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Free Things To Do in Phoenix Now!

Who says that you have to shell out a lot of cash to have a great time by yourself or with the family this weekend? Arizona is a naturally beautiful state so there is always something to do outside but many people don’t realize how many free activities are offered in the metro Phoenix area in the vein of arts, music and entertainment. Here is a great list from the Phoenix New Times on thirty free things to do right now in Metro Phoenix.

Low on funds and high on FOMO? We can help with that. Phoenix is chock-full of free events worth freeing your schedule for, including movie screenings, open mics, and a good deal of art walks. Because saving money is always in season, here 30 free things you can do all year round.

Take in Some Free Art at the Museums

Free admission is standard at establishments like the Phoenix Airport Museum, ASU Art Museum, ASU Museum of Anthropology, Arizona Capitol Museum, and Shemer Art Center (though some accept and encourage donations). But visitors can also get complimentary access to Phoenix Art Museum from 3 to 9 p.m. every Wednesday and 6 to 10 p.m. on First Fridays; Scottsdale Museum of Contemporary Art on Thursdays; and Phoenix Children’s Museum from 5 to 9 p.m. on First Fridays.

Kill It in Karaoke 

At 9 p.m. every Thursday and Saturday night (except the first Saturday of the month) Apollo’s Lounge brings out the karaoke so you can belt out the classics. The adults-only event is free to participate. For details, visit Apollo’s on Facebook or call 602-277-9373.

Let Your Pen Do the Talking 

On the second Tuesday of each month, Practical Art invites Valley wordsmiths to share their work with Uptown P.E.N., which stands for poetry event night. The evening runs from 7 to 8:30 p.m. and features a first-come, first-served open mic opportunities as well as established poets reading their own prose. For details, visit www.practical-art.com or call 602-264-1414.

Walk the Art Walk

Metro Phoenix offers many opportunities to take in the arts. The Downtown Phoenix Art Walk runs from 6 to 10 p.m. on the first Friday of the month. The Downtown Mesa Art Walk goes from 6 to 10 p.m. on the second Friday of the month. The Downtown Chandler Art Walk happens from 6 to 10 p.m. on the third Friday of the month. The Scottsdale Art Walk runs from 7 to 9 p.m. every Thursday. The Sunnyslope Art Walk pops-up from 5 to 9 p.m. on the second Saturday of October and April.

Unleash Your Inner Geek

Throughout the year Nerd Nite Phoenix invites local to learn drink and discuss on a number of topics including superheroes, time travel, and government conspiracies. These beer-fueled brain teasers tend to change up their dates and locations so the best way to stay in the known is to visit phoenix.nerdnite.com or check out the Nerd Nite Phoenix Facebook Page.

Catch a Movie Under the Stars

Lawn Gnome Publishing is making every Tuesday night a mystery movie night. The free flick viewing begins at 7:30 p.m. in the backyard of the downtown bookstore. If you love surprises as much as you love watching films outside, visit lawngnomepublishing.com or visit the Lawn Gnome Facebook page.

Learn to Line Dance

Cash Inn Country is kicking up its cowboy boots from 7:30 p.m. to 8:30 p.m. every Tuesday night with free line dancing lessons. Whether you’re gay, straight, or simply into country music, make your way to the Cash Inn for a complimentary cowboy-style workout. Visit www.cashinncountry.net for more information.

Put Pencil to Paper in Mesa 

Ready, set, draw. Pencil Fight is Lo-Fi Coffee’s monthly community drawing series that gives guests pencil, paper, and sharpeners for an hour of illustration and a chance to win prizes such as a $20 gift certificate to Arizona Art Supply. For updates and information, visit www.loficoffee.com.

Get Crafty in Chandler

At 6 p.m. on the second Monday of each month, Gangplank gets the creative community together for an evening of arts and crafts. Bring your knitting needles, glitter, glue, and other DIY material and get ready to mix and mingle with other crafters as you work your handmade magic. For details, visit CraftHackEV on Facebook.

Get to Know Your Local Hangouts

Support new and local businesses, meet your fellow Phoenix residents over food and drinks, and enter to win raffle prizes with the monthly event, Get Your PHX. Past Get Your PHX gatherings have visited Milk Bar, Rollover Donuts, The Newton, and the Lisa Sette Gallery. To stay in the loop with Get Your PHX, visit www.getyourphx.com.

