Category: Uncategorized

My back seems to have cleared itself up today as the day wore on. I wonder if it’ll get bad again tomorrow. You know what was nice to hear? People at work told me to just take a day off if I need to get it looked at.

If you’re wondering if I actually remember to buy body wash, the answer is yes. My body is fresh and cleaning smelling now, including the penis parts of my body.

It rained most of the day in Vancouver. It was grey, wet, and dreary outside. It wasn’t cold though, so I guess that’s one thing still missing from the traditional, sad Vancouver fall.

Have a good weekend everyone!

Well, I’ve managed to screw up my back somehow. On Sunday night, my back, near the middle of my shoulder blades tightened up. It didn’t affect me sleeping at all but it certainly affected my work day on Monday. In certain postures I could just feel the tightness of the muscles causing discomfort. Luckily, just sitting up perfectly straight relieved a lot of tension. A hot shower on Monday evening loosened the muscles enough for some temporary relief.

Tuesday brought a pain-free day as the muscles seemed to relax on their own. Thinking my ordeal was over, I went to sleep on Tuesday night, only to wake up this morning with a renewed tightness in my back again. Today was pretty much a repeat of Monday. I wonder what the cause is. Am I just getting old? Bad posture? Pinched nerve? Stress (I don’t feel all that stressed)? I think I may drop by the doctor’s office tomorrow to get professional opinion about this. By the way, this sorta sums up how I feel about my back.

I know I’m getting old but the reminders that’s happening never seem to stop. For the last three days, I’ve stepped into the shower and then realized I’m down to my last bit of body wash. I totally forget this when I’m out and about, say next to a drug store. Tonight, I showered with barely a drop of body wash on my poof. Yeah, I shower with a poof and I do it at night. Most of my readers know that. I’d say the odds are 50-50 that I’ll remember to buy more body wash tomorrow.

I frequently eat after midnight. I know people say that’s not good for you but I can’t help it. I’m trying to eat healthier though. This evening, I hate a plate of roasted broccoli and cauliflower past 12am. It was not bad and I know it was good for me. I did not cover them vegetables in Velveeta either. I wonder if my eating habits would be the same if I lived next to a Wendy’s that’s open until 2am.

The new Winnipeg Jets played their first pre-season game tonight. The hometown fans at the MTS Centre welcomed the second incarnation of the Jets with a three minute standing ovation, some of which you can view here. I don’t think any crowd had been that excited for a pre-season game in decades. I only hope the Jets can give their fans a decent season.

If you have five extra minutes in the day, you might want to waste them at this web site. For the record, the key that I drew was terrible but my sword looked awesome.

I recently concluded my multi-post series about my battle with bed bugs from 2004. I’ve decided to assemble the links to all the parts in this single post for easy reference. This is the first time this has been done. As technology has advanced much further since I initially wrote the posts, I’ve gone back and edited some of them to reflect a more faithful vision of what I wanted to write. As an example, in the original versions of my posts, the bed bugs bit first. You’ll have to see how that changes in these versions! Enjoy!

Part one

Part two

Part three

Part four

Part four addendum

Part five

Part six

Part seven

Part eight

Epilogue

 

My good friend Woba, I know you remain hidden in the vastness of the galaxy, most likely near the spice mines of Scarberia. I have fond memories of our adventures on Coruscant and often think about our discussions about clone armies. May the Force continue to be with you.

Patrick Oabel

On Saturday, I went to a party hosted by a friend of mine named Chris. I’m barely a sentence into this post but I’m gonna take a little tangent. The listed start time of the shin-dig was 7:30pm. I got there at 9pm thinking I’d be fashionably late. It turns out I was the first person to arrive. I hate when that happens.

Anyways, it didn’t take long for other guests to arrive. Several of them showed up in a single group. I hadn’t met these people before. One girl in the group looked vaguely and strangely familiar. Usually people whom I sorta recognize fall into two groups: people who take my fast food order or porn. She didn’t seem to fit into either of those groups. As the mystery girl busied herself with making drinks for her friends, I came up to her and introduced myself. How do I know you, I asked. She said she didn’t know but that she and my friend met each other on a dating web site. That seemed like a somewhat plausible explanation as I peruse dating web sites but it didn’t seem like the correct reason why she seemed familiar. I let Jackie (not her real name) get back to her drinks and I returned to refresh my plate with Pizza Pops.

Some time later, I sat down next to Jackie with others and she told everyone where she worked:

“I’m a graphic designer and I work PricewaterhouseCoopers.”

