such things wow

[kaberett]

• I WAS CORRECT: putting one of the bowls of bird feed on the garage roof, with an identical bowl of bird feed on the picnic table, did in fact mean that the birds Got The Idea. Food is being consumed. I startled a pigeon when I got out of bed around lunchtime.
  
• I would be very grateful for advice on how to go about acquiring a replacement silicone lid for a bamboo travel mug, because I am utterly incapable of working out a search term that doesn't just... return a million and one results for complete sets of travel mugs, where the issue is specifically that I have lost a lid, gah.
  
• I am having a happy flail about food? I made ice cream using not-the-ice-cream-maker-I-first-thought-of and it did A Texture and I have leftover apricot jam to eat for breakfast for the next week or so, hurrah. Next step: go through the recipe book and stick a post-it note on all the things I want to try making.
  
• I have spent a bunch of time over the past few days going back over paper diaries back to ~2010, in order to establish how much time I've spent in Cornwall over the last decade, and goodness there was a lot of stuff in there I'd completely forgotten happening but am pleased to have a record of. (I am particularly amused that I apparently made specific note of having met A in person, complete with his full name and everything; this was at a point at which I was nooooot writing down much actual emotional state in my diaries because reasons, so I can only speculate about why I felt it was sufficiently momentous to Record, but there we go. Amusement.)
  
• Dishwashers are amazing and I love them. (I've been unpacking some of the boxes brought back from the mouldering ancestral pile, some of which contain cookware, and there was no way I was dealing with any of that without giving it a very thorough clean first -- and, well, just being able to stick it all through a dishwasher at 75°C and Not Think About It Any More and have it come out clean? is pretty magic. I have soufflé dishes.) Bonus points: A explained to me the other week why in fact it is that US housing doesn't come with in-unit washing machines and dishwashers until you get as far as Properly Fancy housing, which is apparently... because of the electricity set-up. Which makes entire sense and had not occurred to me, but also Good Grief I am glad I live somewhere with 240V mains. (And also a bit perplexed, because the dishwashers at Caltech seemed to work fine, but who knows.)

Comments

[ghoti]

idk search terms, but I've had luck emailing customer support explaining I've lost / destroyed / whatever a part and how much to replace it? and then I get a free lid or whatever.

[madgastronomer]

Oh, did you go to Caltech? So did my wife. Also, that school has already come up for me twice this week.

[kaberett]

I did a summer internship there after my third year!

[madgastronomer]

Cool!

[sebenikela]

i went there too! (2001-06)

~it's a small, small world~

[fyreharper]

Dishwashers are rather more common than in-unit laundry machines; I have never lived somewhere that didn’t have a dishwasher (yes, hello privilege, but also I know how many more spoons it takes to hand-wash things and Dishwasher Is A Requirement) but this is the first place I’ve lived since my parents’ house that had its own (tiny) washer/dryer (in the front-porch closet) instead of a laundry room elsewhere in the building.

(...does Caltech not count as fancy? :p )

[kaberett]

(oh I absolutely consider dishwasher A Requirement of Places I Live at this point.)

CALTECH PROBABLY COUNTS AS FANCY but idek like the student dorms I was living in were literally designed to ward off demons??? the undergrads set fire to it at least once accidentally while I was there??? like yes there's a good deal of Infrastructure on campus but I can see... arguments... for not giving students the good shit when they'll just blOW IT UP...

[fyreharper]

Designed to ward off demons???
:curiousface:

[kaberett]

oh goodness um

there is a Legend (though I can't now find an online reference for same) that some of the Caltech dorms, the South Houses, were built by an architect who was shortly afterwards taken into in-patient mental health care.

It was initially the case that no two corridors were on the same level, for example (i.e. there are small quantities of stairs everywhere), and that there was a fairly severe upper limit on how long corridors could be before you'd just... hit a wall that served no useful purpose.

The corridors are still not on the same level, but some of the walls have been knocked through...

[sebenikela]

I think dishwashers can work on US-standard 120V power. my not-fancy apartment has a dishwasher but not a laundry-washer in it and I don't think it has a special outlet

and come to think of it, I had to fuss with my parents dishwasher when i lived there and theirs just used a "regular" 120V outlet. dunno why laundry washing machines can't

...caltech undergraduates are, and i say this with much love, having been one, a menace to society, infrastructure, and anything that could conceivably be assembled or disassembled by a 19-year-old engineer who hasn't slept in 36 hours.

