Legwork and Life, week of 8/29/18

I think I'm going to start being more appreciative of the rain.  I still have no idea what kind of algae grows in the backyard pond, but a good hard rain utterly destroys it.  For comparison: 

August 3rd: moderate algae growth, but more than enough to make me foggy-brained

August 28th, post gloriously-battering rain, no algae in sight.  

Granted, with luck I may not have to worry about the problem much longer.  I attended the condominium board meeting this month, and brought the matter to their attention.  The people on the board do seem to like to be very social, but I was patient, and brought two pictures to show them.  The first was the moderate-growth picture above.  The second was a picture taken right at the water's edge, and I'm sorry to say I had to go inside and lie down for a while after taking that one... a fact that seemed to impress the board.  

Currently, it seems the pond does get chemical treatments against the algae, which I guess somehow hasn't killed off all the fish.  But some of the board members also accepted the idea of algae-eaters (snails, or fish), and the condo manager also suggested adding more fountains, or bigger fountains, to help agitate the water more.  So I'm not really sure what's going to happen, but at least they know, and understand how badly the algae messes me up.  It's somewhat convenient that I have that story to share, because people are a lot less impressed by, "well, I've been feeling foggy and anxious for months, and it gets worse when the algae is thriving..."  Human nature, what can you do?  

In other news, we adopted a new pet this week.  Or, I should say, "pet."  

This is a refurbished, older model Roomba.  Chris and I have always kind of wanted one (to the point that we put one on our wedding registry for kicks and giggles).  But they're expensive, so we hadn't taken the idea of getting one super-seriously until we found a really good deal for this one.  We named it Jeeves.  Or, I named it Jeeves, and when we turned it on, it proceeded to bump into basically everything, thus immediately making my name choice absurd.  I feel like anything named Jeeves should probably have a certain dignity and grace, and while this Roomba is plenty industrious and cleans very well, it is not graceful or dignified.

So, in preparation for having Jeeves in our home, we tidied up the upper level of our house.  Roombas are decent about working around obstacles, to a point, but for best results, they should only be navigating around furniture, not shoes, jackets, books, etc.  The carpet, to all appearances, was pretty clean.  Chris had been vacuuming previously, and while our canister vacuum isn't in great shape, it's at least still picking up dirt.

You'd think, then, that Jeeves wouldn't have had that much to do.  But lo and behold, after it ran the first circuit of the upstairs, there were dust bunnies packed into its filter and dust compartment.  I emptied it, proceeded to get foggy and anxious, realized it probably had algae pollen or whatever in it, and put the compartment back into Jeeves.  Then I ran Jeeves again, because why not?  And Jeeves came back with more dust bunnies.  I dunno exactly what the technology they put into Roombas to make them find that many dust bunnies in apparently clean carpet, but I'm impressed.  Also, it is now Chris' job to empty the filter and dust compartment.

We had similar results after we set it on the bedroom, too.  Actually, I went into the bedroom to watch it bumble around, and within half an hour, the "dustbin full" indicator had gone on.  I'm going to guess the previous owner probably didn't steam-clean the carpets before they sold the house to us, but still.  That was crazy to me.

I'm hoping to set Jeeves on the downstairs sometime this week, but that's going to be a bit more difficult to tidy up, and it also has more separate rooms.  So maybe it'll be a multi-part process.  Still, it cheers me to know I'm living in less dust and algae pollen.