“Wait, do you work at 250 Howe St.”?

“Yeah, I work on the second floor.”

I instantly knew where I recognized Jackie from. A long time ago, like perhaps four years ago when things were much better in the world, my beloved skate team and I were still working at Black Box downtown, at 250 Howe Street. One day I was going up to my floor and I got into one of the elevators, which was crowded. It was full of Black Box people and also accountants from PwC. Before the doors closed, a young lady got into car with us. She didn’t look like an accountant because she was dressed more casually than the bean counters. She hit the button for the second floor. Someone must have pissed her off because she turned around to the full elevator car and said:

“Yeah, I’m taking the elevator up to the second floor, what are you gonna do about it?!?!?!!?”

The bold nature of her confrontation with the rest of us surprised me. I must admit I believed her to be a bit mentally unstable at the time. I thought she might have been having a bad day. The elevator was silent as the doors opened to the second floor and she stormed out. As the elevator returned to its ascent, they were looks of shock and some comments made at what she had said. I wondered who this crazy girl was and what was her story. I saw her several more times in the elevator after that but there were no more outbursts. My curiosity about her remained though. Alas, when EA forced us to retreat to the wastelands of Burnaby, we no longer had contact with the accountants.

Returning to the present, I immediately told Jackie why I had recognized her as soon as she arrived. I recounted the whole story to her and others within earshot. She laughed at the incident which may or may not have to do with the fact she was extremely intoxicated at the time. Back then I took her to be perhaps someone with a stick up her butt but Jackie was actually a fun person to talk to during the party.

The moral of this post is that sometimes mysteries do get solved, you just might have to wait years for that to happen.

Out of everyone I know, I was the first person to have dealt with bed bugs directly. Having finished my great struggle with them in early 2005, it would be another year to year and a half before I even read or saw a single story about bed bugs in the mainstream media. As bed bugs continued their worldwide resurgence, I began to see more and more written about them. I knew they had hit it big time when I saw a bed bug story on the local dinner hour TV news show. By 2008, two people I knew were victim of bed bugs themselves. I feel no pride in having dealt with bed bugs before they became mainstream again. There’s no hipster bed bug award.

The lessons I learned from nearly seven years ago are still with me today. The first time I checked into a hotel after leaving grad school was a different experience for me. Previously, I would have just thrown my suitcase on the bed, taken off some clothes, and laid on the bed as I leisurely settled into my room; not so going forward. Mike the pest control guy taught me well. The key is to not leave anything on the floor of the hotel room until you’ve had a chance to check things out. The suitcase should immediately go on the luggage rack that most rooms have. Get that thing off the ground. If you want to take off your jacket or any of your clothes, hang them up in the closet, never initially put any of your clothing on the bed or in the drawers. You should immediately check out the bed first. Remove all the layers of bedding, inspecting each layer as you go for tell tale signs of bed bugs, either the bastards themselves or black/red specks which are their feces. Once you get down to the mattress, lift it off the box spring. Examine the seams all around the mattress because they love hiding in there. Move out from the bed next. Take a look at the headboard, behind it if you can. Examine the nightstand as well. Always look in areas that are hard to reach or against the wall. The carpet is more difficult to inspect as you just can’t rip it up to take a look. Don’t forget to look at the drawers in the dresser. Bed bugs can be transported in clothing, so you don’t know if the last guest might have left you some friends behind. Consider bringing a small LED flashlight with you when you travel as the light can greatly assist you in your hotel inspection.

Several decades ago, bed bugs were almost unheard of in the first world. The use of DDT had eradicated them from most developed countries. As increased air travel made the world smaller and as environmental restrictions made DDT use less prevalent, it appears bed bugs have returned for the long run. I wonder if we will ever be rid of them.

You can find the other posts of this series here.

Though the new pest company certainly gave me a very bad first impression, they were more cordial in my subsequent dealings with them. Once they actually stopped to get my bed bug treatment history, they tailored their pesticide treatment to my own situation. As the weeks passed, random bed bug bites gave way to no more bites. My long, personal battle with those bastard bed bugs was essentially over by March (if my fuzzy memory is correct). It was difficult, however, to change so many of the habits that I was forced to pick up. I continued to keep my clothes bagged. Some items that I had in the bedroom didn’t leave the bedroom until I moved out, just on the small chance some dormant bed bug was still alive. By that time, I had read that a researcher had witnessed a bed bug go more than a year between feedings. Overall though, the majority of the second semester of that academic year and the last semester of grad school for me, had nothing to do with bed bugs.

