Pest control needed

You would think that I being a pest control salesman, wouldn't have a bug problem ... unfortunately I do.  For the summer they put us up in brand new apartments, but after about two weeks I saw my first cockroach. Since then there has been a gradual increase in bugs, until now we have tons of ants all over the place - in the bathroom, in the kitchen, and worst of all in my laundry. It's pretty gross. I guess it wouldn't be too difficult just to have one of our technicians who parks their truck here anyway come over and spray around. The ironic thing is that our apartments are contracted out to ABC Pest control, so we can call them and they will come and do it - that would be funny. 

Anyway ... About the ants in the laundry, I went to wash my clothes and I saw what most have been about 50 - 100 ants crawling all over my clothes in my laundry basket. The weird part was that they weren't just one type of ant - there were big ants, small ants, and worst of all ... fire ants. Well I didn't really know what to do to get rid of them so I just threw them in the washer anyway. When they were done being washed I could still see some of them on my clothes, so I just threw them in the dryer and my clothes came out ant free ... the lint collector thing apparently collects ants off of clothes too. Unfortunately my camera doesn't have any batteries so i couldn't take any pictures of the real ants, so these internet ones will have to do.

Fine ... I'll make a blog

My sisters have been telling me for months that I should make a real blog that talks about my life. Apparently my political blog wasn't cool enough ;), and besides, I haven't updated that one forever, so I guess I'll just start this one so that everyone can know what is going on in my life. 

Right now I am down in Houston, Texas selling Pest Control for Eclipse Marketing.  It has been an interesting experience to say the least. Basically, we work everyday from about 9 in the morning until about 9 at night with a couple hours off in the middle of the day for a break. I walk around neighborhoods knocking on people's doors and try to get them to sign up for our brand of pest control.  When I found out we were coming to Houston, I figured it would be the perfect place - lots of bugs and really hot - soon after coming down here though I realized that we weren't the first company to think that! In some neighborhoods everyone already has pest control and in the older neighborhoods some have had the same company for up to 20 years. Every day I hear about a new company ... some of my favorite names are these: Big John's Pest Control, SPLAT!, Bug-be-gone, and of course ... Barker Pest Control (really, there is one). Anyway, I found out that it is much more effective to sell in neighborhoods where the houses don't have their own zip code, so I have been selling in smaller houses with lots of bugs, and that has worked out slightly better. 

One perk of the job is that I get to practice my spanish almost every day. If I didn't speak spanish I would probably have about half as many sales as I do now. 

Unfortunately a few weeks ago I started having symptoms of asthma which made it so that I could not work effectively because of the heat and humidity. After seeing the doctor twice and being on medication, I am doing much better, but it still is kind of rough. The reason that this came up out of the blue was because of the heat and humidity of Houston. I haven't had a problem with asthma since I was really young and back then it was Exercise induced. Although one time I did have problems and that was when I was in Hawaii (Hot and Humid .. hmmm.. see the connection?) Anyway, hopefully things get better soon, because I haven't been able to work the hours that I need to to make more sales.

The group of people that I work with are is really cool. We all get along really well and we have had some pretty fun activities down here. I don't take many pictures because my cameras battery is messed up, but thanks to facebook, there are a few pictures from some of our activities that are posted throughout this post.