useless information

Today I learned that it takes the same amount of time to go to the far away organic grocery store as it does to go to the close one in combination with running one other quick, nearby errand. That information is not only useless to people who aren't me, but it's also boring.

In other useless information, that really fat cat from New Jersey was abandoned because his person was foreclosed upon, and you can't use packing tape to attach trash compactor bags to the textured back of an old beetle's back seat because there's not a good enough surface area to stickum ratio.

a cheap place to live

Today I learned that you can camp about 20 miles north of Yuma all winter (Sept. 15 - April 15) for $180.

making string and cataract prevention

Today I learned by running out of this kind of upholstery string that I used for mattress tufting that the fabric store where I had acquired said string apparently lost all memory that such a thing existed. Thus I learned that if you make about four long loops of kite string, twist each loop counter-clockwise, and then twist them all together clockwise, you can make something that looks a lot like the string that, according to the fabric store, never existed.

In other news, theoretically you can reduce your risk of getting cataracts if you make sure you have enough anti-oxidants in your system. Unfortunately, among the listed supplements are vitamin E and beta carotene, which we all learned before will kill you, so it could just be that you can't develop cataracts if you're dead.

all around bad and nematodes

Today I learned that there are air fresheners that are not labeled 'air freshener' and have cartoony pictures of fruit on them, so sometimes people eat them.

In other news, if you were to find tiny wormy critters living in the dirt that formed under the floor mats of a very old car, if the worms came to a point on each end, they would probably be nematodes. If they had six legs, they would probably grow up to become beetles or moths. Things like that are kind of hard to separate from the dirt, so you might have trouble figuring that out. Y'know, hypothetically and all.

coulda hurt myself

I haven't been reliably reporting what I've learned lately because it's all been about the car belonging to the lady who has lived in her car for 25 years, and it has required a lot of physical labor and, well, coddling. I'm all worn out, so:

Recently I learned:

• The car belonging to the lady who has lived in her car for 25 years was on the verge of having its front wheels fall off. Apparently in 40-year-old beetles, there is a kind of a beam that attaches the front axle to the rest of the frame, and a gas line goes through a hole in it, and that makes a weak spot.
• You can pressurize a car using a piece of acrylic sheet cut to the size of the window with a hole in it for a dryer hose connector, a dryer hose, some aluminum tape, and an off-the-shelf duct part that fits on the front of an Austin Air Jr.
• Welding fumes don't get in a pressurized car, and you can feel air blowing out through any untaped orifices, like what you get if you take out the master cylinder.

The wheels aren't going to fall off now.

I need a vacation.

getting behind

If I'd been paying attention yesterday like reader Linda was, I would have learned that researchers from the University of Washington analyzed six best-selling air fresheners and laundry products, and here's my favorite quote:

"Nearly 100 volatile organic compounds were emitted from these six products, and none were listed on any product label. Plus, five of the six products emitted one or more carcinogenic 'hazardous air pollutants,' which are considered by the Environmental Protection Agency to have no safe exposure level," Steinemann said.

So, air fresheners and laundry products will kill you, but now it says so in the mainstream media.

important chlorine-related information

Today I learned that:

1. Pool noodles are made of polyethylene, which is generally well-tolerated by EIs.
2. There is a water park ride available in about 65 locations around the world that at least partially removes the swimsuits of roughly 20% of its riders.

I can't even think of anything to say after that.

doing the right thing and tofuey death

Today my husband goaded me into going to help somebody who needed it when I was all set to keep my head down and stay out of trouble. He's a good guy.

In other news, tofu preserved with formaldehyde will give you memory loss. It is not clear to me why this kind of thing makes the news.

regular entertainment

Today I learned that when you go to a drive-in movie, along with the movie, you get wind, dust, cigarette smoke, and car exhaust, but -- and this is important -- I got to go to the movies, so I don't care.

decontamination progress and kidney stones

Today I learned that, two months after it got contaminated with some smoke chemical, my dryer is usable again. It's a good thing, too, because something I learned late last night is that if it's cloudy for six days in a row, I can't hang laundry outside. I learned that in one of those 'uh-oh' moments right after I lay down in bed and realized it was going to be a long night because I didn't tolerate my supposedly clean bedding.

