DOUBLE EXTEND BEAUTY TUBES: NOT EXACTLY 80% LONGER BUT DEFINATELY 100% EASIER

I was travelling to a client site, a client I had never actually met before and of course I wanted to put my best foot forward and look snappy. I grabbed the L’Oréal Double Extend Beauty Tubes mascara to toss into my zip lock baggie of travel sized items, and hit the road. This particular product states that it can lengthen your lashes up to 80%. 80%, that’s quite a claim. In fact 80% more length in some cases could just be frightening, but since the average length of an adult female eyelash is 9-11mm I guess 80% isn’t really that terrifying. Nonetheless, since I have average length, relatively light lashes, I thought that using the product would be relatively safe in a business environment and would not make me look like a tricked out drag queen.

I woke in my hotel room the following morning, and grabbed the tube of Double Extend Beauty Tubes. Now I am not a good make-up applier. In fact my entire itinerary of makeup application techniques most often revolves around an unusually old mascara and an equally old lipstick. No one ever taught me how to apply makeup so I just defaulted to what seemed easiest and least likely to look ridiculous. I did read Kevyn Aucoin’s books and even experimented with his techniques, but the level of commitment required to look that good was just far too extensive for my taste and timeframe. So I took the easy way out and stuck with single application mascaras and lipsticks that made my lips look awesome using tricks other than just color. So imagine my shock and awe when I discovered that Beauty Tube application was a 3-step process. That was just not right. But then I looked closer and realized that it was really only a 2-step process with a step thrown in for removal.

Step 1: Nourish and prepare lashes for tubes
Step 2: Tubes extend lashes
Step 3: Smudge-free removal with warm water

I have seen a lot of products and never before have seen the removal of a product as a definable portion of the actual steps of use of the product but I was willing to overlook that oddity. Of course this comment does not apply to products specifically designed to remove something such as Goof-Off or turpentine.

With some amount of trepidation I began my application process. Two steps is a lot for me. But I did as I was told and nourished my lashes to prepare them for the tubes. I noticed then that the nourishing Step 1 product was white.

I suppose the first step would have to vary in color from the second step of actual Tube-Application, otherwise who could tell it wasn’t the same product being applied twice? Then I applied the tubes. They didn’t really look like tubes going on, and they didn’t really look like tubes after they dried, but I suppose all things considered my lashes still looked pretty good. I stood in front of the mirror blinking and I think I even turned sideways to try to see if my lashes really were 80% longer. I know, it’s a flawed test, but it was early and I’d only had one cup of coffee.

So off I went to meet the new client being led by my stupendous 80% longer lashes. I don’t know exactly what I expected, but with an additional 80% length I was sure expecting at least some reaction. I mean let’s consider for a moment how we would react to 80% more length of some other familiar objects. Ok, on second thought, let’s not.

The day went on as usual with a new client. I worked and then when I was done working, I went back to my hotel room and began removing the work related items from my body, all the while wondering why no one commented on my long, luxurious lashes. I mean aren’t people supposed to notice those things? They always do in the ads. No heads whipped around as I was walking down the hall, no one fell madly in love with me and I was completely unable to convince anyone to do anything for me just by the presence of my lashes. Not that I was particularly looking for any of those reactions, but still it’s the principle of it. I have feelings you know.

But then, there I was washing my face when I looked down on the wash cloth and there they were. Little squiggles. I had to look again to make certain I saw what I thought I was seeing, but low and behold, I had finally seen the tubes. Perhaps the easiest mascara removal process ever. No rubbing, no separate product needed, no raccoon eyes, no nothing. Just warm water and a washcloth and off they came. I was astounded, thrilled and 100% sold (20% more than they promised me). If this is what Beauty Tubes are about I’m all in. The whole 80% longer lashes thing, I’m not convinced, but the removal, well that made it all worth while.

DRY CLEANER’S SECRET®: DEPENDING ON YOUR PERSPECTIVE, IT COULD BE BETTER THAN VICTORIA’S

I was all prepared to say that the secret is that it doesn’t work…but in good conscience, I just can’t do that.

I live in the boondocks. OK, not really the boondocks, but there are a total of 2600 people in my town and it takes more than 6 minutes to get to a dry cleaner’s so I thought that I would give the at-home product a whirl. I figured it may not work, but it couldn’t hurt, and if it did hurt, I was either doing something seriously wrong, or about to get a new outfit courtesy of Woolite®. Needless to say, given no extenuating circumstances involving banned chemicals or toxic fumes, I was safe.

