Temporarily working on something else

It seems I have not made a contribution to this blog for a while. Not forgotten.

In the scheme of things, it is nice to have the time to devote to this blog and scour the world for Ironing related stories, however there is the business to run and that takes a priority.

Right now I am helping develop a a set of Training Manuals for future Osca employees and the Osca Ironing Franchises. It involves a lot of graphical diagrams (which I really enjoy), but they are quite time intensive so priorities where priorities are due for now.

Osca.

Reforming Thinker

It started out innocently enough.

I began to think at parties now and then to loosen up. 

Inevitably, though, one thought led to another, and soon I was more than just a social thinker.

I began to think alone - "to relax," I told myself - but I knew it wasn't true. Thinking became more and more important to me, and finally I was thinking all the time.

I began to think on the job. I knew that thinking and employment don't mix, but I couldn't stop myself.

I began to avoid friends at lunchtime so I could read Thoreau and Kafka. I would return to the office dizzied and confused, asking, "What is it, exactly, we are doing here?"

Things weren't going so great at home either. One evening I had turned off the TV and asked my wife about the meaning of life. She spent that night at her mother's.

I soon had a reputation as a heavy thinker. One day the boss called me in. He said, "Skippy, I like you, and it hurts me to say this, but your thinking has become a real problem. If you don't stop thinking on the job, you'll have to find another job." This gave me a lot to think about.

I came home early after my conversation with the boss. "Honey," I confessed, "I've been thinking..."

"I know you've been thinking," she said, "and I want a divorce!"

"But, Honey, surely it's not that serious."

"It is serious," she said, lower lip aquiver. "You think as much as college professors, and college professors don't make any money, so if you keep on thinking we won't have any money!"

"That's a faulty syllogism," I said impatiently, and she began to cry.

I'd had enough. "I'm going to the library," I snarled as I stomped out the door. I headed for the library, in the mood for some Nietzsche, with a PBS station on the radio. I roared into the parking lot and ran up to the big glass doors... they didn't open. The library was closed.

To this day, I believe that a Higher Power was looking out for me that night. As I sank to the ground clawing at the unfeeling glass, whimpering for Zarathustra, a poster caught my eye. "Friend, is heavy thinking ruining your life?" it asked. You probably recognize that line. It comes from the standard Thinker's Anonymous poster.

Which is why I am what I am today: a recovering thinker. I never miss a TA meeting. At each meeting we watch a non-educational video; last week it was "Porky's." Then we share experiences about how we avoided thinking since the last meeting.

I still have my job, and things are a lot better at home. Life just seemed... easier, somehow, as soon as I stopped thinking.

You've been Ironing your shirt wrong.

From the archive of all things ironing:

Wake up.
Get out of bed.
Grab your shirt.
No, no, no. Now is not the time to start thinking about ironing it.


Seems like there may be another way.

You will require:

One shirt on a hanger, a shower with a shower curtain for improved efficiency and the absolutely essential pair of dark sunglasses.

Physics of Ironing

I could not have put it better :

During my research for an article on this blog, I have come across this description of the physics of Ironing:

Monika Chaudhary

Clothes are made of polymers, natural or synthetic. The amorphousness/crystallinity of these polymers is characterized by something known as the Glass Transition Temperature (Tg). This property defines how a polymer behaves at a given temperature - soft above Tg and, hard, crystal-like below Tg.


For example, cotton (a carbohydrate polymer of glucose) has a Tg = 225° C, so cotton fabrics keep their shape because the cotton molecules cannot move at room temperature. Water acts as a plasticizer or lubricant between the chains allowing them to move more freely and lowers the glass transition temperature to 20° C. Cotton shirts and blouses thus crease most where they absorb most moisture and are under most pressure - inside the elbows, under the arm pits, where they are tucked into trousers, etc.

Most irons operate between 200-240° C for cotton settings. At this temperature, the polymeric chains of the fabric loosen up and are temporarily "remolded" till you crease them again.

see also :

chemistry of ironing

When your best friend does the ironing

From the archives of all things Ironing.

This story comes to us from the pages of the Daily Mail.

 For Rupert, Ironing is a pleasure.

 photo credit rossparry.co.uk

Other than ironing, Rupert the whippet has been snapped by owner Janet Burton in a variety of hilarious scenarios appearing as a doctor, tennis player and a choir boy. He is also pictured playing piano, reading the paper and mowing the lawn.

Our Human Resources division has taken a keen interest. "An ironer happy to iron for schmackos?", now there is a way of improving the bottom line.

Watch out for those creases Rupert!

26 January 2015 - Happy Australia Day