They took me for $40 and gave me a tote bag. Bastards.
Bedbugs are truly the assholes of the animal kingdom.
Western Canada has been mercifully free of the little blighters for a long time, but a bedbug infestation broke out in the building I was living in prior to my current digs. I narrowly avoided direct infestation but knew people who basically had to throw out their furniture.
1: $40 gets you the tote bag? I think I have to donate 70 or 80 just to get to the mug level.
3: I've never listened to a pledge drive.
Man is born free, yet everywhere he is delicious.
Christ, heebie. Why are you posting this anywhere near bedtime? I'm going to have the psychosomatic itchies until
morning, now. Thanks.
8: I'm glad I'm not the only one. I was just sitting here at my desk and got a sudden chill at the (false) sensation of something creepy-crawly in my hair. ACK.
I dealt with the bedbug problem by unleashing a death squard of mercenary head lice on them. Take that, you little fuckers! Hahahahaha.
If you'll excuse me now I need to go put this ovicide in what remains of my hair, again.
If someone were truly evil, they'd turn bedbugs loose in a mattress factory.
In ALL the mattress factories.
If I
wasn't shy
I'd turn all the beadbugs loose
in all the factories of mattresses
if I
wasn't shy
No bedbugs, but like Gonerill we've had head lice, four episodes so far. I've been spared, but every time I comb out the rest of the family, my scalp feels as though it's covered with them.
I managed to miss headlice despite having each of my three siblings get infested multiple times. I also am immune to poison oak. Booyah.
I live in fear of this scourge, which signifies the triumph of nature over hygiene. Have you ever seen one of those closeup photos of these nasty little parasites? The pics are always magnified to the maximum degree of ickiness, of course. No, don't google it, not it if you want to sleep soundly tonight. I'm sorry I mentioned it.
I was hoping for a bunch of stories about how easily people got rid of them, actually.
And how they knew people that had them and were over at their houses, but never acquired them themselves. Stories about them not being very contagious.
Please adjust accordingly.
Here's a story about someone successfully getting rid of them. But Jesus Christ that sounds like so much work. Seriously, everything she does would take me like a month to do.
I was hoping for a bunch of stories about how easily people got rid of them, actually.
Wikipedia is not going to be helpful
Bedbug pesticide-resistance appears to be increasing dramatically. Bedbug populations sampled across the U.S. showed a tolerance for pyrethroids several thousands of times greater than laboratory bedbugs. New York City bed bugs have been found to be 264 times more resistant to deltamethrin than Florida bedbugs due to nerve cell mutations.
I know two people who had them. They basically had to throw everything away. I hear they can wrap your whole house in plastic and then heat it to some insane temperature for several hours, but I'm sure that's quite expensive. And then all your books burst into flames and so on. And your house burns down. And everyone dies. Just kidding.
It's not the bedbugs who wrap your house and heat it up. It's the exterminators. To get rid of bedbugs.
Dear lord, we're all going to die.
Did you mean soonish or just in the long run?
||
Also, my fucking students:
Prove that if x is odd and x-y is even, then y is even.
They ALL begin:
Let x = 2k+1.
Let y = 2h.
From there they make uniquely nonsensical steps.
At least there are no math majors in this course; it's a service course for CS and math ed majors. But jesus kids, this problem is a slow ball.
|>
22: I meant in the next 100 years or so.
24: If you get more specific information I trust you'll keep us posted.
It may be when these students land computer programming jobs.
That is supported by my reading of Nostradamus.
Prove that if x is odd and x-y is even, then y is even.
Wait this isn't true.
Whoops, I mistyped it. The question was: x is odd and x-y is odd. Prove y is even.
They ALL begin:
Let x = 2k+1.
Let y = 2h.
From there they make uniquely nonsensical steps.
Correct me if I'm wrong, but that's as good a starting point as any, isn't it?
x - y = (2k +1) - 2h
x - y = 2(k-h) + 1
x - y is odd.
The question was: x is odd and x-y is odd. Prove y is even.
Same idea then.
x = 2k +1
x - y = 2h +1
y = (2h + 1) - 2k +1
y = 2(h-k)
y is even.
