Thank You Captain Obvious

I was researching medicinal use of certain herbs and spices with the idea that some of them can pull double duty-instead of using a spice that has no medicinal value, substitute it with one that tastes similar but has healing properties. Or at least healing properties that have been recognized historically and culturally. Hopefully, not only would I feel better, but I could also put a little twist on some of these great recipes I'm learning and come up with something different.

That's when I came across something called amchur powder, which is basically an unripe mango that's dried and ground. I haven't tried it, but it looks like it would compliment tamarind or one of my all time favorite spices, curry. It also looks like a great ingredient on fish kabobs, called a machli kabob. I might actually buy this spice and test it out just for that purpose over the holidays when visiting the folks. My dad is a grill master, and with all the other cooking I'll be doing at that time, and considering I'll be visiting a non-MCS home, we should probably have something easy to fix in reserve. I've learned from those experiences and won't be so relapse-prone this time, and I sure as hell won't be eating anything like an Almond Joy bar, but once I leave the safe house the risk of relapse will increase.

So over the weekend I was researching amchur powder and I found out that the mango tree is used for all kinds of purposes-the roots, leaves, bark, you name it. That's common in un-industrialized societies that hasn't yet figured out you can do the same things with truckloads of toxic chemicals. Then I saw this:

"Of the mango’s other properties, its dyeing quality is of interest. In India, cattle are fed on mango leaves and their urine is used as a yellow dye, the active principle in this being xanthone. Needless to say, the fabric treated thus has its own special bouquet"

You Know You Have Multiple Chemical Sensitivity When....

You have to filter filtered water.........

Thrift Store Deca-Score (I got 10 items)

All this and much, much more, like 4 powerful HEPA air purifiers

Faithful readers, take note: the best thrift store shopping of the year is the first three weeks after Black Friday.

The reasons for this phenomenon are:

1) People buy new stuff and donate the old things that they replaced with Black Friday purchases.
2) Even if they don't buy an exact replacement, they may need to make room for the new items and donate other things.
3) Some people donate at this time because they feel guilty for buying things on Black Friday, or for taking the day off. At my place of work it's not an official holiday, but I think I was one of the few people working that day. I sure as heck can't go shopping on Black Friday, that would be suicide for a chemically sensitive person. Really breathers, it would be suicide.
4) The thrift stores get cleaned out earlier in the year from people looking for Halloween costumes and Thanksgiving decorations, who usually pick up other items while they're there. So a lot of the junk and clutter is removed and the Black Friday donations are easier to find.
5) Most people's buying habits change for Christmas and they stop shopping thrift stores and go to the malls to buy new items as gifts so their family doesn't think they're cheap, so you have all these almost new items landing at the thrift stores but nobody is there to buy them.

With the smaller thrift stores like the single location ones, their donations get put out as soon as the first week after Black Friday. The bigger the organization and the more locations they have, the longer it takes for the donations to get organized in the logistical supply chain and distributed to the right store. For these stores the items take 2-3 weeks to hit the shelves.

I was really fatigued and not feeling well, but I had to find a specific item, something I knew would be in abundance at the thrift stores the weeks following Black Friday: Big, over-powered HEPA air purifiers designed for large rooms.

I've been working from home for about a month now. Since the weather hit the 20's and the snow finally started falling, I had to close all the windows and turn on the heat. Stagnant air and heat is NOT a good combination when you have fairly new carpet. It's supposed to outgas in two months, but I swear mine is still doing it after a year, and it's part of the reason why I've been so sick lately.

Now you might ask, why does a guy who takes tremendous joy in building his own high volume air purifiers need to buy one? The answer is simple: because at a thrift store I can get several air purifiers cheaper than it costs to make one new. And after Black Friday, there will be many air purifiers available. In fact, I bought four for $25. And I also got 6 small items like some vintage cookware, a professional pizza pan, and a cool retro bike for an additional $16, bringing this incredible ten item bounty home for a whopping $41, tax included.

My biggest challenge now is figuring out how to run these four air purifiers along with the four monsters I already have without blowing any fuses, which has happened twice so far. These are big HEPA filtered purifiers whose output nearly rivals my homemade ones which use industrial blowers. I swear to God with all these fans going it sounds like a 747 is landing on the roof. When listening to the radio or TV I have to run the sound through a big stereo amplifier and tower speakers left over from my bachelor days. It's so loud my neighbors must think I've suddenly become deaf, and with all the freakish things happening to me lately that's a distinct possibility. I hope the folks next door like listening to cooking shows and podcasts.

The cheap purchase price will not be remembered when the power bill comes in, but for right now I'm feeling the love:

Kenmore 85254 w/ionizer-retails at $70, my price $7. Condition-like new.
Kenmore 83202-retails at $250, my price $7. Condition-a little dirty, but like new after cleaning.
Honeywell Enviracare 50250-retails at $170, my price-$7. Condition, like new.
Honeywell Enviracare 50250-retails at $170, my price-$4. I got a discount because it's a noticeably older model and the frame had a small 1" piece chipped off, but the filter and everything else is in great shape. It looks like it was hardly ever turned on and the owners only donated it because of the chip in the frame, but to be fair: Condition, used.

Of course, this is the thrift store that sells things so cheap they price clothes by the pound. Here you can see people digging through one of about eight rows of boxes looking for a new set of duds.



