Cleaning By the Pros

In an attempt to get at least some of the odors and stains left by our two dogs out of the carpet, I resorted to the good-ol’-fashioned googling to come up with some sort of way to make our carpet “so fresh and so clean.”

Gathering from many sources I’ve since forgotten, I have come up with quite the list, including methods for removing the stench of cigarette smoke — a task many of us know and “love” so well.

Note #1: If I say “vinegar” I mean “white vinegar.” Baking soda from hereon refers to sodium bicarbonate. Vodka means only clear, unflavored vodka. Salt is more than likely whatever form of table salt you have lying around.

Note #2: For any of these methods, it is advisable to test in a small, not-visible area of your home. If any adverse reaction should occur, it is a lot better for it to happen in the corner than on every square inch of your home.

On Carpet

Pee stains from (presumably) your pets? Smells horridly like smoke?

The methods include:

• Sprinkle some baking soda all over the offensive-smelling area. I also saw this used for upholstery like couches and chairs. Let it sit for up to 24 hours, and ideally, no shorter than at least a few hours. Good idea to do this before you sleep or go to work, then vacuum it up later.
• On your carpet: If your fireplace has spilled soot onto your carpet, you may also toss the salt onto your carpet, and then vacuum the area later, after maybe an hour.
• Salt, coincidentally, is also useful for soaking up odors from your carpet, just like baking soda. I assume a mixture of both would be effective as well.

Cleaning Your Walls

No, those white sparkling walls won’t always be so shiny with a smoker in the house. Not to worry, you can fix that “easily”:

• A solution I found was one part vinegar to four-to-eight parts water, with a scoop of baking soda poured in. However, I recall in chemistry learning that a base (baking soda) reacting with an acid (vinegar) produces CO2, water, and salt. Thus, I wonder if this solution is actually equivalent to salt water, with maybe a little vinegar or baking soda left. Either way, put this into a spray bottle and then scrub the walls with a sponge.
• Should it be about time to move and your walls are covered with holes, a plaster made of two tablespoons salt and two tablespoons corn starch with enough water (about five teaspoons) to make a very thick paste should do the trick. Simply fill in the hole, let it dry, possibly sand down and rough bits, and paint over it. This should be more effective than the “toothpaste” method, as toothpaste has a habit of “bleeding” out through new layers of paint.

Cleaning Your Chimney

Methods:

• While your fireplace is going at it keeping your house warm, you can occasionally toss in a handful of salt. It helps to loosen up some of the soot in your chimney, and also makes a dazzling yellow flame.

Got odor in the air?

Plenty of things had entries for sucking odor out of the air.

All these things left out overnight, or up to a week, had the claimed effect of removing bad odors:

• A bag of charcoal left open.
• A bowl filled with vinegar left sitting out, uncovered.
• A bowl of citrus peelings.
• Coffee grounds wrapped up in coffee filters, tied, and left sitting around on something (Note: Coffee stains, so be sure the ground do not get wet or come into contact with whatever you’re deodorizing. I think leaving them in a filter should work fine, but you may also desire to put that into a bowl or on a piece of plastic wrap).

There exist a couple preventative measures on cigarette smoke. To help keep the offensive odor from returning, get a deep ash tray and pour a good amount of baking soda into the bottom. Use this pit to extinguish your cigarettes, and be sure to keep them under as much as possible. Additionally, the baking soda will help to suck some of the remaining odor from the air.

Be sure to wash your ashtrays very frequently (i.e., maybe nightly). Keep air circulating, being sure to open your windows and doors as often as possible. Another method is to smoke in front of a window fan which is set to move the smoke outside. So long as your smoke doesn’t have time to sit inside, the odor shouldn’t become so unbearable so quickly.

Now, some of these sound a little strange, and I haven’t tested most of them, save the carpet ones (we lack a fireplace, and our walls should be fine… for a while).

However, I can vouch for using salt and baking soda to help with pet stains. I wiped up as much moisture I could with some old rags, sprayed off-brand glass cleaner on the spots, used a very small amount of liquid dish soap in a lot of water and sprinkled it on the area, scrubbed until I thought my knuckles were going to fall off, then patted down the area to get most of the wetness out, poured more fresh water onto the area, patted it down again, making sure at least most of the soap was out (I know, it was kind of a stupid choice, but it had citrus in it as well — too tempting) and sprinkled salt and baking soda on the area. Twenty hours or so later, I woke up, and while the area isn’t exactly beautiful, it is dry, a lot less yellow, and it smells absolutely amazing. I plan to do this again the next time my parents are in town, when I’ll have the opportunity to vacuum.

