This is the second post in my Wisk series. You can read the first one by heading over to my Pre-Review of Wisk with Stain Spectrum Technology if you’re so inclined.

The goal of this post/video is to illustrate the job Wisk does on protein stains. In this case, the stain was a pre-made grass swatch. I needed an assistant and Cara fit the lab coat so she won by default. We drew Cara and the letter C on the swatch, waited a couple of seconds and then dunked it in some warm water. Though the result wasn’t exactly what I had “drawn”, the stain was gone and that’s pretty sweet.

FYI, Cara wasn’t coached on what to say and every bit of footage – except for a three second part of my saying “uh” too many times – that was taken is included in the video. Cara just kind of took over and what she did was way more awesome that anything I would have done.

Enjoy and if you’re nice, feel free to head over to YouTube and give it a “thumbs up” and comment.

*Disclaimer: I’m being compensated with real money for this series and I received the bottle of Wisk in the video so I could honestly review the product BUT as my Review Policy says, I’m honest with my reviews and if I didn’t think Wisk rocked, I’d say so. Check out #3 on the Review Policy page if you’re confused.*

I spend many hours a day on the internet and visit maybe a hundred websites a day.

For one website to impress me enough that I feel compelled to write something about said website is saying something. That makes sense…right?

Obviously the thing made a heck of an impact on you. I highly suggest you check it out.

The website is called The Wilderness Downtown.

Enter the address of the house in which you grew up and several windows popup. Next thing you know, you’re watching a movie like video of a hooded shape running down a wet neighborhood street.

I don’t want to describe the whole experience to you because it is an experience. I want you to go to the site yourself and enter in the address of your childhood home and ride it to the end.

You’ll be amazed what you admit when it’s done.

I only have a couple of minutes cause I have a bunch of stuff to write up for a gaming magazine based in the UK.

They want to feature some of the stuff I’ve put on Sims 3 Gamer and so that’s what I’m a doin’.

Oh. And I went and looked at a house today – just me and the kids. I know. I know. How many times have I put pictures up of houses I love? Don’t tell me. I know. Really. I know.

But, while I was looking for houses to rent, Tucker and I agreed we should also look and see what’s out there to buy since interest rates are so low right now.

I found a house with an amazing view for not a TON of money and realized this morning that there was no reason why I couldn’t drive by the thing. It wasn’t like we were doing anything anyway. I ended up calling the agent to ask if there was a backyard. Next thing I knew, we were walking through the house.

So. Yeah. Pictures:

And a 20 second video because it’s fun:

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When it comes to shrinks and therapists, I’m not of the opinion all should be flowers, rainbows and sparkly unicorns.

In order to make any sort of progress, you have to do the hard work – the uncomfortable work – required to achieve your goals and sometimes that means you don’t like your mental health professionals all that much.

But no matter how much I’m not enjoying their particular brand of torture, I expect them to be somewhat polite and their office staff to be pleasant even if that smile plastered to their faces is as real as Dolly Parton’s boobs.

That really isn’t too much to ask. I know. Really. I know.

I used to work in a call center for Teleflora and I dealt with way too many families who ordered funeral flowers and the flowers never showed up and even though I was just the chick dealing with their problems at 0200 – Why they almost always waited until the wee hours of the morning to deal with that crap, I’ll never know. – I knew it was my job to grin and bear it. That’s what I was getting paid to do.

Same thing for the fine office folks at a shrink’s office.

I get they have to deal with “for real” crazy people; that’s gotta be taxing. I understand people are assholes and then when you add messed up drugs or no drugs to the mix you get some interesting reactions – and by interesting I mean psychotic. I understand all that. I feel your pain. Now, put a smile on your freakin’ face, speak with me like I’m a normal human being for two minutes and we can both get on with our very, very exciting lives.

I figured I’d feel better by now but I don’t and so I suppose I have to go into the whole story. Feel free to go read something else. I have some cat videos around here somewhere.

For about the past two or three months, I’ve been losing my hair.

Not like cancer patient hair loss but it’s substantial enough that I’m always pulling my hair off of me or the kids or the furniture. At first it was just annoying but as it’s gotten worse, it’s become embarrassing.

Embarrassing enough that I finally gave in and called my no nonsense Irish GP and had him do a blood workup. That phlebotomist pulled five separate vials. That was fun. Not really.

