u/Ship_Ship_8

Why are there so many dogs that come out of Texas and get shipped to other states for fostering/adoption? My state literally gets van fulls of dogs from Texas every day. We can only rehome so many of them. I’m wondering why is this such a problem in Texas? Do people abandon dogs on purpose or are they just uninformed on the work associated with a dog and simply abandon it when they no longer want to? Is anybody in Texas doing anything to mitigate this problem?

I live in northern MN and we’ve had a bad stretch of wildfire smoke this summer. Specifically we had one week where it was terrible - a stretch of 5-6 days where the AQI was anywhere from 300-1,000 (hazardous = 300+).

I always leave the vents in my exterior sauna open when not in use and forgot about it during the wildfire smoke. The first time I took a sauna after the wildfire smoke, it was unbearable. Literal ash had blown in the vents that I had to vacuum up and I couldn’t even keep my eyes open in there because of the lingering smoke smell made my eyes burn and was difficult to breathe.

I left the sauna door open for a week with a big box fan blowing out the door, trying to air it out. It helped but was still bad. I fully sprayed/scrubbed/cleaned the entire sauna with my regular sauna cleaner two separate times and aired it out with a fan for another couple days. It helped a lot but there’s still a lingering smoke smell in there. It only seems to be noticeable when taking a sauna and it still hurts my eyes and myself and towels smell like a campfire after taking a 20 min sauna.

Does anyone have any advice for how to permanently get the smoke smell out of my sauna? I’ll try any cleaning products or methods that are suggested. I’m getting desperate because the sauna isn’t even enjoyable right now. Thanks in advance!

I’m about to lock in financing for a home I’m closing on in 7 weeks. I have a 825 credit score and will be putting ~60% down on a $615k sale price. I’ve got quotes from 2 local banks and 2 local mortgage lenders. Updated rates on Friday for a 30 year fixed conventional mortgage without any points was 6.7%. I could get it to 6.5% with a $2k loan origination fee paid at closing (they weren’t calling it points but essentially the same thing).

Is 6.7% with my credit score and down payment too high? I’ve seen conflicting things on other threads. I could get 6.5% with an additional $2k in closing costs but just trying to figure out if I need to keep shopping lenders. If I need to keep shopping, does anyone have any recommendations?

Thanks in advance!

Does anyone have any recommendations for a home inspector in the Duluth area? Last time I bought a home was 10 years ago and I was disappointed in the inspector I used. Any recent use recommendations would be super helpful. Thanks in advance.