As you can guess, there are many, many more ways to do things. In the planning is a part two for how to clean common bathroom fixtures using cheaper household items than, say, 409.

The Dresden Dolls @ Sunshine Theatre

Well, it’s been a few days (almost a week) since the last post. What happened?

Saturday: The concert! Not kidding.

Sunday: I get online, check my email. Turns out this was marked as a spam blog.

Naturally, I didn’t post here (or anywhere else, for that matter) for fear that this could all be deleted, thus being meaningless. Additionally, I didn’t realize I could.

It’s been a good few days patiently waiting to hear from google. Today out of frustration I looked here, and of course, its status as spam has been removed. No idea when that happened, but it happened, so thumbs up, google.

Now, on to the story:

THE DRESDEN DOLLS & SMOOSH LIVE AT THE SUNSHINE THEATRE IN ALBUQUERQUE, NM

What was it like?

Holy crap — amazing!

The opening act, Smoosh, is a band without a lot of publicity, so I’m giving them some very well-deserved coverage here.

Smoosh is a relatively new band currently comprised of 16- (Asya), 14- (Chloe), and more recently, 11- (Maia)-year-old girls, all sisters, and all pretty damn good at what they do. They play a lot of different songs, thoroughly unrelated and dissimilar from each other, ranging from pop-punk to very classy rock ‘n’ roll.

Let’s start with Asya. She’s the lead singer, keyboardist, and up-stager extraordinaire. She’s tall, and, like her sisters, blond, and I can see her being a very sought-after girl once she’s just a tad older.

Chloe is the drummer and, on a few songs, back-up singer. Let’s just say Chloe has the drumming cojones and badassery to rival the likes of Samantha Maloney, notable drummer of Motley Crue, Hole, and Peaches’ The Herms. Yeah, that’s right, Samantha. You got a rival in the body of a 14-year-old girl (don’t hurt me, please).

Finally, Maia, the tiniest member, owns the bass. She hasn’t had enough tempuring to have a lively, powerful stage presence like her sisters, as she’s still eleven (11!), but I can see her holding her own in a couple years.

Oh, wait, the concert?

It started a little later than anticipated.

Smoosh came out, owned the stage, their fans left (unfortunately for them, as the girls were incorporated into quite a bit of the rest of the night). Shortly after, out come Amanda and Brian, donning military commanders’ hats, long trench coats, and masquerade masks. Sadly, the light was far too low to snap a good picture (add to it the crap quality on Pete’s camera phone, and you have the makings of disaster).

After a few songs, Amanda felt the urge to do something during “The Gardener” I expected, but I doubt security expected, as the look on Guard #1’s face was pretty priceless: She jumped off the stage, and entered the audience.

Needless to say, I was very, very, very excited. I actually got to touch her just a couple moments before this photo was snapped.

Ahhh I know right?

Just a few minutes later, Amanda parked on the drums, Brian grabbed his acoustic guitar, Smoosh was back on stage, along with some of the crew and the mistress of the merch table and Zoe Keating’s sister, Laura. Naturally, they spewed beer all over more or less everything on the stage. Again, naturally, the minors did not have any alcohol in their possession.

Closing the night with bang, The Dresden Dolls returned for their encore: a screaming, angry, twisted performance of “Half Jack,” one of my favorite songs. After screaming along for a good two minutes, my voice was shot, and Pete and I left to return home for some good R&R. Neither of us felt we had the energy to snag an autograph, though I regret it more than slightly now.

Should you have a chance to see The Dresden Dolls or Smoosh perform live, do it. Do it now.

Brush Up on Your Spanish

I’m not typically terribly fond of About.com (their PHP lessons can be a little rough if you don’t know what you’re doing), but I’ve found an acceptable section of the website. Gerald Erichsen has done Spanish right on About.com.

The subdomain contains resources for beginners, increasing your vocabulary, grammar help, a word of the day service, and much, much more.

Particularly helpful to me today were his pages on idioms using tener, which I tend to have some problems with. If you find this helpful, but need to brush up on your conjugation, he has that, too.

With some help from my friend in Chile, I was able to get a reasonably working knowledge of these idioms in about two hours, with her input of, “that is sooooo(…) Hispanic” on, for example, “…pero no me las tango todas conmigo.”

Her response: “We just say, ‘pero estoy nervioso.’”

Overall, the site seems to be pretty helpful if your Spanish skills aren’t so great. If you’re in the “advanced” category, however, the lessons may seem a little slow for you, and you’ll probably want to find something along the lines of turbo Spanish (Oh, hey, I think I just came up with the name for your brilliant new book!).