That happened on Friday and my results came back today: all’s good in the hood. Except my hair’s still coming out.

Doc’s assistant suggested I contact my shrink to see if hair loss is a common side effect of the drug I’m on – it’s not…I checked already.

Being the good little patient, I called the shrink’s office and got the receptionist. She was nice enough. I asked to be connected with the nurse of the doctor I see. She connected me right away and as I started telling the nurse what I was calling about, she cut me off, told me hold on and the line went quiet.

Two minutes later, a new voice came on the line and asked me who I was and why I was calling. She was promptly informed that I had been speaking with my doctor’s nurse.

“Oh, no. No one is EVER put straight through to a nurse. That just doesn’t happen. Now. What symptoms do you think you’re having?” – her emphasis, not mine.

I really was polite. I promise. I was.

I told her I was losing hair, my GP had told me to call them and that my next option was a dermatologist if all else failed. She assured me she’d pass my message along.

To the nurse’s credit, she did promptly return my call. To her detriment, she was a heinous bitch.

It’s not even worth quoting her here since the conversation was eerily close to the one I had with the chick prior. Same “What symptoms do you think you’re having?” All that fun stuff. Except, I have hair in my hand when I run my fingers through my hair. I don’t think I’m losing hair; I have proof.

The nurse went on to say:

“Extreme stress can cause hair loss. No one can prove it but it’s true. Do you pet yourself? Too much hair brushing can cause hair loss.”

I guess I will quote her. I just can’t help myself. Really? “Do you pet yourself?”

I was still being nice…nice with an edge of annoyed Amy hiding under the surface. I wanted to tell her I wasn’t stressed any more than your regular American and it would make a hell of a lot more sense if this medication was causing the problem and not some unprovable “thing”.

ANYWAY, I have a call in to my therapist – who I enjoy – about changing my shrink since I don’t enjoy my “treatment team” and just got a call about my dermatologist appointment.

I just wanna quit shedding like a dog. Is that too much to ask for? Just like I want mental health professionals to not be assholes. But I guess that’s just me.

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We traveled back to Arkansas this weekend to help my mom buy a laptop and get connected to Skype so she can see her grandkids whenever she wants. Stick with me here – there’s a point.

Since the trip was a tad spontaneous, we didn’t get to Mom’s house until 2230 or something on Friday and since her laptop was smoking crack and disconnected itself from the internet, we didn’t get home last night until 2130.

Keep going. Point coming up.

All that driving – though I was actually riding since Tucker was driving – tends to wear on a person and Ollie, Cara and I slept in this morning. I woke up with just one contact in and shambled to the kitchen. Imagine zombie…but with better hair and less decaying flesh.

I popped open my coffee container and the first thing that came to mind was the Folger’s jingle, “♫ The best part of waking up is Folger’s in your cup! ♫”

That led me to start thinking about old commercials I remember from when I was a wee lass – not sure why I just became Scottish.

And there’s your point, folks: commercials I remember from when I was a kid.

Obligatory Folger’s commercial. And is it just me or does the dude at .12 look a bit too much like Rob Blagojevich?

These next three are all anti-drug PSAs. Not sure why I vividly remember these. Maybe because the 80s were saturated with this kind of stuff?

These two songs are like Herpes: you can never get rid of them.

My cousin Layne had Teddy Ruxpin and that devil bear scared the shit out of me.

The new Smokey the Bear commercials don’t hold a LED candle to the old commercials.

GI JOE! REAL AMERICAN HERO!

She-Ra rocked so much harder that He-Man

I loved this movie. Do you remember the McDonald’s toys?

You know you had these pants and you know you danced your butt off.

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I’ve come to accept in the last couple of days that I’m a hollerer.

I start out quiet [Or, as quiet as I can be; I'm pretty loud all the time.] and then escalate to something around the decibel region of a tornado siren.

I don’t mean to go there…to that place.

I would much rather be quiet and do that whole “whisper” thing a lot of child “experts” advise you do but it doesn’t work on my kids. I know what you’re thinking: It does WORK! You’re doing it wrong! But, if I’m anything, I’m thorough in my research and I suspect my children are wired differently or have been permanently scarred by Tucker’s bellowing and my less bellowy and more harpyesque squawks.

My mother is a prolific screecher and I can only assume it was years and years of training by her which blessed me with this amazingly annoying – and potentially damaging – gift.

