The best way to dye your clothes

I love, majorly love, the Banana Republic "Ryan" style pants. They fit me perfectly! Sadly for me, BR discontinued the cut, and I'm stuck with thrift store finds. I also regularly hunt them down on Ebay, buying every pair I find.*
This shopping technique means I don't always get to pick my color, so I ended up with two pairs of straight leg Audry-type khakis.

I dyed one black...and here is how.
You need:
1. A large stainless steel pot - at least a large pasta pot, maybe larger.
2. A stainless steel spoon
3. iDye. It comes in natural and synthetic fiber. If your clothes are blends, you need one of each packet. I bought mine at a local art supply store for $2.00 a packet. Now here's the weird part. You have to consider the color of the clothes, too. I used navy dye and my pants came out black. Mostly. Basically. I mean, it's a shade of black.
4. Newspaper
5. Rubber gloves

This is why you need the gloves. 

 Here's what you do:
Put newspaper on the floor around your kitchen stove and any nearby counters. Put on gloves.
Put your clothes in pot and cover with water; clothes should move freely. Add dye packets. This type of dye has a dissolving packet, so use dry hands and toss it in: mess free. Yay. If you are using the poly dye, add the enclosed intensifier, too. Add half a cup of salt and stir. Bring to a boil. Boil for an hour, stirring clothes around with a long spoon every few minutes. BE CAREFUL. This solution has a tendency to form super heated pockets that will spit hot dye at you!

The splatters on the stove clean off easily with soap and water

Boil for at least an hour.
Allow to cool.
Wash garment by itself in cold water and dry twice before wearing. Then be careful when you wash it - the first few times it will bleed and should be washed alone!
Here's the results: notice that the formerly white pockets are vibrant blue but the pants themselves are black!

Or are they? The fabric on the left are another pair of actually black pants. On the right are my new pants  - slightly different shade.

And both pairs need to be washed.

Still awesome. I love them to death.
Have you ever dyed your clothes?
* P.S. Size two, regular or long (I'll hem them!), if you ever see any snap them up for me and I will love you forever.

Last day!

It's my last day at my current position! Good-bye, crazy lady who punched another customer in the face (this happened yesterday)! Good-bye, homeless dude who hides in the drive-through to jump out at cars and ask for money! Good-bye, technician who is always half an hour late!
We're going on a little vacation before my new job starts, and you won't believe this, but it's to Boston. I guess I forgot to tell the hubby how I feel about Boston...and how I feel about his frenemy who lives there. Sigh.

Yesterday I ran the Eat My Crust 5k before heading into work. It benefits the NO/AIDS foundation, so I ran it even though 5k's aren't my thing. I had a bad race. I really don't know how to pace for a 5k, and I came in 4th, which might as well be last! I started out too slow and was 7th for most of the race. Then I overcompensated, sped up too much, and passed people until I was third. Then someone passed me in the last mile and I didn't have the energy to prevent it! I have decided that 4th is the worst feeling ever.
I also wasn't thrilled with my gun time of 21:29; it was only a little better than last week's race. However yesterday was extremely humid (97%) and set a record for heat, and I certainly felt it. I will be able to gauge my ability better in dry weather, since humidity slows me down.
As for the race, if you're in the area do it next year. I had to leave to go to work, but the after party was awesome and runners get an apron instead of a T-shirt!
Now that I've been royally humiliated in the 5k, does anyone have any tips and hints for me? I'd like to get faster and I'd like to know what a "good" time for me would be.
Hope you're Monday is wonderful and no one jumps out of the drive through and asks you for cash!

Salvation Army Success

Yeah, I shop at thrift stores.

Brand-new Kenneth Cole loafers: $7.99. Adorable Michael Kors wedges: $8.99

PS...Squeamish about used shoes? Read my fix.

