too busy to learn much

Today I theoretically learned how to make soy yogurt, but I didn't actually try it. I was too busy doing things that weren't sitting on the couch, like making a mattress for a friend and reading a signal processing textbook. (Occupational hazard: I concluded that the editorial staff at the nerdy textbook factory could stand to be a little more nerdy. Either that, or the author of that book needs to be kicked a couple of times.) I didn't even get to the dryer, which still needs some parts scrubbed and assembled, and I want to get through that textbook yesterday.

I overbooked my things-to-do list. I have a proper reason to get up in the morning tomorrow.

I feel better.

that's just weird

Today I learned that botanically, tomatoes are fruit, but in 1893 the Supreme Court ruled that legally, they're vegetables.

weather, comfy places to sleep, and silliness

Today I learned that they close the Molino Basin Campground in the spring and don't open it again until late fall, and it looked totally inhabitable to me. Apparently the people who usually stay there are a bunch of wusses who can't handle things like 90 degree heat at 10 o'clock at night.

In other news, the laundry contaminant got into the mattress springs and bed frame, so last night we slept on the camping cots with kapok mattresses, and everything went much better. They're kind of hammocky, so there's a big ridge down the middle of the bed when you push them together, but if you let a little thing like a ridge down the middle of the bed stop you, you aren't trying hard enough.

Also, Army of Darkness is about the silliest movie I've ever seen.

shampoo, cheap bikes, and body language

Today I learned that shampoo will kill you! I knew it.

Also, you can make a bike out of cardboard, thereby vastly reducing the profitability of selling stolen bikes, and here's some helpful information for us socially inept nerds about reading body language.

dust, photovoltaics, tar, and handwriting

Today I learned that when filter companies test filters, they buy Arizona dust for a test material, so we've accidentally been filtering the very thing filters are designed to handle.

In last year's news, some researchers from the New Jersey Institute of Technology invented a kind of solar cell that they figure we ought to all be able to print out someday on our inkjet printers. Since it appears that these things involve nanotubes and buckyballs, I think I'll wait patiently.

In fire decontamination news, I got to wondering about what's actually in smoke, and it appears that tar could be a product. Tar is pretty hard to wash out; I understand that the easiest way to get actual tar out of your clothes is to rub them with lard, and let it sit for a couple of hours, and then get the lard out.

Ok, so it's not like I was going to try lard on a whole quilt even if I were sure tar was the problem. I'm not going to try milk as a solvent, either, because I have a terrible time washing that out, too, plus it makes me sick. I'm going to stick with ammonia because I can make myself sick sniffing the greywater afterwards, so it must be doing something.

Also, minuscule is the preferred spelling of miniscule, and either one is a kind of medieval cursive.

new look

Today I learned that if you're used to organic apples, conventional apples look extra super shiny, which ends up looking kind of scary. I mean, think carefully about the folklore of extra super shiny apples.

warning: boring technical details

The hills are on fire again, but we don't have a pressurizer to contaminate this time. It's still in parts in the back yard, except for the blower, which is on the kitchen floor next to a mostly assembled dryer. You could say we have a bad habit of taking everything apart, but we have very clean things once we put them back together. The thing is that now we're thinking about making our own really good house pressurizer, so here's what I learned today:

Air cleaner blowers typically have a scoop around the impeller (here's an example) so the air doesn't go past the motor itself. I hear you have to be careful to pick one that only takes air from the side away from the motor, and you want an impeller bigger than about 8 inches in diameter to reduce the noise. For airflow, you want something above 400 CFM (cubic feet per minute) because you end up slowing that down when you start sucking or blowing the air through a bunch of filters.

Standard furnace filters come with a MERV rating, and I already forgot what that stands for, but it tells you how good your filter is at filtering out very small particles. The more efficient your filter is, the higher its resistance (pdf), which is what slows down your blower. Filters have an initial resistance, which is the resistance of a clean filter in terms of how high it can suck a column of water given a particular face velocity (air speed approaching the filter). When the filter is dirty, its efficiency is great because not much can get through it, and that's when you get your final resistance. And filter resistance matters in terms of how much electricity it takes to turn your fan, so here's a page with a handy chart (pdf) of how much various resistance filters cost per day.

If you'd like to increase the amount of air you can get through your filter, you could double the area, which doubles the CFM (see page 4 here, pdf). You can't change the resistance, however, without buying a different kind of filter.

