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.

I ran two half marathons, on consecutive saturdays. 

http://tpmmuckraker.talkingpointsmemo.com/2009/11/party_foul_tea_partiers_eat_their_own_in_bitter_in.php?ref=fpb

TPMMuckraker

Party Foul! Tea Partiers Eat Their Own In Bitter Internal Feud

Zachary Roth | November 12, 2009, 5:08PM

The Tea Party movement is being ripped apart by bitter internal rancor, highlighted by a lawsuit against a former leader, vituperative name-calling, and charges of financial mismanagement and corruption.

As we told you this morning, board members for the Tea Party Patriots (TPP) this week filed suit against Amy Kremer, a former TPP leader who fell out with the group over her involvement with a rival Tea Party faction, the Tea Party Express. And on Tuesday, a judge granted a preliminary injunction, ordering Kremer to return control of the TPP websites to the board, and to stop representing herself as a TPP spokeswoman.

But that's just the tip of the iceberg in terms of the Tea Partiers' internecine strife. Emails obtained by TPMmuckraker detail how a rogue faction of Tea Party Patriots is lashing out at the board for going ahead with the suit against Kremer, and challenging the board's financial management, triggering a state of acrimony that appears serious enough to threaten the upstart movement's ability to continue to mount an effective grassroots challenge to the Obama agenda -- just days after the House passed the health-care-reform bill that the Tea Partiers view as socialism.

In an email to fellow TPPers sent Wednesday, Gerald Merits called the lawsuit "the single most insane act of self destruction I have witnessed since this country elected Obama," and asked "how much donor money is being spent of (sic) suing Amy?"

For the rest of the day, the email list was consumed with charges and counter charges. In response to Merits, Josh Parker, a supporter of the board, wrote: "Amy created a situation where TPP couldn't do anything BUT sue her, then she goes on with her poor me crap. She brings this on herself and all the rest of us."

At the root of the dispute is the acrimony between TPP and the Tea Party Express, a newer group formed by a team of GOP consultants. Many TPPers sees TPE as inauthentic, calling it the "Astoturf Express," and deriding it as a "Republican front organization." But others -- including Merits -- have flirted with TPE, apparently out of frustration with the TPP's sprawling structure and unwieldy decision-making process. On Wednesday, David McKalip, the Florida neurosurgeon and one-time Tea Party Patriot activist, who found himself in hot water after we published an email he sent showing President Obama as a witch doctor -- addressed a Tea Party Express rally in Orlando.

In Wednesday's email exchange, several other TPPers sided with Merits in raising concerns about the lawsuit. And one, Jack Staver, raised a separate charge against the board, suggesting that board members were being insufficiently transparent about the organization's finances.

Wrote Staver:

How much money does TPP have? How much did we make in DC? Where are the financial statements? Do board members get paid and if so who? Who signs the checks? Where does our money go?

Merits echoed that theme. "Why are the financial records not public knowledge?" he asked. "Show me the money!"

Eventually a Tea Party Patriots loyalist couldn't take it anymore. "Why are you intentionally trying to destroy this movement??" he demanded.

Charges of lax book-keeping -- and worse -- appear to be breaking out across the Tea Party movement. In a separate email written Wednesday and obtained by TPMmuckraker, Matt Perdue, the president of a San Antonio Tea Party group, ripped into the group's treasurer, her husband, and their supporters for conducting a "mass redirection campaign," apparently to line their own pockets using Tea Party donations.

"Where has all this money gone?" asks Perdue. "If there is nothing wrong going on, why has there not been one single piece of paper produced to back up why people got checks, some for $3,000, $7,400+, $4,000, $10,400+??? Where is the documentation? Why isn't the cash deposited like it should be? Why did it take more than two weeks to deposit cash from the meetings?"

Meanwhile, other Tea Party factions are trying to distance themselves from the dispute between Kremer and TPP -- and position themselves to benefit. Darla Dawald, the leader of the Patriotic Resistance, a far-right grassroots group, wrote in a message on the TPP email list that her organization has "not supported any lawsuit or fighting ... but I felt obligated to inform our base what is happening so that you could make an educated decision about your support of the Group called the Tea Party Patriots." Dawald has been a key participant in the bus tour organized by the Tea Party Express -- an effort shunned by TPP.

And Eric Odom, the founder of the Tax Day Tea Party events, wrote in his own message that the acrimony "presents a dangerous situation for the movement as a whole," and urged TPPers to return to "defeating the socialist thugs who seek to destroy our country, not fellow patriots who seek to stop them." We reported that Odom this week launched a political action committee designed to channel Tea Party activism toward an electoral goal.

As Wednesday wore on, the TPP internal email list degenerated into name-calling, sarcasm, and personal attacks. "Jack, you REALLY look clueless right now," Parker wrote to Staver at one point. Parker also ripped Merits for "your usual pissing and moaning without knowing nothing." And Staver deemed Parker "not worthy of a response."

Some TPPers expressed concern that the acrimony could damage the movement if exposed. "Daily Kos and other left wing interest groups are going to love running with this story," wrote one.

Merits appeared to share that concern. "This will go public if we let it drag on long enough and if you don't think this will have a chilling effect on all Tea Party movements raising funds you are living in a world of fairy dust and gingerbread houses," he wrote. "Read my previous emails. If this goes on long enough, we all go down - NOT just TPP and TPE - ALL OF US."

Some of Papa's photos mum found in an old album.

Diggers Ball, rural NSW - 1952.

Diggers-ball1952

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Old-nick

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

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Here's some Christmas Creep for you.

Bah Humbug:

Buy Nothing Christmas (Reverend Billy and the Church of Stop Shopping)

Alternatives to cut Christmas Trees

Something for your Festivus needs

Dear Santa letter generator (NSFK) Not safe for kids

Bah Humbug cards

A Santa by any other name:

Santa vs. Saint Nick

Sinterklaas

Holiday Helpers:

The Yule Cat,  Jolakotturinn

The Yule Goat, Julbock or Julbukk

Other:

Vintage Russian Christmas cards

Vintage Christmas Images

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.