spugbrap’s blog

I had to go to the Virginia Department of Motor Vehicles (DMV) last week, for the first time in several years. Their web site is very useful and usable, so I’ve done most of my DMV transactions online in recent years. Things like vehicle registration renewal, change of address, driver’s license renewal, etc. only take a few minutes on the website.

Apparently every other 5-year driver’s license renewal cycle, you have to get a vision screening, though, so you have to go in to a physical DMV location. This year was one of those years, for me.

Before going in, I looked up my local DMV location (Manassas) on their Office Locations page, to see how long the wait time would be. The site shows realtime stats for your closest location and two or three other nearby locations. At 11:41am, the site said 9 minutes and 12 seconds, which seemed reasonable enough.

So, I headed down there. The wait ended up being a bit longer than that–35 minutes or so to get called to a window (just the first of 3 things I had to wait for).

When I got to the window, I had to take my vision test, and apparently I did not understand how to use the simple device they use to perform that:

I was supposed to put my forehead on the pad, look into the machine, and read the first line of letters. But I could not find a “line of letters”! Not a first one, not a second one, none.

I could see a tiny ‘F’, and what I believe was a tiny ‘B’ or something, but depending on how I looked at it, the B was sometimes below the ‘F’, sometimes to the right, and sometimes below and to the right. In any case, these definitely did not constitute a “line of letters”, and I could barely see them.

I tried numerous times to step back, re-set my forehead on the pad, and look into the device, but I kept seeing the same thing. This went on for a minute or two, and I was freaking out by this time, thinking I was going to be unable to renew my license because the machine says I’m blind.

I asked if I could try a vision test machine at a different window, but she said this one should be working. She tried looking into it, to make sure, and she somehow saw lines of letters. She suggested I read the second line instead of the first. I maintained that I could not see any lines of letters, let alone a “first” or “second” line.

Eventually, I bent down and looked into it from a different angle (I looked upwards instead of straight down the barrel of the machine), and saw a whole chart full of large, clear letters. I read the first line, with no trouble at all, and we both breathed a sigh of relief.

In hindsight, it might have helped if she (or I) had angled the machine upwards towards me, since the thing that finally worked for me was bending down AND looking upwards. Not once did she suggest changing the orientation of the machine to fit me, though, and I didn’t know if/how much they actually move, so I never thought to ask.

After the vision test, I paid the renewal fee, then sat down and waited to have a new picture taken. I didn’t ask to get a new picture taken–I kind of liked my old picture. It’s from 8-9 years ago, when my hair was the longest it’s ever been. It was a conversation piece, if nothing else. Here it is, feel free to point and laugh and call me a dirty hippie (notice the Phish t-shirt, too)! I’ll post the new picture eventually, whenever I have a reason to scan my new license.

It was about a 10 minute wait to get my picture taken, then another 5 minutes waiting for the new license to be printed. So, all told about 50 minutes of waiting. I’m glad I won’t have to do that again for 10 years.

After I got home, I checked the website again, expecting to see much higher wait times (since I’d just experienced them first-hand). The site did show a longer average wait time: 17 minutes and 32 seconds, but that’s still way less than what I actually sat through.

Summary:

There are 2 main points I hope that I’ve conveyed with this blog entry:

1. Although the real-time average wait time information on the Virginia DMV website seems pretty cool, and may be useful as a *very* rough indication of how busy they are, there is a huge margin of error. I don’t know what exactly they’re averaging to come up with those numbers, but my actual wait time was at least 3 times as long as the website showed.
2. When looking into the vision screening device, look upwards a little bit, rather than straight down the barrel of the machine. Otherwise, you’ll look like a moron, and waste time, which means longer wait times for everyone else.

Soooo.. Apparently, paper towels are not “a microwave-safe plate”. Neither are cheapest-of-the-cheap thin paper plates, and–surprisingly–neither are my favorite Tupperware plates. Oops!

I’ve recently started eating Banquet pot pies for lunch, every so often. They didn’t used to have microwave instructions on them, so I didn’t used to take them to work. I feel like, even as recently as 2 years ago, I took one to work, and was dismayed when it said not to microwave it. So, anyways, now that they are microwavable, they make a decent cheap-and-easy lunch.

Unfortunately, I’ve had mixed results with this whole microwave-pot-pie thing. The first time, I didn’t have a plate, so I stuck it on a couple paper towels. When that was part-way done, I noticed a burning smell, and opened the microwave. The bottom of the pot pie container was scorched, and the taste of the food was ruined by the burnt-paper odor.