And here's how you get to the Arizona wildfire page, which I find fascinating and totally inadequate, but much better than what you'd find in the newspaper, considering the newspaper hasn't apparently even heard of this fire yet.

exciting moments in air quality, radiation, bacteria, deadly sunscreen, and Lord Byron

Today I learned that if you've been battling filtered-smoke-related laundry contamination, you shouldn't go into town when it is more humid and more polluted than normal. I might have been able to handle the humidity if car exhaust weren't made of filtered gasoline smoke, but since it is, things went poorly. The really, really sick lady almost didn't get any bananas.

In non-smoke news, low-level radiation apparently makes your immune system happy, and we're spreading bacteria all over the solar system, which leads us to the quote of the day:

This week, the Phoenix lander touched down on Mars, hoping to take the first ever direct measurements of Martian water and organic molecules. “To guarantee the cleanliness of the robotic arm, it was enclosed in a biobarrier bag – effectively an interplanetary condom,” said Lewis. But this will not be a feasible control measure for humans.

Also, sunscreen kills coral, and Lord Byron had a club foot.

day off from the laundry (only looks like giving up)

Today I suffered a minor tv coma and saw some actual advertisements, the only one of which I remember was about insurance and involved fussing about the price of gas and tires. That got me thinking about prices, which, according to the news media, are extremely fuss-worthy.

In terms of items I actually buy, I have noticed that it costs more to buy gasoline, but really the only other thing that's caught my eye is the price of eggs, which comes to maybe a dollar more per week. I'm feeling the news media's fear-mongering, but I'm not feeling all that much actual price-related pain. Apparently I'm doing that un-American thing again where I fail to go out and buy stuff.

Ok, while I was writing that, I realized that there's one more ad I remember. It said that they're making dark chocolate M&Ms now, which would have mattered back when I was a left-out dairy-sensitive kid, but these days just registers as another price that doesn't matter.

penalties and bananas

Today I learned that the impending super-scary penalty for not cutting your water use by 20% in the hotter, drier part of the San Francisco Bay Area turns out to be something along the lines of $4 per month and a scolding letter.

In banana news, and if you are at all involved in the really, really sick lady's banana supply, you have a category for banana news, bananas used to taste better back before the 1960s when banana companies supplied Gros Michel bananas instead of Cavendish bananas. The Gros Michel variety was wiped out by Panama disease, a fungus, which has mutated and is now capable of wiping out the Cavendish variety, although it has not yet gotten to Latin America. Also, a banana company was responsible for the 1954 overthrow of a democratically elected government in Guatemala.

In grocery-store banana gossip, I heard from the produce guy at Safeway that the Del Monte organic fields got wiped out last month by some other fungus that goes away if you cut down all your current bananas trees and grow new ones, which I understand takes about 8 months. And Dole organic bananas have been going for a $1/lb ever since their fields flooded in Ecuador (according to the Basha's produce guy), and if you're really into banana trivia, you will have noticed that they put the field numbers on the stickers, like 542 and 712 (see for yourself).

Since that's more than enough information about bananas, I will now give you the headline of the day, which by its very existence, dooms some of us to hell:

Suspect in custody in fatal porch shooting

cow fat

Today it was hot, so I read the various smoothie chain menus looking for un-pesticided berries, which I suppose I didn't really expect to find. Instead, at Jamba Juice in the description of their Fit n' Fruitful^TM smoothie, which has some fancy additive (conjugated linoleic acid) that's supposed to help you lose weight, I found the following fantastic disclaimer: "Note: Results will not be achieved with sporadic consumption."

Then I learned on Wikipedia that conjugated linoleic acid is a fat that comes from grass-fed ruminants and that, according to studies, it's supposed to be good for you, but maybe not if you're fat. Also it's a trans fatty acid.

You can't make this stuff up.

heat and quilts

Today I learned that riding in 103^o heat with 10% humidity isn't bad. You just wait until evening, when the sun won't peel the hide off you. I did better than I expected, and that's saying something considering how sick I've been lately.

In other news, some blankets that didn't fit on my clothesline and instead got draped over some patio furniture appear to be less toxic than the stuff that's been hanging vertically. I have to go sniff everything again in the morning (without hurting myself), but if that's really true, I'm going to have a back yard carpeted in sheets and quilts.

And then the squirrels will chew holes in everything unless I post a guard, but this is the price we pay for living in sunny Tucson, where the tourists evaporate over the summer because the sun will peel the hide off you.

water, oil, and health mayhem

Today I learned that you can grow algae in the desert with what sounds like greywater, and in an effort to make oil prices more reasonable, the Saudis are going to increase production again. They're worried that we're all going to turn to alternative energy sources, and then all they'll have is just a bunch of desert with some dead animals under it, which sounds like a pretty reasonable concern to me. It also sounds as though capitalism (in the form of speculators) may well take care of the oil-burning, CO₂-producing thing, which seems like the opposite of what usually happens. I was expecting some too-little, too-late regulation.

