Spring planting, with White-out

[rsc]

I finally got around to putting in the first set of indoor seeds (destined for outdoors eventually, of course). I haven't decided yet how to proceed with the "Eye of the Tiger" violas, which I've tried unsuccessfully in the past, but it seems that may be because I haven't read the planting instructions carefully: this year I noticed that they want to be planted in a cool place, about 60°F, whereas just about everything else wants to be at 70-75°. I suppose I could put them in the basement, but keeping them watered and watched would be a nuisance. Also, I don't know if they need light to germinate (in general, if seeds want darkness the packet will say so), and we don't have a source of imitation daylight in the basement. I may just wait a bit and plant them outside.

So, who here is old enough to remember White-out? (For those of you who are not, this is a white liquid that comes in a small bottle with an applicator brush in the cap, which we used to use to paint over errors made while using a typewriter, since it produced an opaque more-or-less typeable surface. Other brands existed, such as Liquid Paper. In fact, after I had finished typing this entry, I went and looked at the bottle, and what I actually own is Liquid Paper, and now I think of it the other brand was probably spelled "Wite-out".)

(Those of you not old enough to know what a "typewriter" is can just shut up.)

Anyway, this is not the non sequitur it appears to be. I still own a bottle of the stuff, which is an integral part of my indoor-planting ritual. Once the seeds are in the dirt, it's kind of difficult to tell them apart, so I label each one by sticking half of a tongue depressor in the corner of each container with a coded pattern of dots painted on it in LP. (The first time I thought of doing this I used a ball-point pen, which became unreadable once capillary action had brought the water from the dirt up the length of the tongue depressor. Hence the White-out, or whatever.) As I'm doing this, I transcribe the code (and its meaning) onto a sheet of paper.

Some year soon, I'm going to run out of the stuff, and I don't know if it's still possible to acquire it. (jwg says "Sure it is.") I was also a little careless when putting one of the freshly-painted stakes in this year, and got a stripe of Liquid Paper on my right thumb. That stuff sets really fast! Immediate application of soap and water had no visible effect. When I was all finished with the planting, I tried nail-polish remover (yes, this house contains nail-polish remover, despite a complete absence of nail polish), which sort of works. So now I have a very faint white stripe on my right thumb.

And that's how i know it's really springtime.

Comments

[magid.livejournal.com]

I still use Wite-Out at work; it helps a lot when I mismark the fixes on a page that could otherwise be misread. Which is to say, yes, it's still available. And a pain in the neck to get off hands; I didn't think to try nail polish remover (I'd have to acquire some).

[magid.livejournal.com]

Oh, and the stuff I remember using in my typewriting class wasn't liquid, but little sheets of white that I'd have to place over the letter to be fixed, and retype, so the white would just cover the letter. That assumed I'd put the paper over it with the correct orientation...

[rsc.livejournal.com]

little sheets of white that I'd have to place over the letter to be fixed

Oh, yes, I remember that stuff. Didn't work very well.

[magid.livejournal.com]

I don't think I've used it since that class, when it was the only permissible way to fix things.

[rsc.livejournal.com]

Nail-polish remover (AKA acetone) is handy stuff. It will dissolve some glues (like the ones that price stickers and the like are attached with) where soap and water are helpless. (Another substance that works on a surprisingly large number of such stickers is peanut butter.)

[magid.livejournal.com]

I've used nail polish to get those annoying stickers off. I'd never think of peanut butter. How strange. (I don't have any of that in the house either, but I do have cashew butter. Wonder if that would work as well.)

[rsc.livejournal.com]

No idea. I forget where John found out about peanut butter.

[xlerb.livejournal.com]

There's a trick I learned at a summer job many years ago, for indelible marker on a nonporous surface: scribble over it with a similar marker, and immediately rub it off; the solvent will more or less take off the old ink.

[drevilmoo.livejournal.com]

A short soak in vinegar and hot water can work quite well also.

[fj.livejournal.com]

I don't know if it's still possible to acquire it.

Of course, the kids need to whiff something when they are out of spray-cans and Whippets?

What is 'paper'?

[rsc.livejournal.com]

What is 'paper'?

As if.

[vaneramos.livejournal.com]

I've heard Marian make reference to Liquid Paper, so it must still be around.

[rsc.livejournal.com]

Everyone's telling me that it's still available, so I guess I don't have to worry. The more especially as jwg just called to my attention that there's an additional (and fairly new) bottle in this very room.

[jwg.livejournal.com]

I bought a new bottle of Liquid Paper at Staples last year. I used it recently when filling out the paper Subchapter-s Mass tax forms for my dormant consulting corporation and made an error.

I used it to fix up a dance camp variety show prop not too long ago.

[rsc.livejournal.com]

used it to fix up a dance camp variety show prop not too long ago.

You'd think I would have remembered that.

[keyne.livejournal.com]

Heck, my 7yo uses Liquid Paper. It's in no danger of vanishing soon :)

[chrishansenhome.livejournal.com]

I remember both Liquid Paper and the little strips with white powder that you typed over the offending letter. When I worked for the Harris Poll, using Selectric typewriters (who remembers Selectrics, with the little golf ball? Raise your hands, both of you!) before the Selectric III that actually had a piece of sticky tape in the ribbon cartridge that lifted the offending letter off the paper, we used both Liquid Paper (probably TM, by the way), and the paper strips to correct errors. It saved our bacon, mostly.

