Midnight Visitors

'Twas the night before Festivus, and all through the bathroom,
despite wearing my pants,
I looked on the floor to see dozens of ants.

This, sadly, dear readers, is my tale of Christmas woe. Where is the joy, you are saying? Where is the spirit? Well, let me tell you.

This all started yon about two weeks ago, when it rained, and when it rains in the Bay Area, or at least in the East Bay for sure, it means the ants need somewhere to go, and where they usually go is your house. Or it certainly is mine. It started off, as it normally does, with a few little ants roaming around in my bathroom. I thought, no chance are they going to set up camp here. What are they going to eat, my dead skin cells? Perhaps yes.

Because, for whatever reason, decided to move in. I woke up one night to find not a pile of gifts, but that the miniature six-legged elves had in fact decided to lodge themselves somewhere in my walls probably, and were traipsing their way blithely through my bathroom, to and from my closet. Don't ask me what was on their little anty minds. I have no idea. I just wanted them gone.

So I put down some ant traps that had worked for me before. Nothing.

At that point, I was just glad that they weren't in my kitchen, though I can't say I enjoyed stepping over them in order to take a shower. At least they weren't IN my shower. Two days later, they WERE in the kitchen. And they looked something like this:

Only, in fact, it was worse, because even once I got them off the counters, they kept coming back, and they were also swarming around two of the lower drawers. Again, don't ask me why. There was no food in the drawers. But I did have to move all my tupperware.

I was just about at my wit's end. It was a Sunday, and I was having guests over on Monday night for a Holiday party. If I didn't get rid of the ants, I was pretty sure I'd have to tell people not to come. But I was determined. I posted a desperate plea on FaceBook, and got a lot of responses, recommending many of the treatments mentioned in this article.

One thing that kept coming up was Borax. Well, I didn't really know where to get Borax. What I did was I went back to the hardware store and got some kind of liquid ant killer I'd seen before and decided to try it. The guy I talked to said it was "the best." Well, it didn't look like much to me. You cut out little squares of cardboard and drip the stuff on, then leave it around near the ant trails for the ants to find it. When they do, they eat it, and then take it with them back to the nest and feed it to their babies. Shortly thereafter, they all die. Theoretically, they kill the queen, too, and then you're set.

Trouble was, I had so many ants, I kept seeing these big ones that I was sure were queens or something, but probably they were just males. I don't know that much about ant biology. All I know was I kept killing them, and they were only getting worse.

But I had hope when I saw them taking the bait - literally. They were circling around the drops of liquid like cows at a water trough. A friend came over later, and brought Combat traps, and I put down a few of those for good measure.

As a bonus, when I checked the label on the stuff I bought (Terro), it said the active ingredient was Borax. So I bought Borax without even knowing. Sweet! And I think it was sweet, because even though they didn't list the other ingredients, I think it was probably either sugar water or corn syrup. I didn't taste it to find out, though.

Anyway, I went to bed with a massive ant trail in my bathroom, and a burgeoning collection of them in the kitchen, and woke up to - practically nothing! There were a few wandering about confusedly in the bathroom, and two or three by the kitchen garbage, and that was it. It was a Festivus Miracle!

I hopped about and clapped my hands, and danced with little Timmy, and said, hooray, we can have our Holiday Party after all! Well, maybe not quite. But I did have my party as planned, and all went very well.

Until the ants started to move back in today. Sigh. Well, at least this time I'm ready for them.

Sign Me Up!

This week's post was submitted by Agent KGB in Boston. It's a post from Interbent that features "Humorous and Unclear Toilet Signs and Directions." Like the one above. The list reminds me of this one I saw in a bathroom in San Francisco early last spring.

There are also some Dada-ist looking signs, some highly suggestive, some alien-friendly, some, apparently, just for fun, and I really like the generic guy-on-toilet-seat-with-laptop - in a red circle with a slash mark through it, of course. And don't forget the Extreme Pizza bathroom for the "Extreme costumer only." So I'm guessing they only allow people who make or wear costumes in there...

Google my Arse!

Intrepid Agent HoJo detected this gem of toilet papetry on the Huffington Post recently. It was listed under "Technology." We're not sure if that's because it bears the name "Google," or because toilets and related accoutrements are clearly tech-related. We're going with the latter.

Originally posted on a Vietnamese blog, this label choice is a marketing strategy I have not encountered before, and if I have, certainly not in such an egregious form. I'm guessing that the developers for this product sat around a board room table and decided that by slapping the name of a highly successful technology-oriented company on their TP, they could generate a boatload of sales. Or perhaps some other kind of load? I couldn't resist...

I am also guessing that Google and their lawyers will be after this company soon, if they are not already.

But my favorite part about this piece are the translations of the Vietnamese text, which you can read on the original post from Huffington, and also the "100% Virgin Pulp." I think that would definitely appeal to the Catholic masses.