And by reading this nifty health column, I learned that cherry juice is a good anti-inflammatory for some people, but God only knows if it'd work for you, and tonic water will kill some people, but if you have a taste for things like gin and tonic, it probably won't kill you, personally.

Also, the air cleaner we use as a pressurizer is almost decontaminated from the smoke problem. It's been running outdoors with no carbon in it since Thursday.

unintentional day off

Today I just washed stuff. It wasn't particularly educational, but I guess I learned that it only takes about half an hour to dry laundry in the Arizona sun this time of year, particularly if you flip it over after about 20 minutes.

same old, same old and two surprises

Today I learned that I'm enough better that I can sort through my old clothes and decide to throw most of them away. It turns out that a lot of them were kind of raggedy anyway from the last laundry contamination episode. I gotta stop having these, although this one is by far the hardest to wash out.

Also, the FDA agrees that mercury isn't completely safe for everybody, and a man who looks like he was painted brown reported for Fox News that speculation is entirely to blame for oil prices.

death by plastic, geography, and big lizards

Today I didn't learn that drinking out of polystyrene will kill you. I learned that the hard way a couple of years ago with a standard styrofoam cup, and then I learned it again last month at a cafe that put iced tea in a clear plastic cup, which turned out to be #6 plastic. I also didn't learn that vinyl shower curtains will kill you. I understand other EIs air them out for upwards of four months before they're allowed in the house, but my shower curtain is cotton canvas. Here in the desert, that thing dries faster than my towel.

Things I did learn today:

1. By taking a Middle East geography quiz, I learned that they rearranged the place since I learned where everything was in sixth grade.
2. Komodo dragons don't have diaphragms.

Also, my doctor told me I'd better just concentrate on coming up with more stay-at-home jobs, which seriously bummed me out. I mean, I like helping out the really, really sick lady and her husband, and I like journal copy editing, but someday I'd like to get a real job. The kind with health insurance would be nice.

On the upside, the doctor had a good tip on smoke-chemical removal: alternate vinegar and hydrogen peroxide for 20 to 30 washes. I hope sometime tomorrow to get my couch cover back with that, and then I'll probably just end up taking it into the bedroom and sleeping on it.

large appliance mechanic

Today I learned that having a washing machine drain into your kitchen sink makes it very clear exactly how much water goes through your washing machine. I mean, I've seen washing machines drain into big, deep, garage-type sinks, but it looks a lot different in the kitchen. Also, you end up with a very tidy sink.

In related news:

• It appears that I have gotten the contaminant from the smoke out of the stuff I've washed, but now I'm battling All detergent residue.
• It's hard to get detergent residue out if your preferred method is several hours of 'air fluff,' but one dryer is still contaminated and the other is in multiple pieces all over the patio.
• I'm in the process of learning if wind gusts purported to reach 30 mph this evening will do much.

And, considering that the pressurizer is still contaminated and there's air pollution outside, I think I've learned that this is a crummy experiment because there are too many variables. I suppose I'll have to see what happens.

great expectations and pensive plants

Today I learned that the washer we extracted from storage has a sticker on the back that says it sold for $680 back in 1998, but since we got it from the scratch and dent place, we only paid $470. It got a five year vacation sitting in storage, so I guess I expect it to last until 2028.

In other news, some plants avoid hurting their relatives, and this one parasitic one actually sniffs the air nearby to figure out which way to grow to reach the best host. Also, people have known that electrical signals travel between plant parts for something like 100 years, but apparently the whole idea that they could actually be doing anything has been carefully ignored.

I don't understand why you would ignore something like that unless you were afraid of what you'd learn.

Miss Molly knows too much about washing machines

Today I learned that by wearing decontaminated new clothes, I got well enough that I could pinpoint the cause of the laundry contamination. It was from the controlled burn, and whatever it was, it was stuck to the screen outside the house pressurizer and all over the inside of the duct leading inside. And I couldn't detect it last week.

In extremely related news, it appears that you can probably wash this particular contaminant out using All Free Clear (an actual safer mainstream laundry liquid), but it might take a few repetitions, and then if you're me, you have to wash out the All Free Clear. So there's hope for the three quilts I contaminated and the four sets of sheets, plus the clothing I was preparing to give away to people who would tolerate it.