It's silly because it's odd to write a proof for something so simple, but that doesn't seem particularly egregious.
Though I messed up the math, because I forgot to multiply by -1.
y = 2(k-h)
31: But that's not what they did.
Prove y is even.
Step 1: Suppose y is even!! Teacher, did I get it right?
You should just teach them to differentiate first. I hear that is easy.
I managed to miss headlice despite having each of my three siblings get infested multiple times. I also am immune to poison oak. Booyah.
I dunno about poison oak, but one of the upsides to losing my hair is that I can just laugh whenever the subject of head lice comes up.
We're homeless. So very glad it is funny to you.
36: You think you guys got it bad? I serve some really lousy overlords.
Ticks are incredibly long-lived, dormant on a tree branch for 40 years until they smell a mammal below.
Loa loa filariasis, google only if you are brave or have a hard time with algebra.
For the students, there's a website for laughing at their code
http://thedailywtf.com/Comments/Avoiding-Magic-Constants.aspx
Just now there was a stink bug in my toilet bowl. The obvious solution (use urine stream to knock him into the water, flush) worked. It was still very annoying.
38.1 provides food for thought. I'd call it a candidate for the new mouseover if I didn't know better.
Yesterday at work, a stink bug kept buzzing the light over my head, periodically landing, realizing it was hot, and then taking off for more buzzing passes. Eventually, I got him into some bits of newspaper and took him outside, whereupon the motherfucker chased me back into the building.
Little shits are serious about getting inside for the winter.
I've seen two spiders in my office at school in the last two days. The small jumpy kind. Fortunately I'm not spider-squeamish.
I find it oddly reassuring that nothing will stop Moby from killing. And then killing again. He's the eternal flame of stomping out eternal flames.
I read that as spider-curious, which seemed reasonable enough.
You could be in luck. Maybe spiders eat mouse poo.
41: I smashed one once. It was inside (near somebody else's office), but I couldn't smell anything bad. I've also stomped a few dozen without my shoes getting stinky. Maybe I got lucky or maybe they've gotten to the media.
The mouse trap is wonderfully untouched so far, for the record.
43: Pittsburgh has a leaky sewer system. The flushed big might make it.
47: I didn't know spiders to be fond of Rube Goldberg-esque board games, but it's nice of you to supply them with some entertainment.
41: Eventually, I got him into some bits of newspaper and took him outside
Stanley, word is you're supposed to flush 'em down the toilet. This way you put an end to their way of making a scent-trail to the building, by means of which they enable additional and future stink bugs to find the place, like, next year.
The quickest mouse catch I ever did was using a generic Sugar Smack as bait.
54: Uh, yeah, and then they mutate and can breathe underwater and emerge from the toilet like the rat in that TAL episode? Yeah, no thanks.
That was also the worst because the mouse grabbed the bait with his little paw. He didn't died because his neck was clear of the trap.
Pro tip: when you kill in bulk, it really pays off to use generic supplies.
The mouse's plight was so touching, my grammar suffered.
I think the cooties reference in the OP might have been a TAL episode too.
56: "This American Life" had a toilet rat? Maybe I've been too quick to ignore NPR.
56: I don't think that's how toilets work, but okay, if you want to liberate the stink bugs, I guess that's alright all right.
||
Hawaiian Punch just threw a giant tantrum in her sleep. She never stirs much, so after a minute or two of hysteria I went to check on her. Eyes closed, back arched, furious. Swatting away my hand when I tried to comfort her. Boy was she sleep-mad. Then she wrapped it up.
|>
Bring on the bedbugs! I'm done grading! Night.
I suffered the depradations of bedbugs in a shitty vietnamese hotel, and we swore we would move, and then we got so drunk and high we ended up spending another night despite the bugs. we basically coated ourselves in industrial-strength DEET. it was less itchy but they still got us; it's gross to see all the spots of blood on the sheet and think, hey, that's my blood, fucker! later I got bitten on the head by a poisonous spider (while asleep at a different hotel) and then the bites became infected with the flesh-eating bacteria, spread by those little icy-cool towels they give you at restaurants. I still have a scar on my nose, from touching the sores and then smelling my hand, thinking, that smells just wrong as hell. ended up with a giant bubbling infection on my nose. and then the berkeley health people took care of it, the end. hey, check out deet.com!
ps I still strongly recommend travel in vietnam, this was ages ago, but do not use the deceptively refreshing cool towels at the restaurant, unless it's aman-something.
