Last week was one big long birthday celebration.  I only worked on Monday, because on Tuesday jglee and bryanche flew out to visit and stay with us.  On the ride from the airport, I mentioned that I should have made commemorative T-shirts for their visit.  Well that idea became, “Let’s make 4 colored T-shirts and reproduce Ed’s xanga logo.  And then let’s wear them while riding around San Francisco on Segways on July 4th!”  At this point, June was probably looking for divorce options, which are surprisingly hard to get just before a holiday weekend.

Unfortunately they had to leave Saturday morning, and thus missed our hike and BBQ.  It turns out June had made a digital scrapbook for my birthday and collected 80 pages worth of pictures and well-wishes from my friends.  The cover is even more embarrassing than the T-shirt picture above — underwear is involved — so I won’t be posting it here.

First: it’s important to know the difference between dishwasher detergent and dishwashing detergent.  Notice the suffix change:

• -er means it’s for your automatic dishwasher, the machine with buttons on it.  The liquid/powder/gelcap will burn your bare skin, so be careful.
• -ing means it’s for manual dishwishing, that is your hands and a sponge.  It only comes in liquid form.  It’s safe on your hands but will flood your kitchen if you use it in an automatic dishwasher.

My first apartment in college was where I re-created the Great Flood and learned the difference between the two.

But this post is really about dishwasher detergents.  One of life’s great disappointments is to load a dishwasher, run it, and open it to find a thin white film baked onto your dishes, glasses, and silverware.  Once that film is there, no further dishwasher cycles will remove it.  You’ve got to take them out and rewash them by hand.  Your dishwasher has changed from a cleaning device to a dirt transformation device.  Avoiding this fate means paying attention to your brand of dishwasher detergent.  Fortunately, people at Consumer Reports love this kind of testing, so in August 07 they did a full review and found:

• “Six Cascade detergents topped the ratings of 22 detergents in Consumer Reports’ latest dishwasher detergent reviews…”
• “The presence of enzymes appears to be key in dishwashing detergents that performed best in CR’s latest detergent reviews…”

Here is a link to the summary article, and a link to another set of independent user reviews:
http://www.housekeepingchannel.com/a_649-Six_Cascade_Detergents_with_Enzymes_Top_Consumer_Reports%92_Ratings
http://www.viewpoints.com/Cascade-Complete-vs-Electrasol-Advanced-Dishwashing-Detergent-reviews