Where Did My Day Go?

Jeez, where did my night go!

I got caught up I guess...some ersatz housekeeping...well some real vacuuming, and some computer housekeeping...

I was at it early, thorough vacuuming in the living room before the housekeeper came. We've been at war with blood-sucking fleas for better than two weeks...we've dusted the whole house with Food Grade Diatomacious Earth, and left it in the carpets for a whole two weeks. The stuff is insidious however, I can see how it would worm it's way between the flea's exoskeleton segments, and cut to the quick. It's just chalk if you get down to the chemical level, so it's organic...

No really...DE, diatomacious earth is made from millions of microscopic diatom skeletons...dead plankton actually. They mine the stuff somewhere...mostly for filter media used in swimming pool filters. The pool filter DE is too coarse for the flea genocide business, and the food grade designation is real, the super-fine stuff is used for "polishing" liquids, wines and beer, and many more beverages I'm sure.

Wednesday's vacuum job was the Home Stretch...I spent a couple of hours Tuesday afternoon dusting and vacuuming the Den, the hallway, and my room...I have an Industrial dusting method that's much more satisfying (and way less back breaking) than the old faithful rag and Pledge routine.

My method takes a little more set-up than grabbing a bottle of Pledge and the rag bag, but in the end it's just too much fun not to do it.

I open all the curtains all the way. I put a large fan up against the window screens and turn 'em on Max. Then I run 50ft of air hose from the compressor in the garage, tipped with an air nozzle. With the air in one hand, and a horsehair bench broom in the other, let the games begin. I even use a Mini Maglite with a bite appliance in my mouth to shine a light on every mote of my quarry.

So, I swept and blasted away and vacuumed and blasted some more for a couple of hours before grabbing some leftovers for dinner and settled in to watch the Giants game from SoCal.

Not the Dodgers, the "Los Angeles" Angels, who broke our hearts in the 2002 World Series. Dang if they didn't take two of three to keep our hearts hurting...still the Dodgers did manage to pace us so we didn't lose that much. It's a long season with almost 100 regular season games still to play. Even though we lost two of three, the Giants are 3rd in batting average in the National League for the past two weeks. The team is coming together nicely.

It's a long season...as it should be!