I can safely state that Dry Cleaner’s Secret® contains no banned chemicals and gives off no toxic fumes. The oil based formula is contained on what they call a Cleaning Cloth which looks strangely like a dryer sheet. The Cleaning Cloth has a dual purpose. You can use it to remove stains on your clothes by applying it directly to the material and/or you can toss it into the dryer with your clothes to dry clean all of them. It is a rapid, 20 minute process to get your clothes clean and refreshed and although there is a warning against giving the Cleaning Cloths to children or pets, putting them in your eye or eating them, it is a non-toxic formula that at least claims environmental safety.

As cynical as I am, I did not expect this particular product to work. Part of my skepticism was that I have tried other at home dry leaning products in the past and have had little luck. My jackets still smelled like an arm pit-deodorant hybrid and my pants still smelled oddly like crotch. I wasn’t impressed. So when I removed my jackets and sweaters this time and they did not have the lingering smell of Gillette, you could have blown me over with a feather. Alas, a product that lives up to its claims. Imagine such a thing…

There are two downsides to Dry Cleaner’s Secret® as far as I can see. The first is that you can only clean four items at once, so if you are like me and wait until you have a bag full of clothes to clean before you get around to addressing the problem, you could be standing at the dryer all day in 20 minute increments getting the job done, The other is that it does not iron for you. When one gets clothes back form the dry cleaner, not only are they (dry) clean, but they are also pressed. I don’t iron, so this is a major bonus for me. I can iron, but I don’t do it because I’m really not very good at it, and ironing is one of those activities that if you don’t excel at it, you should just let someone else do it. The repercussions otherwise can be both humiliating and extremely uncomfortable. So, for me the fact that I still needed to iron the items that came out of the dryer was a little bit of a deterrent, but not enough of one to prevent me from using the product again.

CABELA’S RIPSTOP CHEST PROTECTOR: $29 COULD SAVE YOU HUNDREDS OR MORE IN VET BILLS

We have this dog, well really we have two dogs, but this story is about a product ever-so-necessary for one of our dogs. One dog is 11 and he’s pretty calm and set in his ways. He’s still up for a good run, but he’d just as soon lie on the comfy bed as go outside. In fact he won’t go out if it’s raining or too cold. He’s 11 (almost retired) what do you expect. Our other dog, she is 3. She’s a complete and total nut. She is afraid of cameras when she is inside and when she is outside she moves way too fast to get a good photo of her. This is the best we could do and as you can see her feet are a complete blur. This is because she rips through the woods at dizzying speeds. This is her story.

BoBo is accident prone as one would be tearing through the woods at breakneck speeds only 30” from the ground. She is a German Shorthaired Pointer (GSP), the perfect hunting dog. The GSP was bred to be the multi-purpose hunting dog, built to run and hunt all day. We don’t hunt, but she does. And she is very good at it. She has brought us all sorts of animals, turkeys, grouse, deer and actually a moose. She is fearless and she is slightly crazy. In fact the breed is slightly crazy and although you would never find a nicer breed, if you don’t have hours a day, every day to spend with them, I wouldn’t recommend one. Trying at times, these dogs have enough energy to power the US energy demand for over a year and as such are the perfect dogs to test the durability of hunting dog clothing and other equipment. And this is where the real story starts.

BoBo has sustained numerous injuries. There were the rather frequent run-ins with barbed wire which brought about a variety of different quantities of stitches and veterinarian visits. In fact I’m sure her bills are building a new wing at the veterinarian’s office. And then there was the time that she ran so fast into a stick that it rammed itself through her right front legpit (I’m sure that’s not the right term for it) tore into her muscle, through the fascia, scraped her bone, and tore through the fascia and muscle on the other side of her leg, before hitting the skin on the opposite side of where the initial puncture occurred. At that point the skin at the original puncture point finally tore which ultimately resulted in a slightly hobbled (but only slightly) and moderately skinned dog. Her lack of motion was really the only indication of a problem because although the fur peeled back and exposed the muscle near the entry point there was surprisingly little blood. Nonetheless, 15 staples and 30 stitches later, she was put back together, and as soon as the anesthesia wore off, she was trying, pretty successfully, to run around again. Clearly healing is not a concept in her puppy vocabulary, only running.

It was at this point that we decided that she needed some protective gear. Since they don’t make body armor for dogs we went the next best route. Get her gear for hunting dogs. She is a hunting dog after all. So off to the Cabela’s catalog we went in search of something which would at least deflect the objects that were clearly in her path. It was there we found the Cabela’s Ripstop Chest Protector. This vest made of an “abrasion-resistant 600-denier ripstop material,…reinforced with a layer of heavy-duty 900-denier material through the chest and belly area.” buckles over the dogs back . I do not have enough good things to say about this product. BoBo has not once injured herself since we got her one, and in fact we have quite a bit of evidence that she has encountered things which could have torn her up. Barbed wire wounds have a very distinct “L” or “V” shaped tear and there is no less than 2 of those in her vest. But the tears are in the vest, and not in the dog, and so for that we are eternally grateful. Although the vest itself is a bit of a mess, the dog is, thankfully in one piece. The cost of the chest protector ($29.99) more than covers the cost of the vet bills and the tragedy of that horrible dog cone.

