Cleaning the Shower Door- a Series of Experiments

It's been a while since I've cleaned the shower door, as you can see in this picture:

The shower door is fairly new, and I still haven't landed on a completely satisfactory cleaning approach.  I reasoned that the cloudiness was caused predominantly by soap scum, so I stared the cleaning process with soap scum cleaner and a cloth rag.  It got some of the cloudiness, but it still wasn't clean:

Next I went after it with Windex and a paper towel.  Again, some improvement, but not great:

Then, I decided to try a trick I read about on the World Wide Web.  One person who had worked in a motel described how they always cleaned their shower doors using a dryer sheet that they'd moistened with water.  I decided to give this a try.  I found that the dryer sheet seemed to loosen more of the cloudiness, but I needed to follow up after it with Windex again to remove the loosened gunk.  Here is the result:

A nice shiny door.  My recommendation: go straight for the dryer sheet followed up by a swipe of Windex.

How to Select a Decent Karaoke Song

You may have experienced that sinking feeling when you go to a party or bar, and there is karaoke singing going on.  At some point, you’ll be pestered into joining, and you dread the likely auditory pain you suspect you will inflict on your companions.  What to do?  It’s good to have a few karaoke song choices in your back pocket that you can pull out in these times.  If you’re prepared with a few song choices that you’ve tested out in advance, you won’t have to fret. 

What makes a decent karaoke song?  Consider the following criteria:

•   Avoid the overplayed songs like Sweet Caroline and Margaritaville.  Similarly, while show tunes are universally known, we’ve all seen the Sound of Music more times than we can count.  Spare us.

•  Have a sense for your vocal range.  Do not pick a song that will cause you to shriek into upper registers and that you have no business attempting.  In other words, Mariah Carey is generally the only one who can pull off a Mariah Carey song.  If you’d like to test your vocal range in advance, here is a handy link: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9IejHKpfHso

• You want to pick a song that people recognize and will enjoy, but are not tired of.  If you like a certain group or artist, target one of their lesser-played hits

• It’s no longer the 1990s.  You might want to listen to some current music every now and then so that you have a few choices from at least this decade

•   Have a care for total song length- don’t make the audience suffer through Freebird or Climbing the Stairway to Heaven

•  Be very careful with certain genres such as rap or country.  These are very hard to pull off well, and are at great risk for inflicting auditory pain

• Move a little while you’re singing.  Don’t stand there as if your feet are glued to the stage.  Even better, if it’s a song you know well enough, you don’t have to stare intently at the monitor for the lyrics, and you can interact with the audience a bit

• Finally, for a few of you readers out there (and you know who you are), don’t be a microphone hog.  If the Sony executives haven’t come to knock on your door yet, you’re not that good.  Variety goes a very long way in enjoying  karaoke

Enjoy!

Bean/Bacon

Bean Dip: to Bacon or not to Bacon?

So, Rachel, our resident skeptic, makes the most amazing baked bean dip ever.  We had leftover cooked bacon from breakfast in a restaurant, so we asked for a doggie bag (incidentally, the bag was also useful for capturing the excellent mimosa-fueled ideas we were spouting at the time).  When it was time for bean dip making, Rachel made two batches.  One with bacon, and one without.  You can guess the outcome- the bacon enhanced the already-delicious bean dip and elevated it to new heights of smoky delight.  FABULOUS!!!!

Bacon.                     No bacon.

Infinite Lumpless Storage

The Problem
You are feeling pretty primped and put together for the office, home or time on the town.  Your tailored slacks give you a no-nonsense finish to the rest of your whimsical outfit.  And you think you look hot.

Classy hot.

Oh look!  I dropped my keys, I will need to bend over and pick them up.  Still classy hot, but unfortunately only in your head.  Everyone else can't take your eyes off the giant, lumpy squares cast by your pocket bags and all of their contents on your well-displayed butt.

This is unacceptable and must be solved.  We're on it.


Brainstorming Brilliance
The ideas began to flow.

• Step one: Contemplate the merits of pockets.
• Step two: What are alternatives to pockets?
• Unsightly bulges are gross.  What about sightly bulges?  Can we make use of things that we would like to bulge, i.e. bosoms and butts?  We contend the arm region is also sorely under-represented in the pocket arena.  Thus the formed shape pocket idea was born.
• Considering the potential disadvantages of a sightly bulge appearing suddenly, we discussed graduated shape-enhancing storage devices.
• Could we create some type of pannicular in-body pocket, like a kangaroo, or the cheek pockets of a hamster?  This would require consultation with a plastic surgeon, so we put this idea on hold.
• The concept of a uni-pocket was born.  A totally tubular space that connects Pocket A to Pocket B, with the possible added benefit of compression and smoothing of undesired bulge-osity.
• Then, the magic happened.  Why not disentangle the pocket from the pocket substrate?  Pockets need no medium in which to be embedded!

The Idea

Create an infinity scarf with an opening that can be used to store critical items for your day.  And add class not lumpy ass.  

The Prototype

The team immediate got to work to construct the prototype.  All that was available was fox-clad fleece, so basically Grade A materials.  Unfortunately the working conditions were a little sketchy.  We had a single, rusty needle.  A temperamental sewing machine.  But since we had all had mimosas with breakfast, we were not deterred.

A hasty construction mistake was turned into an intentional "mobius" scarf detail that added additional je ne said quoi flair.  Fortunately, fleece buttonholes require only a minimal cut and new stitching, so we added buttons to our pocket slot to keep our precious items from spilling out of our lovely scarf.  Here are the results:

"Sunny, help me figure out how to stitch the ends together" -Amber

By Jove, this pocket will work! 

Haven't you always wanted to tote your hard boiled eggs?

Emergency tampon storage!

Are those Lipsmackers in your foxy scarf?  Why yes.  

This scarf can accompany you on all your daily tasks, like vacuuming.

Hello!  Welcome to our new blog! If there was a problem, yo we'll solve it.  Check out the hook while our DJ revolves it.  We are a (self-proclaimed) brilliant group including a scientist, a seamstress, a skeptic and a smart-ass.  It's kind of a Breakfast Club thing.  We're just a bit nerdy, and we believe in brainstorming and continuous improvement.  A few of our latest problems, predicaments and brilliant ideas:

• Creating false butt padding that is hollow to wear in your pants and allow storage for your phone or other important items.  This concept includes graduated sizes of fake butt padding, so that you could gradually add gluteal sphericity without triggering derision
• Bean dip experiments- adding bacon or no bacon?  We will let you know the outcome of this experiment
• Going into a restaurant and you can't decide between several choices on the menu?  Order one item, and then ask the server for a "scrap" of another dish.  Perhaps a pancake that wasn't flipped properly?  A scrapancake if you will?
• Continuous uni-tubular-pockets sewn into clothing. Because, well, lots of reasons why.
• Working on your family tree to see where you inherited your breasts from- perhaps Sarajevo?
• Tiny battery-powered ear warmers in the shape of hearing aids that keep your ears warm without the big fluffy hat that musses your hair
• What is the best choreography for old ladies?
• Is there a way to discourage your weird neighbors from putting their three Yorkies on the trampoline in the backyard?
• What is the optimal amount of smoothie gingering?
• What are ways we could have more fun at work?
• Piracy- what are the modern implications?  How could we incorporate elements of piracy in our lives?  Booty is a great word and is greatly underutilized.
• Wearing shirts that have the thumb hole allow you to squash household spiders without a paper towel