastor and what the Senator said about it. As Mr. Stewart pointed out, it's really different when a politician speaks to the American public like they're adults.

new nerdy employment opportunities

Today I learned that spammers are hiring educated programmers to create today's malware, and not only is it harder to protect your computer from, the amount of it is skyrocketing. It's apparently up to users to not click on stupid stuff and keep backups handy in case they need to re-install their operating systems. Me, I married a nerd.

too much excitement

Today I learned that I can't yet go in three grocery stores and a plumbing supply place all in the same day, and it's been three weeks since my car-sniffing accident.

This calls for more goofing around on a mountain bike. Life is hard.

things that sound familiar

Today I learned that some people with MS have food sensitivities, and they get better when they stop eating things that make them sick. It makes you wonder what the rest of them are sensitive to.

yeouch

Periodically even sick ladies go dress shopping, and by dress shopping, I mean browsing for the latest fashion so we can make it at home and not injure ourselves in stores full of sizing chemicals. Here's what I turned up:
a) a little thing inspired by something the model's grandmother might have worn back in the '60s, and
b) a shirt the model's mother might have worn over leggings in the '80s.

I think what I learned here is that I haven't figured out how to clothes-shop online.

Also, diesel fumes will kill you.

millet and instant gratification

Today I learned that a friend of mine who used to turn into one big hive when he ate millet accidentally developed a preference for some millet-containing bread without killing himself. He found out because I was idly reading his bread label. I am not surprised to report that despite being pleased that he no longer reacts to millet, he went out and got a different kind of bread.

In other news, if you have all the local grocery stores' phone numbers programmed into your cell phone in case the really, really sick lady has a sudden banana shortage, when you get blown out of a store that's sucking barbeque fumes in the front door and has a cologne-drenched shelf-stocker in an aisle you care about, you can call the manager from the parking lot and complain. Ok, so it was Saturday, so I had to leave him a message, but at least I said something coherent, and I was polite about it.

all border-related

Today I learned that besides sounding like a ridiculous way to keep Mexicans from crossing into the US, Yuma's proposed moat would make a little piece of the Colorado River wet again, so people could go fishing and have a bike path. That sounds kind of nice.

In other border-crossing news, that land bridge the Native Americans crossed a zillion years ago was actually much bigger than I gleaned from my elementary school coursework. Maybe my little-kid imagination failed in the face of a bridge wider than six lanes.

In just general desert news, your dog can take a rattlesnake-avoidance class from the Humane Society.

non-plague fauna

Today I got all cleared up on the ten plagues of Egypt because it seemed like snakes ought to be one of them, but it's not.

pretty flowers and illegal downloads

Today I learned that there are flowers all over the place at Picacho Peak State Park, and they have one of those trails there where you have to hang onto a cable to stay on it. I didn't actually get to see it because we weren't dressed for it; we were supposed to go hang out with the local sick people's group, but I got really sick really fast right after it started, so it was good to have a consolation prize.

In other news, if you type "stupid funny" into Google, and click on the "Fresh Sushi" at Wal-mart sign (scroll down), you could learn that the technology to make illegal downloads is getting shinier, which is nice, but it's still illegal.

easily skeeved

Today I learned that now that they're counting HPV as an STD, 25% of teenage girls, and 40% of the ones who say they've had sex, have at least one STD. On behalf of us geeks who actually listened to the sex ed stuff they taught in high school and thought, I am never going to have sex, ever: eeeeeeeeeeeewwwwwwwww.

In other things concerning teenagers, salvia, the new marijuana, will kill you. Or, since people report that it tastes bad, gives bad trips, and is generally not very popular, maybe not so much.

In bike news, I finally finished battling fork oil fumes and got my fork put back together. It's acting like a totally different beastie now that it's all greased up nice, and I'd be embarrassed for not doing it sooner except that when I was sicker, it would have killed me outright. Ah, the trade-offs in life.

And in case you needed to know, there is some kind of rock called owyheeite.

bear spit, toddler phones, and poisonous products

Today I learned that if you put motion-sensitive cameras out in grizzly country, you could end up with bear spit samples to go along with your pictures because bears apparently feel that these things need to be licked.

In similar news, unpredictability-wise, you can get a cellphone for your toddler that has two buttons: a mommy button and a daddy button. I don't have any toddlers myself, and maybe the ones I know are too young, but it seems to me that an age group with a reputation for crank calling 911 three hundred times on a deactivated cell phone could drive you crazy, particularly if you spend a lot of time on the phone and have a talented mimic in the house.