I had suspected for a while that my level of voice was a tad too much but what really brought it home for me was when I video taped myself doing this yoga DVD. I wasn’t certain my form was correct and if I was going to sweat through 35 minutes of ass burning stuff, I was going to do it correctly the first time.

What I saw – other than my horrible form – was me demanding the kids get off of my yoga mat.

Granted, each time I was about to fall on their heads and no one wants that happening. At the time of the taping – that just sounds odd – I was concentrating on not groaning and on my shaking arms and legs and every time one of them touched me, I would almost fall over; they were breaking my concentration and it was taking all I had to keep going with the infernal video.

Watching the video after I had showered, I saw Ollie raising his leg up like the folks on TV and reaching his arms up to the sky and doing his best to mimic them.

I saw Cara stretching legs out and doing her level best to do the splits. I saw her patting my back while I was doing the “chair pose” and my legs were shaking to the point I thought I was going to collapse. I saw Cara dancing around to the music like only a three year old can do.

Basically, I saw my kids being kids and me being an asshole for being short and loud with them.

Sheesh. Talk about a video slap upside the head.

I’m not going to say I’ll never holler at them or raise my voice or anything like that since saying those word would make me a bald face liar. But I’m going to try like hell to curb it. Whenever my mom gets pissed about something and speaks loudly at anyone – doesn’t even have to be me – my stomach drops to my feet and it’s like I’m five again.

Cara’s almost four. A bit too close to home.

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We live close to the local university so tenants come and go with the semester since most of them are college students. For the most part, they aren’t loud but they have a lot of issues.

Remember those issues? The boy drama? The friend drama? The should-I-call-him-or-should-I-wait-?!!! drama?

All that crap makes me happy I’m married.

Three sorority sisters moved in on the floor above us. I do most of my work whilst sitting on our door mat in the breezeway. I tend to be very quiet and wear my headphones.

I wasn’t wearing my headphones last night.

A door above me clicked shut and I hear a match being struck. A deep inhale came from the stairwell and someone sighed one of those depressed sighs you tend to only see/hear in movies.

Girl 1: Sarah, you can tell he loves you. His ex-girlfriend is strange, but I kind of know her and she’s totally over him.

Girl 2 [Sarah?]: Haley, he cheated on her with five different chicks in a three month period. That’s what she told me. That’s why she ended it. He says he didn’t. I don’t know who to believe.

Girl 1: If he says he didn’t do it then he didn’t. You just have to trust him and not listen to her. She’s psycho and she’s a liar. You know who you should trust.

Girl 2: He told me he pulled out. That’s something, right?

Girl 1: Exactly.

WAH?!! Did the guy sleep with all those chicks or didn’t he? I’m so confused.

SO glad I’m married. And of course it’s because I’m madly in love with my husband and it has nothing to do with how stupid college kids are and how stupid I probably sounded a couple of years ago.

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I knew when Oliver started petting my leg as if it were a dog that it was time to shave.

*Feel Free to add your own one sentence blog post in the comments section below.^[1]*

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1. ^[1] This doesn’t count as part of the blog post as it’s a notification. FYI. ↩

I told you about dropping my Samsung Propel in the bathtub whilst checking the water temperature, right? Maybe I didn’t but I’m too lazy at this moment to go back and check. I took the phone apart, tossed it in a Ziploc bag full of uncooked rice and crossed my fingers the phone could be resurrected.

The phone DID work but had this fixation with the number three. Ever few seconds, it would spontaneously dial 3 which made leaving voice mails a real bitch.

I wasn’t scheduled for a phone upgrade from AT&T until 2011 and so I was stuck with said possessed phone.

Tucker, being the night in shining armor [or whatever] he is, offered me his upgrade and we decided we would pay full price for the iPhone he wanted. Plans changed when we stopped in the AT&T to look at the Samsung Captivate.

You learn something everyday and what we learned that day is you can upgrade early if you pay a $75 fee. I walked out with a beautiful phone that wasn’t possessed.

The Captivate is a full fledged “smart phone” comparable to the iPhone – maybe even better. Lots of features on the phone I love but this isn’t a phone review. Like the iPhone, you can download apps for the Captivate and here’s the list of apps I hold near and dear and you should too. I’ve broken them up into subgroups for ease of scanning.