And best of all, because I was shopping for donated items at thrift stores weeks after Black Friday and not on Black Friday itself for new items, I never saw people placing the value of material goods over the importance of human life like here (the 2009 edition). I know there's a lot of working families out there struggling to make ends meet, but when you have to get up at 3 in the morning and stand in line for hours just to buy a product that will eventually be disposed of, something is wrong. Black Friday isn't merely a modern economic indicator, it's a sign of how screwed up people's priorities and materialism has become. Don't they understand that need and want are two different things?

When It Rains It Pours

My watch, which I've been wearing for a year now, started causing a rash of big red bumps, especially around the band and where the band and watch meet. I moved it up an inch so you can see the watch-shaped outline starting to form where it used to be. Everything else is freckles. Yep, I have freckles. I'm a cutie.

Success!!!

Today I ate two carrot sticks, two slices of celery, and one slice of toast. This is slightly more than the past two day's amount of food combined. I guess it means I'm getting better.

One of the freakish things that is happening is that despite eating like an anorexic rabbit, I haven't lost an ounce of weight. I'm not bloating, I'm not iodine deficient anymore, and I'm sure as heck not moving around much, but not losing any weight with such a small amount of input seems odd. Plus, even though I haven't exercised in a while I have more (slightly flabby) muscle tissue than the average guy, and with more muscle you burn more calories, even when not moving.

The toast eaten today was from a first attempt at po-boy bread about two weeks ago which I had frozen right after cooking it. Because it was homemade I can calculate the exact amount of salt consumed, which was about 1/8th of a teaspoon. That's still short of the recommended daily allowance, but at least it's a start.

While looking up salt intake online, I found this web page from the Mayo Clinic. The first graphic was pretty scary, not only because of how much salt is put into processed food, but also how much processed food is eaten these days.

Negative Nancy

Got the results of the tuberculosis test today. It's negative, I don't have it, but they suspect I have a lung infection...just not the exact strain that causes TB.

The infection is causing all kinds of MCS reactions. My theory is that the bacterial or viral colony in my lungs is producing a toxin that MCS is reacting to. It's like having toxic mold, but in your lungs, not the walls of your house. There's no way a respirator can protect you from this.

Fatigue is constant, even with Provigil to compensate. I had fibromyalgia in my ear. My freakin' ear! Even with all the fibromyalgia pain over the years I never knew that such a thing was possible. It was one of the worst fibro pains yet, first starting in my jaw. I guess I'm lucky here because the last time I had jaw pain like that it morphed into a one-sided migraine that lasted over a month. The ear pain only lasted for a couple of days and is starting to fade.

Nausea is bad, in two days I've only eaten two carrots and two sticks of celery. Because the nausea intensifies after eating, I'm seriously considering eating baby food, with the idea it is easier to digest and possibly less like to trigger the feelings of queasiness. And there's a couple of weird body things happening now that completely defy logic and medical science, but I'm too tired to go into that now.

Quite Possibly, The Coolest Thing I've Ever Seen

I'll admit it, I'm a downtown type of guy. At least I used to be, when I could still go outside.

I've lived downtown, near downtown in inner-city sections, in the subdivisions, and way-the-heck-out-in-the-country, in a small rural town. Small town life really isn't as bad as people think it is, but my preference is living downtown. It's where the action is at. It's where the denser populations give randomness the best possible chance to make something happen. Higher body counts also mean that fringe-group interests can afford to visit here and put on a show, be it a 4 string quartet from China, a MIT professor on a lecture tour, or my two favorite heavy metal bands-even if I can't see them anymore (1 and 2). Downtown has what I refer to as a "collision of cultures". And with all of those differences and various things going on, there is a chance to learn and experience something new...or something that may not happen again.

I recently ran across this video of downtown San Francisco in 1905, as taken from a streetcar as it moved through one of the main avenues. It looks like the director manipulated the frame rate to give the viewer a smoother ride, which goes along pretty well with the laid-back groovy music on the soundtrack. But when watching the film, it becomes quite obvious that America will never have this moment of time again, and it's a shame.

It's not just the combination of cultures that San Francisco had back then, but that so many disparate elements could mix and exchange amongst each other so naturally, continuously, and, well.....organically. There's so much spontaneous movement back and forth in front of the streetcar that there's a real harmony in the chaos. The cross section of life on this street moves at unbelievable angles and with unrelenting frequency, but yet it all seems so commonplace and familiar. You'll see people working, playing, walking, riding bikes and horses. You'll definitely see distinctions in social class, strictly defined roles for a person's age or sex, and the entrance of new technologies like the automobile, but there's such life to it, and it's all right out there in the open. Nowadays, if you're walking in downtown San Francisco you better be on the sidewalk. It's nothing but cars, cars, cars on the roads now, and worse yet everybody has their windows up, their cellphones on, and they're rushing to get to a home that's still an hour's drive away so they can plop their lazy thoughtless asses down on the sofa and watch TV.

Every downtown has it's own character, and some are better than others. But I've never wanted to go back to a certain place at a certain time like I did when I first saw this clip. I'd go back and be a streetcar driver, and every day at work I'd have a front row seat to view the amazing, completely honest and unabridged show that life put on. As for now it's late, and I'm going to put my romantically minded and chronically ill body in bed. Screw the TV. Screw the cellphones. I would say screw the cars but I love The Mighty Toyota, it's been good to me. I guess the difference is I don't hide inside it (expect for the chemicals outside), and it serves to take me to experiences (or that it once took me to them before MCS), not isolate me from the experiences that the American automobile has been increasingly designed to do.