Kevin's Watch

SoulQuest1970 wrote:Ok, not only do I already feel sick today, but the guy in the next cubicle belches ALL DAY LONG!!! EVERY DAY!!! Even my radio and headphone do not drown it out. *sigh*

At least he's not farting.....

Lorelei wrote:

SoulQuest1970 wrote:Ok, not only do I already feel sick today, but the guy in the next cubicle belches ALL DAY LONG!!! EVERY DAY!!! Even my radio and headphone do not drown it out. *sigh*

At least he's not farting.....

He does that too. Fortunately I can't smell them.

Well if they ever do you should inform him that chemical warfare is in fact in direct violation of the Geneva Conventions.

Lorelei wrote:Well if they ever do you should inform him that chemical warfare is in fact in direct violation of the Geneva Conventions.

Thank you for the great laugh! LOL!!

Seriously, get a big thing of gas-x and leave it on his desk with a note that says, "For the love of all that is holy, please, I am begging you, please take some of this."

great. a book i won on e-bay came in! a 1923 edition of a poetry collection by Vachel Lindsay. we have already contacted somebody about rebinding it. i am so happy.
(and i took today off.)


en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vachel_Lindsay

I feel baffled. The interior of my car smells like skunk. Not eye-watering levels, but bad enough.

There's no smell outside. Skunk poltergeist? Skunk nanobots?

It's definitely skunk smell and not a sulfury rotting egg smell? Does it get stronger/weaker if you turn on the heat/ac blower?

Cameraman Jenn wrote:It's definitely skunk smell and not a sulfury rotting egg smell? Does it get stronger/weaker if you turn on the heat/ac blower?

It has a musky animal tang, rather than an eggy smell. When I turned on the heater it was less noticable.

Please to shed light upon this mystery, car genius person?

Well, it's not the catalytic converter if it's not eggy. If it got less when you turned on the heater then it's not coming from the engine compartment or inside the vents. That leaves it down to something inside the passenger/driver area. I would check around under and as much in the seats as you can to see if any little critters got in accidentally. It happens.

There's been an opossum wandering around my house the last few days.... Could he have crawled up under the hood? Maybe I cooked him when I started the car!? AUUUGGHHHH!

Oh, God, poor little cooked possum!

Mmmm.... cooked possum.

Take a peek under the hood.

Clearly the muffler bearings.

This site should help.

WHAT?!!!? They don't offer hydraulic blinker fluid? OR fuel injector splatter guards? What kind of backwater site is that?

On a serious note Jwaneeta, I asked the questions because most likely it is something within the interior compartment. If it was coming from the engine, running the heater would make the smell stronger because it would be bringing the air in directly from the engine compartment. It also rules out something falling/crawling into the heater ducts and dying. Again, an occurrance more common than one might think. The only other thing I can think of is that maybe something is stuck to the exhaust and burning off from under the car. Also, make sure there is nothing yucky in the trunk. Just in case something rolled out from your last grocery run into a corner of the trunk and it's missing status was overlooked. I have seen multiple occasions when an unidentifiable smell was caused by something like this. It also raises the likelihood tenfold when the smell is animalish and not plastic burning or rubbery. I actually had a customer complaining about a smell and we discovered that it was from a bag in his trunk where he had left a wet swimsuit in with a towel and sweaty gym clothes. Ugh. I had another customer who's groceries had leaked some sort of meat juice into the carpet of her trunk, thus the animal rotting smell that permeated her car.

Well, I crawled around with a flashlight and didn't find spoor or anything. No luminous possum eyes blinking and no cooked possum feet. And now the smell is gone.

It was really strong last night... it's weird that it could dissipate so quickly. I hope it doesn't come back, because it was rank.

Heh -- I left a steak in my trunk once. Made this stenchy episode smell like the flowers of Elysium.

It was probably something that got on the exhaust pipe and burned off. I wouldn't worry about it and I am super glad it is gone.

