Well, you get the point. We heard a lot.

Let me shine some light on the largest complaints from customers so that you, as an American citizen who will likely buy at least 10 gallons of fuel this week, can have a better understanding of what goes on behind the scenes at the 3rd level of Hell. (The DMV ranking in at the lowest and most dismal of the levels).

Why can’t I pump my own gas?

I didn’t write the laws in Oregon and trust me, this hurts me as much as it hurts you. However, it is rumored that it is cheaper for the companies to allow only a select few to touch their station pumps. Insurance, for one, will have lower premiums because station attendants are trained on the equipment and are much less likely to start a station fire due to misuse of equipment or product. When you insure only 10 employees vs. 500 high school students, 2,500 college students and the town’s elderly, insurance companies feel a lot safer knowing they only have a few trained individuals to worry about instead of the entire driving population. But how do lower insurance premiums affect the driver? Compare Oregon’s fuel prices to California and Washington. I’m sure having a ‘Portland’ in Oregon, with massive shipments of fuel coming in every day and very little distance to travel to it’s destination, factors into this equation, but if a fuel station company is spending less on insurance premiums then they have a little wiggle room to offer better prices to their customers that are competitive when compared to neighboring states. For example, the current fuel price in Portland, Oregon is $3.93 for regular at Arco vs. Seattle, Washington $4.07 for regular at Arco. In Oregon, you can even find gas for as low as $3.83 at Bob’s Auto and Gas whereas Washington prices range from $4.07 to $4.39 just for regular. (Don’t look now, Diesel is at $5.11 in Washington, too!). California, despite it’s reputation, has a slightly lower price for regular, $3.91 in Sacramento, when compared to Washington and Oregon. However, prices can get as high as $4.39 for regular at Shell and have shot up to $5.29 for Diesel at Valero. (gasbuddy.com) Oregon gas prices would be even lower then the surrounding states if Oregon taxes didn’t charge so much per gallon, which currently sits at $.24 per gallon (Oregon ODOT)

You might try the argument that everything the companies are saving on insurance premiums, they loose to paying all those extra employees. Uh, not likely. Even with Oregon minimum wage at $7.95 (whoa, maybe I’ll move back there!), thats only $1,200/month gross per full-time employee. Considering you only need 4 extra full-timers in addition to your regular crew of approx 6 to run the pumps, that comes to only $4,800/month that you pay for extra employees. The station I used to work at was open until 10pm and could easily pull in $2,000-2,500 a night, and that’s ignoring what they made during the day! Yeah, I’m guessing they could afford those extra employees without batting an eye.

Another good reason to have a few select employees pump your gas for you is because of the link between fuel products and certain types of cancer. The chemical Benzene, a lead substitute found in gasoline, is a known carcinogen to humans and is believed to be linked to breast cancer. The chemicals 1,3-butadiene are also found in gasoline but are believed to be linked to a wider range of cancers. (Think Before you Pink) A French study has shown that children living near a gas station have four times a greater chance of developing leukemia because of the Benzene from the gasoline and the platinum particles from catalytic converters. (Sepp Hasslberger)

Perhaps this hasn’t been put in writing yet, but wouldn’t the state of Oregon rather treat 10 cases of disease and cancer ridden individuals as opposed to treating the aforementioned hoards of students and elderly? State health insurance would be less, treatment for cancers would be more readily available due to the low number of diseased, everyone is healthy and happy and babies are born with ten fingers and ten toes. Sounds good to me…oh wait, except that I’ll be the one with cancer. Dang it.

Why can’t I smoke at the Station?

I’m assuming most of us have seen The Dark Knight by now. Remember Mr. Dent’s mistake of covering himself with oil and then getting lit on fire? Everyday there is one kind of accident or another at a gas station involving some amount of fuel. Whether a nozzle didn’t click off in time and over-spilled, or a gas can got tipped or someone has a hole in their tank intake (seriously), we attendants get covered in gasoline somehow throughout the day and then you wonder why we don’t walk up to you with that little death stick in your hand? Maybe we don’t feel like becoming charcoal today. When we walk up to your window, covered in our Eau de’Petroleum and you roll down your window to grunt “10 dollars of 89″, the vapors on our clothing are wafting into your vehicle and mixing with the air that your cigarette is surrounded by. Since fuel is more flammable in its vapor form then in it’s liquid form, this causes a very dangerous situation for both of us. If enough vapors enter your vehicle, the air will literally catch fire. Though the fire might be short-lived due to the low concentration of fuel vapors vs. air, the damage will still be done, especially if you’re wearing flammable clothing or your interior catches fire. Not to mention you just fried the poor attendant. Also, along the subject of igniting gasoline vapors, is the fact that every gas station sees many fuel spills a day, and some of them are large. We may put cat litter down to soak up most of the gasoline but the vapors are still there as the gasoline slowly evaporates. You pull up to the pump with the spill, roll down your window and- KABOOM!! Those vapors surrounding your car just came into contact with your lit cigarette and caused an explosion as they ignited. This can lead to a damaged pump and, considering the extent of the damage, the fuel lines running from the pump to the underground holding tanks are now exposed. As the vapors burn, they ignite all standing and evaporating fuel, assume that comes into contact with the pump and travels down to the holding tanks…well, considering there are thousands of gallons of fuel down there with access to air via the ventilation system, now you just blew up an entire city block. Just cause you won’t put out your cigarette.

I had one irate customer once ask me why she should put out her cigarette “It’s not like I’m going to throw it in a puddle of gas!” I’m sorry, but liquid gas is the least of our worries. If you smell gas, it’s already too late if your holding a burning object.

