Ami's AfterChat NewsletterOctober 1998Please Note: This newsletter was originally sent on October 21, 1998. It may not have improved with age. Information may be outdated and irrelevant, not to mention useless. It is here only for your enjoyment.
WELCOME Since my mailing program is still partially toasted, it becomes even more important for you to tell me if you are changing your screen name. Give me both the old and the new. Similarly, if you have to drop off the list completely, tell me that too, just don't tell me why. I prefer not to learn from my mistakes. (You remember, I'm the thin-skinned one....) I hope to get the program with the mailing list corrected in the next couple of months. Yeah, sure. Right after I sign up for that class on small engine repair.
WHERE OH WHERE HAS AMI BEEN?
THE GUINEA PIG CLUB Check this newsletter for ordering information as soon as it's available. I might even send out a Special Edition. (Don't worry, you won't miss it!)
ON VACATION I will not be hosting the monthly chat in November or December. Those Thursdays land on Thanksgiving and Christmas Eve. I think most of us will have other plans. I might pop in and say hi, but don't count on it. We'll resume with the chats in January again. As always, it's the 4th Thursday of the month in the AOL chat room from 9 to 10pm EST. Speaking of vacation, I will probably not be sending out a newsletter for November. This will be the first time I've missed a month since I started this silly thing a couple of years ago, but I have a really good excuse. My mother is taking me on a 2 week cruise to Asia! I'll be visiting places I can't even find on the map yet. And I can't wait. We haven't traveled together (just the two of us) since the first summer after I started college when we went back- packing through Italy together. In Naples we mis-judged the timing of our arrival into the train station by about 6 minutes and jumped off the train half a mile short of the station. The train had stopped, and the sign did say Napoli, but there was no platform on which to alight. We both bounded off the train one after the other, and hit the gravel about 4 feet from the bottom step. (OK, so I pushed her out first but I was afraid we'd miss our stop.) We were each carrying 40 pound backpacks and miraculously landed on our feet. Otherwise, we would be there still, flipped over on our backpacks, legs wiggling in the air like turtles, laughing hysterically. I can only imagine the trouble we'll get into on this trip! The itinerary is about as exotic as they get: Thailand, Malaysia, Singapore, Vietnam, The Philippines, China, Hong Kong, and Korea. If you have any wonderful suggestions for fun things to do, let me know. I'll keep my eyes open for anything quilty and will report back upon my return.
UNCOMMON TREADS
STAMP IT OUT! Don't want to go to the post office, you can order stamps online: http://www.usps.gov/news/stamps/98/98081stp.htm Contributing to cancer research will make you feel better. It won't prevent you from getting breast cancer, but it's a good thing. So, while you're licking and sticking, take a minute and call your doctor and ask if you're due for a mammogram. If you are, make a date with your best friend for an M & M. That's a mammogram and a movie. Take the afternoon off, get your boobs shquooshed, and go see a movie. Popcorn optional. Now before you go whining about mammograms, you should know that they're a lot better than they used to be. Because of my family history and the fact that my own mammary glands often feel like they're filled with cat kibble, I have been doing the mammogram thing once a year since I was in high school. I remember the machines with the giant balloon on top, before they invented plastic and foam rubber. By the time the technician had maneuvered me into position every hair on my head was either plastered to the balloon or standing on end in one huge static cling. Not only did I leave the office with breasts as thin as credit cards, but I had a really bad hair day too. Things are now much improved. The technicians even laugh when I request an 8 x 10 glossy.