On other notes, I discovered that the next few months are gonna be hell around here. I came home and was sitting in the sunporch working on my latest MN chapter piece and tuning out the hammering/banging from the demolition guys next door when the crazy upstairs neighbor starts screaming "Stop it! Stop it! Stop it! Stop Hammering! Stop Hammering!" I hear a pause and a bunch of spanish being spoken of which I can make out enough to know that they are talking about the crazy guy. They bring in the foreman and he explains to John, very patiently, that they need to remove the damaged parts of the building and that it is going to create some noise. John starts yelling about how he can't hear his tv. The foreman is very patient and tries to explain again that noise is inevitable but the sooner they can get their work done, the sooner the noise will stop. John just keeps repeating that they have to stop because he can't hear his tv. I realize from this exchange that it must have already happened several times before. Ugh. The day after the fire John must have told me a hundred times in a shocked and helpless voice that his tv and phone were not working. He could not grasp the concept that it might take time to fix it. He nearly drove BGB insane. BGB joked that as long as John's cable and phone were working he would have willingly sat and let the whole place burn down around him and now I realize that was said in jest but essentially true. Then yesterday he was still trying to get the phone back and he must have told us again that his phone wasn't working about fifty times and not just told us but with this shocked/lost essence like his world was ending. When the repair man for the cable showed up on Monday, he told the landlord that it would be a week before he could fix the cable, John was so insistent that the repair guy climbed onto the unstable roof and took his chances and mickey moused some cable just to make John shut up. The phone guy was here yesterday and while he was working John kept yelling out the window and down the stairwell, "Chris, what is going on, what's the phone guy doing, Is it fixed yet?" until finally Chris lost his temper with John and yelled, "I don't know." I was surprised that anyone could keep their patience as long as BGB did with John. I just can't imagine how someone can be so helpless and yet survive on their own for so long.... !!! John's kitchen throw rug was soaked during the house soaking and he insisted to Chris, after Chris tried to convince him that the carpet must be dried, that the rug did not need to be taken up to the point that Chris gave up. I hope it doesn't breed mildew that we are going to have to breathe but part of me knows it will. Ugh. John is so unable to deal with any change or interruption to his regular schedule and so unable to comprehend stuff that I found myself wanting to scream at him to shut up shut up shut up. I feel so freaking sorry for the guys trying to work next door. This is what they will have to deal with for as long as it takes to fix the place, which according to the owner is four to six months. I know I should probably feel some sympathy for John but on the scale of things I just can't anymore. I tried. I now want to throttle John and bake pies and buy beer for the workers next door for having to deal with John.

Oh Jenn...

I feel for you and BGB. Your neighbor sounds just like how I suspect Beorn would respond to such stressors if he was an adult and on his own.

Do you know if John does have any recognized disorder, and if so, is there an organization that would take him in until the repairs are done? It sounds like he is not only going to cause himself harm from the stress of the building, but that you, BGB, and the workers will suffer from his inability to handle changes to his routine. While leaving his home would be a huge stress to him, it may be the best thing for the short term, if an alternative can be arranged.

Do you know anything about his family that you can possibly contact?

Good luck to you all.

Cameraman Jenn wrote: the crazy upstairs neighbor starts screaming "Stop it! Stop it! Stop it! Stop Hammering! Stop Hammering!" I hear a pause and a bunch of spanish being spoken of which I can make out enough to know that they are talking about the crazy guy. They bring in the foreman and he explains to John, very patiently, that they need to remove the damaged parts of the building and that it is going to create some noise. John starts yelling about how he can't hear his tv.

Oh. My. God. How maddening to have to hear that -- to have to listen to him fretting and freaking out for how ever many weeks it takes for things to get fixed. Ugh. That would drive me absolutely spare.

And that business with the wet rug... that's just soon-to-be-stinky and unsafe. Do you have the same landlord? Can't he take the dude in hand and enforce a rug change on him, at least?

Okay: earplugs. M16 earplugs are design to muffle rifle fire: perhaps they could help you tune out fretful John. You can get them at Army surplus stores. ipod shuffles are also pretty good for self-pacification. And you guys can always pack up the critters and come visit me.

EDIT: Menolly's advice is much better. But come out and hang with me for a few days if you need to get away.

I dunno, John is in his late fifties/early sixties. Not sure what his disorders are, He is diabetic. I do know that.

Luckily FOR ME the demolition guys quit at dark so the screaming stops then.