desert broom

Today I learned that if the desert broom starts blooming in town, and you feel like you suddenly have the worst cold you've ever had, you should not go for a walk at the national park, even though it is outside town. It is not far enough outside, and your terrible cold-like symptoms can morph into terrible flu-like symptoms. The only good thing here is that (for me) reactions don't last nearly as long as actual colds or flu.

stuff that'll kill you plus a lesson in writing legislation

Today I learned that you can bring home the contaminant over at my friends' house in your car. And yes, I should stop trying to go over there, but the wind changed directions and it sounded really promising. Apparently, the new wind direction makes an eddy in their area, so the new unfinished house, with its porta-john, is still upwind.

Everything else I learned so far today I learned on Fark:

• Bisphenol A exposure in Chinese workers directly correlates with men's sperm quality, so now we have an actual BPA study done on humans, and the results were not good news. I have to admit that due to some hormonal weirdness while eating unusual levels of canned chicken broth while I was on vacation, I had my suspicions that BPA was worse for you that people thought. I was in a moldier outdoor environment than I usually am, too, so my personal anecdotal evidence is not compelling, but I'm done with canned anything now.
• A private prison company cooked up Arizona's SB 1070. Their business model involves locking people up, and according to NPR, they wrote the danged thing in December of last year, and it passed in April of this year practically untouched.

What really annoys me is that the prison people came up with a very clever way to make more money, but locking people up should not be in anyone's financial interest.

important stuff makes the news

Today I learned that people putting mothballs in their yards to repel snakes made the news, in that it's illegal and the Arizona Department of Agriculture will come visit you and make you clean up your mothballs so you don't kill (or at least make really sick) pets and small children. The article only says that the incident happened up in the northwest part of the state, but I can report here that the EI grapevine knows whose neighbors did it and in what town.

In other news, EIs use vodka (contains ethanol) to decontaminate things with alcohol-soluble contaminants because rubbing alcohol (isopropyl alcohol) reeks. I'm not really clear why other people would use it, but here's a whole article in slideshow format about what all vodka is good for besides drinking.

And here are some cosmetic ingredients that'll kill you, and THIS JUST IN: if your husband forgets to tell the barber to spray his hair only with plain water, he can bring home a stage 5 perfume emergency.

new construction, laundry, and politics

Today I learned that the problem over at my friends' house can at least partially be blamed on a new house that is upwind and about a 1/4 mile away. That place, which now has stucco and windows, appears to be a major source of death-defying air quality. I don't know why it's still so evil if it has stucco and windows, but I have high hopes that it will get better soon.

In other news, if you know a homeless EI, and I think most EIs do, and you somehow become the only one who can handle some of her laundry, then you, too, can learn all about how microscopic loads of laundry (separated to prevent cross-contamination) form little cloth logs in the dryer that fall from one fin to another, not tumbling and making little thump sounds roughly a half second apart. You can run the dryer for an hour, sucking pollen into your house the whole time, and those things will never, ever dry. She doesn't tolerate the air outside my house or inside my house, so it's a wonder the dryer helps at all anyway.

In political news, I mentioned before that I'm expecting a major shift in political parties in 2012, and I think we're on track for Tea Party vs. Democrats, but it would be really fun if the Democrats get unpopular enough to be overthrown by, say, Transformers. I would miss nap time for Tea Party vs. Transformers.

blogs are in (who knew?)

Today I learned that blogging is still alive and well and more popular than ever now that you don't really have to write words and, y'know, stuff. You can just post pictures and links to articles and call yourself a blogger, which is essentially what I thought I was doing here back in the day.

So to rejoin the story here, in case anyone still reads anonymous blogs, we're in the middle of a vacation-induced laundry sensitivity involving hard water, vinegar, and All detergent residue. My only ammunition is baking soda or ammonia, and I can't say that they work as well as vinegar and All did, not that I ever really tolerated All. You use the vinegar to wash the All out, but somehow really hard water messed up the process.

In other news, a friend of ours got a new heat pump while we were on vacation and tried valiantly to offgas it before we got back. I can spend roughly two minutes a time at their place now, and I miss my friends. I know it'll probably offgas all the way by February, but I don't get out much.