The material is very stiff when it is new and takes some time to break in. A few washings and some use will do the trick. The only issue with this product is that with the short haired breeds (such as the GSP) there are three areas that needed extra padding so that they don’t rub their fur off, or rub their skin raw. The three areas are: The leg holes, the elastic “V” shaped areas on the back of the chest protector and on the bands that go across the dog’s back to clasp the chest protector in place. You can see where I sewed fleece onto the chest protector to protect against such a thing.

Because this vest is so fantastic we got BoBo another one and bought one for our older dog. He doesn’t run anywhere near as quickly or as furiously as she does, but he is sensitive and it protects him from the massive numbers of raspberry bush thorns that we have in our area. We had to make one additional adjustment for him, and cut additional space in the “U” between the fleece patches so the edge of the chest protector did not rub on, and irritate his wee – it only seemed fair.

This is one of the greatest products ever created. I highly recommend this chest protector. It allows complete freedom of motion for the dog and freedom of worry for the people. Although admittedly, nothing is completely dog-proof, for this product to be BoBo-proof is a testament to its durability and effectiveness.

BOWFLEX®: WILL 20 MINUTES MAKE THE DIFFERENCE?

I admit it. I bought a BowFlex®. It was years ago and I just didn’t know what else to buy. I’m not a fitness professional so I didn’t know of anything better. I didn’t think that you could buy actual gym products for home use (something I know now you can do – live and learn). So, there I was, living in a rural community with no fitness facility and desperately wanting some way to work out. So I bought a BowFlex®.

In 2004 the only BowFlex® option I was aware of had “bows”, hence the name. Well actually the manufacturers and marketers call them "rods", and these “rods” are hardened rubber/plastic/synthetic material that bends with the resistance allocated to a weight. So the 10 lb rod gives you 10 lbs of resistance, the 30 lb rod gives you 30 lbs of resistance and the 50 lb rod gives you 50 lbs of resistance. Or at least that is the case when the BowFlex® first arrives at your home and you set it up.

When I first purchased this product, it arrived at my house in a box in multiple pieces and these things often do. I was putting it together when a friend showed up unexpectedly, chuckling about how it will turn rapidly into a “very expensive clothes line”. I can gladly say that is not the case and I have consistently and continuously used the BowFlex® throughout all of the years I have owned it. It has travelled across the country and back and although slightly awkward, is actually quite easy to move. It has wheels so you can tip it back and roll it along. This I must say is a very helpful design feature.

But since this is a review of the product itself, I suppose I should comment a little more on the product’s ability to function as advertised, as in how do the workouts work and are they worth the money. When I purchased this product in 2004 it was the next to the top of the line model and was somewhere in the range of $1500 to $2000. I don’t remember the exact cost, but I remember considering it an “investment in my health and wellbeing,” so I was not about to let it become “very expensive clothes line.” I set it up, and I did use it. I used it often in fact. So often, that over time the rods started to lose their resistance. I don’t leave the rods hooked up when I am done with my workouts, lest they receive unnecessary bending while not in use, but they still have lost resistance over time. Now when we work out we talk in terms of whether we will use the “hard 50,” (the 50 lb rod which is still quite firm and resistant) or the “easy 50” (the 30 lb rod combined with the two 10 lb rods all of which have lost a lot of their resistance). There is clearly a difference between the resistances of these 50’s. I don’t’ know what weights we are actually lifting most of the time, but we still use it. And we still use it often.

I suppose if you recognize the fact that the rods lose resistance over time, you can work around it, but it is certainly not ideal. It’s a good gym for home use for someone who doesn’t really care much about what weight they are lifting, but I certainly would not recommend it for a serious lifter since you can’t really gauge your progress.

Perhaps the newer models have remedied this problem and the rods are created out of a more durable material, and I am quite certain that the BowFlex Revolution® system that came out within the past few years eliminates the problem completely. I can’t be certain, but I imagine that the interlocking plates that define the BowFlex Revolution® don’t get lighter after multiple uses so although it is more expensive than the systems with the rod technology, it’s probably a better choice for the long term. Assuming that you actually use the product with any sort of regularity, you will theoretically get stronger and therefore need more weight and not less. Since the rods lose resistance, over time your original 30 lbs of resistance becomes 25 lbs so to get the same workout weight you must add the 5 lb rod. This, may be good for the ego because it appears that you are adding weight when in fact is just a little bit of a pain in the butt since you never really know how much weight you are lifting (or how much resistance you are resisting).