30 Free Things to Do in Metro Phoenix Any Time

Grant via Flickr

Joke Around in Scottsdale

Stand Up, Scottsdale gives up-and-coming comics a chance to test our their new material with its weekly open mic night. The unexpected (or uncomfortable) laughs begin at 8 p.m. every Tuesday and run until everyone has had their chance to wow the crowd. For more information, visit standupscottsdale.com.

Make It a Movie Night at the Library 

Every Wednesday night, the Phoenix Public Library invites movie-goers of all ages to heal their hump day blues with a free film screening at Burton Barr Central Library’s Pulliam Auditorium. Film screenings start at 6 p.m. For the full schedule, visit phoenixpubliclibrary.evanced.info.

Tweak Your Mind

Every Wednesday CO+HOOTS invites the public to partake in Midweek Mindtweek, a free series that features lunchtime lecturers from experts in their field. Food trucks will set up in the parking lot so guests can get their midday fuel while learning new ways to better their career. For a look at who’s lined up to speak, visit cohoots.com.

Find Your Philosophical Side

Practical Art invites fellow philosophers and deep thinkers to discuss the big picture with its ongoing event, Socrates Cafe. The reflective rendezvous happens from 3 to 5 p.m. every first and third Sunday of the month. For details, visit www.practical-art.com or check out the Practical Art Facebook page.

Get Your Game On

Every third Sunday of the month, Firehouse Gallery is putting out the Pick-Up-Sticks, Scrabble, and whatever else it can find, for Game Day. The free affair runs from 2 to 5 p.m. Guests are encouraged to BYOB and BYO-games. For details and to see who’s coming, visit Firehouse Gallery on Facebook.

Mix and Mingle with Phoenix’s Movers and Shakers

Looking to network? Radiate PHX has you covered. The monthly series gives guests a chance to learn about the latest developments in downtown Phoenix as well as make connections with who’s who behind the city’s fast-paced growth. Radiate PHX’s dates and locations vary by month. To stay updated, visit www.facebook.com/downtownphoenix.

Read more at: http://bit.ly/1VSN9tF

Bed Bugs 101

bedddThere is a lot of mystery surrounding bed bugs in the public eye. Not everyone reacts to bites the same way, it is difficult to get rid of them and there is a lot of misinformation out there. It is important to understand what bed bugs look like, how to prevent infestations, how to recognize infestations and to know when to call a professional service.

Bedbugs are flat, round and reddish brown, around a quarter-inch (7 millimeters) in length. The ones that typically plague humans are the common bedbug Cimex lectularius and the tropical bedbug Cimex hemipterus.

A few decades ago, bedbugs were somewhat of a novelty in developed countries. But since the early 2000s, infestations have become more common in places like the United States, Canada, the United Kingdom and Europe, according to the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC). A 2013 study in the journal Nature Scientific Reports suggested that bedbugs have evolved ways to resist insecticides.

The creatures don’t have wings and they can’t fly or jump. But their narrow body shape and ability to live for months without food make them ready stowaways and squatters. Bedbugs can easily hide in the seams and folds of luggage, bags and clothes. They also take shelter behind wallpaper and inside bedding, box springs and furniture. The ones that feed on people can crawl more than 100 feet (30 meters) in a night, but typically creep to within 8 feet (2.4 m) of the spot its human hosts sleep, according to the CDC.

Bedbugs reproduce by a gruesome strategy appropriately named “traumatic insemination,” in which the male stabs the female’s abdomen and injects sperm into the wound. During their life cycle, females can lay more than 200 eggs, which hatch and go through five immature “nymph” stages before reaching their adult form, molting after each phase. [Infographic: Bedbugs: The Life of a Mini-Monster]

Read more at: http://bit.ly/1KpJLp1

Why Killing Bed Bugs With Heat is Effective

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As we have talked about in previous posts, bed bugs are extremely hard to get rid of. There are many different tactics that companies use to eliminate bed bugs but heat is proven to be one of the most effective and is where we get the name Arizona Heat Pest.

Do not let these parasites ruin your life. Do not let them invade your home. If they are already there, you need to take all of the steps that you can to dislodge them from this position and kill them all. Killing them with heat is simple and effective, making it one of the best tactics that you can choose.

The entire process will be broken down below, including what you need to do, how much it costs, and when you should use heat instead of a different method to eradicate them from your home. If they are making it so that your home is not the clean, relaxing place that it should be for you and your family, keep reading to learn how to get rid of them forever.

Killing them with heat simply entails getting the interior of your home up to a level of heat that they cannot survive. If you have ever been in a sauna, you know just how intense it can be. You know how it reaches every corner of the building, allowing no escape unless you exit the building altogether.