There were just a few loose ends to tie up before the school year ended. The first was the issue of compensation for what UBC Housing knowingly let me to move into. Had UBC Housing not known there were bed bugs in my apartment before I moved in, I don’t think I’d have any case for compensation; same if I had actually brought them in myself. The truth, however, was something they couldn’t avoid. UBC Housing knew they had an infested apartment. They tried to treat it but failed to confirm the problem was gone before letting me move in. Those were simple facts. I wrote a long e-mail to the Director of UBC Housing. It was a polite, yet firm message detailing all that I had to go through over the last few months. I stressed that UBC Housing had a mission statement of supplying more than just a roof over my head, that it was supposed to give me a safe environment from which I could live and study. I forget what I asked for in return but I know that I got a 50% reduction in housing fees for half a year. It wasn’t exactly free housing but at least it was something.

The second thing I received was a new mattress. I had brought my own mattress to sleep on when I moved it. As the mattress was on the floor, the odds of it being a home for bed bugs was likely. Even though I had bagged it and put in pesticide strips, UBC Housing believed it wasn’t a good idea for me to bring that mattress home. They gave me a brand new mattress, which for weeks I kept in its original bag propped up against a living room wall, in the safe zone. When it was time to move out, I simply brought the new mattress home and left the old one in the bedroom.

The last thing I got was the smallest item but probably had the most emotional meaning. One day after one of the pesticide treatments, near the end of the battle, curiosity got the better of me. For some reason, I wanted to lift my mattress off the floor to see if there were any of those little bastards underneath it. I knew it was a bad idea but I just had this urge to do it. As a kid, I used to lift rocks when I was outside sometimes and I learned all manner of creepy things liked to hang out underneath things. So, I did it in one quick motion. As I looked at the bare carpet, I didn’t see anything at first, relief beginning to wash over me. Then, I saw it. There was a single bed bug, barely moving. I thought it was going to dash away quickly so I panicked somewhat but it didn’t go anywhere. It was dying and it was trying to move but it couldn’t. I had no pity for it. I wondered for a second if any of my blood was inside its body. It didn’t matter. For some reason, I wanted a memento of this battle, a trophy of sorts. I went away to get a small plastic container and a pencil. Using the pencil, I picked up the bed bug and deposited into the container. I then taped the container closed with masking tape. I must have examined that dying bed bug for about ten minutes. I kept tapping the container to get it to move. Was it hungry? Was it dying because of the pesticides or the weight of the mattress? It finally died not long after I captured it. I felt no remorse for it at all. I kept the plastic container on my desk for the remainder of my time in that apartment, which was months and months. When I finally moved out of that apartment in September of 2005, I made sure to move that container with me. I continued to keep that container on my desk for years afterwards. My bite scars had healed a long time ago but that container had a real and tangible reminder that these things made my life terrible for a good part of my last year in grad school. I’d sometimes look at that dead bed bug and think how great it was that in the end, I won that battle. I don’t have that container any more, I threw it away before I moved into my current apartment.

For those who are wondering, when I moved all my stuff back to my parents’ place, no bed bugs hitched along for the ride. Everything I had done and that the pest control companies had done led to that good outcome. So there you have it, my long and personal story about my first and hopefully last encounter with bed bugs.

Oh, don’t fret though, I have an epilogue post coming up because I wanna drag this thing out for one more post.

You can find the other posts of this series here.

 

I really did have genuine intentions of writing part eight of my battle with bed bugs but I was playing Deus Ex: Human Revolution tonight and I got really close to the end, so I figured I’d just keep going to finish the game. Get to the end I did indeed. Well done, Eidos Montreal! It’s good to see Canadian talent shine through on the international video game stage. Um, it also didn’t help that some pics of Scarlett Johansson (reportedly) in the nude showed up on Reddit. I went there to strictly read the comments… honestly. Stay tuned for part eight tomorrow.

As mentioned in part six, things settled into a holding pattern. I’d still get random bites every once in a while but certainly not like in the beginning when I was covered in them. Mike the pest control guy would come by and continue to do spot treatments. Mary from UBC Housekeeping would sometimes call to find out how things were going. Then one week, Mary called to say they were going to try something new. She informed me they weren’t going to use Mike’s services any more and that UBC Housing had contracted another pest control company. She wanted the new guys to drop by apartment and talk to me about my situation and formulate a plan going forward. I thought Mike was a nice guy but since I wasn’t paying for the pest control, there wasn’t much I could do. I agreed to let the new guys come by the next day to talk to me.