In non-EI illness news, apparently some people know the southeast US as the "kidney-stone belt." The article says it has to do with dehydration, so now I want to know why less humid places (Arizona, for example) aren't part of the kidney-stone belt. I didn't learn that. Not that I'm complaining.

Sylvester vs. Wile E.

Today I learned that the spayed and neutered feral cats living at Cal State Long Beach are attracting coyotes, so there is some debate about which animals should be removed -- the cats or the coyotes. I suppose I also learned that Cal State Long Beach sterilizes its feral cat population.

In entertainment news, I saw an ad for a new tv show called The Cleaner, which I assumed had something to do with taking care of inconvenient dead bodies, if the cleaners in Pulp Fiction and Point of No Return were anything to go by. According to the review I found, it's not about dead bodies. It's about terminally convoluted ways to take people to rehab, and it's too bad to watch, but it makes for a pretty entertaining bad review.

marketing and dryer contamination

Today I learned that some public health types are trying to get people in Ghana in the habit of washing their hands with soap more often to prevent disease, and they're getting good results using a technique borrowed from marketers, who have had good luck getting people to form habits that involve using their products. Here is the scary part:

But what Dr. Curtis learned in Ghana suggests that saving the world may be as easy as hawking chewing gum, or, to use a more contemporary example, as simple as training Americans to spray perfumed water on couches that are already clean.

FEBREZE — the perfumed water used on couches — is one of the most successful examples of a habit-creation campaign, and, in a sense, the playbook for how Ghana learned to wash its hands.

So there you have it: FEBREZE is perfumed water, and Americans are trained monkeys.

Which is pretty obvious if you have any contact with the developmentally disabled community. These people have learning disabilities up the wazoo, but they tend to have things like five kinds of painkillers in their medicine cabinets because one is for back pain, another one is for headaches, a different one is for general pain, but you also need the one for general pain at night, plus you never know when you might have an inflammation problem.

On the home front, I learned that I can't use my dryer with an unfiltered air source this time of year. It's been raining every single day here, even though it generally only says there's a 20% or 30% chance of rain, so there's enough mold outside that sucking it through my dryer makes my clothes intolerable. We put the pressurizer back together today, so I expect to feel like a human being in the morning, plus I should be able to use the dryer.

bread and sunglasses

Today, in honor of the grocery stores either not carrying or being out of bread without lots of junk it in, I learned to make bread. I used this whole wheat bread recipe that I turned up on the web, which leaves out various steps I remember my dad taking, and I substituted more water for the milk. Since I never follow recipes correctly anyway, I figured this was a good way to start, and it turned out really well except for the part where I didn't grease the pan enough, so the bread came out in about 4 pieces, none with dimensions large enough to make a proper sandwich.

Also, it rained all night, and I started getting one of those light-sensitivity headaches after a trip to the store for bananas, but I headed it off at the pass by wearing sunglasses all afternoon and evening and making my husband feel like he was living in a cave. He's a good sport, but you'd be too if your wife had a bad case of sunglass-related coolness.

tv coma

Today I watched something like eight hours of tv, so all I learned is that oil prices are a bubble, cleaner air doesn't reflect as much sunlight as dirty air, and George Clooney, who previously got the press to print that he ironed his balls, got them to print this: “I spend at least three or four hours a day in the bathroom. Being sexy day and night is a big responsibility. And I like taking it!”

cars and cows

Today I woke up at 4 am, and I don't know if I was reacting to something in my food or to my husband, who, a day or two ago, got into some dust from the car belonging to the lady who's lived in her car for 25 years. So I didn't learn a whole lot today, but I can report that the lady with the old car learned today that she's fully capable of driving a different car, which she had found pretty intimidating. The trick here is that now we have to find her a different car that she can have instead of borrowing for a few minutes, and some of you in readerland know exactly how long this hunt has been going on. But it appears that there are some helpful car lot guys around town who will call you when they get something promising smelling, and at this point, I'm all about involving the middleman.

