getting my pipes cleaned...

No - my air ducts. In my house! Shame on you!

I am here to tell you that you do not want to see the inside of either the vents or the furnace in a house which you rent. From a not-so-top-notch landlord. The filter, first off, is IN the furnace. And it probably hasn't been changed in years. I'm surprised it hasn't actually burst into flames.

And the "pipe" that leads from the intake to the furnace looks like it was crudely shaped from sheet metal by the landlord himself (in fact, I'm sure of it) - it's kind of a rhombus-y/trapezoid-y shape. Which only takes up 3/4 of the intake hole, and not an even part of it, at that. The rest is just a gaping hole to the creepy innards of the house. And the stuff in that vent! Fuzzy, furry, dirty... blecch.

I addition, we have 4 vents, and only 2 ducts. That means that each vent is sharing a duct with another vent. 2 vents per duct. What do you think that does for my precious heated air power? Cuts it in HALF. Unless we shut off the vents to the front of the house. I guess it's OK if you pass through Narnia to enter our cozy warm living quarters... right?

Since we're in our Late Summer/Early Fall Cleaning mode, we're also getting the couch, the ottomans, and the rug cleaned. So after the duct cleaners left, the upholstery cleaners arrived. They wanted to know if I wanted everything scotch-guarded and deodorized. "Yes to the scotch-guarding," I said, "but does the deodorizer have a scent?" "Yeah - it's fluorescent-y." Hmmm... Did not realize that you could taste the fluorescent rainbow. Anyways, I passed on the floral-scented deodorizer (AKA "cover-upper"). And had to get the hell out of there because whatever he was spraying on the couch was actually blocking oxygen from reaching my lungs.

I also felt very gangsta, doing a cash-under-the-table deal for the scotch-guard. Just thought you'd like to know that. I didn't have the cash on me exactly, but I'll post about that later.