In completely different news, there is a proposal to ban fragrances in the Minneapolis schools because students are making other students sick. The fragrance industry wants the ban to be voluntary, and I can see why, but I still hope that the fragrance industry dies a horrible death in keeping with its propensity to give children asthma attacks.

glory days

Today I learned that you shouldn't walk a retired racing greyhound off-leash too close to an in-progress professional soccer match with cheering crowds if the stadium gates are open and your dog enjoyed her racing career.

In other news, the tune that has been running through my head all day and I know was left over from elementary school is called Land of the Silver Birch, and having read the words, it was probably part of one of those racial-guilt, social-consciousness thingies that were so popular in the 1970s (in California, anyway). Mostly what I remember from those was this one time, they took what seemed like the whole school over to the community center, put us in groups, and herded us places without much explanation, making the kindergartners cry. I suppose that was an admirable lesson about Native Americans being herded off to reservations, but I was a nerd and didn't get it until later, so you know those crying kindergartners didn't get anything out of it except a fear of going to the community center.

quotes from across the pond

On what happens when stores stop supplying plastic grocery bags, besides that they don't end up hanging off cacti:

[A] scheme in Ireland had reduced plastic bag usage, but sales of bin liners had increased 400 per cent.

On two fourteen-year-old boys who took Viagra at school:

The boys have claimed not to have taken any of them but there has been good reason to believe that was not the case.

mostly just things you could eat

Today I learned why I won't eat spicy tuna rolls - it's because they contain MSG, and as the article about MSG cheerfully states, "virtually all studies since [1968] confirm that monosodium glutamate in normal concentrations has no effect on the overwhelming majority of people." Standing in line near a chain smoker would have no effect on the overwhelming majority of people, either, but this is why I've written off the overwhelming majority of grocery stores in town as unshoppable.

The article also mentioned similar problems connected with aspartame, which, as I've mentioned before, will totally wreck some people, but they generally don't know enough to stop drinking diet soda, which is too bad. It's the sneaky stuff that'll make you really sick, and doctors don't always ask if you have a big soda habit, or if there's mold under the leaky window in your campus housing and you eat ramen noodles for lunch when you show up at the health center complaining of feeling like crap. Not that I know anybody who had this problem and solved it by moving, not eating ramen anymore, and getting lots of exercise sprinting around for upwards of an hour at a time after her newly-acquired dog, Molly. But thank God there wasn't any soda involved.

The only other important information out there today is that there's a space ship for sale in Phoenix.

a dog, ammonia, and too-handy bus switches

Today I learned that Rachel Bilson has a cute dog, ammonia gas is lighter than air, and it's a lot of trouble to drive a hybrid bus through the projects in San Francisco because the residents keep turning them off.

more fun with inhalants

Yesterday I learned that no matter how much the suspension fork oil you bought doesn't smell, it has absolutely nothing to do with how much the factory oil that came in the fork smells. The result is that my fork is in parts on my back patio, and I won't be going for a ride tomorrow.

I won't be going anyway because juniper and cedar pollen season started rather abruptly last night, and I'm stuck in the house for the next week or so, or less if my pollen shot lets me get away with it.

more and better fun

Yesterday I learned not to go into this one conventional grocery store that is routinely pretty crowded. I only ever went in there for organic bananas for the really, really sick lady, and after learning what happens when I get a chain smoker behind me in line, I don't consider that a store anymore, just like McDonald's doesn't have food. Then I learned that some kinds of headaches go away if you sit in the dark. It has to be totally dark, though, so it's better if you're tired and it's night.

In other news, I learned that the skin on my arms isn't just dry. It's a rash, and I know this because I got the same rash where my biking gloves touch my wrists in these narrow little strips. If you know what you're looking at, it's pretty obvious that I'm sweating out that car-chemical exposure I got on Tuesday, and it's not going very well, skin-wise.

So now I've gone in a store and gotten well and truly sick, and I've sweated out something nasty and gotten a rash. I think I'll try to avoid the other stereotypical EI stuff, but only if I can remember what those things are before I screw them up.

and little bits keep coming off

Today I learned that in some laptops, instead of the hinges becoming weak because of a loss of friction, they just snap off where the securing screws go through them.