BIG, fluffy Snowflakes!!!

All around, everywhere!  Winter finally!

OK, I've been doing my research on this little by little through the week.  The project?  How to clean and protect an aging vinyl floor.  For those who don't know, our kitchen has a really wonderful brilliant white floor that is now about 10 years old.  The problem, of course is that it was no longer white - more of a light, smoggy grey in places.  Normal cleaning does nothing.  So what to do?

Well, I wouldn't want to miss out on a mini-obsession, now would I?  Several elements - cleaning solutions, cleaning method, and (once clean) protection method.

Being a chemist at heart, I attacked the cleaning solution problem first - doing trials on small, labeled floor patched during the commercials in the Olympics.  The candidates were:

• 409 cleaner (standin for "standard soap / surfactant


• Lemon-scented "goo gone" - (standin for "hydrocarbon solvent")


• Acetic acid, 1 % (with a bit of detergent thorwn in as a surfactant)


• Ammonia, diluted 1:10


• Ammonia + Ethyl alcohol (strong imitation of windex, without the blue)


• Tri-sodium phosphate, medium strength solution

I will save you all of the details - the ammonia placed second, with the TSP placing first (which was also the cheapest).  You can just imagine the 10 labeled patches on the floor, all a varying amount of clean!  I'll spare you the pictures.

Next - how to clean the darn floor.  Its pretty big, so we need to think big.

• First disqualification - get down on your hands and knees and scrub with a cloth - even with a small patch, my back ached for several days!


• Works better - grind a cloth around with you foot.  Much better, no hurting back, uses your weight.  TOO SLOW, however!


• SCrub brush - works great, but there is the back problem!


• Rented electric floor scrubber machine - BING!  we have a winner!  Get it a soft pad, sometimes used for polishing, to avoid grinding up your floor.

So this morning we rented the machine ($30 for a day - a deal!).  Learning to "drive" it took a bit of getting used to - it has one large rotating pad, so you lean the machine forwards or back to make it go left or right.  Throw some water / TSP mix on the floor, and scrub away.  The entire job probably took 20 minutes of scrubbing - far less than getting the stuff out of the room.

This left us with one white floor, but still with no gloss, because the polyurathane top coat had worn off years ago.  We rinsed / dried it twice, then applied a commercial polyurathane vinyl top-coat reconditioner on it.  One base coat plus one thin top coat.  Result is wonderful, white and glossy! And I check an obsession off of my list!

 

After being sick on her vacation for a whole week, G wanted to do something fun tonight.  We decided to go to the downstairs Cabaret "The Water Coolers".  This was a set of skits, centered around the water cooler at work, joking at all the things that go on around an office.  Very funny!  Highly recommended!

OK, I learned this from a friend.  With a little practice :-) its really easy...

What, you say, is easy?  Eating a kiwi fruit.

Yeah, I know, you once tried eating one of those cute, green fruits, and I'll bet you that you don't eat them very much any more, because they are just more trouble than they are worth.  Peal them? - forget it!   All you get is a slippery, slimy mess that you couldn't even think about eating when the time comes, because you forgot to wash your hands first and started wondering where they had been recently.  OK, what about "slice and scoop" -besides sounding like a surgical technique, this used to be my favorite method, but for me, I needed a special, curved serrated knife to do it really well.  And you always felt like you left a quarter of the fruit inside the skin.

Nope, the best way to eat them I learned from my friend Kevin - you just eat the darn thing.  You got it - scratchy skin and all!

OK, the first time you do it it will seem a bit strange - but look on the other side - wasn't it easy?  See, I told you so - it WAS easy, wasn't it.  And the second time you realize that it is actually an eating experience.  The skin (yes, chew it - try it!) is somewhat tart, which balances out the rather sweet kiwi.  I actually look forward to the skin now.

Oh, and one other thing to trust me on -- I know what you are wondering --- yes, the skin does, errrrr,  "digest" completely.

Next week - a my next feature - increase fiber in your diet by eating your used sandpaper!  Followed by "sunflower seed shells on your salad as a garnish!"

Yummmmmm!

