I’m performing with my Improv 400 class tonight in the Unexpected Productions BIG Class Showcase! The show is at 8pm at the Market Theater, 1428 Post Alley in Seattle. If you’re in Seattle and you don’t have plans tonight, come see us. It’ll either be really great or really terrible — I guarantee it’ll be “really” something. What more can you ask for? ;-)

Some people apparently find cleaning fun, but I’m not one of them. I like having things clean, but I most certainly do not like the process of cleaning. So the fact that I’m writing a TIBTIL post about cleaning contraptions should tell you that I’ve really been impressed by something. It is true. In fact, I’ve been impressed by two things.

The first thing is the Bissell SpotBot. We’ve actually had this thing since Christmas, and it continues to surprise me. It does the work of scrubbing carpet stains or spills for you. You just fill it up with water and solution, set it on the spot, push the button and let it go. It wets the spot, scrubs it and then sucks up the liquid (it doesn’t get the carpet completely dry, but it’s drier than when I scrub it manually). When it’s done, the spot is clean. If you’re not careful, the spot it cleaned will actually be cleaner than the surrounding carpet, so I don’t recommend using the SpotBot in areas where the whole carpet is visibly dirty unless you’re prepared to clean the entire thing immediately. Bright clean spots in middle of a dirty carpet are not attractive.

The second TIBTIL is the Dyson DC17 Animal vacuum. Ok, ok. I know that Dysons are trendy. And expensive. And Consumer Reports rates other vacuums higher. But several trusted friends have Dysons and love them. After reading way too many reviews of Dysons and other brands online, I came to two big conclusions. First, the vast majority of Dyson owners are very happy with them. Second, discussion about vacuum cleaner brands seems to devolve into religion quickly — people feel very strongly abut their favored brand. So I won’t claim that Dyson is the best, but I will say that we’re extremely happy with ours. It picked up an extraordinarily disgusting amount of dirt from areas that we’d been regularly vacuuming with our old vacuum.

It doesn’t make me happy that we had all that dirt in our carpet, but it does make me happy that we now have a vacuum that can pick it up…

Phones and phone calls are a pain in the ass. Seriously — if you want to get ahold of me, I’d rather you just send me an e-mail. But some things still require using the phone, so I can’t completely avoid it (yet). Anything that makes phone calls less annoying is a good thing in my book. If you agree (or if you use telephones a lot, or if you’re just into telecom/voip stuff), you may be interested in playing with GrandCentral.

Google acquired the company recently, so I’ve been trying out their service and it’s very cool. It does a lot of stuff, but the basic thing is that you have a single phone number that you manage from the GrandCentral website. You can control which of your phones ring when people call the GrandCentral number, including different rules for different groups of people. For example, you can have calls from friends and family ring all of your phones, while calls from your boss only ring your cell phone and calls from your crazy ex-girlfriend go straight to voicemail (or even get a “this number is no longer in service” message!). Extremely cool stuff.

GrandCentral is invite-only right now, but I have a couple of invites left. If you’re interested, let me know and I’ll send one your way.

BTW, my GrandCentral number is 425-318-4375 (yes, I’m that confident in GrandCentral’s spam filtering), or you can call me with the button below. But don’t be surprised if it goes directly to voicemail ;-)

Last winter, on some of the coldest days of the year, we had a power outage. Starting last night, on one of the hottest days of the year, we’re having a power outage. This time, it’s apparently only a few hundred people affected. And it’s looking like the duration will be measured in hours (around twelve), rather than days. Still, with the temperatures as high as they are right now, it’s likely long enough to make us have to throw out a bunch of food again. Yay.

This has not been a good year for my relationship with Puget Sound Energy.