If you're looking for stories about bedbugs not being so bad/contagious, well.
Our roommate had them last year in the tenement we shared in Brooklyn. I think she caught them from the crackheads who lived across the hallway when they walked through the uncaulked 19th century walls. They liked to bite her on the face, I suppose because that's the most accessible part of a sleeping body.
She ran most of her possessions through the dryer, put others out on the fire escape to freeze, and had an exterminator come four or five times to spray everything down with permethrin. After three months or so, the bedbugs were gone.
Somehow, they never managed to waddle over to our bedroom, some 70 feet away, and we never got a single bite.
Reading recent accounts of bedbug infestations, I think that went about as well as these things possibly can go. As far as news reports go, I would bear in mind that you're most likely to hear about infestations that are unusually intractable. Average experiences are by nature less newsworthy.
This is very timely, as I've spent the last couple of weeks being bitten by something. Was scared it was bedbugs, but decided it wasn't as there is no other sign of them, and I was getting bitten during the day, and the bites are really tiny. So decided I had body lice (knew I shouldn't have fucked that tramp at the end of the road, but his cheap cider just got the better of me). But actually it is now stopping and I think it might have been bird mites - we sleep in the attic and there was a pigeon nest under the eaves somewhere. Then our helpful neighbour put a load of chicken wire over the pigeon hole, and then I started getting bitten - my assumption is that it was the desperate bird mites. The good news is that they can't reproduce on human blood. The bad news is that I am still covered in tiny scabs.
And I got a tick on holiday. Parasite City, that's me.
sorry asilon, that's a drag. you would know if it were bedbugs, though, they're distinctly awful, and there really are bloody spots on the linen.
The bad news is that I am still covered in tiny scabs.
Just like the factory that hired children during a strike.
How many 6 year-old scabs can one union member beat in a fight?
46: I smashed one once. It was inside (near somebody else's office), but I couldn't smell anything bad
My experience is that the smell is not that bad, almost a bit "lime-y" or like cilantro. Also within our family there was a significant difference in sensitivity to the smell, my son and I picked it up right away, while my wife could barely smell it when we had a vacuum canister half full of them. For the stragglers we have a few jars of rubbing alcohol around that we sweep them into.
16: Stories about them not being very contagious.
They do not infest people's homes who lead goodly and virtuous lives.
43: I find it oddly reassuring that nothing will stop Moby from killing. And then killing again.
He came dancing across the prairie
With his poisons and his traps
Looking for affirmation
For every bug he zaps.
Actually, that is approximately my least favorite Neil Young song.
My experience is that the smell is not that bad, almost a bit "lime-y" or like cilantro.
Interesting. I like the smell too but I think it is very much like the cucumber Hint Water.
I had bedbugs in 2003, before it was cool.
One of my children was more allergic than the rest of us and it took awhile to diagnose. The family practitioner treated us for scabies 3 times before sending us to a dermatologist, who said, "If I didn't know better I'd think you lived in Harlem and had bedbugs." (This was also before it was cool for white people to live in Harlem.)
The landlord said it wasn't his responsibility, so we paid $500 for an exterminator, which got rid of them for about 4 months, and then repeated it. At this point, we found out that the neighbor above us lived with them in harmony because he wasn't allergic ("You mean those little things that walk around in the bed while you're reading?"), thus creating a permanent reservoir.
We moved out, and dusted all of the furniture with something we bought around 170th St., and never saw any bedbugs again. We did not throw anything out, and did not simultaneously wash or dry all of our clothes.
I sent the landlord a letter stating that it seemed to me that the money he lost when I moved out was probably canceled out by my moving and extermination costs, so there was no point in suing each other, and he apparently agreed. I also suggested that the whole building needed to be treated. I doubt that took place.