I hope this clears up some questions you may have the next time you’re driving through Oregon or just running down to the corner station and observe the ‘No Smoking’ and ‘Turn off Engine’ signs posted. They aren’t there to make your life miserable, I promise. They’re there to make sure you, and everyone around you, still has a life when you pull away from the pump.

Road trip!

This is our new cat, Lily. Lily is a 6 year old female who came from Freecycle.com. Lily decided to spend her first two nights with us at the emergency vet all because of what the vets can’t claim is anything but an “anxiety attack.”

So, what happened?

Lily was dropped off at our place at 12:30pm on Wednesday. She was kept separate from our other three cats as she slowly got used to our home. She made it through her first night at our house by hiding under the bed and in the closet and coming out only in the dead of the night to eat and use the catbox. On Thursday morning we thought she was doing better and might be ready to meet our other cats so we left our bedroom door open to let them mingle at their own rate. Lily survived through the day by hissing and glaring at our other cats as they slowly entered and inspected the room. Thursday night, Paul picked her up and brought her into his office to watch some tv with him. Well, that lasted about 23 seconds until Lily jumped off his lap, threw up and started foaming HEAVILY at the mouth while twisting her head and smacking her tongue against the roof of her mouth. We put her back in the bedroom and shut the door and kept an eye on her while Googling her symptoms. She hid underneath the bed for the better part of a half an hour, still foaming and becoming less and less responsive to us except for the occasional hiss when we got too close to her. I was starting to panic at this point, so we got the broom and pushed her out from under the bed and put her into the tub where she stayed, still foaming and drooling. We found a webpage that stated that if a cat had been foaming for longer then a half an hour, then it was a good idea to phone the vet. Paul phoned the vet and listed her symptoms, which at that point just included foaming and drooling. Five minutes later I phone the vet back and added that she was also lethargic, non-responsive “butt reflex” and was just staring into space. While on the phone, I was looking for any other signs and noticed her pupils were very noticeably uneven and that her second eyelids were half way closed. The vet suggested that it was a neurological condition and that we bring her in. Since rabies is a neurological disease, we were becoming very concerned at this point. We couldn’t find any other reason for her to be reacting this badly, no foreign objects in her throat, no chemicals she had gotten into, so rabies was sounding feasible. Another condition that can cause these symptoms is Feline Leukemia and since we had only had Lily a little more then 24 hours, we had no idea of her past health diagnosis.

So, midnight on Thursday night we took a trip to the emergency vet with Lily to get her some professional care. They ran a full blood panel on her to see if any of her values could be causing her symptoms. Her glucose was high (diabetes or stress), her white blood cell count was low (possible leukemia) and her liver values were high (poisoning, severe allergy or other chemical assault on the body). They put her on an IV-drip and injected her with anti-nausea medication to stop her fluid loss. We left the vet at 2:30am and Lily stayed the night to be monitored. The emergency clinic suggested we take her to a day-vet to get a leukemia test in the morning and to continue the IV-drip and monitoring for signs of poisoning.

When Paul and I got home we bleached the entire bathroom and anywhere else her saliva has gotten since Feline Leukemia is spread by saliva and is contagious to other cats. Needlessly to say, this was a very hard few hours for us because we now had our other three cats that had potentially caught a deadly virus.

At 6:30am, I went back to the emergency vet to pick-up Lily and take her to the Forest Creek Animal Hospital for further treatment. She was still drooling but was well hydrated and was more responsive. The emergency vet had nothing to report on her condition and said nothing else could be done until she had her leukemia test. At Forest Creek, they drew blood for her test and hooked up her IV-drip again. An hour later at 8am, the test results came back negative and the vet doctor came out to talk to me about our options. Lily stayed at the animal hospital for another 24 hours. Within that time she became fully responsive, started eating like a pig, recovered her fluid levels and stopped her drooling. Lily’s previous owner met me at the Animal Hospital on Friday evening so that we could also discuss Lily’s future home placement if it was needed.

Paul and I picked Lily up from the Animal Hospital on Saturday morning at 11am and she’s been doing great ever since. She’s eating between 3/4 of a can to 1 can of cat food a day and seems more comfortable with our surroundings. We decided to keep her separate from the rest of the house for at least a week regardless of her improvement because we don’t want to trigger a relapse. Based on the lab results, the vet still can’t determine what caused her episode.  Stress, seizures or a chemical poisoning are the most likely so far. We’re taking her back to the Animal Hospital on Wednesday to get another blood test to see if her liver and white blood cell count have returned to normal. If they haven’t, then we will order an ultrasound to check for a gastrointestinal disease.

Her pupils are still uneven sizes but less pronounced. It’s possible it’s a condition that she’s had for life but that was aggravated to a noticeable amount during her episode.

However, even though I have a fairly amusing foothold in the world of “the internets” (oh, I laugh) I’m unable to find myself under any google search except Angela Bonser-Lain (check out my college graduate GPA!) so I’m going to cheat and give the google spiders something to find.

I was born a Angela Jeanne Lain. My fellow highschoolers knew me as Angie Lain and I lived in Pasadena, Ca for 16 years.

I lived in Park City, Utah for a year.

I moved out to Corvallis, Or when I was 17. I met my husband when I was 18 and we got hitched 4 months after (w00t, w00t!) and now I go by the name Angie Bonser-Lain. My school, however, knew me only as Angela Bonser-Lain. They frown upon nicknames and I frown upon foo-foo names but in the end, they won.

Suck on that, Google. I will never cease to amuse myself on those long days at the office, suckas!

Now to post and go Goggle myself…

Merry Christmas Everyone! Go hug your friends and family, they’re the most important part of this overly commercialized week in December!