mzp's Profile

Our front hallway has no outlets in it, and only an overhead light. Which is great sometimes, but mostly just too bright to leave on all the time. I wish I could put two lamps on a console to light the space, and I've been dying for someone to invent a battery-powered lightbulb! Something that just screws into a regular lightbulb socket, but is battery powered, no outlet required! A girl can dream, right?

yelloweed makes and excellent point: CONTROL YOUR CHILDREN! Please!

We had dear friends (my husband's best friend and his partner) and their 18-month-old stay with us in our tiny 1-bedroom+den apartment. We don't have kids, and we definitely don't have a kid-proof apartment.

They camped out in the den, which has a pullout sofa bed, and once the bed is open there is not much room. We managed to arrange the space so they had room for the bed open, plus the playpen for their baby to sleep in. This entailed removing the computer desk from the den and wedging it into our bedroom.

For the most part, they were quite attentive to their kid. Except at mealtimes. This kid was a disgusting eater, and every meal meant food was everywhere, and they would just do a cursory clean up, leaving sticky floors, and leaving the kid with sticky hands and face to transport peanut butter or pudding everywhere. It still gives me the heebie jeebies -- we basically scrubbed every surface in our house after they left.

The final straw came on the day they were scheduled to leave, but later in the day. My hubby and his best were up eating breakfast and feeding the baby his breakfast. Baby was in his highchair, no diaper. My hubby is getting more and more anxious about the baby not wearing his diaper, but his friend kept reassuring that it's ok, they do this all the time. Breakfast ends, and baby starts to run around the house, still bare-bummed, and no idea when the last time was that he peed. Sure enough, he squats and pees all over the floor. Husband freaks out, everyone jumps to clean up, and they end up leaving rather quickly and with tempers high. It was NOT GOOD.

These friends now have a second kid, way too much to fit into our apartment, so they stay at a hotel when they visit now.

Ours is called "The Colonial Defense Mainframe" after the system that was hacked to cause the Cylon-Human war in Battlestar Galactica. Yes, we are nerds, but it made me chuckle every time I needed to connect to it!

My hubbie and I have been watching re-runs of Friends, and noticed that in the early seasons, before Joey builds the giant entertainment unit and gets the ugly recliners, that Joey and Chandler had an Eames chair! JEALOUS! And I'm sure back in the 90's they would have gotten it for a song because no one wanted them then!

I actually saw one in another re-run of a show recently -- can't remember which! -- that was also before its time...

If you use Gmail, Outlook, or anything else that lets you set up rules and folders/labels, you shouldn't need any additional email addresses!

I have 4 addresses:

1. I have one for work, that is only used at work and on my work computer (somehow I'm lucky enough to not be in a position to need and use a cell phone for work!!!).
2. I have my personal Gmail address, which is used for everything.
3. My previous Gmail address (still functioning, uses my maiden name which some people still use) is synced up to my current personal Gmail. Messages sent to that email immediately show up in my personal inbox. I haven't physically signed into that account in years. (NOTE: You can do this with Hotmail, but Hotmail gets picky if you don't sign in for a certain length of time. I lost my old Hotmail address this way -- it was not a big loss, though! Just make sure you sign into your Hotmail occasionally if you are going to POP or fwd it to another email, to keep it active.)
4. My home-business email address (myname@mydomain.com) runs though my personal Gmail as well, through a POP server.

You can even set up multiple inboxes to keep the emails separate within Gmail. Set up a bunch of filters to tag and move emails as you want them sorted. The only thing I wish that Gmail had was a function to archive an email after a certain amount of time. Instead, I just archive all the newsletters and bacn immediately after I receive/read it, so my inbox is only full of relevant emails from real people.

I have everything set to tag automatically as well, so I can find things in the future when I need them. For example, emails from Old Navy get tagged with "clothing." When I receive the email, I immediately archive it so it doesn't show up in my inbox. When I decide I want to go shopping and see if I have any coupons or deals from Old Navy, I just pull up the clothing tag, or search Old Navy. No inbox clutter, no need to sign into another email address, and everything I need is right there!

/end long-winded rant about email management. Inefficient systems are one of my pet-peeves....

My in-laws used to struggle with keeping their light berber carpets clean, renting a steam cleaner every 6-ish months and they still looked dingy. Once when they were renting the cleaner yet again and bemoaning their carpets to the rental staff, they were advised to try cleaning the carpets with just water. If you're cleaning the carpets that often, the soap can build up in the carpets and leave a residue. They started cleaning only every 3rd time with any solution and it helped with the dinginess...

We have a pullout sofa in our den, but it's comfort level is, quite frankly, low. Our sectional sofa, on the other hand, is wide and cushy and comfy, so most overnight guests end up sleeping there!!! Unless privacy is needed, then they sleep in the den! ;)

Oh God. We all do this, don't we?

We live in a condo built in the early 70's, and we have a woefully small number of outlets in each room. People just didn't have as much to plug in back then, so we break all these rules!

Our bedroom only has two outlets, on opposite walls from each other and in the middle of the wall. How do you plug in two bedside lamps and two alarm clocks to an outlet in the middle of the wall behind the headboard of your bed without an extension cord or two? Plus that's where the cable enters our unit, so that's where the cable and phone modems live, each needing power as well!

Our living room is the same, and our giant mess of an entertainment station is all plugged into one outlet via multiple surge bars. It's disgusting, but necessary!

To exacerbate the lack of outlets, we also have too few fuses (yes, fuses!) and so have things like the dishwasher and the a/c unit on the same breaker. Can't run them both at the same time...!

Oh. My. God. The Victoria Falls picture gives me the heebie-jeebies!!! Beautiful, but absolutely terrifying!

I also do the brown a little bit on the stove top, then pop into the oven trick. I do about 5 minutes in the pan on the stovetop because I like a nice crispy chicken, and then 15 minutes in the oven at about 400. Perfect every time. I learned this method from a cooking show where they did this with proscuitto-wrapped breasts, but it works perfect without -- you don't *need* the ham..... (but who doesn't love bacon-wrapped chicken?!?!??!)