When I moved into my current building, I found a note under my door from the tenant organizing the bedbug complaints to the landlord. Yikes! They are now known to travel vertically, and my line hasn't been reported to have any yet, but most of the A and F apartments have seen them.
The landlord is taking it seriously, and the little bedbug sniffing beagle from the commercials came to check out all of the apartments. I don't want to make any accusations in a public forum, but let's just say that his handler can be persuaded through the usual methods to report an alert, and my apartment got a very thorough treatment. Haven't seen any bedbugs yet. I also plan to spray around my bed every 3 months with some stuff that claims to keep them away for 4.
persuaded through the usual methods
Titties! Hooray!
Would that still work at my age?
A note on raising children in Manhattan: I was putting the kids into a taxi to go to their father's house after Thanksgiving dinner, as well as walking the dog before going to work. They got in and the car drove off, then stopped, and the window rolled down. My daughter asked, "Mom, I know it's $6 to get to Dad's house, and $2 for the tip, and $1 because it's Thanksgiving. But you had the dog when you hailed the cab and he stopped anyway, so does he get the $1 for the dog even though you didn't get in?"
I had them in 2007 and it wasn't a big deal. I put covers on my mattress and box spring; put vaseline on the legs of my bed; washed a bunch of clothes and all my bedding; took other clothes to the dry cleaner; and put other clothes in plastic bags and sealed them up for year. I also cleaned out my closet and took a bunch of stuff to the junkyard that didn't seem worth cleaning. This all took about a day. (Luckily, I'm able-bodied and have a car.)
The exterminator came every couple of weeks to treat -- about 4 or 5 times in total. And I haven't seen them since then. My building paid for it.
Unfortunately, it turns out that a few people in my building are chronic hoarders. This makes it basically impossible to treat their apartments effectively, which really sucks for their immediate neighbors. This has caused a lot of conflict in the building.
OT:
I just saw Charles Krauthammer rolling down the street!
87: And if he was, did you piss on him?
One of our group homes has bed bugs. My old neighborhood was full if them. The brother-in law of one of my coworkers is in the bed bug removal business. You have to invest in a lot of equipment, but then you gross at least $250k. And that may be net.
86: I just saw Charles Krauthammer rolling down the street!
A friend of mine was almost run down on the street the other day by a drunk, bicycling Uma Thurman.
83: persuaded through the usual methods
So how much bribery do you have to engage in, on average, as a middle-class resident of NYC? It was definitely one of the things that struck me, the one time I've spent a significant amount of time in Manhattan: The city is just too big and complicated to get everything done that needs to be done, without bribes.
Also, New Yorkers: How much of a distinction do you make, ethically, between actual cash bribes and the sort of in-kind gifts of food or alcohol or tickets or whatever that I gather are fairly common?
And finally: Didn't I already right that a former financial industry colleague of mine (young guy, no college), quit that business and went to work for one of the big exterminator chains, and now spends 40 hours a week doing nothing but bedbug abatement?
92: None, unless you count more expansive Christmas tipping than I think is common in other parts of the country -- mostly $50--$100 to the super and other building employees, and because Buck's running a business, he tips the mailman and the FedEx and UPS guys as well.
But we may just have a simpler life than other people. What would you envision bribing people for?
It is true that in NYC you have to hire a special person called a "fixer" whenever you do a major remodeling, right? So I've heard.
I have enjoyed dinner at a very crowded Churrascaria in midtown thanks to the benjamin my then-boss slipped the maitre d, but aren't those people amenable to bribes pretty much anywhere?
because Buck's running a business
Getting the permit approved in a timely manner, having the truck unloaded after hours, having the plumber come out on Sunday: all things that can cost extra that are not necessarily "bribes", but not always reported to the boss either.
95: Well, in the old days, I guess, getting your phone hooked up. But nowadays, getting the super to fix things, getting other utilities hooked up, getting permits to fix things, getting someone to ignore the fact that you didn't get a permit, that kind of stuff. Not so much the maitre'dees, although that's hardly surprising, but as Sifu points out, not limited to NYC. Why, I always make sure to palm a $5 bill that I cleverly exchange with Greg, the host at my favorite Olive Garden, every time we go in. He makes us feel really special, you know?
