Cat’s Neighborhood

Buy this stuff!!

The grapevine (and, now, finding her blog post) told me that IG was appropriate impressed with Folex carpet cleaner. It's seriously miraculous stuff - a gabillion-trillion times better than anything else on the market but a relatively unknown product. Spray, blot, stain = GONE.

And I just saw, on their website, that it's good for clothing stains too. Why didn't that occur to me on my own? Doh!!

Moving on....

Awhile ago, I found that Folex comes in gallon jugs and can be used in carpet cleaning machines. So I bought a jug and set it in my house for weeks on end. Then, during my extended illness, I pulled out the carpet cleaner that I bought let's say... SIX YEARS... ago and assembled it. But that made me exhausted so, I put it back in the garage to ignore.

Two weeks ago, when the weather was just right, I pulled out the machine, loaded the soap thingie with Folex, and tried cleaning just the hallway... to mixed success. But I realized the soap dispenser had barely dispensed any of the miracle cleaner. No wonder my success was mild, I'd basically "cleaned" with just warm water (making the amount of filth that came out extra scary)!! And the carpets had a LOT of cat fur so that gunked up the works a lot.

Today I got another wild hair (wisely, I had not returned the machine to the garage), mixed the Folex directly into the water reservoir and tried again. WOW!! Some spots just instantly disappeared. One swipe and GONE. That was fantastic! Other spots disappeared after being allowed to sit for awhile. Others (the spots where I sit all the time) only lightened up, appearing to be perma-stains, but were still improved (since I have light gold carpet, I can bleach them).

I'd show pics but the carpet still looks pretty bad (8+ years of gold carpet, black cats, me being a slob and a general disbelief in cleaning... you do the math). You'd only know it looks MASSIVELY better if you'd seen it, in person, before today's cleaning. Plus, it's still damp and I know the Folex will keep working till it dries.

Of course having misc piles of shit up off the floor is helping too. Too bad most of them will be put back because, much like Richard Gere, they've "got nowhere else to go!!"

I only got through 2/3 of the house before running out of motivation and Folex. I still need to do the dining room and move furniture and repeat the living room. And I supposed the bedroom too (the only time the carpet under the bed has been cleaned was when Adrian took out the bed to paint the room) - esp the East side, where the cord wouldn't reach (and there's cat barf that needs to be cleaned up anyway)(gawd, these cats are getting to me!!).

I may y or 4 more jugs of Folex and use it straight up, no water, next time. I'm not sure. I'm also not sure why I hate vacuuming but tolerate using the carpet cleaner... they sound and feel almost identical, and the vacuum doesn't leave the carpet wet, so why do I slightly enjoy using the cleaner but want to ax murder anyone who turns on a vacuum?

And that's basically how I spent my weekend. Sat was spent almost entirely asleep. The longest I was awake was to get some dinner (chicken pho) and pick up med refills (oh, lordy, when did my Darvo scrip go from 30 pills to 60?? the bottle is too big for my cabinet). Then I took 2 xanax (I've been having insane levels of anxiety), passed out around 10p, moved to my bed at 12:30a, and slept till 1pm today. Screwed up my plans for the day but, hot damn, I feel better! (got all the kinks out of my body)

I forgot to share my happy news... I WON A $50 AMAZON GIFT CARD ON FRIDAY!! Random draw from a facebook contest run by BlackFriday.info, which posts all the day-after-thanksgiving ads as they're created - so you can plan your shopping/spending early (or, if you're like me, start craving all sorts of stuff you don't really need). That was an awesome start to the weekend!! It was offset by working till 1am, and some really shitty meetings throughout the day, but hey...I WON $50!!

Should I go out for a drink tonight? I think Puka Bar might be calling me.

• 10:33 #MW2 network performance is the exact opposite of #Uncharted2 #

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00:19 bit.ly/3ThCVW "Me and My Dick." Flying vaginas played by men in drag in flapper dresses, with mustaches and cigars. Go watch. Really.

08:53 I hate when I hit the start button on the microwave when I meant to hit timer. Although it did make me discover the crayon in there.

15:26 "UP" has my kids completely entranced. I don't think they've blinked since it started. Sweet.

16:03 Giant stingray video (holy shit!): bit.ly/4Bbx0X

16:26 I nearly died laughing last night, watching it! RT @DarrenCriss Our latest creation has been set loose: bit.ly/7V4yc "Me And My Dick"

18:21 Watching a biography of Lenin on Hulu. Weird to hear people talk ing about his propaganda who actually remember him.

19:12 Oh ma gaw! What joy! What bliss! bit.ly/z2daF

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• 16:36 Just came across a cyclist down on the road, thankfully he's okay and now on his way home #

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and I only had to hang up on tech support in India once (a record for me!).

turns out that all i needed was my IP address. i eventually figured out how to hit the modem to see it (gee - just like hitting the router, but you have to be plugged in to the modem).

for future reference, the key to everything is
192.168.1.1

of course, if I can't get into the internet, I'll never be able to find that. So I used my label maker to put all the vital info on the router itself.

I hope I have at least another 2 years before I go through this again.

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Drinks

Sorry that I just want to ramble on today. I'm feeling seriously rebellious. I think I want to completely overhaul my lifestyle. Mostly my diet. Okay, so I've got: a wheat allergy and chronic fatigue syndrome. The last thing I want is pity - I don't need it. I got through a graduate biology program. But I'm annoyed at our society for its silliness with edibles.

Should I stop drinking? It's so dumb how I google cider recipes and they all have booze in them. That alone makes me want to boycott the industry. I'm definetly cutting back on coffee because I'm having palpitations again when I have too many cups or alcohol.

I wonder if I should just go whole hog and live a crazy vegan lifestyle. I also google vegan recipes and they all have wheat. I can't eat those. Can you see why I want to start diet groups on Vox? People keep saying to me, "Oh, I don't know how you can stand to go without cake / coffee / booze / steak". Yeah, thanks for the words of wisdom.

On a happier note, we have heroes like Alton Brown to educate us on cooking techniques. And I still love Ace of Cakes, I bet they would make a cake just for me. My favorite episode was when they made a cake for the author of a kid's book called Ghost Girl, a child who was teased in school. Then she died and she learned what real friendship is.

Appropriate for my dilemma, I guess. Maybe I'll change my attitude along with what I consume.

ghostgirl

Green_tea

So I've sent out my resume, I'm waiting patiently to hear back from potential employers. I can't wait for school to send my diploma so I can take that stupid word "Candidate" off my title for "Master's of Science".

My mom thinks I should apply for a college teaching job. You know, so I won't get eaten by some beast in the forest. I can't imagine anything I'd want to do less. I'm in biology so I won't have to work with humans, remember?

The one advantage to teaching is that I'd  teach those brainwashed students about evolution. In the vet tech program, our cell biology teacher was a devout Christian. A student asked about Intelligent Design, and she replied, "This is a science class, so we're not going to discuss religion". Score!

Although it may be brutally cold I'd rather be watching bobcats anyday than stuck in a monkey suit at a desk. Being an ecologist means I can dress casual and be a socially awkward geek if I like. Not that I can help it.

I'm at least tempted to volunteer for science groups that stand up for Evolution in schools. And a new arrival at my favorite bookstore showed Origin of the Species in illustration form. Yay!

Charles Darwin's On the Origin of Species: A Graphic Adaptation

A friend of mine has a great website you should check out;

www.Scribendi.com

http://twitter.com/Scribendi_Inc