Monday, April 23, 2012

Chapter 14, Page 5 Never been cleaner

That would be the chlorine bleach.

In many ways I'm not easily grossed out. I also don't particularly like cleaning. When I am grossed out, however, I either avoid that which grossed me out like the plague or clean it down to the microscopic level. The latter usually arises if I have to live in the same building as the gross thing. It's also why I rarely showered during my first go through college. And people say boys are gross...

12 comments:

Brian H. Gill said...

Oh, my: I've also had a habit of 'cleaning' by using chemical agents that are safe, but not pleasant to the nose. So I've been told, anyway.

I'm enjoying this sequence.

Brigid said...

@Dad: 'Safe' being a somewhat relative term, here. I seem to recall getting a lecture about safety procedures and mixing chemicals after this incident.

Dan (Croatoan5376@Yahoo.com) said...

I once had a somewhat unfortunate adventure involving two different cleaning chemicals. Figured that if one was good, a concoction of two had to be better. Right?

Well...not quite. Turned out that while one could do quite a decent job, two at once could kill you. A word to the wise: keep the ammonia and the Clorox bleach away from each other.

Brigid said...

@Dan: Funny thing, the lecture Dad gave me specified those two chemicals. Apparently the combination produces a toxic gas of some sort.

Not that ammonia isn't toxic all by itself. Something I can personally attest to.

Dan (Croatoan5376@Yahoo.com) said...

Ammonia chloride, to be exact. And I'll leave it to you to decide whether or not you want to research the unfortunate history of that particularly noxious compound and it's historic uses...or perhaps I should say it's historic misuses.

Brigid said...

@Dan: Apparently, the primary byproduct is actually chloramine vapor. I wasn't able to find much about the substance beyond that, though there was a rather distressing reference on a couple pages to national security risks.

Ammonia chloride is pretty dangerous stuff, too. Especially since it seems to be a key ingredient in some explosives (and fertilizer).

Journo-SEAL said...

@Brigid: And WMDs from WW1 as well as a poison in WW2 for less than military means.

Little confused, you avoided showering because the showers at college were dirty?

Brigid said...

@Journo: VERY dirty. And less than completely private. Flimsy plastic curtains are not effective barriers and I couldn't always tell if the male voices I was hearing were from the radio or some nitwit boyfriend who was too lazy to walk down the hall the public restrooms.

Journo-SEAL said...

@Brigid: Was there no indication that it was a shower room for females? 0_0

Was this when you were in Ireland, BTW?

Brigid said...

@Journo: There was a sign clearly stating that it was a girls only bathroom. And it was in a girls only dorm. That didn't stop girls from bringing their boyfriends over and it didn't stop those boyfriends from being too lazy to go another dozen yards to the men's bathroom near the entrance.

And it was here in the States.

Journo-SEAL said...

@Brigid: Ahhh. That makes a lot of sense now.

To be fair, I only showered once the whole week that I was in the UK to hand in my final project. Let's just say...the halls of residence don't have the most pristine of bathrooms/showers XP

Brigid said...

@Journo: They never do. Doesn't matter what side of the pond they're on.