Duct Duct Juice

Junk mail pisses me off, unless it suits me. I thumb through the thirty-some-odd coupons in that blue direct mail envelope that arrives every Wednesday, ignoring all the plastic surgery and dry cleaning ads, and once in a great while a gem is revealed.

The recent remodeling in my condo seems to have created a post traumatic dust disorder. Maybe it's just me. Maybe you are supposed to dust your house every thirty minutes. Nevertheless, that coupon advertising air duct cleaning for $49 sounded pretty good to me and my lazy ass.

I imagined a couple of guys coming over and blocking all my air vents and hooking up a vacuum to one of them and just sucking the crap out of it, ridding all my ducts of remodel residue. They'd be in and out in half an hour; I'd be dust free in no time.

My utopian dream came crashing down within the first five minutes when Horhay showed me cakes of black soot in the furnace and wanted to clean it for $479. "Oh, you HAVE to clean this," he says.

Well, I did what any independent woman who can decide what she will and will NOT do when confronted with such statements.

I ran to the phone and called my husband. Because after owning this condo for 11 years and never having the furnace area cleaned and being shown black sooty fingers wasn't enough for me to say, "Gee, maybe it's time I had that nastiness that's blowing through my house removed." I had to have a man tell me to give the OK.

So the guys went to work:

I wasn't interested in making sure their claims were credible, but I guess Horhay took pride in his integrity and insisted I see what was behind the main air intake vent:

Horhay melodramatically explained that this is where the blower gets its air from, still trying to justify my paying him over $250 an hour to dust and vacuum. Yeah, whatever. I just wanted to see the coupon-initiated forty-nine dollar massive suck already.

Then he pulled out some things that were stored in the furnace area, left behind by some previous owner:

I'm thinking orange juice and empty paper towel rolls.

When they finally finished with all the superfluous soot and plaster removal (boooooooooooring!), I eagerly watched as they prepared for the big Whoosh! air duct cleaning.

Imagine my disappointment when they merely stuck a vacuum tube about a foot into each duct. I mean, this is what I called them out for in the first place. Jeez, I could have done that and saved myself $49. Live and learn, I guess.









I would like to thank Sparky of RedBirdAcres for bestowing on me the "Antique Laundry Machine About to be Touched Down Upon by Tornado" award.

I think it's obvious why I deserve this one, don't you? Thanks, Sparky!









Also, a big fat grateful THANK YOU goes out to The Hussy Housewife for acknowledging my street cred by giving me the Slang Word of the Week award which is usually held over at Humor Bloggers Dot Com, but this week it was awarded on Hussy's blog.

Thanks, Hussy!