Since you cannot see all of the bugs or all of their eggs, you need this sort of a treatment since heat can hunt them down for you. There will be no need to locate their nests when your entire home has been heated up until it is a death trap for these bugs.

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Bed Bug Horror Stories

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In the business of bed bug removal, there isn’t really ever a dull day. There are constantly new places where they are popping up and new people that need to be helped but sometimes we get there after the problem has been going on for a while and there are some horrifying things that bed bugs are capable of doing if we let them run amuck. Check out an interview with a bed bug exterminator from Brooklyn and a few of his horror stories from working the job for many years.

In the past few years, have you gotten more calls about bed bugs or fewer calls? More. But the one thing I do see is that people are starting to raise their level of acceptance with these bugs. I’m finding them all over.

What does that mean, “raise their level of acceptance?”
 Well, when these were first starting, it was like alarms were going off. People were, “AAGH, I’ve got bed bugs!” Now it’s like, “Eh, I’ve got a couple of bed bugs.” It seems like they’re becoming a little more nonchalant, like an occasional roach or something.

So what’s the difference, in terms of threat level, between the occasional roach and a couple of bed bugs? Well, the occasional roach would be in your kitchen by a water source, eating your food and things like that. The few bed bugs would be eating YOU. They’re parasites. They feed off human blood.

How concerned should people be? If you just have a few, is it worth paying an exterminator hundreds of dollars? Why can’t you kill them yourself? When people try to self-exterminate, they’re not taught how to find cracks and crevices. It’s very small details you’ve gotta pay attention to when you spray. You tend to make them spread.

How is that? Because once a pesticide is close to a bug, they will cross it, and they’ll scatter away from it. If they leave you and they can’t go back there, they end up going for your outlets or a hole in your ceiling where a light fixture is or something, and they’ll spread to other apartments. Or if you had them in the master bedroom, they’ll end up spreading to one of the smaller bedrooms.

What’s the worst job you’ve gone on?
 Ok, for me, I’ve come across a lot of different ones, but probably the one that was most shocking to me was when I was going to a single-room-occupancy to do a general treatment, for roaches and things like that. When I walked in, the gentleman was sitting on his couch, and his wall looked like it was covered in spots. And I’m staring at it, because it looked unusual to me, and I’m wondering why these spots looked like they were moving.

And when I got a little bit closer, there were hundreds and hundreds of bedbugs covering his wall behind his couch. I looked at the guy; he was chewed up, there wasn’t a spot on his face that didn’t have a bite on it. I said, “Sir. Look behind you.” He said, “They’re cockroaches.” I said, “They’re not cockroaches, they’re bedbugs, and they’re eating you.”

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Click here to get rid of your bed bugs in Arizona

Bed Bugs May Carry Deadly Disease

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In recent years bed bugs have resurfaced in a big way. They are absolutely everywhere and they are extremely difficult to get rid of. Bed bugs can bite, they cause property damage and now a new study says that they may also carry a deadly disease. Bed bugs have always been viewed as harmless but more studies are showing that they are becoming more of a threat in the recent years, making it extremely important to get rid of bed bugs and the only way to ensure that they are gone is with a professional service. To get the best professional service that the valley has to offer, go to azheatpest.com  and check out our discounts page to get the best price!

As bed bug infestations have continued to crop up in firehouses, schools, movie theaters and homes across the country, a team of researchers is now warning that these proliferating pests could prove to be more than just an itchy, pricey nuisance.

According to a new study published on Monday, bed bugs are capable of transmitting a parasite that causes Chagas disease, an infection that in some cases can lead to cardiac or intestinal complications. The infection is found most commonly in Mexico, Central American and South America, but has been increasing its foothold in the U.S.

“There are a lot of people with Chagas disease, and a lot of bed bugs. They are in our houses, in our beds — and in high numbers,” said Michael Levy, a researcher at University of Pennsylvania’s Perelman School of Medicine and senior author on the new paper. He also co-authored a report in January that found bed bug populations in Philadelphia are growing by 70 percent a year.

“But no one seems worried,” he added. “We always hear that the bugs don’t seem to be carrying anything.”

On their website, after lamenting that bed bugs “are resurging, causing property loss, expense, and inconvenience,” the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention goes on to offer some “good news” — “Bed bugs do not transmit disease.” The CDC declined to comment on the new study, which details a series of experiments that suggests bed bugs and mice are capable of transmitting Chagas disease to one another.

Read more at: http://pi.vu/66uF