Wednesday, October 31, 2007

Lost things


I can tell my brain capacity is just about full... or that my world around me is a total and complete mess (in a very literal sense). I have been doing my best to eat on schedule and sleep as much as possible (about 7 hours on most days) but my schedule cactches up with me in symptoms like lost objects and dirty laundry. I have lost the cable that connects my camera to my computer, making photo-blogging really difficult. I've lost a beautiful bracelet that I recently bought... totally bumming me out and hoping that I find it tomorrow. I'm down to the bottom of the clothing I own that isn't completely full of holes (or dress up clothes) so my wardrobe this week has become a combo of holy jeans and velvet tops, or jersey shirts with wool pants... I've lost my coffee mug at work...for the show I've lost an engagement ring and two pair of pliers (although I don't think I am to blame for the missing pliers :/ ) it's all of these little things that all mount up to being really annoying and all I want to do is clean everything because that seems to be the best way to find things. Alas I haven't the time to clean things, I have to spend all available time chained to the sewing machine (where I hope to find my poor bracelet) or there are those pesky hours at night where I am obliged to sleep. It's so annoying. If only I could store up sleeping credits... but then that might not be good. Then people would ask me to work for 24 hours a day because I should have a stash of sleep in my back pocket... alas I ramble now. The end is is sight... but that is weeks and weeks away. Hopefully a day off will happen next week (keep fingers crossed). Hopefully I can organize things and find all of these missing objects before they drive me mad!

Friday, October 26, 2007

this one goes out to my sister...



yea, too busy to make a real post, but here's a shout out to my stressed out sis who's breathing smokey air in San Diego county. Love ya Kelly-bug!

Tuesday, October 23, 2007

Less is more (Belated Blog Action Day Post)

Hi all. So as any of you who actually know me are aware, I am a costume designer and a wardrobe mistress and a seamstress. As a wardrobe mistress/dresser I am a glorified laundress/butler/nanny/personal assistant. It's not exactly the glamorous side of show biz, but it pays the rent better than the designing part does. On a typical show I end up washing anywhere from two to ten loads of laundry, yes I said Ten loads of laundry (each day). So after about eight years of employment where at least half of the time I am on a Wardrobe crew I've become pretty good at laundry and stain busting... and avoiding ironing when possible.

The chemicals that we use every day including our soaps and cleaning products effect our health and the environment's health so I try to keep my washrooms as "green" as possible. So here are my top tips for keeping your laundry room as healthy as possible

1. Concentrate;
When buying liquids always consider how much of it is water. I like to purchace concentrated products to reduce the amount of water that is being trucked around the country, thus reducing carbon impact and saving shelf space.
My favorite products are;
Simple Green, All Free & Clear concentrated, Liquid starch (not the spray can)



2. Less is more;
Never use as much soap, or OxyClean or fabric softener as the bottle tells you to. I find that using about 2/3 to 1/2 of the company's reccomendation gets everything just as clean if not a little cleaner. Remember, the soap companies are making more money with the more soap that you use. By using less you are saving money, saving gas and saving excess suds going down the drain. Using a laundry-soap enhancer like OxyClean (which I fully endorse) or Borax will make your smaller amount of soap more effective, but the rule is true to the enhancer as well; use less than the company reccomends.

3. Invest in Spray bottles
It's always cheaper to buy in bulk and refill a bottle. In my laundry room I have the following spray bottles;
* Folex Carpet Cleaner-- a "non-toxic" product that works as an all purpose stain treater for everything including grease, stage blood, tomato products, stage make-up and rust, sold at OSH hardware stores (WAY better than Shout)
* Simple Green-- also a good stain treatment (if coupled with some elbow grease and baking soda) and the best surface cleaner I have.
* Vinegar-- yes just straight Vinegar. It helps get rid of iron burns, protine stains and works as a non-toxic glass/mirror cleaner.
* Starch/Water-- it's the old fashioned way of starching, involves a lot less waste than the cans and gets everything much more crisp than spray cans do, I can't believe it took me as long as it did to try it.
* Water-- for ironing and cleaning with. Sometimes dirt doesn't really need much cleaning product at all, just let it soak in some water if it's not a grease or protein stain.
* Liquid fabric Softener/water (a 1:6 dilution)-- I think that Downey sells a bottle of "wrinkle relase" formula for about $5 a bottle, and this is essentially all that it is. I use it to help with steaming and static cling.
*Vodka-- This is an OLD wardrobe trick that comes from Russia's Bolshoi Ballet. Vodka has the miraculous properties of not staining clothes (as isopropyl and rubbing alchohol do) while disinfecting them and making them less stinky. Most wardrobe people prefer Vodka to Febreeze (which mostly masks odor)-- use REALLY Cheap Vodka.

4. Other favorite Cleaning products;
Aside from what I have already mentioned I would like to add;
* Baking Soda-- a good deodorizer to add to the wash, also works as an abrasive for hard to scrub out stains and counters.
* Ivory Soap-- if you're out of laundry soap you can shave it into the washing machine. It works as a stain pre-treat, just get it a litte wet and rub it in (yet again better than Shout).
*The Sun-- hanging things out on the line makes whites whiter, shrinking minimal, gets rid of mildew and Saves energy ( you can make the best of global warming and not contrubute to it)

5. Less Aerosols!
The Health effects of Aerosols isn't something that is published in popular media in the US especially because of how much of our economy is run by corporations. However it seems logical that the aerosol cans are mostly air and when they're spent are dangerous additions to landfills. Ingredients are not listed on most cans, but a little research into their Material Safety Data Sheet (MSDS) will tell you what is in it.
Check www.msds.com for information on ingredents and known health effects of just about any product you use.
Many products contain metals that can't be healthy to breath in and aerosols produce tiny particles that are easy to breathe in.