Using Shoe Goo to repair running shoes

I go through my running shoes rather quickly, since I like lightweight (thin-soled) shoes and I wear the insides first thanks to my funky feet and bunions. In order to save some shoe-money,  I decided to try to extend the life of my nearly-dead New Balance shoes by using Shoe Goo. A trail runner I know uses it on all his shoes, but kind of preemptively. I wasn't sure how to go about saving a pair of shoes with it.
You can buy Shoe Goo online or at a hardware store. I walked to the True Value on Oak street, where I accidentally wandered onto a movie set and got yelled at. *sigh* Hollywood South, y'all! The Goo costs about $5.

The Goo

My shoes were pretty worn when I started:

You can actually see white foam THROUGH the gray outsole, it's so worn!

Try #1: I spread a thin layer of Goo on the worn areas with a plastic knife. Then I started hallucinating about purple ducks until I had the bright idea to put the shoes outside. This stuff is stinky! You have to spread the goo quickly as it starts to set immediately. After two days of drying (to be on the safe side), I took my shoes out for a 9-miler.
Results? Not good. Everything I applied was worn off or peeling!

The toe area wore off; the heels peeled.

Try #2. I realized that the layer of Goo I'd used was too thin to make up for the severe wearing on my shoes. I peeled off any remaining shreds of goo and tried again. This time around, first I roughed up to surface with a serrated knife since I was out of sandpaper and was too scared to venture back to Oak street. Then I squeezed lots of Goo onto the area, spreading it as I went. The Goo starts to set in just a few minutes, so once the surface was set I pressed in indentations where the treads used to be.

Thick Goo layer

I waited a day to be sure the Goo was completely dry before I wore the shoes for several runs. After about 40 miles they look like this:

After use, the Goo gets opaque. Notice no more white foam showing through!

The Goo is obviously taking some pressure, but it's holding for now. There is some lifting at the edges.  As for feel, I really didn't notice that there was anything different about the sole. The shoes didn't feel brand-new, but they also aren't continuing to wear.One thing I should mention is that the dried Goo makes horribly squeaky soles, so I sound like a one-man high school basketball game when I walk on my wood floors. Also I would estimate you can treat two pairs of shoes from one tube of Goo, so it costs $2.50 a pair. Or $1.25 a shoe...
So, my recommendation? Apply it sooner rather than later and you can probably get a few more months out of your shoes. For $5 it's worth it, but don't expect miracles. I'll use it on my shoes, but I will also rotate Goo'd shoes with newer pairs.
Have you ever used Shoe Goo? Would you try it, or are you skittish about messing with your running treads?

Dear promotion: hurry up.

I got a promotion at work - one that has been in the works for a year and a half! - and I will be leaving my current position at the end of the month. After a few weeks of training I will be managing my own pharmacy, a brand-spanking-new clinical facility that will actually be inside a local teaching hospital. It's the first pharmacy of its kind in the state and only the second in the region (the other is in Pensacola, Fl). I'm excited!
My coworkers aren't exactly making it hard to leave. Since I delivered the news at least one tech has called in every day, and today TWO called in, leaving us dangerously short handed. On top of this our store has been regularly meeting or exceeding the volume of our closest 24-hour stores (think about it - same number of prescriptions filled in 8 fewer hours per day!), and of course we have a tough clientele. Our proximity to an emergency room (next door) and our high percentage of patients without transportation means that most people want to wait, which rushes us.
Sadly, we also have a ridiculous number of opioid abusers at our store, and we get requests to fill controlled substances early about 100 times a day. I am SO sick of playing police.

Today I should have been able to leave early to make up for the extra hour we work on weekends, but instead I ended up staying late. Very annoying.
I can't wait for the insanity to end! The new job should bring lots of opportunities, but I'm also happy that I'll have regular 9 to 5 hours. That is incredibly unusual for a pharmacist and I feel privileged. The best part of that is no more 6:30 am work days! Today was my last one!

