The Whine thread.

[TSara]

I do most of my general cleaning with a spray bottle of vinegar and maybe a little scrub of borax now. Bleach is extremely potent -- it will take the surface right off a formica counter, for example, and then every drip will stain it. It's also not so good for the environment when it gets into the water table. I save it for when I really need to kill something, and actually I find either vinegar or occasional hydrogen peroxide does that just fine, even for sterilizing the pots I use for seed starting. This has been a shift for me since I used to clean the stainless steel sink by filling it with bleach and water and do the dishwasher with something that reeked of bleach, but I've enjoyed the change to more ecological stuff, especially getting rid of that awful bleach smell which was beginning to bother me more and more. I swear by Ecover products, though some of them are getting awfully expensive lately and I've been trying to switch down. (Unfortunately a lot of "eco" stuff doesn't work at all well.)

I use vinegar, baking soda , and borax a lot too for cleaning.

Also avoid bleach for the most part. We also use a lot of method's cleaners in our house for cleaning.

[Pitseleh]

Ok, so, I had the most absolutely frelled up day yesterday...

I had class at 7.30am and the professor decided that we had to do the final group assignment presentation based on a very specific map that only one part of the class has. He said, "Since these guys already have the map, I can't force them to give it to you (meaning my group), but you could always do some sort of trading or buy it from them." Well, since they had refused to give it or trade it or sell it to us the day before, we decided to go and try to get it ourselves at the government office in charge of those things... When we got there, the place was closed, and it won't open again until Monday at 7.30am. So, we decided to try and persude this guy I know at the other group to sell us a copy of the map. We offered them $25 for the copy (the original map itself is $3), and they all refused to sell a copy for really stupid reasons... Needless to say how mad we all are at the other group. (There are two other groups on the afternoon class that also need this map, and who also offered them money for it, and got denied).

So, exhausted, I go to buy a cup of coffee before my afternoon class, and my best friend calls me in tears to tell me she just got fired. Blame it on the crisis...

To top it all off, when I was about to take the bus to come home at 9.00pm, I got mugged.

Man, I used to love Fridays...

[Aquarius]

WTF??!! You got MUGGED??? Oh dear...are you okay???

[TPoptarts]

Awww you poor thing

[Alelou]

Yeah, what the hell ... you just kind of casually drop that in there...!?

[Pitseleh]

Yeah, I didn't get hurt or anything like that. The robber told me to hand over whatever cash I was carrying, so I gave him around $40 which were the contents of my wallet and showed it to him so he knew it was empty. He took the cash and ran off... It was scary, but it could have been worse. I took the bus and a friend picked me up to take me home.

[CX]

Well, at least you're ok and didn't lose a whole bunch of money.

[Asso]

But that's a ugly, ugly, ugly thing, in any case!
I'm near you!

[Aquarius]

Yeah, I didn't get hurt or anything like that. The robber told me to hand over whatever cash I was carrying, so I gave him around $40 which were the contents of my wallet and showed it to him so he knew it was empty. He took the cash and ran off... It was scary, but it could have been worse. I took the bus and a fried picked me up to take me home.

When I lived in that crack den of a neighborhood years ago, the cops always told us to keep $20 in our wallets at all times, so in case we did get mugged, it's usually enough money that some junky can score a bag of whatever and will just run, like he did with you. Back then, things got pretty ugly, and sometimes they'd hurt you if you told them you didn't have any money--even if it was true. A girl got held up in the parking lot of an apartment complex next to ours, and the guy shot her in the face because she didn't have anything to give him.

Your're lucky you didn't get hurt! Glad you are okay and that he didn't get away with a lot.

[justTripn]

What a terrible thing! That map buying-story sounds pretty aggravating too.

[Alelou]

Yeah, it's almost like you got mugged twice.

The professor seems kind of diabolical to me, sowing the seeds of enmity. Just be glad he/she isn't a member of your family.

[Pitseleh]

Yeah... Funny thing is that I felt equally helpless in both situations. I guess the professor wants to build some sort of competition so both groups in the class will push each other to do a better job, but competition leads to ugly things sometimes. Nothing worse than a divided class...

It was just a horrible day, and I was glad it was over.

[Kevin Thomas Riley]

Oh my, glad you escaped unharmed from the mugging, Pitseleh! What a crappy Friday!

I've never been mugged. But once someone picked my pocket on a Moscow bus. Thankfully I didn't lose a lot of money, and I didn't have my credit card in the wallet.

[Asso]

I have been mugged, in Prague.
But it was a professional job. I noticed nothing.

[Alelou]

Actually I think we usually define getting 'mugged' as being accosted and threatened with harm (or actually harmed) in a robbery.

Otherwise, it's a just being robbed. (I got robbed in London by two guys who coordinated very nicely, one distracting me by asking me the time while another took off with my purse.)