New Apartment Woes

The downside of living in apartments outside of Utah means the possibility of inheriting a home from a smoker is significantly greater.

When I first moved in, my home smelled horrible. Granted, it wasn't as bad as say, my mother's home, but it still made my head throb.

The first thing I did was to run over to the Dollar General to purchase Febreeze and Glade Plug Ins.

I sprayed Febreeze on everything except the ceiling. It cut the majority of the smell, but I could still feel the stinging in my lungs after about an hour of sitting in my home.

Frustrated, I turned to the Interwebs. There are tons of home remedies, and I decided to try the inexpensive suggestions.

I purchased the best air filter money could by. Thankfully, it was only $9. I bought cotton vent covers for the air vents. I purchased a vanilla saturated special square to put on my expensive new air filter. I even bought charcoal briquettes and put three in the bottom of each vent. Well, that's a lie... Brandy put them in the vents.

After two days of not smelling an improvement, I went a little more drastic last night: I put charcoal briquettes on four of the six vents in the house. The ones I didn't treat were the ones in the kitchen and bathroom. This is because there are doors which open up over them.

They have been in place for over 12 hours now, and I believe this has done the trick. However, this means the problem lies in the air ducts.

The cleaning of air ducts can become very expensive, and I doubt the management company would be willing to pay for this.

There are some inexpensive things I can try to eliminate the smell in the vents, which I might try at the end of the month.

I'll need to have a final solution (that's for you, Abby) before the fall. I don't feel it's a good idea to keep the briquettes in and on the vents when the heat is being used.

Anyone out there have any recommendations for eliminating cigarette smoke odor?

UPDATE:

Sunday night I emptied an entire CAN of Lysol Odor Neutralizer into the vents, hoping it would kill whatever nastiness lived in there.  I'll be able to tell when I get home Monday evening.

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My Mouth is Wet, My Throat is Dry

On Friday morning I was aware of my throat.  

And then I got a sense of dread--something is up.  It's normally not a good sign when I'm made aware of a part of my body I usually don't pay attention to.

I drank more water which lead to an emotionally scarring event I didn't drink water for the rest of the day on Friday.

I did not get a lot of fluids on Saturday, and I could feel myself draining.  To my symptoms I added fever and coughing.  I wanted to believe so desperately I was sick due to spending time with a croupy three year-old over Memorial Day Weekend rather than being the subject of some horrific children's song about a lady ingesting a spider. 


By the time 5:00 pm rolled around, all I wanted was to go to bed.  I made myself some dinner hoping it would give me some umpf, but we all know this didn't happen.  I mean, you read the title of this post, right?

I went upstairs to go to bed, but the well meaning Tiny followed me up there.  She wanted her hair braided and wanted to play.  I complied with both until I just couldn't stay awake any longer.  Poor thing, all she wanted to do was play and have fun, but mean old Auntie Misty shot her down for sleeping.  

I woke up coughing in the middle of the night, and I generally feel like hud today.  My symptoms today include mild fever, gravely voice, coughing, and a tickle in the back of my throat.

I sure hope it's the croup, and not some exotic spider sickness or something.

There Was an Old Lady Who Swallowed a Spider

If you read my other post, you know I wasn't feeling well on Friday, and was drinking a lot of water.  

Thursday I filled up  my huge, metal water bottle one of my NASA colleagues had given to me prior to leaving for the night.  I put the cap on thinking "I'll drink it tomorrow."  Now, I did NOT screw the cap on, but I just put it on there.

At 10 am, when I was taking the last swig of water, I felt something in my mouth.  It had the consistency of a wad of paper or wet popcorn.  I quickly spat the contents back into the water bottle and looked.  I was honestly expecting to see paper.  I mean, there's a TON of paper at NASA.  It's totally possible it was paper.


The picture in this post is what I found.


To my credit, I didn't freak out as much as you might imagine I would.  I calmly seperated the creature from the water.  Then it was sticking to the inside of the water bottle, so I had to bang it a few times to get it out onto a paper towel.  

Then I counted the legs.  Four times.  

I shivered, threw it away, and asked a coworker for gum.  She and I talked for a bit about the incident and then I had to vomit.


Needless to say, this event left me traumatized and I couldn't stand the thought of drinking anything for the rest of the day.  This fear spilled over into Saturday, causing me not to drink until about noon.

Since then, I have been plagued with a sore throat.  This has caused a nagging thought in the back of my brain that I might have some sort of exotic spider sickness.  Not the cool kind which renders me the female version of Peter Parker, but the kind that leaves me dead.  Or vomiting spiders.  Or some such horrific scene.

Lessons Learned: ALWAYS cap your drink, and never use a container for drinking if you can't see through it.

Fireside Bank STINKS!

Remind me to tell you the story of how Fireside Bank makes it's customers break state law because they are too cheap to spend 50 cents to mail something to Ohio.

S.T.A.R.T.

I got a new bank here in Ohio.  It's U.S. Bank, and so far, I have been as happy as a clam with everything.  The reason I went with them vs. another bank in the area is due to their S.T.A.R.T. Savings program. 

What I have done is set my account up so each time I use my debit card, $1.00 will be transferred into my savings account.  Some people might see this as the acme of foolishness, but it's a way for me to think about how I spend my money.  It is a way for me to save without really thinking about it, and a way that isn't painful. 

I believe this also follows a principle from George S. Clason's book, The Richest Man in Babylon.  Most people, Clason included, will tell you the secret to wealth is to pay yourself first.  Well, I'll pay God first with tithing and pay myself second.

I'm half-tempted to post my success/struggles by how well I'm saving here, so I have some sort of accountability, you know?  But then again, do I want every Tom, Dick, or Terri to know how much money I have in the bank?  Not that my identity is worth stealing, but there are some things which should be kept private.  Abby has thoughts on this, I'm sure.  I'll wait for her to make my decision for me.

Okay, now that it's officially Monday, I'm going to head off to bed.  Time for me to get some sleep before work tomorrow.  You know, with the huge report I have to do for NASA.