Born to Run 5k recap and review

I never run 5k's, but I ran this one because it was a fundraiser for the Women's Center for Life. Unfortunately...
1. I was hung over. We got drinks to celebrate my promotion at work - which is finally actually coming to pass, two years later - and I cannot hold my alcohol. I had a martini and I felt positively ill.
2. Very few people showed up. There were only about 125 runners altogether!
3. Runners tend to group in packs, and only the "lead pack" followed the course. It wasn't marked, but we were following a biker. The slower runners lost sight and turned the wrong way, running more like 2.7 miles.

So... recap: I ran a 21:40, not as fast I would have liked, but I felt sick the whole time. First overall female in a very tiny field. I have no idea how to run a 5k, how to pace, what pace to aim for, etc. I suck at 5k's.
Review: The Hot Eight brass band played and Antoine's provided food, but this race needs some serious promotion and a marked course. Also my "trophy" is really strange.

What is up with the ribbon?

Foody Friday: Easy home canning

Down here at the tip of the USA we grow a lot of citrus, and even in a bad crop year the winter prices are phenomenal. I decided to save some of the delicious, dirt-cheap grapefruit by making marmalade. I based this recipe off a combination of my favorite orange marmalade and several other recipes, and I must say it is not only quite good but the easiest canning recipe ever. So if you have never made preserves before, this is an excellent way to learn.
This is a dark, rich marmalade, a little on the bitter side. If you like sweeter preserves, reduce the amount of lemon juice by half and add an additional 1/4 C brown sugar

Dark grapefruit marmalade
Ingredients:
4 grapefruit. I used pink but I imagine ruby red would be incredibly delicious! Do not prick or break skins.

3 C white sugar
2 C packed dark brown sugar
1/4 C lemon juice


Equipment needed:
Six half pint jars. You can buy them here. Run them through the dishwasher before you use them.

Large pot to make the preserves - I used a pasta pot.
Large pot to process the preserves - it has to be big enough to cover the jars with water. I used my big dutch oven. If your pot is smaller just process small batches (1 or 2 jars) at a time.
Candy thermometer is completely optional

Spoon, ladle, sharp knife; immersion ("stick") blender optional.


1. Wash the grapefruit and put them in the pot, peel on. Cover with water, bring to a boil, and boil for an hour and 15 minutes. You may have to add more boiling water as the water level goes down. Every so often you can turn the fruit with a spoon. PS - while you are boiling the grapefruit your house will smell amazing.

2. Drain the water out and let the grapefruit cool. I left mine in the pot overnight because I ran out of time to finish the project.
3. Chop the grapefruit up. It's best to do this in the pot so you don't lose any juices; an easy way to do this is with a short bladed knife or with an immersion blender after slicing the fruit. Just chop it up until the peel pieces are as small as you'd like them. Pick out seeds as you encounter them.
4. Add the sugar and lemon to the pot; stir as you bring the jelly to a boil. Boil for about 15 minutes or until it starts to jell. You can tell: it gets thick, darker, and the consistency of jelly. If you dip the spoon in, the liquid will cool into jelly on the spoon. If you have a candy thermometer, boil until temp reaches 220; I tried this but I got sick of the thermometer being in the way and got rid of it. You don't need it.

Seconds after this picture was taken I dropped the thermometer into the pot...then the sink. Not worth the trouble.

5. Ladle preserves into clean pint jars, filling almost completely up (if you have extra marmalade put it in your fridge; if the marmalade doesn't totally fill the jar you can't get a seal and the preserves will go bad in a few months. I got about another 1/2 jar which I stuck in my fridge and am eating on toast!).If you drip on the outside of the jar, it's no biggie - it will get clean in the hot water bath.

6. Screw lids on and prepare hot water bath by placing a towel in the bottom of a pot and putting the jars on it. Fill with water. Note to new canners: You may hear a "pop" as the jars seal at this point. You still have to process them in hot water to get a true seal.

What's for dinner, dear? Oh, a couple of jars.

7. Put pot on the stove, bring to a boil, and boil jars for ten minutes. You will hear each lid pop as it seals. When you are done each lid should be tightly sealed and flat.

There. You're done. Delicious marmalade for almost no work at all!