[kaberett]

More to follow, engaging with the substantive part, but:

Partway through my SURF the fire alarm went off, at 3am, again.

Unlike every previous time, however, on this occasion FIVE FIRE ENGINES ATTENDED.

Because, it turns out, some FUCKING Mole had STORED THEIR ACETONE in the BOILER ROOM in the BASEMENT, what the FUCK. WHAT. THE ACTUAL FUCK.

(I was in a single in Hell. I hit the point, a few weeks in, of decontaminating the Purgatory fridge with extreme prejudice. There was stuff in there that had been there for AT LEAST FIVE YEARS.)

[fyreharper]

NO WHY WHY WOULD YOU DO THAT that is NOT AN ACCEPTABLE STORAGE CHOICE D:

The only Being On Fire I can think of around my time at university was the year before I got there, and was merely a case study in Why Candles Are Not Permitted In The Dorms. Liberal arts school: possibly less hazardous? ;)

(...It is possible that there could be some things in my fridge that are 5 years old, but at least I still LIVE HERE :p )

[kaberett]

THESE PEOPLE DID NOT STILL LIVE THERE.

[sebenikela]

Oh god, the Moles.

I was in Dabney, and while we definitely had our own ridiculous shenanigans the Moles were...special. Like, we accidentally killed the power to the building because (as it turned out) we had 2 circular saws, a couple worklights, and an arc welder all plugged into the same circuit, but that was just a matter of flipping the breakers, we never (while I was there) had the fire department show up.

(everyone was very sad when they renovated the houses--it happened the year after I graduated. They painted over the murals! they destroyed the Hyperspace Bypass! (a shortcut from a closet up into a cupboard in the alley 7 kitchen) For a couple years before that the Dabney "fire code" compromise involved a sort of drywall tunnel going AROUND one of the random walls in the middle of the hallway because we were stubborn.)

[kaberett]

... right.

that was the other time Serious Fire Engines, in my summer there.

they fucking RUMBLED THE CHIMNEY in the Blacker lounge.

(I was in Dabney at the time and it was PLENTY LOUD FROM THERE, thank you.)

[kaberett]

RIGHT SO it TURNS OUT, I have remembered, that the thing about dishwashers??? is possibly??? that you over there genuinely do have to pre-wash plates and such by hand, which we... don't. it can just go in the dishwasher. the dishwasher will cope.

is that... a thing?

[sebenikela]

I have HEARD RUMORS that such dishwashers exist, but all the ones here I have experience with require plates to at least be rinsed mostly clean before going in.

This makes it sort of pointless of one person, because it's actually less work to just wash the damn plates by hand, so I only use mine when my brain is being a stubborn toddler. (so, about half the time)

[sebenikela]

oh and actually the most annoying thing about 120V power is that electric kettles take FOR EVER to boil water. Which is probably why they're less common here.

[wohali]

This search seems to work for me (sorry that it's Amazon, though):

https://www.amazon.com/silicone-lids-coffee-mugs/s?k=silicone+lids+for+coffee+mugs

[kaberett]

OOOH, thank for link. That should help me narrow down my search terms!

[jedusor]

mrr? I don't know anything about electricity set-ups, but in-unit dishwashers and washing machines are not at all unusual in regular-people housing. they're not a given, but they're common.

[kaberett]

RIGHT I have poked at my brain some more and some more things have fallen out, in case useful/explanatory:

(1) my impression is that in most instances you actually do have to pre-wash plates etc by hand before sticking them in the dishwasher? even if just to the extent of rinsing them? is this accurate? (I can put things straight in the dishwasher from used, even if it's dried on some, and it'll come out clean. Something something something efficiency of water heating something? idk.)

(2) washing machines etc: are absolutely a given in normal-people housing in the UK under most circumstances. This conversation came up at all because I was staring in astonishment at an article about incredibly expensive housing in New York, where it was proudly and specifically announced as a selling point for this multi-million-dollar apartment that It Had In-Unit Laundry, and I just could not quite wrap my head around that not being... taken absolutely as a given, in that context?