I wish that spring were coming to England. As it is, it's going to be just into double-digit temperatures over the weekend, but will be wet and windy. Enjoy spring for me, will you?

[jss]

For the record, I've used and remember the Selectric (which is either ® or ^TM, I'm sure) and Liquid Paper (which according to the bottle I've got is ®).

And I remember rotary-dial phones, television before cable and remotes, and a time before VCRs.

[chrishansenhome.livejournal.com]

Even better than rotary-dial phones, the first telephone in our house had no dial, and an operator answered when you picked up the receiver and connected your call.

This was the mid 1950's, of course. We were NEptune 1-4393.

[jss]

Can't say we had one of those phones (though I stayed at a friend's place one summer in the early 1990s that still had no touch-tone service in-town, and no phone in the house itself (other that the direct-connect one that only rang in his grandparents' place next door)).

I remember the phone numbers before the delettering efforts, though I never learned my home-phone by letter, just by number. I do remember when area codes for NA-based phone numbers were defined by the middle digit being 0 or 1. (Scary how there're folks now who don't know that Used To Be The Rule, huh?) I also remember pre-ZIP code mail ("Southfield 76, MI").

not-so-modern telecommunicaitons

[trawnapanda.livejournal.com]

I remember (nay, owned) manual typewriters (with red/black ribbon), and my first phone number on this continent was 416 266 5219 (or, as some had it, AMherst6-5219), and a rotary dial phone it was. We lived at 71 Guildwood Pkwy Scarborough 711 (now Scarborough M1E 1P2)

my first ever that I remember phone was bakelite, with a braided cord, and the mouthpiece had a cupped bit around to catch the noise of your voice; and yes it had a rotary dial, but also a button above it labelled "call exchange". You didn't get a dial tone until you pushed that button. It was a party line with the folk next door - whose phone was on the other side of the living room wall (it was a semi-detached house). We couldn't call them on the phone of course, it being a party line, so if we at BARnet-8236 phoned BARnet-9470 you'd invariable get an engaged signal. So they system was, pick up the phone, DON'T push "CALL EXCHANGE" but thump four times on the party wall, and they'd pick up the extension, and you could talk.

[magid.livejournal.com]

Another rememberer of the Selectric. Also rotary-dial phones and television before all those bells and whistles.

[rsc.livejournal.com]

I mostly remember the Selectric in its computer-terminal incarnation (the IBM 2741 and its relatives).

[thaaang.livejournal.com]

I know Selectrics. I think I've even used one within the past 2 or 3 years.

[lcohen]

yes yes, selectrics, liquid paper, manual typewriters--the whole schmoo i remember. and a houseful of vinyl records--one of my partners was teasing me yesterday about needing to get a turntable for my car....

[bratman.livejournal.com]

And people think I'm odd.


By the way, wouldn't a Sharpie work?

[rsc.livejournal.com]

And people think I'm odd.

They do? What people? How could they think that?

By the way, wouldn't a Sharpie work?

I suppose it would. But what we have now works, so why mess with it?

For anyone who cares (ha!), there is now no visible trace of Liquid Paper on my thumb.

[bratman.livejournal.com]

I'm certain John cares.

[xlerb.livejournal.com]

Wait, what? Since when is white-out an old-people thing? I used it when I was younger — mainly for handwriting in pen.

[rsc.livejournal.com]

I guess it isn't. I just assumed it was because, well, typewriters.

Everyday Chemistry

[trawnapanda.livejournal.com]

you realise, of course, that this is a chemistry question.

Wite-out is still available (it's a Bic - as in disposable razors and pens - brand), I purchased some since christmas. The only difference in this bottle and the last one is the brush is now a little wedge of foam rubber, instead of a bristle-brush. I actually purchased it to hide the blobs of paint that the previous occupant of my apartment got on the ceiling. It's not a dead-match for the white of the ceiling, but a lot better than the milky-coffee-brown paint splodges.

I do actually use it for its intended purposes too - getting rid of printing (or my mistaken pen-marks) on a postcard, where space is limited and scribble-out isn't an option.

The slips of correction paper with white stuff on one side were Ko-Rec-Type(tm), and they worked quite well for moi.

You could paint the entire end of the tongue depressor white and then write on the white surface en clair with a pen, as opposed to coding in dots and then having to record the code. Reading plain English words can sometimes be quite relaxing.

Acetone is cheap nail-polish remover, and an OK solvent - not terrific, but it's cheap, and miscible with water, and does dissolve several things water won't. (my students love it, until it gets to THEIR nails). the expensive "oily" nail polish remover is ethyl acetate, with a fruity odour, and a better solvent. Wite-Out(etc) use chlorinated solvents (like dry cleaning fluid), which is why they dry so quickly, and why acetone didn't completely remove the smear on your thumb.

Peanut butter works to remove label-goo because it is a solid that is loaded with (peanut) oil. The oil acts as solvent, the solid stuff holds the oil in place. Other vegetable oils will work too, on whatever PB will remove.

-- Chris (chemist by day, panda by night)

Re: Everyday Chemistry

[rsc.livejournal.com]

The slips of correction paper with white stuff on one side were Ko-Rec-Type(tm)

Ah. So they were. Thank you.

You could paint the entire end of the tongue depressor white and then write on the white surface en clair with a pen

See my response to bratman, above.

Other vegetable oils will work too, on whatever PB will remove.

That's useful to know.