In other extremely related news, a joint decision last night to use a 'safe' washer for safe laundry and a 'not-so-safe' washer for evil laundry (plus All Free Clear) resulted in a trip to the storage place this morning to collect the emergency back-up, ten-year-old matching washer and dryer that first entered storage back in 2002. Despite being two-thirds of the way back, they weren't anywhere near as hard to extract as we had expected. Thus they are sitting in multiple pieces on the patio getting Bounce and Tide removed from their innards. Interestingly, the innards belonging to the washer appear identical to the ones in the older machine that we bought here, but younger and with more bells and whistles. So far the biggest difference between the two washers is that the newer one, used for four years, had less cumulative crud in it than the older machine, which we cleaned last week.

Also:

1. My husband has postulated that the crud collects due to a lack of surfactants in ammonia, my laundry liquid of choice.
2. Finding orangeish dog hair in the dryer makes six years feel like nothing.

wha?

Today I learned that I turn into a freakin' moron when the air quality website ozone index reads 90. I don't remember this from last year...

...and there may well be a reason for that.

old car feats and spelling choices

Today I learned that we can drive our 24-year-old BMW 340 mostly highway miles and not even get the empty tank light to come on. We got 26 mpg, which is not bad for a car old enough to have finished college and gotten its own apartment, assuming it wouldn't have chosen to live in an expensive area and have had to move back in with its parents.

In related news, organ pipe cacti, or cactuses according to the Organ Pipe Cactus National Monument handout, have solid skeleton parts instead of ribs, like saguaros, or wacky-looking swiss-cheese skeletons like chollas. There will likely be a picture tomorrow.

In unrelated news, despite the fact that 'what' is generally pronounced 'wut,' it bugs me that most people spell 'wacky' with an h so it would reasonably be pronounced as though whacking were involved. Although, according to somebody with a webpage on an academic server, 'whacky' was the original spelling, so maybe it did originally have something to do with whacking. So that's a little whacky, but I guess I'm over it now.

In ever-popular laundry news, I got away with wearing mostly decontaminated, all-new clothing today, and I felt much better. Yesterday really, really sucked. And that taste in my mouth that I had attributed to something outdoors was just me trying to detox the laundry contaminant when I got away from it, i.e., went outdoors. So it's heart palpitations in the presence of the laundry contaminant in large quantities, and that funny taste in low quantities.

laundry, tortoises, and surprising uses for bug names

Today I learned that I can pretty much decontaminate new clothing and bedding in two days if I run the washer and dryer constantly while I'm awake, and I soaked the quilt overnight in vinegar. Tomorrow my husband intends to remove me from Tucson for the day for mental health reasons, and then I'll go straight back to trying to decontaminate my old stuff. I am not looking forward to my water or electric bills, but since it's hard to go anywhere or do anything if you never sleep or wear clothes, it'll all be worth it.

In other news, one of these fine days I'm going to adopt one of Arizona's captive tortoises, and you're supposed to grow their food for them, and all I have is prickly pear and spurge. (Spurge is a weed, so that one was easy.) The stuff I think I want is some rock hibiscus, some globemallow, some deer grass, and some trailing 4 o'clock. I will consider some petunias, but from my experience with the Arizona sun, I would think they would fry before 10 am around here, but if the Desert Museum says you can feed them to tortoises, they must know something about petunias that I don't.

Also, if your friend who would probably know said there are chiggers in the Chiricahuas, so you can't sleep on the ground, and you look up chiggers on the internet, you can end up with a page full of more ethnic slurs than I ever knew existed.

more laundry

Yesterday I went into Target to buy myself a new basic wardrobe that's only contaminated with chemicals I know how to wash out. I learned that I can handle the fitting rooms for a little while now, which is a huge improvement over a couple of years ago, when I learned that I was much better off just buying drawstring pants, which will fit anybody.

Today I learned that I can't quite decontaminate new stuff in a day, but I almost have sheets and a bunch of clothes. If I can get the quilt I'm going to use as a bed pad sorted out tomorrow, I get to sleep in the bed again.

In extremely related news, every day it seems I am better able to detect my laundry contaminant, but I'm reacting less. So besides getting more sensitive, I've either been making things better slowly, or I'm crashing my immune system. I know which one I'm hoping for.

Sunday afternoon laundry fest

Today I learned that even washing machine parts that were cleaned a month ago can still have all kinds of icky scum all over them. I'm hoping today's cleaning effort will fix it so I can sleep in the bed again soon because I'm down to my last not-recently-washed blanket, and I really don't want to reassemble the torture device rope cot. In extremely related news, this laundry contamination episode began with the smoke from the controlled burn and resulting air filter change only ten days ago; it feels like it's been about three weeks.