So, the next time I decided to try microwaving a pot pie, at work, I put it on a paper plate. Apparently that was not a good idea, either. The paper plate was the extremely thin, flimsy, cheap kind that happened to be laying around in the kitchen, at work. Part-way through heating up that pot pie, I started hearing sizzling and popping sounds that I knew were not normal. Again, the familiar smell of scorched paper, this time having scorched a brown ring on the paper plate, and there were seemingly-random burnt areas on the top of the pot pie. This pot pie was ruined, as well.

[hmm, I thought I had a picture of this one, but I can’t seem to find it. insert picture of sad pot pie on thin, cheap paper plate here]

Meanwhile, at home, we’d been heated these things up in the microwave several times, and never had any trouble. So, it was either the microwave at work, that was at fault, or my choice of “microwave-safe plates.” I decided to try using one of my good Tupperware plates, because I was pretty sure we’d used those for heating up pot pies, at home. But, that didn’t work out so well, either.

At least the pot pie was edible, this time, but it did some damage to my previously-invincible Tupperware plate.

I was determined to figure out a way to heat up a pot pie, at work, without hurting the pot pie or the plate. So, the next thing I tried was a paper plate that I’d brought from home. This was a good-quality Dixie paper plate, which has been our favorite kind for years. These plates have served us well, for all manner of cheesy/tomato-saucey/juicy foods. Foods don’t tend to stick to them, and they tend to withstand quite a bit of prolonged wetness before suffering any ill effects–unlike most other paper plates.

Anyways, when I heated up a pot pie, in the microwave at work, on a Dixie paper plate, it worked great! The plate was not damaged at all, and the pot pie was thoroughly heated and tasty. [Note: The pot pie pictured below was pretty broken up when I opened the box; the nasty-looking chin was *not* the result of heating it on a Dixie paper plate!]

From now on, I will only heat up my Banquet pot pies on Dixie paper plates.

Last night, when I was taking the trash out, I noticed that the trash can in the garage was making a lot of noise. As I went to pull the drawstrings on the trash bag, I saw little worms crawling around the outer edge of the bag. Upon further inspection, I noticed that there were hundreds more crawling around inside the bag. Then I realized what they were: MAGGOTS!

So, I went about trying to kill them. I had a can of Lysol Disinfectant Spray with me, so I tried that first. I sprayed it all over the top of the trash bag, and sprayed a good bit into the trash bag, as well. At that point, I noticed that there were some crawling around on the floor, too. So, I sprayed them as well. But, that didn’t phase them one bit. They kept right on crawling. I carefully grabbed the trash bag and ran it outside to the curb (good thing it was trash night!). Then, I scanned the garage for anything that might kill bugs.

The next poison I saw was a spray bottle of Lysol All-Purpose Cleaner. I assumed that it was stronger stuff than the aerosol spray can I had just used, so I decided to try it on the bugs. I could almost hear them laughing, as they kept on crawling, sometimes walking directly through big puddles of it, when they could have easily gone around. They just didn’t care. By this time, there were about 20 of them crawling around on the floor (that I could see). I had to use something specifically designed to kill bugs.

So, I ran inside and grabbed a can of RAID. The can we had handy did not say anything about maggots or flies on the label, but I hoped it might work better than nothing. So I sprayed it all over the floor, wherever I saw maggots. I made bigger puddles wherever there were several of them close together. They didn’t seem to mind, and just kept going about their business. By now, I’d seen them crawling under a nearby pile of wood, and more seemed to be crawling out, than were crawling in. Either way, this showed me that they were not only resilient little bastards, but that they were probably already well established in every nearby dark place/crevice. I was freaking out, now, because they seemed to be multiplying, right before my eyes. I could see probably 40 of them, at that point.

Next, I called Lacey, and asked her to look up how to kill maggots. She read about a lot of things that DON’T work, and then found some things that supposedly had worked for some people:

- Products containing permethrin

- Boiling water

- Bleach

I looked around the garage, some more, and found a can of pesticide, in a powder form. A quick glance at the ingredients confirmed that it did have the chemical I was hoping for: permethrin! So I started shaking the powder everywhere I could see the maggots, and also tried to make a barrier around the area that I had been treating thus far, to try and contain them. Somehow, it did not come as much of a surprise when they kept right on crawling, through pools and piles of 4 different poisons.

This was really testing my sanity. I kept worrying that they were on my shoes, or might have grabbed onto the bottom of my pants legs. The barrier didn’t work at all. They were branching out in every direction, at this point. Everywhere I looked, I saw maggots. I could probably see close to 100 of them, at this point, and I knew that there were lots more that I couldn’t see. Oh yeah, I forgot to mention, they were nearly invisible. Their coloring was a perfect match to my concrete garage floor. Without their constant wiggling, I might not have even noticed them. I felt helpless and defeated. But I still had one trick to try: bleach.