KT Tunstall to play Pinkpop

In (not so much anymore) news, Scottish pop/folk-rocker KT Tunstall is scheduled to play the Mainstage at Pinkpop Festival on the second day, May 31. Other line-ups for the day on Mainstage include Foo Fighters and Kaiser Chiefs.

Additionally, on June 1st, well-known chick rocker Alanis Morissette is due to perform on the same stage, and on her 34th birthday, no less. Happy ahead-of-time birthday, Alanis!

Other Alanis-news includes her new album, titled Flavors of Entanglement, will be released very soon:

• Germany, Brazil, Belgium, the Netherlands, and Luxembourg on May 30th.
• Internationally on June 2nd.
• And, unfortunately for me, in the United States on June 10th.

Alanis herself has summed up the album as a cross between “joy and levity” a la So-Called Chaos and a “kind of rock bottom, ‘Holy shit, I am a broken woman’ moment.”

I expect, this being Alanis, to give rave reviews, so you may as well do anything in your power to sign up for an advanced copy — or at least camp Wal-Mart for the release.

Wedding Rings: Choosing a Metal

It’s a choice we all have to make before we marry. While not quite as in-your-face as, “Where should neurotic Aunt Betty sit?” the metal of your ring is still a pretty big decision, as it affects not the wedding day, but every day after, along with any choices you make of future jewelry. Thus, here are some things to consider.

Yellow Gold: The old favorite

Yellow gold has endured over the years as a popular choice of metal for both mens’ wedding bands and women’s diamond wedding rings. However, it is diminishing in popularity as more choices become available.

Yellow gold says “tradition” without speaking any words. At times, it can even scream.

Depending on how you feel about the color and its collision with your jewel of choice, this old-time favorite passed down through the years can continue its work.

Why you should choose it: If you don’t want to fret about other metals, yellow gold is a solid, reliable choice.

Sterling Silver: The new contender

Sterling silver, while not particularly popular in wedding jewelry, is still a beautiful metal. It’s relatively cheap, but requires a bit of maintenance to keep it from tarnishing.

Why you should choose it: It’s low-cost, but high-maintenance. If you like the color, consider white gold.

White Gold: A solid alternative

White gold has come into great popularity over the last decade or so, with roots from even longer before. It has a great, clean color compared to yellow gold, and it compliments other jewelry very well, from silver, and even to things such as obsidian.

Almost nothing screams “high-class” as much as a white gold ring speckles with diamonds.

Why you should choose it: It is a great choice if you like silver, but want something less high-maintenance, as gold never tarnishes. Also, few people (if any) have an allergy to gold, and at times, silver will react poorly with a person’s skin, particularly if they have a particularly acidic diet, leaving the green ring of shame most people associate with cheap, knock-off jewelry.

Black Gold: A new favorite

No, I’m not talking about coal or oil. Black gold is a relatively new variety of gold. Black gold, as told to me by a “reliable resource (i.e., my mother)” is “growing in popularity in Colorado.” While I haven’t been to Colorado in about ten years (though I’ll be there in roughly half a month), I can see why.

However, there are some problems with black gold, along with its brothers, blue and even purple gold. They’re not as strong as regular yellow gold, and tend to wear easily. In fact, it’s plausible a sharp blow to these alternatives could shatter your ring. Additionally, these colors tend to carry a higher price, as it is far more expensive to make a single piece. If you can get a ring from a batch they’ve made, or from a jewelry retailer specializing in black gold, it may be cheaper.

Even more, these colors tend to tarnish much more easily than the other varieties of gold, and getting them treated could be expensive and difficult, as they’re less common.

Why you should choose it: If you want a truly unique color, black gold, or blue or violet gold, is a fabulous, beautiful choice. There are some considerations, however, to take first.

Platinum: Our final contender

No, no. I know: It’s incredibly expensive, and it looks more-or-less like white gold. So what? Platinum has always been a very high-ranked favorite, and I can understand why.

Why you should choose it: It’s platinum! One of my favorite metals. Now if only I could afford it…

In conclusion, there are other choices typical for men, such as titanium, which is an excellent choice if you worry about your hubby being particularly accident-prone, as it’s the strongest metal available for rings, while still being beautiful. Whether you choose the standard yellow or the fabulous violet gold, realize you’re going to have this choice (ideally) for the rest of your life, so don’t make a choice because everybody else likes it. I, personally, am pushing for black gold.

Have fun picking out your ring, and enjoy the chance to try on everything in the store to see how it looks on your manicured finger. In the works is an article about alternative choices to the standard diamond. Dare we venture into amethyst? We do.