And may I please add that 20 minutes 3 times a week will not make an average person look like the BowFlex® advertisements claim. To look like that one must completely overhaul their life, do hours of cardio exercise every week, lift weights several times per week and have exceptionally perfect eating habits. Let me put it this way, unless you spend a lot of time doing other physical activities or have some sort of freaky genetics, you will not look like an Adonis using the BowFlex® 20 minutes 3 times a week. It’s just not possible no matter what the claims are and the testimonies say. Sorry BowFlex®, you have served me relatively well, but get real, no one really believes those claims of instant perfection, do they?

ICY HOT® PATCH: ALL IS WELL WITH MINIMAL SMELL

I have a fascination with the claims that over the counter pain remedies make. Having had back problems for most of my conscious life, I am always a bit wary of the claims of anyone or anything to reduce the pain. In fact after several prescriptions of 600 milligram Motrin, Loritabs, Tramadol, Lidocain patches and a lumbar Cortisone shot, none of which managed to even touch the pain, I sort of lost faith. I figure with two herniated discs and a small stress fracture, the best I could do was learn to live with the pain. I mean how many more doctors could I possibly listen to who would tell me that “Back pain is common. 80% of Americans have some sort of back pain.” True, perhaps, but with over 67% of American adults classified as overweight or obese (www.cdc.gov/nchs/fastats/overwt.htm), back problems are not surprising. The human skeleton is just not meant to carry around that much extra weight. Couple that with the stagnant American lifestyle and the number of hours per week people spend hunched over a desk, is it any wonder 80% of Americans have back problems? I, unfortunately am one of those 80%.

Well suffice it to say that none of the prescribed pharmaceuticals helped the pain. Some of them made me not care that I was in pain, but the pain did not cease and my belief in Western medicine faltered. (Go figure.) So when I saw the Icy Hot® Patch (www.icyhot.com/), I chuckled to myself and didn’t really believe the claims, but I must admit I was intrigued. I figured if it didn’t work, I’d be no worse off than I was the day before, $14 poorer, but no worse off. And considering I had spent no less than $1500 on the multiple doctor visits and the Cortisone shot, I figured $14 was no big deal. So I bought some. I got the XL because I figured the bigger the better. Why not, if you’re going to go for it, might as well throw caution to the wind.

On the evening that I decided to try them, I was in the usually amount of pain. Nothing extraordinary. I could move pretty well and the constant nagging was just nagging, not debilitating. I read the instructions which gave three easy steps “Pop, Peel and Apply”. The patches themselves come sticky-side down on a plastic sheet which you need to peel off. You then take the large gauzy, sticky patch and apply it to the aching area. It smelled like icy hot, you know that sort of medicinal, eucalyptus scent, but nothing too terrible. I didn’t smell entirely like an old man, for which I was quite grateful. The regular Icy Hot tends to have that effect. The patch must keep the scent contained. I did not understand exactly what was meant by the “pop” instruction so I just used what little finger nails I have to remove the plastic sheeting. It took a minute or two, but I managed. I applied the XL patch, which is 75% larger than the normal size and waited for something magic to occur. It was just like the Icy Hot cream that I remembered, only it didn’t move around, didn’t get wiped off, and didn’t make my clothes or my sheets smell like a nursing home. It was cold going on and a minute later is was hot. (hence the name – Icy Hot.) And the best part is that it worked. It clearly didn’t fix the crack in my spine or scoot my discs back into place, but it did make the whole area feel better. I was astounded.

The instructions say that you can keep the patch on for up to 8 hours, so I went to bed with it on. I half expected to wake up with a minor skin irritation, but I was willing to take that chance for a night of reduced back pain. When I woke up, no irritation and the patch was right where I left it, on my body. It wasn’t crumpled up at the bottom of the bed, stuck to the sheets. It wasn’t stuck in my hair. It hadn’t moved at all. But my 8 hours was up so I had to remove it. The adhesive they use is clearly just short of Gorilla glue since it didn’t budge even with all of my nocturnal movement, so, with good reason, I expected to tear of at least one layer of skin with the patch. I was wrong on that one too. It was like pulling off a Band-Aid. Granted an XL Band-Aid, but a Band-Aid, nonetheless. I’m sure if you are a hairy guy, you may have a different opinion on this one, but upon removal, I did not feel like I was being waxed by a sadist.

The Icy Hot Patch won’t fix a major medical problem, but then again, neither do hundreds of dollars worth of doctors visits, prescriptions drugs and minor “procedures.” In all, it did more for my back pain than all of the above combined and it didn’t make me incoherent, incapacitated, incapable of movement or force me to drive for hours only to wait several more hours to spend a lot of money on a solution that failed. In fact, I would say that the Icy Hot Patch is far better at fixing back pain than any of the multiple doctors and specialists I’ve seen. And except for the “pop” instruction, easier to comprehend, significantly less intimidating, far more effective and a fraction of the price.