(Photo via Huffington Post)

World Toilet Day

Today is - are you ready? - World Toilet Day! I'm not making this up. It was founded by the World Toilet Organization, which I am also not making up. But this is serious business. (So to speak.)

The text from the WTO page reads:
"World Toilet Day is a global day of action to increase awareness for toilet users' rights and to advocate a better toilet environment. This day is marked by individuals, toilet associations, and other advocacy groups across the world to bring attention to a cause that truly affects everyone on earth."

And if you go to the World Toilet Day Website, they'll give you two reasons we should have it.

#1: Because 2.5 billion people worldwide are without access to proper sanitation, which risks their health, strips their dignity, and kills 1.8 million people, mostly children, a year.

#2: Because even the world's wealthiest people still have
toilet problems - from unhygienic public toilets to sewage disposal
that destroys our waterways.

Get it? #1 and #2? These people are awesome. They even advocate more toilet stalls for women.

Now this is one cause we can really "get behind."

(Image - A WTD Press Conference in Ghana, courtesy of WTO)

Thanks to Agent RC for alerting us!

In One Door and Out the Other

I just spent a week in Massachusetts with my family, and catching up with old friends, and experiencing Ye Olde New England Bathrooms. One interesting feature of one of these bathrooms was the one belonging to my good friends Agents D and K. They are in possession of a large bathroom with a claw-foot tub and the convenient (or not) feature of two doors, one on either side of the room. Here's the view from the kitchen door:


And here's the view from the living room:


So, basically, if you want to use the loo, you have to first go in one door, walk across the room and lock the other door, then walk back and lock the first door. Well, I guess it depends which door you walk in first, but you get the idea. Unless you want to live dangerously, in which case the only door you probably really need to close is the one leading to the kitchen, since the other door opens onto a little vestibule with no other access, and not the living room itself.

We discussed possible reasonings for this set-up. They pointed out that the house used to be all one house and was divided into four apartments. So most likely, this room was not originally a bathroom (it may also have been built built before there was a lot of indoor plumbing.) There are, however, very old-looking locks, of the round, turny kind that I used to have in the room I lived in in Maine. It's like a round, brass knob that sticks out, and you turn it one way to get the bolt to go out, and the other way to draw it back in. It's usually situated somewhere above the knob.

Their guess was that the room may at one point have been a walk-in closet. But then, why the locks on both doors that could only be manipulated from the inside? So you could lock yourself in the closet? Hm... It's possible it was always a bathroom of some sort. Or a small bedroom. Or maybe the locks were added later. Maybe it was a bathroom, and the people who designed it were just too lazy to walk around to get in from the other side. Your guess is as good as mine.

One thing I do know is that I am not particularly fond of the bathrooms with two doors. It's enough to monitor one door to make sure it's locked and no one walks in. But then when there are two, then it really doubles the chances of this occurring, and that's not really a great thing, in my opinion. Or you just have to have to think a lot, because it would be so easy to just wash my hands and walk out the one door, completely forgetting about the other.

I've seen several two-door bathrooms on the West Coast, so this set-up is not limited to New England. And in fact, in those cases, the bathroom was accessible only by walking through someone's bedroom, which was kind of odd. I'm sure it's handy if that's your bedroom, but I like a little separation of personal space when I'm visiting someone's house usually.

Anyway, since Agent K has such a spectacular bathroom, you should really think about buying her new book, Life in Violet. It's a novel, set in New England, about a girl named Violet. I've so far only read the first line, but that was enough to tell me it was good! So you should go buy it, and then read it while you ponder the value of two-door bathrooms.

The Maine Attraction

In honor of the fact that a good friend of mine has recently moved to Portland, Maine, and a new friend, Agent Brian, has just relocated from Portland to San Francisco, we have this post from Agent Steve, our other Maine man. Here he is, in his own words:

While showing off parts of Maine to some people “from away,” I decided to treat them to the Maine Lobster Festival in Rockland. Besides showing them a little bit of Down East, it was a good stop to stretch our legs, admire Robert Indiana’s EAT sculpture atop the Farnsworth, watch people scarf down lobster and most importantly, find a public bathroom.

We didn’t have far to look. Before the fun rides, before the carney games and before the enormous tent of crustacean gobblers, in fact just twenty feet beyond the oddly unoccupied entrance booth were a slew of port-a-potties, including the first handicapped-accessible I’ve ever seen (I don’t get out much). Happily, it was only the second day of the festival for the warning sign within seemed dire. Sign notwithstanding, I’m pleased to report the facilities were clean and included functioning hand sanitizer dispensers. In retrospect, the placement was perfect: not next to the eating tent and quite close to the rides that spin you around.

That is a serious looking warning!

And we agree with Steve. "Handicapped accessible" portapotties are far superior to "regular" portapotties. Every portapotty should have that much space to move around in. And we, too, are big fans of the hand-washing stations we've seen at some porta-pottied events recently. Thanks, Steve! We'll be thinking of you and that tasty Maine lobster. Mmm...