[jedusor]

yup I rinse most things and if something is all crusty I'll just do it by hand. I would much rather do that than change a filter full of gross food remnants every two weeks D:

I might have been confused by that article too, depending on the phrasing of it? like if it was "jacuzzi bathtub, two ovens, in-unit laundry, and a 7th-floor balcony!" it'd stand out, but if it was "utilities included, free parking space, in-unit laundry, and a gas stove" it would be standard.

[worlds_of_smoke]

dishwashers are actually pretty common in rentals around here. in many cases, they're considered basic kitchen appliances that are supplied by the owner free of cost, like stoves or refrigerators. our old apartment was in a *really* shitty part of town (i.e. regular gunshots and drugs and murders) and was rundown af, and we still had a dishwasher. i'm insisting on having a dishwasher when we move, and it's actually not something that limits where we could rent, especially since the parts of town where there are apartments with no dishwasher are parts of town we don't want to go back to due to high crime and such.

if you're *buying*, that might be different, but that's because the previous owners may take *all* the kitchen appliances.

(the only reason we don't have one *here* is because the owners of the complex when we moved in were cheap as fuck and wanted us to pay a rental fee for a dishwasher. but that is really, *really* unusual for my part of the states and the renovated apartments have dishwashers.)

[kaberett]

RIGHT so the thing I was apparently forgetting to mention was: my understanding is that in the US you pretty much really do have to prewash stuff before it goes in the dishwasher, at least to the tune of rinsing it off? Which is not the case in the UK, and something something efficiency of water heating something?

[worlds_of_smoke]

Yeah, it's generally considered a good idea to rinse off the big chunks though I don't think it's absolutely required. I'm fairly confident that our water here would be hot enough to deal with anything, since it runs REALLY hot. It's pretty much impossible to JUST use hot water if you're washing something unless you want burnt hands.

(And that's AFTER they came in and turned the hot water heater down some.)

[passingbuzzards]

dishwashers are definitely in the vast majority of the housing where i live, even fairly low-end places! i'm guessing it may be more a matter of how old the overall area of habitation is? i'm sure there are plenty of awful apartments in, say, new york city that don't come with a dishwasher but charge 9x the rent of a comparable apartment in denver but that is just . . . not likely here because virtually nothing predates the '80s

[kaberett]

RIGHT so the thing I was apparently forgetting to mention was: my understanding is that in the US you pretty much really do have to prewash stuff before it goes in the dishwasher, at least to the tune of rinsing it off? Which is not the case in the UK, and something something efficiency of water heating something?

*chinhands*

[(Anonymous)]

hmm i don't believe that's the case! i think most people prewash dishes because if you don't do so the filter in the machine will eventually get clogged up and all your dishes will smell like wet dog, lol. my dishwasher runs scalding hot and almost certainly could shear off any amount of dirt, i just don't want it to BREAK

[kaberett]

Huh, whereas I'm broadly of the opinion that one cleans the dishwasher filters once a fortnight or thereabouts CULTURAL VARIATION IS FASCINATING

[jedusor]

I literally do not even know if my dishwasher's filter is a thing I can change.

[passingbuzzards]

i'm actually not sure ours can be easily taken out?? it's definitely An Undertaking, anyway, so i don't think it's something intended to be done regularly (are yours made with the understanding that they'll be regularly removed?)

[kaberett]

... huh! Yeah, ours are trivially removable and we are Advised to deal with them Regularly.

[passingbuzzards]

(whoops, anon reply was also from me, didn't realize i'd gotten logged out!)

[booksarelife]

Dishwashers are definitely not at all unusual, and I'm also being very thankful currently that they exist because I just got through a semester of having to handwash everything (we had a dishwasher, we tried to run it once, it appeared to have run very quickly but didn't seem to have done anything and there were enough things that we had to call maintenance for that we never got around to it-and, like the oven, we weren't entirely sure if we were just not using it right), so yes, I agree dishwashers are amazing, and so are laundry machines in your place of residence (another thing my study abroad didn't have).

There are reasons we're not allowed to have certain appliances at school (besides things about wiring) it's because it'd be a horrible disaster of people burning things