***I am strongly against Static Guard. It is mostly alchohol, but 30% of it is propane, butane and Dimethyl ditallow ammonium chloride, which when introduced to water (through leaky landfills or just from evaporation) peaks acid rain production, and kills plankton even from very small doses... I digress greatly but basically there are a lot of complex cleaning products full of ingredients that we are often unaware of.
Instead of Static Guard use a 6:1 concentration of water to fabric softener, or even better a 5:1 concentration of water to vinegar with a few drops of your favorite essential oil to get rid of the vinegar smell.

Well, thank you for reading this far (it's been a long post), I hope it has been useful.

Monday, October 15, 2007

Eco blog pending... (Me vs. the Environment)

Ok, So I am still planning on posting a blog about how I keep my laundry room earth friendly... but today the elements were against me. I've had a chest cold brewing for days now and running around for eight hours a day in a leaky cold amphitheater in October has only made it worse. This morning I was unable to tell the dog to stop barking and resorted to clapping at him... (it worked). I had lost my cell phone and had a strike to do at the theater. For the non-theater folk "strike" is actually a lot of work involving massive clean-up and putting away the show and the wardrobe room in its entirety. I got to the theater and there was a light sprinkle so I stepped up the hauling of heavy items, hoping to get enough into the dressing rooms and away from the theater to keep it all relatively dry... of corse it has been rainy all week and I managed to find the two shelves that were still holding a good amount of rain water and dump it all directly onto my head. About an hour into the strike the heavens opened up into a timultuious downpour. In my wardrobe room the ceiling drips as though in an underground cave but faster... and I had to continue to move my gear. Mind you I am doing this strike alone for reasons that I don't care to get in to and today was the only day that I had truly free to strike. I managed to get all of the non-waterproof items out of wardrobe and all of the costumes back to the shop but was soaked to the core and now I sound like Tom Waits, so I went home early, put on dry clothes and fell asleep at 6pm. I woke up around 9pm and now am sitting here finding that my heart is not in to actually posting the blog that I had intended to. I'm still sick and I still have work to tend to all week. Hopefully though I'll manage to stay asleep tonight and wake up in a better disposition.

Sunday, October 14, 2007

Blogger Action Day 2007

Much like my father who was "patriotic before it was popular" I was an environmentalist before it was popular. I was probably an environmentalist from the first day my baby eyes could focus on a tree... thus I am eager to see the fruits of this blogger action day that is coming up on Monday. Everybody with a blog is encouraged to blog about the same topic all on the same day. This year's topic is the Environment. It's very trendy especially with Al Gore getting the Oscar and the Nobel Peace Prize for "An Inconvenient Truth". However annoying new greenies are when they tell us all that we need to save energy and that the Earth is going to be incinerated by a big ball of global warming (like it's new news) I appreciate that they have joined the band wagon that had been started long ago with oh say; Jimmy Carter, Edward Abbey, Ansel Adams, Thoreau, John Muir... and so on and so forth. Yea, I'm a member of the Sierra Club, I vote with the Green Party, I bought my car based on the expected MPG, I pick up litter at the beach because it's there... welcome to the party. I am both thrilled and annoyed at the new coverage that our environmental woes have become so fashionable to discuss. I am irritated every time the electric company informs me that I can cut my electric bill by "lowering the temperature of [my] pool". I glance around my room and count the standard light bulbs... um, zero... and I look outside for my pool... hum maybe there's another way short of bribing my landlady to get us double pane windows... However I am always happy that a greater population is becoming cognisant that their actions and their consumption affects the world they live in. That said, I encourage all of you with a blog to check out the link, register your blog with http://blogactionday.org (check my links on the side), and join in the discussion. Also if you do post for blog action day leave me a link to your site, I'm eager to see what everybody posts.


Wednesday, October 10, 2007

Rain at the Theater

Last night we called the show on account of rain

We ran the show until the rain became unberable and the ceilings (i.e stage floor) began to drip with streams of brown rain water...

We were all so happy...



This morning we all got here and mucked out several inches of standing water from the floor so that we could get the place running for a student matinee (with an understudy)... and tonight we are almost dry but exhausted and going on with a different understudy... blogging is mostly limited to pictures since actual communicatiion skills have been reduced to a series of grunts and hand gestures... here goes another one.

Wednesday, October 3, 2007

service please...


I took myself out to breakfast today. As I was glancing over the menu I thought, "I could make most of this at home myself, why did I want to come here?". What's more is why haven't I felt like cooking anything in a month? Why is it I've been eating nothing but cereal at breakfast? As I sat there stirring cream into my coffee I realized that I've been spending way too much time catering to everyone else's needs. At work I'm making sure that twenty two people are dressed, pressed and polished for the stage. At home it's just me and the dog, since my roommate's out of town, and I'm busy making sure that he's fed and walked and happy. I think it's been too long since someone asked me what I need, so really just going to the cafe and having somebody check on me to ask if I had all the correct condiments or enough coffee was exactly what I needed. Someday I'll find a balance for all of this... I hope someday soon.

Monday, October 1, 2007

Good News

I spoke to my Grumpa today and he is in good spirits, feeling good.
Yay!