All photos: Agent Steve

MacGyver Freestyle Portapotty 200

This image comes to us from Agent Dave, via There, I Fixed It. It is unclear to us whether this homemade Throne was actually used, or just assembled and photographed to get up on the website. But still, it's a nice image. And maybe could give you all some ideas for when you're roughing it and/or your plumbing system craps out.

Hamster Potty

This is Pork Chop, my hamster, who never ceases to charm me with her curious antics.

A few weeks ago I went to Petco and purchased myself a Hamster Potty. Yes, you heard me. A hamster potty. How could I resist? It was only $8, and the picture of the hamster on the box was just so darn cute. Plus, I figured, hey, why not, if it saves me some bedding material (note: I use recycled fiber bedding. Very green. Well, actually, it's brown, but the package is green...). Anyway.

On the side of the box, it says training your hamster to use the potty is as "E-Z as 1-2-3." According to this article, it's more like "1-2-3-4-5-6." But I'm not sure Pork Chop got either memo.


Anyway, I set the thing up and then waited so that I could see which corner of the cage she likes to "go" in. Wouldn't you know it, she decided she likes to use the corner that's underneath her little climbing tube, where it would be impossible to fit the litter box doohicky thing. So when I changed the bedding, I just decided to put some of the soiled material into the litter box, like they said, put it in a nearby corner, and see if it worked.

Well, first she was curious. What's this new thing in my cage? Then she tried to eat the litter. It didn't take her long to find out she could crawl in, being that it is precisely hamster-sized, and then she proceeded to dig.

She ignored the soiled bedding and decided it was merely a fun place for her to explore. Pretty soon it looked like this:

I came home later in the day to find her just hanging out in the "potty" like it was her new front porch. Ah, Pork Chop. The designers obviously did not take into account your creative hamster mind. So much for "E-Z" hamster potty-training. But if nothing else, at least my little Pork Chop has a fun new place to hang out...

Coffee Time

This past weekend, Agent B and I, along with friends Lisa & Robb (aka Agent Double-L) did a fundraising ride for the Bay Area Outreach and Recreation Program (or BORP). Essentially, we rode along with hand-cyclists and adaptive cyclists of all kinds for a 25-mile tour of the Sonoma wine country. It was a beautiful ride, but an incredibly hot day, with temperatures topping out at around 100 degrees, Fahrenheit. Luckily, due to a glitch in some hotel booking, we ended up staying at the oh-so-posh Fountaingrove Inn in Santa Rosa, where they do these neat little foldy things with the towels.

They also have something I've noticed in other hotels in the area, which is this bowed-out shower curtain rod. I'm not really sure what the purpose is. I suppose that if you are a more rotund sort of person, this could afford a little more comfort in the shower, but I can't say I saw a lot of very large people about the premises. (They also had a gym and a pool/spa.) I did wonder if the curtain rod had something to do with that annoying thing where you turn on the water and the force of it pulls the inner curtain, which is lighter, into the area where you are standing, which now has less air pressure due to the force of the water, which means that you have to fight the thing off while trying to shampoo your hair. That didn't happen to us, so if that was the purpose, it worked. But the crowning glory of the bathroom was definitely the coffee maker!

That's right. Normally, I would not think to involve my breakfast beverage with the toiletry unit, but there was something very charming about the whole set-up. There was actually sort of a divider between the toilet/shower area and the sink/mini-kitchen, which made it seem a bit more sanitary. I have to say, it was a little odd to brew my coffee in the loo. Nevertheless, I got a little bit of a kick out of it. Hey, at least the sink was near by. And I assure you there was no Austin Powers 2 type business going on.

So anyway, the ride was great, despite the heat. And of course, the wine at Trentadue Winery was delicious.

Celestial Bodies

This next installation of "toilets in space" comes to us indirectly via Agent Double-L-Awesome (and her facebook page)...

While the rest of us were mourning national tragedy, something else happened on September 11th, last Friday, when Space.com announced that an unusual glowing trail in the night sky was, in fact, a large amount of water from human liquid waste being ejected into space from the shuttle Discovery.

The amount of water ejected, according to the report, was approximately 150 lbs (or 68 kilos). The reason it was so much was that they were not able to eject any water during the 10-day visit to the International Space Station, due to external experiments taking place on the station's structure. (Also, if the ISO's main toilet was still broken, then there were probably more people using it).

When the waste water is released, it immediately freezes into tiny bits of ice, and then the heat from the sun causes it to sublimate and vaporize. Meanwhile, the light catches it and makes it look all pretty.

Space enthusiasts who watched the shuttle guessed as to what the strange trail formation was. One (Abe Megahed, who took the photo that you see), got it right when he wondered if it might have been a "massive, record-breaking urine dump?" Indeed, it was.