I don't know if I can help you with the no pain pond cleaner but I can tell you about Roombas! I own two and LOVE them!! As far as cleaning, they do a fairly good job. When I got my first ROombal back in December 2008, I got it out of the box and sent it for a spin in my living room. I had just thoroughly vacuumed the carpet AND shampooed it the day before. I was VERY surprised to find out Roomba got a full dust bin of dirt on the first go round. It doesn't follow any set pattern when it sets out on a mission. It just roams around randomly. It does have a computer inside that maps out where it has been and where it has to go yet so that the entire rug is gone over by Roomba. It doesn't do wall edges and corners super great. But, I can tell you my rug gets vacuumed a lot more often with Roomba then it did in the past. Embarrassing to admit it but before Roomba, my carpets were lucky to get vacuumed once every couple weeks. If you want to go to a Roomba forum, I've listed a great link below. Lots of great people there more than willing to answer question (a LOT like this forum :-) I poured over those forums for months before taking the plunge and got a lot of info. Also, keep an eye on woot.com. They often will have new Roombas for sale. I got my last one for $150 plus $5 s/h there...a lot cheaper than buying from iRobot! Here is a link that might be useful: Roomba forum

Ack! dlm, I forgot to post back. First, my gray is a Dove Gray (light). In darker areas it's a mid-level, maybe a battleship gray? Charlie's soap powder form, diluted in water, scrubbed, let it sit, scrubbed again, wiped. Probably got it up to 60%. Then I did a different section with diluted Charlie's soap and Oxyclean scrubbed in on top of that. Let sit maybe 20 min, scrubbed, 'rinsed'. Much better. Not 100% like the light Dove gray at outer perimeters of floor, but easily 80 to 85%. Close enough you have to really be staring at it to see the difference. (Can't get a pic to show it well, shadows from vanity are throwing off grout.) So I'll clean it good that way & immediately seal, and I'll be happy. :) If you want to check it out, I don't know how close this is to you, but if I'm downtown & need some CS I get it Be By Baby (Wrigleyville area). Easy metered parking on side street (I always find a spot - a miracle!). Or you can go to CS website, maybe there's a dealer near you. (Not me, it's either downtown or mail.) I also get through Amazon. Free super saver shipping + $11.50 or so is a good price. (Think it's about $14 at Be By Baby). I wasn't impressed with their bottled spot treatment. For the price I just put a scoop (abt 1TB) of powder in a spray bottle, make my own, works just as well.

There's no doubt I'm deficient in many ways in the kitchen but the only things I can think of offhand: I get mixed results with dinner rolls, especially if I don't use the breadmaker to mix it up. Biscuits? Forget it. Although I haven't found a biscuit recipe I really like anyway. I do *not* like those baking powder biscuits. They taste about the same as throwing a fistful of flour in your mouth. No thanks. Not even buried in ketchup! LOL I actually *like* the whack-a-mole tube buttermilk biscuits when you put some real butter on them. I've wished I could recreate my mother's dinner rolls but can't. I have had mixed success with other recipes though, but it's the principle of it. I spent a lot of mornings keeping her company while she labored over those golden goodies. And getting 2 or 3 of them hot from the oven and the jar of peanut butter... dang, thems was good eats! One thing took me years to master and it's such a simple thing. Boiling potatoes! They'd either be mush or they'd be undercooked. I never could get the thing timed out. Then, finally, I was careful about the size of the chunks, stood over it and constantly checked and okey dokey, finally mastered one of the simplest of kitchen items. But I come by honestly at least (or so I claim - that's my story and I'm sticking to it). My great-uncle was a lifelong bachelor and one of his favorite dishes was boiled potatoes! My aunt (his niece) always laughed about it. "What *easier* thing is there to make but boiled potatoes?" she's ask. I didn't tell her that (at the time) I couldn't make them either! One other thing, I can't carve very well either but I don't really care! Chop the meat off the bones and dish it up. Other people may "eat with their eyes" but I use my mouth, ergo my tastebuds come into play and foo-foo plated food does not impress me. Usually it's more spaced out so you have less food (therefore less cost which equals more profit) to the restaurant.

Hi anele; I totally know what you mean about being a vegan making your social life difficult! I am really impressed that you're a veg in a family of omnivores ... wow. It is not easy! Well, I guess we're "just" the strictest of vegetarians, although I find that my children (two and four year-olds) and I feel and do better when following a vegan diet. (My husband is an omnivore, but only outside the house -- at home, he is also a strict veg. He also finds he doesn't do well after eating ice cream but he eats it anyway!) When the children are out at school or with friends I don't freak out when they get (dairy) cheese pizza or baked goods made with egg, but at home, I try to bake only vegan and we only use soy yogurt and soy milk. (They are always forbidden from drinking dairy milk and eating dairy ice cream / sherbert. Both make them vomit and that's just unfair to their little systems.) I've yet to find a non-dairy cheese which isn't repulsive, so that's a hard one for us .... When we lived in San Francisco (CA) we also found being vegan socially isolating -- even as a vegetarian it was hard. But now we live in Boulder (CO) where being a vegan is socially easier, but when we socialize (outside the house) we're just vegetarian. We'll go with the flow up to a certain point. I have to say it is just so much easier to even be a vegan in this day and age with all the substitute products available to us! But even still, it's work. I really do applaud you for being a veg in your home!