I grabbed a huge bottle of bleach, that just happened to be within arm’s reach, and started pouring it on them. I was a little worried about the fact that I was mixing so many harmful chemicals together, but I was much more concerned about killing these evil maggots. They kept right on crawling, though! UGH! Lacey had said something about bleach taking a half hour to kill them, though, so I tried to be patient. The maggots were continuing to expand, and to hide underneath every box, piece of wood, etc. I tried to move a few things out of the way, so I could pour bleach in more places, but I’m pretty sure that every time I moved something, it just helped them spread (because they were already crawling on everything).

Uh-oh, the bleach-pesticide-pesticide-cleaner-disinfectant mix was now working its way across the garage. Apparently the garage slightly slopes so that liquid runs towards the outside driveway. But we’ve got all kinds of bikes, scooters, helmets, jumpropes, baseball bats, etc. stored in the garage, some of it in cardboard boxes. I scrambled to move everything cardboard out of the way, but I was a bit too late. So I had to empty the contents of the wet cardboard boxes, before their contents got wet. Empty them where, though? Wherever I could. Stacked on top of toolboxes, bikes, shelves, plastic tubs, etc. Just had to hurry. I didn’t want this poison mixture getting all over my kids’ stuff.

Finally, I got things pretty well moved around, so the little poison rivers could proceed towards the exit. I figured this was also helping me to spread the poison around, so if the bleach did work after a while, it was already covering a wider area. It was getting very late, so I started picking up my cans of poison and putting them on a shelf. As I was doing that, I kept noticing more maggots in places that hadn’t been treated [enough] yet, so I poured more bleach on them.

I hated leaving the garage in this state, but I really needed to get to bed. I wished there was some way I could burn the tiny demon spawn, without destroying my car or house. Believe me, if I ever find a pile of these things outside, they’re going to burn. Revenge will be mine, someday. Unfortunately there was nothing more I could do, out there, so I closed the garage and prepared to go in for the night.

Before going inside, though, I shook my pants and checked my shoes for maggots. When I got inside, I watched the floor behind me as I walked, to make sure I didn’t see anything wiggling. I was very freaked out and paranoid, at that point, so I undressed slowly and carefully, putting my clothes and shoes into trash bags.

Then, I went up and took a hot shower. Every drop of water, running down my leg or through my hair, made me feel like maggots were crawling on me. I almost felt like taking a bath in bleach, but I wasn’t quite that far gone. If I had actually found maggots crawling on my skin, I might have gone to that extreme. That was one of the most unpleasant experiences I’ve ever, and I’m sure my words cannot express just how horrible it felt.

This morning, I’m feeling a lot better (sanity-wise), but am not touching the garage door until the pest control people come. So, I’m staying home today so I can ensure that these evil creatures get annihilated ASAP.

If you need to clean up cork floors, don’t use Lysol disinfectant spray. I learned this the hard way, and have yet to actually adequately recover from it.

Early one morning, a couple months ago, one of the cats pooped at the top of our stairs, on the cork floor. Since they are not my cats (they are mainly Lacey’s and Matthew’s), I’m not usually the one to clean up such a mess. But everyone was still asleep (I go to work way early), and I didn’t want the mess to get worse by having someone (cat or human) step in it and track it around the house, so I dealt with it myself.

I thought I remembered Lacey telling me that the way she cleaned that stuff up was to pick up the poop with paper towels and dispose of it, then spray the area with Lysol and wipe it off. Well, it turns out, the floors didn’t like that. It turned the sprayed area a light color, and took off the shine. It looked bad.

So, I sprayed some Pledge wood polish on it, and wiped that on, and tried to wipe off the excess. The spot looked better (not perfect, but at least it was shiny again), but now the whole area was very slippery! I wiped and wiped, with paper towels and then with rags, but all it did was make the slippery area bigger. Wood floors are slippery enough, already, and the top of the stairs is a really bad place for floors to be extra slippery!

I needed to get to work, but I didn’t want the kids (or Lacey even!) to slip and fall down the stairs, so I grabbed a bathroom rug (the kind with nonslip rubber on the bottom, that you step on when you get out of the tub/shower), and covered the entire slippery area.

Lacey told me that this is *not* the way she cleans up cat poop, and she proceeded to tell me how she actually does it. But that was a couple months ago, and I’ve already forgotten. Luckily, the cats don’t tend to poop in the wrong place anymore, although their long hair does make the occasional cling-on get dropped here or there, sometimes. Eww.

The rug is still there, today, because I don’t really know what to do about the slippery floor problem, without risking damaging the floor worse than I did originally. I actually kind of like having a soft, non-slip surface up there. It does help me know where the top of the stairs are, when going up/down in the dark. I guess it’s probably kinda tacky, though, but I tend to care more about utility/safety than aesthetics.

The cats like it too. They sleep on it every night!

(Nermel sleeping on it earlier this evening)