So I don't leave anyone with too-serious, homeless sick lady thoughts, I also learned about cow fart backpacks.

leaving the house, tendonitis, and death in the water

Today I learned that:

• The air quality in Joann Fabrics has improved dramatically, which could mean that I'm doing better and their building is offgassing.
• At 2 pm today weather.com was reporting the UV reading around here was 5, which is a little different from the 12 I'd gotten used to. The sun this time of year won't peel your skin off immediately, but it won't dry your laundry in half an hour, either.
• Fluoroquinolone antibiotics will explode your tendons.

And tilapia will kill you.

light sensitivity

Today I learned that if I do whatever it is that gives me one of those light-sensitive headaches, the light sensitivity can last into the next morning, but not the headache (so far). I wore sunglasses indoors on a cloudy day for the first time ever, and the problem mostly cleared up after I got into the sauna.

In fire decontamination news, it appears that washing fabrics with as much ammonia as I can get into my washer without asphyxiating myself (maybe a cup or a cup and a half of 10% solution) will take out most of the contaminant if I wash the stuff twice. My couch cover (a quilt) seems pretty much ok, but I keep putting off trying to sit on it. The dryer we've given up on; I'm going to sell it. The air cleaner (house pressurizer) sometimes seems fine, but I'm suspicious of it. I can't get the motor clean, so even though it's not in the air stream, it could be making things not quite right.

Also, trying to help the lady who's been living out of her car for 25 years takes a lot out of you, and then in combination with the light sensitivity thing and the sauna, it makes it hard to write.

the good of the many outweigh the good of the few

Today, in the least shocking news ever, I learned that the cervical cancer vaccine makes some people sick. We here at broken physicist are so very, very unshocked. Also, Pringles are only 42% potato.

bombs bursting in air

In honor of the Fourth of July and one of this blog's favorite traditions, and thanks to reader Susie's website, I feel compelled to report that fireworks will kill you!

This will not stop me from trying to watch fireworks from 20 miles away, assuming it's not pouring rain. Happy Fourth!

new news

Today I learned about bloated jellyfish and a really big dead catfish on my new favorite news site, which has German news in English.

central air and bananas

Today I learned that if your central air conditioner's blower motor starts sounding ill at around 11 am, if you already know how to get the blower out (from that time you had to wipe the previous resident's powder makeup off it), you can pull it, whack the impeller off the shaft, buy another motor, eat lunch, talk on the phone, and put it all back together in just about four hours. When we turned the AC back on at 3:15, the temperature indoors had risen from 80 to 86 ^oF. Shortly after the fan came on, all the air that had been resting comfortably in the ducts in the attic came down and raised the temperature to 87 ^oF, and then the AC stayed on for roughly four hours to get the temperature back down to 80 ^oF. I think I learned that it's more energy efficient to keep the AC on when you're not home, but that could just be because I keep my house at 80 ^oF, and this time of year, a standard high for the day is something like 106 ^oF.

In banana news, wild bananas look weird (and sometimes purple), and if you did something to the sand that passes for dirt around here, you could grow your own.

extreme brilliance and knowing when to quit

Today I learned that a famous person (in the EI community, anyway) with one of those distrusted-but-handy science degrees (in parts of the EI community, anyway) will, for a fee, swing a pendulum to help you make those important decisions. I suspect that's a creative way to charge a consultation fee for telling potentially irrational, new-agey advice-seekers with chemicals in their brains what to do, but in such a way that they won't argue with you. It's freakin' brilliant.

Other than that, I learned that margaritas without ice in them are nasty, and I have to go to bed now.