WATER----HARD & SOFT Yes indeed, hard water. We don't have it any more. Nine years ago we bought a water softener and now we have very soft water. Soft water is a ploy devised by the people who sell water. They want you to use more of it, so they invented soft water which may look like real water, but it doesn't ever get the soap out of anything. I haven't added laundry detergent in 9 years. I'm just washing clothes on the leftover residue. Still have lots of suds. I detest showering in soft water, and this is where the water sellers make a lot of money. I stand there trying to rinse off and no matter how long I stand under the nozzle, I still feel soapy. Shriveled and prune-like I give up when the hot water runs out, but my skin is still slippery. Soft water makes everything slippery, especially my hair. It's not that I've ever had robust hair, it's always had that spider web quality to it, but it looses any body it ever had in soft water. I have kept the "moose" people in business too, foaming my head after every shower in the hopes that the white ball of foam smeared over every tendril will somehow let me fluff my hair to normal levels. After 20 minutes of styling, even with the BIG HAIR STYLING WAND, I go limp and flat by lunch time. When I travel, I have much better luck with my "do." I can stay bouncy and fluffy until almost dinner. I just realized---it's the water. Hotels probably have HARD water. So, now, I go to the one tap in the house that still has hard water and fill a little plastic bottle full to the top. I put that on the drain in the tub so that it will heat as I shower. When I'm all done with my shower, I shake my head vigorously back and forth to get all the SOFT water out, and then pour my little bottle of HARD water over my freshly shampooed head! It apparently works, and I'm getting used to the egg smell again. In my on-going efforts to improve upon the system (I used to just carry the water over to the shower in my hands) I'm filling all the wide shallow baking dishes I have with hard water and letting it partially evaporate to maximize the water's coiffure enhancing properties. I'm losing a lot of counter space, but it's worth it. When this batch is ready, by hair should reach the ceiling!
READERS DIGEST
The Washington Post held a contest inviting readers to come up with ideas that
never made it off the drawing board. Here are just a few:
The Slimfast Blimp
HOTEL SIGNS
In a Tokyo hotel:
In a Bucharest hotel lobby:
In a Leipzig elevator:
In a Belgrade hotel elevator:
In an advertisement by Hong Kong dentist:
In a Paris hotel elevator:
In a hotel in Athens:
In a Yugoslavian hotel:
In a Japanese hotel:
In the lobby of a Moscow hotel across from Russian Orthodox monastery:
On the menu of a Swiss restaurant:
On the menu of a Polish hotel:
Outside a Hong Kong tailor shop:
Outside a Paris dress shop:
In a Rhodes tailor shop:
From the Soviet Weekly:
A sign posted in Germany's Black Forest:
In a Zurich hotel:
In a Czechoslovakian tourist agency:
Advertisement for donkey rides in Thailand:
In a Swiss mountain inn:
In a Bangkok temple:
In a Copenhagen airline ticket office:
On the door of a Moscow hotel room:
In a Norwegian cocktail lounge:
In a Budapest zoo:
In the office of a Roman doctor:
In an Acapulco hotel:
From a Japanese information booklet about using a hotel air conditioner:
From a brochure of a car rental firm in Tokyo:
Two signs from a Majorcan shop entrance:
MORE EVIDENCE THAT THE WORLD IS POPULATED BY IDIOTS 1. Police in Wichita, Kansas, arrested a 22-year-old man at an airport hotel after he tried to pass two (counterfeit) $16 bills. 2. A company trying to continue its five-year perfect safety record showed its workers a film aimed at encouraging the use of safety goggles on the job. According to Industrial Machinery News, the film's depiction of gory industrial accidents was so graphic that twenty-five workers suffered minor injuries in their rush to leave the screening room. Thirteen others fainted, and one man required seven stitches after he cut his head falling off a chair while watching the film. 3. The Chico, California, City Council enacted a ban on nuclear weapons, setting a $500 fine for anyone detonating one within city limits. 4. A bus carrying five passengers was hit by a car in St. Louis, but by the time police arrived on the scene, fourteen pedestrians had boarded the bus and had begun to complain of whiplash injuries and back pain. 5. A convict broke out of jail in Washington, DC, then a few days later accompanied his girlfriend to her trial for robbery. At lunch, he went out for a sandwich. She needed to see him, and thus had him paged. Police officers recognized his name and arrested him as he returned to the courthouse in a car he had stolen over the lunch hour.
REAL HEADLINES!
Have a great quilting day!
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