Silicon Investor (SI) -- The First Internet Community

STOCKTALK

We've detected that you're using an ad content blocking browser plug-in or feature. Ads provide a critical source of revenue to the continued operation of Silicon Investor. We ask that you disable ad blocking while on Silicon Investor in the best interests of our community. If you are not using an ad blocker but are still receiving this message, make sure your browser's tracking protection is set to the 'standard' level.

Pastimes : Don't Ask Rambi -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: Gauguin who wrote (9665)	4/12/1998 1:28:00 PM
From: Rambi	Read Replies (2) \| Respond to of 71178

I have just had a revelation about existence, and balance, and harmony. I know you want to hear it. It could be life-altering. The "church ladies" in my little hometown Lutheran Church were always doing projects and one of these was collecting the remains of their soaps. My mother did this; she had a little margarine container in the bathroom closet and she would put the slivers in it when they got acceptably small. (When my mother died, she had an entire kitchen cabinet packed with little empty margarine tubs-hundreds of them. Why? How many margarine tubs can one person use?) And then they would all get together in the church kitchen with their little containers and melt all those little soap slivers in a pot and make new bars and send them to Africa. Those bars of soap fascinated me. They had so much character-such history. I would hold them and smell them and look at the different streaks of color and think how much more meaning they held than the bar of Dial on our sink. But what's more fascinating (here's the revelation part) is that those women had found a way to not have to use the slivers!!! A way that even allowed them to feel good about not using the slivers. Why-the bigger the sliver, the better!!! Doesn't that just seem like such a great way to deal with life? Finding a way to turn your irritations into someone else's solutions? It just seemed to have a certain symmetry.

To: Gauguin who wrote (9665)	4/12/1998 2:07:00 PM
From: jhild	Respond to of 71178

Well, with a little effort you can not lose a single piece. I have a technique that almost certainly verifies that part of me is Scotch, and, no, not just that part that I drink. Now be warned that I have not tried this with all brands, so results may vary. But it is worth experimenting with to possibly help you over the stress of that disagreeable transition between bars. I myself am an Ivory boy. 99 and 44/100ths percent pure. (There I've said it, so I guess that I have officially outted myself.) You may not know it to look at me, because I don't really look at all like those people that I see on the commercials, save, of course, that I am every bit as clean smelling when I leave the shower. But anyway on to the soap saving technique. Now the real trick to this relies on foresight and planning, and this may make it unsuitable for all people. Once you recognize that your soap is beginning to wear its way down to the point of becoming one of those little individual use soap sheets that little old ladies carry around in their purses in the off chance that they may find themselves stranded in a restroom with only institutional soap dispensers that smell more like floor cleaner, then that is the time to break out that new bar and put it in your shower or bath. Now this is key - it must go into your shower at the beginning, preferably located where the water may pool or splash on it. By the end of your shower, after the new bar has begun to absorb a little water, and of course while your old bar is wetted from use, then is the time to act. Act boldly. Take both the old and the new bars and - are you ready? - squeeze them together firmly. Now this doesn't really require the kind of strength that Superman can exhibit in crushing coal into a diamond, but the firmer the better. Now let me warn you here that I have on several occasions, when using those non-Ivory oval bars, had the soap slip from my hand. One such mishap even cleared the curtain hanger and scored a regrettable splashdown in the toilet. (Is this by any chance the origin of the term toilet size?) I might add that I believe that my current attraction to Ivory stems from this singular incident as Ivory offer the advantage of floating. Having now melded your bars, sort of a reverse stock split as it were, simply leave this new bar in the soap dish for the next shower. When you return for your next shower, you will have a new bar of soap, with rounded edges and the lump of your old soap firmly attached to one side. Admittedly, the soap looks a little pregnant and lopsided throughout your continuing use, but it is such a small price to pay for being able to sleep the night before that shower that you just know you will be required to start a new bar. The alternative to this approach is to save those small pieces soak them in water and load them into a "soap press". But that is a little advanced miserliness left for another time.