siege day 36

Today I learned that sea lions sleep under the wharf in Santa Cruz, and there are big square viewing holes in the wharf that say on their rails to not feed the sea lions. Also, Corning/Corelle outlets definitively do not carry glass lids for their discontinued 1 liter pots.

siege day 34

Today I learned that even though blogs are very last decade, if you're not going to go all full-on facebook, you should probably say something now and then, or your friends might wonder what's going on with you.

So what's going on is that the designation 'siege' is not really applicable because we had to abandon the fort on Wednesday. It makes it hard to work and shop for your friends when you're gone, but I couldn't do those things from inside my house anyway, and here I can go in stores and make it to family birthday parties.

Here I can make myself sore walking on level sidewalks for 25 minutes, but two days later, I'm in enough better shape that I got to walk for an hour and a half in the hills where there are lots of wildflowers. This thing where you can go outside for as long as you want is almost indescribable.

I expected that indescribable feeling to arrive almost immediately upon leaving town, but I didn't. It didn't until we stopped in Phoenix to buy another air cleaner, and I got to pay for it. I paid for dinner, too, even though it's the same money no matter which of us pays for things. Apparently being able to buy stuff is the definition of freedom.

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We still don't know what's causing the air quality problem in Tucson, but now that I'm feeling better, I can resume making phone calls and maybe cook up one o' them FOIA requests to the base. Or maybe the Air National Guard, which works out of the regular airport. After driving immediately downwind of a little airport in Phoenix during the exodus, I'm thinking my biggest problem is airplane exhaust, so I'll have to call the regular airport, too.

That one lady who is so sure the problem is coming from the base says it feels like spraying or something that goes on during specific hours of the evening, and when it ends around 11 pm, she can go back into town and be fine until the next evening. No one else can get close enough to even pretend to pinpoint the source, so we'll have to just keep calling people until somebody figures something out.

siege day 18

Today I learned that the main ingredient in pvc glue is tetrahydrofuran. We've been thinking the stuff coming from the base was one of the aromatic hydrocarbons, but for all we know, it could be a whatever tetrahydofuran is. For that matter, they could just be painting with enamel paint on a large scale, and I haven't bothered to figure out what solvent goes in enamel paint.

Whatever's going on, the base isn't saying, and I haven't figured out how to word a Freedom of Information Act request yet. If we can pin down what the base is doing differently, maybe we can find out when it's going to stop.

The only upside here is that since I mostly can't go to work, I have lots of time to figure out the FOIA request.

how to secure a house against poison gas

Tonight I learned that if you're going to tape your house shut, you should follow through and not just tape the windows facing the prevailing winds. You should tape the whole damn thing shut. You know how Homeland Security told us all to have plastic and duct tape on hand? That's essentially what we've got going over here, but we use Tu Tuff and blue tape because Tu Tuff doesn't stink and blue tape won't pull the paint off your walls. The only thing is that Tu Tuff is white, so now we can't see out to know if the Air Force base is actually sneaking over here to kill us in person or just staying where it is and sending over EI-killing jet-cleaner chemicals.

The other thing I learned is that the rules say that unless an environmental problem is affecting a 'substantial' part of the population, the rest of us have to put up with it. Is 15% substantial? I think I need a lawyer.

the sick leading the blind

Today I didn't learn whether or not I have to leave town. There's something horrible outside, and it started showing up March 22nd. It blew away when we had an east wind, but now we haven't had one for a week or so. It is ok in my house most of the time, but sometimes it's not, and sometimes it's my fault for fiddling with the air handling system.

One woman here in town is absolutely 100% confident that it's coming from the Air Force base, but no one knows how to get anything straight out of them. The air quality department does the very best it knows how, but from an EI's perspective, putting non-EIs in charge of that is like putting a bunch of visually impaired people in charge of an art gallery full of paintings. They know there are paintings, but they can only figure out what they are by reading the descriptions, assuming somebody put Braille on there. (Which is not to imply I know what chemical this is, but PDEQ is in no position to even confirm there is a chemical.)

On top of the whatever, there is now a very exciting pollen season going on, so if I want to get out of the whatever, I have to contend with the pollen. Last week all I had to do was get a little outside of town over some hills, but now if I want to leave the house, it'll be a long drive.