New Tricks

No more washing windows with paper towels–it’s all about the newspaper. A friend at work shared this trick with me and I promptly tried it out on the humungo mirror in my bathroom–to great success! Never again will I use paper towels to wipe up mirrors or windows! I can’t believe it took me 23 years to discover this trick. I’ll just have to wash windows twice as much for the next 23 years to make up for it.

Another lesson I learned this week is that floating candles in Las Vegas are just not practical. I’ve been trying to make them work for a couple of months now, and am so sick of refilling the water every single day. Plus, the water that evaporates leaves marks on the glass that are impossible to get off unless you use a stainless steel scrubbie (my new best friend). So yesterday I decided to fill the candle-floating-glasses with rice instead of water. Yippeee–no more water refills or hours of endless scrubbing. Plus, I’m saving water and thus doing my part to ameliorate the drought conditions in this freaking desert we live in.

I was going a little crazy with the rice yesterday. I noticed that my sea salt was starting to clump together. Salt is not supposed to clump. Then I remembered a little trick that Mom and Dad use at home to stop the salt shaker salt from clogging the salt shaker holes: they put a few grains of rice in the shaker. Since my bottle is quite a bit larger, I decided to put a small handful of grains in. Bad idea.

My thinking was that the rice would absorb whatever moisture was in the salt (evaporated from the water my candles used to float in…), thus declumping my beloved sea salt. And maybe that will work, but the holes in the top of the canister are so big that the rice comes out whenever you use the salt! Shoot.

I’m going home on Thursday!!! YAY!!! Hansi, our exchange student from Venezuela (who stayed with us my senior year of high school), is visiting for the month, so she’ll be home too! As well as big sis Phoebe with new hubby John and baby Sydney–so it’s going to be one huge family party!! I’m sure we’ll be spending some quality time at The Rock.