I'm sure there's someplace in Chinatown that will sell you those noodles, Jess.

Oh that's a good idea. Or Sunset Park.

you don't have to call me darlin', DAR LIN'!

Ahahaha! This inevitably got sung at a karaoke bar in Nashville a few years ago when juliana, amyth, jessica, and katep and I met up there... I distinctly remember turning around while belting it out, along with the rest of the bar, to see bemused and maybe a little horrified looks on the faces of jessica and katep. David Allen Coe - not a universal phenomenon.

The cats do not like the doorbell. not at all.

Hivemind query - you know those crispy fried noodles that come with Chinese takeout soups in the little wax paper bags? Has anyone ever seen them in a grocery store?

I'm guessing those are different from chow mein noodles? Because I've seen those in the stores a lot.

Yay, Steve Goodman! Earlier this week on another board, someone posted a YouTube of one of those old Boxcar Willie ads, which got me to respond with the lyrics to "Vegematic": (When he brought the) Vegematic / And the Pocket Fisherman, too / Illuminated Illustrated History of Life / and Boxcar Willie with a Ginzu knife / A Minute Mender / and a needle that'll knit or crochet / And a tied-dyed day-glow souveneir shirt from Six Flags Over Burbank...

So, kinda a once in a lifetime thing. HMNS's corpse flower, Lois, is on the brink of blooming and you can follow her progress here [link] and watch it happen here [link]

Oh that's a good idea. Or Sunset Park.

For sure.

Gas is now ON!

whoot! I can leave the house is MY NEW CAR!

I can haz new refrigerator! Shiny and clean and not dripping water all over the floor.

I smelled a corpse flower a few years ago in DC. Stinky for sure, and very dramatically huge.

Dammit. I had written out a whole long response on sarameg's project, and it got eaten. And I closed my links. Lemme sum up: EPA provides guidance on working with lead paint, which sarameg may have already seen - [link] (PSA for all - new EPA regs recently went into effect requiring contractors working on lead paint to be certified and to inform homeowners of certain info). Obviously, keep children, pets, and pregnant ladies away from the work. I think reusing dropcloths would risk creating lead dust. Overall, by choosing to refinish instead of replace, sarameg is "getting" a higher-quality wood than she would get new and averting all the waste (fuel, water, habitat destruction, power) involved in harvesting, shipping, and processing - by which I'm trying to say that no matter what dropcloth she uses, it's still a massive net win.

The only waste reduction strategy I can think of, and it's more closing the loop/choosing products carefully than reducing, would be to use a thick, recycled content plastic sheet and layer recycled paper over it - dispose of the paper daily but reuse the plastic. But I don't know how that would work, how available those types of materials are to you, sarameg, and whether it would cost significantly more.

Anyway. My two cents.