I just need to mention the obvious: the Olympic women figure skating is incredibly beautiful, and just totally amazing.  All of the skaters are awesome!  Three performances to watch in the short program were (in order) Kimmie Meissner, Irina Slutskaya, and Sasha Cohen.  Slutshaya and Cohen both had amazing programs - but that was somewhat expected.  Meissner to me was the great surprise - so full of life, and pure wonder of being there, skating in the Olympics.  The sheer wonderment really showed.

While this link lasts: http://www.nytimes.com/slideshow/2006/02/21/sports/20060222_OLYMPICS_SLIDESHOW_index.html

I am also amused that to my strange mind, Sasha Cohen may actually look more slavic than Slutskaya (G looked her up - and yes, her Mom is Ukrainian, and she does indeed speak Russian and presumably Ukrainian).  She also (amusingly enough) skated to a Russian folk song.  Irena skated (also amusingly) to Dies Irae, which translates to "day of Wrath".  But it didn't matter - the music was great and Slktskaya's program was skated perfectly.

The finals are this Thursday.  I don't know who to cheer for - if Sluskaya wins, it will make up for last Olympics, where she placed second in a surprise (but well deserved) upset to Sara Hughes.  It will also give Russia golds in all three skating events, something that has never been done before.  On the other hand, Sasha Cohen has incredible art, and in the short program, showed she has what it takes.  Or there could be an upset - you never know.  That's skating!

Yesterday was G and my anniversary!  To celebrate (part 1), we ate, of course:

VERY tasty!  Tonight we will go out for dinner - still deciding where.  The Olive Tree (Greek) seems to be a frontrunner, although Indian is always there on the list...

And I was also a good husband, and bought some flowers - irises, which were prominent at our wedding.

 

It just happened - Gwendolyn just finished the last web-based test on her Nutrition course.  She is now DONE and very happy that it is over.  Her final average was 97.5%, which "should be good for a A".

This is her progress chart, now complete.  As you can see, she is smiling!

For each of the 22 chapters (652 pages), which were grouped into 12 exams, she had a 7 step process to study as follows:

1. Pull all material from the course web site


2. Type up the vocabulary for the chapter and make entries in table of acronyms


3. Take all of the teacher-provided materials (except lecture) and reformat into G's personal style.  Then print .


4. Take lecture, put into specially created word template - format using outline styles


5. Read and highlight chapter, with the outline of the lecture open on the computer.  Augment outline as necessary.  Print.


6. Review all printed material (i.e. actually study).


7. Take test...

Each step gets colored in on the "control chart" - exhibit A. - Yellow for "in process", green for "done". Earned value, practices at home.

Congratulations, Gwendolyn!

Well, several days ago winter finally arrived - it is -10C out at the moment, and there is, well, maybe 15 cm of white, fluffy snow on the ground.  I may have to actually shovel the driveway - only the second or third time this year, and this is February!  Its going to stay winter at least through the week.  It will help me enjoy California next week ;-)

This has been a busy week at work - just a lot of things to do.  I am collaborating with Eric on a paper (although I am worried I am not going to be able to give it a fair share of my time), and there is some standards activity going on, which is OK.  Next week I go on a combination trip - first to San Diego (CA) for a 2 day meeting, then a one day meeting in Denver, CO, then back home again.

I have been doing at least a reasonable job of keeping my exercise up - the last two days I ran (yesterday for 6.5 km, tonight for 7 km) - enough that my toes complained with some small blisters.  So no more running 'til Saturday.  Tonight it was easy because I had plenty of good distractions (and believe me, running on a treadmill NEEDS distractions).  I had the pool people to watch (waterslide and all), an MP3 player to listen to, and, special, tonight only, a girl and guy (they seemed to know each other well)  high school students (Juniors or Seniors - hard to tell.  They were loudly chatting away about everything high school - chemisty homework, falling asleep sitting up, what all their friends were doing, who is going to the snowflake ball, why ___ is so quiet lately.  Amusing.

G is almost done with her nutrition course, and doing very well, of course.  We both agree it will be GOOD for it to be OVER.