Favorite Android Apps^[1]

Games:

Abduction! – You’re a bouncing cow with a mission to save your herd from the aliens. Really.

Air Horn – Not really a game, per se, but it sure is a heck of a lot of fun.

Paper Toss – It’s exactly what it sounds like. You toss a wad of paper into the trash can. Your nemesis is a fan bent on blowing the paper away from the can.

Steamy Window – You know how you draw pictures in the steam on the mirror after you get out of the shower? Now you can do that on your phone. Blow into the mic to get more steam.

Talking Tom Cat – I despise this app. Cara and Ollie LOVED it. They win. They outnumber me. You talk to the ugly gray cat, it records what you say and then says it back to you except about three octaves higher. You can also pet it and pull its tail.

News and Info:

BBC News, CNET, CNN, Dictionary.com, Drudge Report, Fox Business, Fox News, NY Times, NPR News, TMZ, USA Today, The Weather Channel

Handy Stuff You’re Gonna Want:

Adobe Reader – Every now and then, you find a person who likes to annoy you by making a link a .pdf document. This should help.

Advanced Task Killer – The Captivate “multi-tasks”…kind of. You’re going to end up with a lot of things running on your phone because you’re going to forget they were paused and next thing you know, you’ve got thirty things up and then you’re all like, “WFT?!” Use this app to assassinate stuff you don’t want running. Just uncheck stuff you want to keep alive.

Antivirus Free – Sometimes good phones go bad. This app scans what you’re doing and keeps your phone on the straight and narrow.

Barcode Scanner – Well…it does what it says: it scans barcodes of tons of stuff. This should probably be one of the first things you download. You can also scan these things called QR Codes like this one:

Bubble – Because you never know when you need something level.

Bump – Think “fist bump” but with phones. And you transfer data. Bump your phone and their phone together and you can exchange photos and contacts and all kinds of cool things. Works with the iPhone too.

Fxcamera – Takes your Captivate’s 5mp camera and makes it even cooler. Examples:

Toycam mode

Polandroid mode

Google Search by Voice – You’re too lazy to type in your search. Say it instead.

Photoshop.com Mobile – A pared down version of the real thing. Easy to use.

Ringdroid – Make yourself some ringtones.

Shake – Uninstall – Easy as could be. Open up what you want to kill and then shake the crap out of it while holding search. All gone.

Microsoft Tag Reader – You’ll see Tags a lot in magazines and your barcode scanner doesn’t like them one little bit. Get the Tag Reader so you can access the cool bonus content.

Useful Stuff and Social Media:

The Coupons App – To save stuff as favorites, you have to upgrade but the free app is still pretty sweet. Find all kinds of local stuff and just present your phone to get the discount.

Discount Calculator – For those of us who are mentally slothish when it comes to math.

Epicurious Recipes – Yum! More than 28k recipes at your fingertips. Choose a meal time, a main ingredient or look at the recipe of the day. You can even make a shopping list for whatever you’re making for dinner.

Official Facebook App – Maybe there’s a better Facebook out there but I don’t use Facebook a whole lot and I like this one just fine.

Nook for Android – I have to give Tucker credit for this download’ he grabbed it while he was drooling over my phone. I have been considering the Nook anyway and having the baby version on my phone convinces me I need the daddy version.

Official Twitter App – Again, I’m sure there are probably better apps out there but I’m A-OK with the official Twitter Android app and I have over 6k followers. If the Twitter app can keep up with me, I’m pretty sure it can keep up with you.

Where’s My Droid? – How many times have you turned your phone on silent and then lost the thing? With this app, you set a word you can remember and then borrow someone’s phone and text your number. Silent mode’s switched off and the phone starts ringing. If you use the “donate” version then you can send a text from your computer via email. For full instructions, check out the Where’s My Droid instruction page.

So. There’s my list of apps I’ve downloaded twice now. Twice because I had to wipe my phone about an hour after I got it – I made the mistake of importing all of my Gmail contacts. Don’t do that. Trust me.

Hope this helps when you get your Captivate or whatever it is you get.

Edited to add: If you’re having issues with the Captivate not syncing with Kies, here’s what you do:

1. Menu button on the far left
2. Settings
3. Applications
4. Touch “Samsung Kies” – On my phone it’s at the very top.
5. Now try to connect your phone to your computer via your USB cable.

Video explanation with sweet stop motion:

1. ^[1] In no particular order ↩