Another thing that helps with bras is a lingerie bag - typically a zippered mesh bag. It keeps the straps from getting hooked around other clothing or twisted or whatever.
“And they used Bon Ami!!!”
A quote from my favorite Don Knotts movie, “The Ghost and Mister Chicken”.
Sorry, I couldn’t resist.
And yes, Janis, I remember the “Sock Incident”! It may have been the last time I enjoyed one of those “fart in church” belly laughs. Thanks for that.
Quasi
The Mythbusters did a show on motion sickness, testing Dramamine, those wrist pressure point bands, and ginger. Maybe a couple other things (it’s been a few years since I’ve seen that episode) as well.
Hands down the thing that worked the best (and pretty much the only thing that really worked) was ginger.
I read this once years ago, and it’s my go-to hiccup cure:
Take two pieces of ice and rub them on your throat on the sides for about a minute. Best way to describe is on either side of your Adam’s apple, or where one would be if you had one. I think it works because the shock of the cold causes a spasm in the right place.
A bleach solution might help a little, I had the same problem. Eventually, i just repainted using two coats of Kilz primer and two coats of paint (you can buy special mildew-resistant paint). I also replaced our bathroom fan, after discovering it wasn’t working anymore. D’oh!
I’ve thought of mildew-resistant paint, but I’m in an apartment. Trying to match the color and all that would be too big a hassle. 'Course, the idiots who run this place should’ve used mildew-resistant paint in the first place. :rolleyes:
But, yes, I also always leave the door open while I shower, and I leave the vent fan on for a good 15 minutes after I’m done. My bathroom is one of those deals where the toilet and shower are in their own little room, so I don’t know if that makes a difference. However, I live alone, so the door never gets closed. Hell, if I had somewhere to store it, I’d just take it off its hinges and get it out of the way.
I have used that Scrubbing Bubbles Mildew Remover spray and just squished it on and left it. Stains disappear.
Remote controlled helicopters. Seriously, a year ago, anything you bought for less than $100 was pure crap, but this year, they’ve got solid state gyros and a fairly consistent physical design. However, the companies that make them are almost unimportant and have poor quality control, and sometimes they fail to print the actual word that makes it worthy of being purchased (“gyro”). So here’s what you look for:
[ul]
[li]Size: maybe 8" long[/li][li]Major frame elements: METAL![/li][li]Counter-rotating main blades (one set goes clockwise, the other goes counter clockwise)[/li][li]Horizontal rotor in the back (i.e., it’ll make the tail go up or down, as opposed to clockwise-or-counter-clockwise)[/li][li]Cost: about $40 at Fry’s, possibly a similar price at Brookstone, but I don’t have the discipline to enter Brookstone stores. Those are for ones with infrared controllers; RF controllers are more expensive (and Brookstone has a quad-blade behemoth with two video cameras for $300 that you control with your iPhone but, as I said, I don’t go into those stores).[/li][li]The critical element: There are supposed to be two short, vertical links (usually plastic) connecting the stabilizer bar (just a thin metal bar that rotates in a plane almost parallel to one set of the main blades, but the links allow the bar to counteract any wobbling caused by misalignment, manufacturing variances, etc. I bought a few for people on my team (because they have an awesome team lead) today, and I had to go through about twenty of them to find four that had the links in place. The others are absolutely going to go to someone who will have a crappy experience and think that 2010 was not the year to buy toy helicopters. I told one of the people at the store, but well, he was someone who works for Fry’s.[/li][/ul]
So, look for one with both links intact, and forgive yourself because at some point you’re going to crash it and break one of those links and you’ll be out $40. But lemme tell you: you will fly it a lot before that crash, whereas any POS toy you bought (um, I bought) in years past would, the first time you turned it on, fly right over to wherever you didn’t want it to go and destroy itself. Seriously: three seconds of useful life, hopes dashed, money flushed.
These new ones will spin up, zip up a foot or two, and bam! They’ll be stable. However, “stable” is not “motionless.” Stable means that the gyros and the stabilizer bar will make your 2010 toy helicopter stay in a vertical path, usually moving upwards faster than you want it to, and your thrust will determine if it hits the ceiling or falls, and it may be rotating slowly. All you do is dial a trim value in (or with some remotes, hit buttons near your left or right index fingers repeatedly until it stops rotating). But it will not be whirling like a dervish! It’ll be rotating slowly, like a cool helicopter piloted by a cool guy or cool gal, waiting for some minor (yet cool) fudge factor so it can, yes, hover motionless in mid air!!!
Then, with one of your joysticks (on the remote), you move it left to make the helicopter rotate left, move it right and it rotates right. Move it forward, IT GOES FORWARD! Pull it back, IT GOES BACKWARD! You are actually controlling it!
