Good laundry doing Sue. I managed 3 loads last night.

Matt - mark it wrong, so wrong.

Dana, me too. Those last $$ having to go to the ceramic dog - good times.

Interesting Education piece in the NYT: [link]

Salad was good, but I still feel hungry. grr. I'm sure it is a craving, not real hunger. stoopid carbs.

I made two recipes from my Cooking with Trader Joe's cookbook this weekend.

The black bean soup was not anything to write home about but the sesame noodles, which I brought for lunch, are pretty darn good.

I need to find someone to alter a dress for me. Looking in the phone book under "alterations" and "tailors" mainly gets me men's tailors. Any suggestions?

Do dry cleaning places usually do decent alterations? It shouldn't be anything complicated -- some hemming and maybe some darts in the back.

Do dry cleaning places usually do decent alterations? It shouldn't be anything complicated -- some hemming and maybe some darts in the back.

I think so. My place does anyway. If there is a dress boutique near you (that doesn't do its own alterations) you might ask them where they send people. That's how I got the recommendation for where I take my stuff.

I know that dry cleaners are where Clinton and Stacy from What Not to Wear usually recommend.

ION (literally), what news anchors do when they're not on the air. These two are my go-to local news show (9:00 WGN) when I do watch it, and they're hilarious here!

I need to find someone to alter a dress for me. Looking in the phone book under "alterations" and "tailors" mainly gets me men's tailors. Any suggestions?

Yelp can be surprisingly helpful for this sort of thing.

Yeah, I'm looking on yelp right now. There's one or two places that are listed with one or two reviews.

Stupid non-big towns. I think I've got a couple possiblities, though.

Speaking of dry cleaners, what's an average turnaround time people encounter? We have an insano cleaner who turns it around in 24-ish hours, but the quality is hit or miss. I generally get 2 days (or 3 if I take my stuff in at the very end of the work day, which is fair).

So today (Monday, right?) I take one skirt to a cleaner I'd never gone to before, and the cleaner person asks me when I want it back. So, since it's Monday and I figured Wednesday, maybe Thursday at the latest, I just said, "Whenever."

She says, "Oh thank god. Is Monday okay?"

I was so taken aback that I actually replied, "You mean NEXT Monday?"

She sighed, and said, "Well, WHEN, then?"

V. tempted to take my skirt back and leave, but I said Thursday.

Is 3 days an unreasonable amount of time for me to expect one skirt to be cleaned? Was 7 days reasonable for the cleaner to suggest?

signed,
damn I need to get some Dryel

I have always had good luck with dry cleaner alterations. For that level of stuff, someone who seems like she knows what she's doing probably does. And anyone can do hemming.

Is 3 days an unreasonable amount of time for me to expect one skirt to be cleaned? Was 7 days reasonable for the cleaner to suggest?

Well, in my office, if a salesperson sends me an order without a deadline, that order automatically goes to the bottom of the queue. If other jobs with deadlines come in after theirs, those ones are done first, so Deadline-Free Order that could have been done in 24-48 hours may in fact wind up taking a week or more to get to.

[edit: Which is to say, I think a 3-day dry cleaning turnaround is totally reasonable, but I don't think it's unreasonable to expect the customer to ask for it.]