The next day rolls around and I get a knock on the door at the appointed time. I open the door and some portly dude who looks like a construction worker is on my door step. He asks if I’m me. I tell him I sure am me. He then looks over my shoulder and asks why my fridge hasn’t been pulled out the alcove. The question confuses me as no one has told me why I needed that done. Dude then asks me why my living room hasn’t been cleared of my belongings. I tell him there must be some misunderstanding as no one told me any of this. Dude then asks me why I haven’t prepared for their arrival. I again tell him this is news to me. I try to explain to him where I’m at in the treatment phase but he doesn’t seem to want to listen. He gets in my face and tells me if I want to get rid of bed bugs, I need to be serious about this and that I should comply with all his demands. This gets me angry. I haven’t even known this guy for five minutes, he neglected to even ask me kind of treatments have already been done, and most importantly, he has no clue how serious I am about getting rid of bed bugs. Had he asked, I would have told him about the bagged clothes, my upstairs clothes, my downstairs clothes, and the fact I sleep on a bagged mattress filled with insecticide. How’s that for serious?

I tell him that if he wants to listen to my story and then formulate a plan going forward, that’s fine but I’m not about to let him march in here and spray behind my fridge because there hasn’t been a single bit of evidence there were bed bugs downstairs. He leaves in a huff and I’m still incensed. I almost immediately march off to the UBC Housing office which is thankfully close by. I get to the front desk where I tell the receptionist I need to see Mary immediately. I patiently wait a few minutes and stew before she comes out. She barely finishes her hello before I ask her who were that clown that she had sent me just minutes earlier. I launch into an angry recount of the verbal exchange I had with dude. I tell Mary it was absolutely disrespectful in the way he had talked to me. I say that it was most insulting that he just assumed I wasn’t serious about getting rid of bed bugs. He didn’t even bother to get my story before making assumptions. I finally tell Mary that this was just another failure on UBC Housing’s part, first knowingly giving me a bed bug infested apartment (without full disclosure) and then changing pest control companies with idiots like the one I just met. I briefly look over to the receptionist who appears to not want to be at her desk. I don’t care, I’m angry and Mary needs to hear this. Mary apologizes and says that behaviour was unacceptable. She promised me that she’d phone the new pest control company and pass along my comments. I get her to phone me back with any developments going forward. I also tell her that if this is the way the new company would be handling things, UBC Housing should keep looking.

A day later, I get a phone call from someone at the new pest control company. It’s not the guy from yesterday but someone higher up. He’s very apologetic. I let him know exactly why I thought yesterday’s dude was completely out of line. He agrees. I tell him how everything could have gone way better had dude just asked me a few questions instead of assuming things. Phone dude again agrees with me and asks if I’m willing to let another dude come by and a real assessment this time. I say yes but it better not be the same dude. Phone dude thanks me for giving them another chance. He then tells me in the meantime to go look in my mail box after the phone call.  After we hang up, I go to the common block and my mail box. Inside is a $20 gift certificate good at the UBC Bookstore, courtesy of the pest control company. A nice gesture I suppose.

Some time passes and for some reason, I have to phone Mary to ask her some questions. I phone the UBC Housing office to get transferred to her line. The receptionist replied with an awkward tone, “oh… um, she doesn’t work here anymore”. The way she said it made me think Mary didn’t leave under the most ideal conditions. Sure, she might have quit but usually quitting doesn’t elicit that type of response when you ask for them at their old company. I’d also like to think that if she quit, she would have had the courtesy to let me know she was leaving and that my case would be handled by her successor, whoever that might have been. By then, we’d been trying to rid my apartment of bed bugs for months. I got no such indication from her that she was voluntarily leaving. She was most likely fired. If that was indeed the case, I have mixed feelings about that. She didn’t deserve to be fired just because there were bed bugs infesting various UBC Housing residences. Bed bugs can be brought into a residence in any number ways. Where the area gets a bit murky is if she was the one that decided to assign new residents into apartments and rooms that she knew had previous infestations without confirming the bed bugs had been eliminated. I have no idea if she knew about those previous problems and if she had the power to stop assignments from being made. Whatever the reason Mary left, it didn’t matter, she was now gone and I had to talk to her replacement going forward.

In the next part, the battle draws to a close and I claim my status as a bed bug survivor.

You can find the other posts of this series here.