I can and have made them take off from the top of a stack of DVDs, fly around the room, and land smoothly on top of other stacks of DVDs. If you’re like me, you should be sporting wood right about now (or the female equivalent).
However, you’re going to crash it into lots of things, but not the three-seconds-and-$30-evaporates crashes. They’ll be the oh-darn-remove-power-immediately-and-watch-it-gracelessly-smack-into-the-bookcase crashes. Or flat-screen TV.
More info (I’ve spent over $200 and two nicks in my flat-screen TV to give you this information, (two broken, one disassembled because I’m me, one mostly working with parts scavenged from others and one that’s in perfect condition, and a bunch more for the gifts today)
[ul]
[li]Don’t be skittish the first time you take off – if you apply thrust too slowly, it’ll barely lift off, start moving sideways and plop over on its side. Any time it stops acting like a helicopter, just drop the thrust completely and let it crumple to the ground. Chances are good that nothing will break. By the time something critical breaks, you will know that you can get another one and keep it from breaking.[/li][li]If the box says anything about LEDs, please consider that you might want the very small battery in these helicopters to use their energy to act like a helicopter, not as an annoying bundle of multicolored, flashing LEDs.[/li][li]Also, though it may seem novel to open a door on the remote and pull out a wire to recharge the helicopter from the remote, it’s cooler and way less expensive to use the USB cable that comes with the helicopter to charge it, should you have any sort of device that has USB ports, thus preserving the life of the 6 AA batteries in the remote.[/li][li]If you see a small switch on the remote (on those packages where you can even see the remote) that has two positions near where one of your thumbs might be, congratulations! You’re looking at a helicopter that has slow-and-fast ranges for forward and backward! (Don’t confuse those with the three-position IR channel selector that all remotes have, generally located top-center of the remote.)[/li][li]All of these things seem to be made from very similar plans, similar molds, etc., so if one helicopter crashes (and they’ll be crashing) and breaks off one landing skid, you might find that another helicopter from some other manufacturer has slightly different skids, but whose mounting holes exactly line up with those of the other helicopter. Really, I don’t know what forces are at work regarding manufacturing.[/li][/ul]
Should I post again, the subject will probably be Leatherman multitools.
I’m not a helicopter enthusiast, but your joy is infectious! I do believe that I am sporting the female equivalent of wood right now.
Put it between your mattress and boxspring! Or just under the bed. But when I was in college living in the dorm, a lot of us took one of the doors off our sliding-door closets to put under the mattress for some support. That’s what made me think of it for you!
bows You’re welcome! 
The last source I would have thought to listen to for undiscovered wisdom like this is “Aarti Party” on the Food Network. (Not a knock on Aarti, she’s a fine host and obviously a good cook. But she’s no Alton Brown when it comes to “cool food tricks.”) Anyway, the existence of the show is 100% worthwhile for this one tip:
Dropped a bit of eggshell in the egg? use… (no, not toothpaste) the rest of the shell to pick it out. So simple, I can’t believe no one ever told me before…
If only I could get back the hours of my life I’ve spent fishing little bits of shell out with my fingers.
Wow, really? I’ve known that one for so many years I never even bother to post it to threads like this. I guess I assume everyone else knows it, too.
So, OK, while we’re on the subject of eggs and helpful hints I think everyone else knows, too, here you go: if you drop a raw egg on the floor, wiping it up can be quite a production. That raw white almost seems to take on a life of its own, and actively avoid your dish cloth/paper towel/whatever. Liberally sprinkle granulated sugar on it. The sugar will dissolve into the egg, and the whole mess with solidify, making it much easier to clean up.
I usually fish out bits of eggshell with the tip of a kitchen knife.
I read this:
Then this:
:dubious:
I have a waterbed.
Never occurred to me to put it under the bed, though… :smack:
If I could only go back in time a few months, I would tell this to myself after I dropped an entire carton of eggs on the floor but before I spent the next hour chasing goop across the linoleum.
Surf’s up, dude!
Thank you. It’s nice to know that my … words are touching you. 
Of course! That’s terrific! I can’t wait to try it next time I go camping.
I was too cheap to buy arnica gel at the one place I could find it – Whole Foods. Instead, I bought two bags of dried arnica flowers from the Hispanic spice section of Wal-Mart, soaked them in a bottle of rubbing alcohol* for two weeks, and strained through cheesecloth… homemade arnica liniment. Worked amazingly for a very deep bruise on my knee a short time later.
*It had a strong smell, but after soaking the flowers, you don’t notice. You could also use vodka, I just didn’t have any on hand.
Thanks, lisa! I live in East Dallas - it’s basically one big Hispanic spice section. I did not know they sell those flowers there, though. Will try!