I get the impression that a lot of people around here (MPLS, not Unfogged) are real chiselers who don't tip delivery men who bring you large, unwieldy objects like beds and appliances. I cannot countenance that.
Would that still work at my age?
Probably, but I couldn't say for sure without a picture.
Barney Coopersmith: You don't tip FBI men!
Vinne Antonelli: Sure ya do!
96: "Expediter" is the term you're looking for.
90: I was writing on my ipod and had to get up in 30 seconds. She said that he made around $250K. I'm guessing that that's his gross income because $250K seems high to me, but my social worker colleague didn't know the specifics. In the case of this particular colleague, I don't know that she knows what those words mean, so I didn't ask. But it's entirely possible that it is so lucrative that you can make $250K net.
103: I tip everybody. That's my philosophy.
Well, for one thing, I finally figured out how to deal with moving.
Previously, I always had binding estimates, but there were always unexpected issues that came up the led to extra line-item billing, ending up with 6 big dudes in my apartment wanting more money.
Then I learned the secret: negotiate the gratuity in advance. I agreed to pay $300/hour for 6 guys, 2 trucks, materials included. The estimate was for 10-15 hours, and my previous move with 4 guys had taken about 16 hours (which was rather inconvenient).
So, when the foreman arrived, I told him that I had $4500 as agreed, and I sure hoped they would to finish early, because I would much rather give the money to his guys than his boss. The result? He tore up the paper he'd started filling out, saying that he'd arrived at 8:30 but they really hadn't gotten started until about 9. No extra fees for unusually complicated disassembly, no mention of anything not fitting in the elevator, and the travel time between the 2 apartments was exactly how long it takes to drive that distance. When I ordered lunch for them, I had a hard time getting them to stop to eat it.
They did a great job, finished in 10 hours, took home $250 each, and it didn't cost me any more than it would have anyway.
They also remembered me the next time I moved, and the team was apparently bummed that I sent some kids off to college and only needed 4 guys.
I think it might have been bird mites
Don't go swimming in Lac Leman unless you want to start wondering how you got crabs. The duck mites love your groin.
It's hard to duck mites. They're so leetle you don't see 'em till they're right up on you.
107 is kind of horrifying me: it costs you $4,500 to move in Manhattan? My parents hired moving companies when we moved from state to state back in the day -- and of course I have no idea what that cost, and a good portion of it may have been reimbursed -- but that kind of thing is beyond my comprehension. Difference of scale, or something.
Yeah, it seems a lot to me. It cost us less than $1000 to move last time, and that was a full-pack from the movers, plus from Oxford to London.
We've always moved our own stuff, which may be why we are still in the current house. Somebody should warn people about the amount of stuff you acquire after 30. It just appeared one day.
111: I don't even mean that it's expensive for the service, since I have no idea how much these things tend to cost here in the U.S., never having used a full service. I surely couldn't afford it. The last time I moved a house full of things a mere 200 miles -- about a year ago -- it was roughly $1,000 for truck rental alone, over the course of three days, labor provided by our own selves.
I suspect my only point is that I must scale down my belongings, assume a month overlap between abodes, and take the prospect of moving just as seriously as I have been taking it.
One time we rented a truck, one of those small ones, and they were out so they gave us a 25' truck for the same price. Driving that through the West Virginia mountains was not pleasant and the floor of the truck was about five feet high so we had to lift everything.
I drove a 24' truck over the Sierras once. That is a very different experience from driving a smaller vehicle, boy.
114: The truck is supposed to have a ramp-thingy that extends out to the ground. You know.
the amount of stuff you acquire after 30 having children.
116: It did, but it is still more work than the low bed of a small truck.
117: The boy can move his own stuff.
Oh, kids are miniature, aren't they? It's not like they need a dining room table.
When you have kids, you need to get a dining room table because if your kids mention that they always eat dinner on the coffee table, the other parents with real jobs will give you funny looks at pick-up.
