oh ye dish-washing gloves

I'm quite pleased tonight to find out that Mr. Clean Nyplex gloves are finally being sold again, just under a different name - Bliss gloves.

I've had to patch tiny holes in my old pair of Nyplex gloves with silicon glue, in order to keep using them for washing dishes. They are 3 years old now. The material has stiffened to the point where they are no longer comfortable, and cracks/holes are becoming more frequent. As it will soon be winter, ie. chapped hands season, I'll be in need of a good pair again.

None of the other brands I've tried were as good as these Nyplex ones were.

Ever since getting to know someone who is very allergic to latex, and reading that latex allergies may be induced by frequent exposure to it, I've tried to avoid it where possible.

As for why I've never even tried using the dish-washing machine that is in this house, well. The seal looks bad; I'm afraid it would leak water. I'm not sure the machine would do a good job. Maybe it would waste more water than when I wash the dishes by hand. Maybe it would make annoying noise. I seem to have a hang-up about it, and I'm not sure why.

lamp mystery solved

This regards the lamp that I nearly electrocuted myself on (though Qiao, having more experience with such things, thinks it unlikely that I would have gotten more than a nasty shock).

After taking the lamp apart to replace the socket, I discovered that the socket didn't actually have a contact missing, and it wasn't actually intended to take a 3-way light bulb. The socket does have a 3rd terminal, but it's not for controlling the extra filament of a 3-way bulb as I expected.

The old socket has 3 screw terminals, whereas the replacement 3-way socket I bought has only 2. Four wires come up out of the base of the lamp, and 2 wires were connected to one of the 3 screws.

It turns out there is actually a little bulb in the base of the lamp, which Qiao and I never knew about! The base is ceramic, with a lot of cut-outs in a nice pattern. The inside of the base had a paper lining, hiding the stuff inside. Inside that, there was a little Christmas tree type bulb, which must have burned out long ago. Turning the knob once would turn on the little light in the base, twice would turn on the top light, and thrice would turn on both.

Not sure what I'm going to do with it now. I think it would look neat to replace the little bulb with a short string of white LEDs, but I'll have to figure a way of hooking that up.



(Nearly every time I take a photo in the above room, I'm chagrined to later discover a roll of toilet paper in the picture. I use it for blowing my nose, as it has a higher recycled paper content than facial tissue. It even managed to sneak itself into the above photo.)


I love how these socks look together with these shoes! (Kudos to you if you can figure out how this photo was taken).