I once pulled a car behind a fully-loaded 25' truck, which had, in addition to me, the driver, my wife and two dogs in the cab. I drove that monstrosity from Norman, Oklahoma to Denver, Colorado. We didn't have to deal with any mountains, fortunately, but a wind storm in Kansas was so severe that I thought the truck might well tip over. God, I hate the Southern Plains.
I've also been through the desert on a horse with no name.
But I feel suddenly apologetic about 119. I guess they need beds.
118: Way more work than loading the stuff into a van. Especially when it rains and the ramp turns into a slip and slide.
Also, never drive a 25'ish truck east through Wheeling, West Virginia unless you just like scaring yourself into a heart attack.
max
['The Columbus, Ohio vomit comet is pretty exciting too.']
I know what you are talking about in Wheeling, but I didn't take the truck that way. I did make that trip in a Ram 50 in a snow storm. They did some work and it isn't that bad going down. The climb is still rough.
It cost me about one thousand to move from a 6fl walkup in upper Manhattan to a third floor one in Brooklyn. Four guys, about five hours including a traffic jam. All Israelis for some reason. We had an agreed upon price of seven hundred, they insisted on upping it. I probably would have won in court, but I wouldn't have had my stuff for a long time. I did not give out any tips.
I'm feeling almost lucky now that I'll be saving on NYC moving costs by having to buy all new furniture.
125: Yeah, it's pretty obvious from Shamhat's descriptions that she had a lot more stuff to move, a full family with childrens' worth, 6 guys for 15 hours.
236: Blandings, did you get the bedbugs? I missed that news, if so, or else didn't keep track. My sympathies, if it's the case.
It's not the bedbugs, it's all the stuff they accumulate that you have to move with them. Bedbug bunkbeds, bedbug dinette sets, bedbug bug's life toyboxes.
237: Divorce, not bedbugs, I believe. Though they're not mutually exclusive and there can be metaphorical overlap too.
129: Oh. I'd missed that as well. Sympathies continue.
Y'all are making me feel extremely lucky about the relative lack of moves in my life.
the amount of stuff you acquire after having children.
What's amazing to me is both the sheer amount of stuff that is truly necessary with young children, and how fast it (can) dissipate. I'm faux-single-parenting this weekend with a 20-month-old and an almost-four-year-old, and there is a slew of items that they legitimately need that, say, a 6- and 8-year-old just will not.
Also, holy smokes is parenting a lot of work. Not that I was under any delusion about this, but it's like the Jean Kerr comment writ large: "The thing about having a baby -- and I can't be the first person to have noticed this -- is that thereafter you have it." So much for showering, or brushing your teeth, or you know, breathing independently.
I'm faux-single-parenting this weekend with a 20-month-old and an almost-four-year-old, and there is a slew of items that they legitimately need that, say, a 6- and 8-year-old just will not.
Yes. After they can pee off the deck, it gets much easier.
It may be different with girls. I don't know.
After they can pee off the deck, it gets much easier.
You're on a BOAT?
131: Thanks. It's amicable, as these things go, and it's the right outcome. It's just sad that it's the right outcome.
136: You can't pee off the side of a boat unless you know the river is full of fish with that particular kink.
137 -- I'd missed that too. Condolences, Blandings. I've been there.
126: My sympathies. But yeah, having to buy everything for your new place does make moving a hell of a lot easier.
(Holy crap, it's been a year since I went through all that. Feel simultaneously like a very short and a very long period of time.)
It's amicable, as these things go
I had one of those. Beats the alternative, I guess, but it's still no fun. I'm sorry to hear it.
Holy crap, it's been a year
I realized a few weeks ago that it had now been a decade for me, which hardly even seems possible.
Crap, crap, crap.
I accidentally had a ton of books (ok, more like 10) shipped to my old address. I didn't realize this until now. At least two packages have already been left at my old apartment's door. I'm out of town right now; I suppose I am just going to swing by on my way home and see if I can pick them up. But oh my fucking god, how stupid am I?
(PS: That last question is rhetorical. I really don't need the answer.)
120: So *that's* what the looks are about? Well, huh.