wayner

I am now officially back on the road.

God help us all.

When my parents here a few weeks ago they left money for a house warming gift. Money to buy: A vacuum!

But not just any vacuum. I had been sucked in by the hype and wanted a Dyson.

I picked up the DC07 All Floors which is the most basic of models available in Canada. In Britain they have nifty looking canister versions, maybe the difference in voltage here keeps Dyson from bringing it over.

So after a few weeks of use I have to say I’m very happy with it. It is not the Second Coming in vacuum form, but it is good.

I’m not going to focus on the good points too much ’cause you can always go to the website and be told how everything is just peachy.

As far I can tell its true that it doesn’t lose suction, it just keeps on going and going like the Energizer Bunny. It’s also true that it doesn’t use filters and doesn’t seem to need it. I’ve been checking the washable filter on the exhaust and have yet to see anything build up on it yet. Even tho it’s bagless and needs no real filters you will need to clean the dust chamber eventually. The fine particles will build up in the corners, probably from static.

The first time I used it, it was picking up from my glorified dustbuster of a vacuum so I had to empty it 3 times that night. It’s not quite what you’d think as cat hair gets “fluffed” up inside the chamber and that chamber is smaller then it appears. But, wow, the carpets came back to life!

The hose compresses like the flexable part of a bendable straw which allows them to put a fairly large hose in a pretty small space. But those ridges are also something else the suction can pull against meaning you can to work against the vacuum to reach what you want. I wonder if this might also be some way of making the suction seem more powerful. Not that such tricks are necessary with this machine. The biggest problem with the hose trying to retract is that a lot of pressure is put on the part by the handle. You can tell that this is the point that will fail first.

The main focus of the design is on the yellow removeable dust bin. This removeable bin is also the handle to lift the vacuum for transporting it around the house. What this means is that if you do something stupid like hit the button that’s practically under your thumb then the heavy part with the motor comes loose and falls on you. That’s not cool. They did try to make a little trigger so that if you’re lifting you can’t disengage it, but it’s not reassuring.

My last complaint is that it fits under nothing. The rotating brush will not get much farther under a couch then the very edge. This is where the British canister version would excel has it comes with a low profile brush head. Even when going straight against a wall the brush will fall short by about 3/4^th‘s of an inch. You need to vacuum sideways along the wall, not up towards it.

With all that my only regret is that I didn’t get a higher end model with the mini brush head. That would make the stairs so much easier to clean!

Today, we bought leased a car.

We were looking for cheap. Dirt cheap actually, but Anita didn’t want to go domestic so from what we were looking around at the time left the Toyota Yaris and the Honda FIT. (I don’t think it actually is suppose to be capitalized, but it seems more Japanese that way for some reason.)

The Yaris is actually a nice car. A really nice car to tell the truth. The only issue was that where the Yaris had drawbacks the FIT had strengths.

The Yaris has the speed/tach/etc moved to the centre of the dash which was awkward. I probably could get use to it, but it felt kinda…. dangerous. Our Yaris test drive was in the dark and one of the things we had trouble with was that we couldn’t tell which gear the car was in. There was no light on the gear shift itself. There was supposedly something on the dash to indicate this, but we didn’t see it at the time. The steering on the Yaris felt like a loose drive-by-wire. The first degree or two you’d turn wouldn’t seem to do anything and then it would start when you kept turning. To go back you needed those same few degrees to turn the other way. I didn’t like that.

The last little snag was the FIT’s strongest asset. Because of the size of the car the backseat of the Yaris folds down so you can actually transport something larger then groceries. But it’s all or nothing, no 60-40 split, just up or down.

The FIT is just awesome when it comes to storage options. The rear seats fold down in two different ways. First the bottom of the seat can swing up and be locked in place. This gives you four feet of vertical space. Their ad photos show a bike fitted in there. That’s cool.

But it gets cooler still. Once the seat bottom has been lifted up, then the back can fold down. And it folds flat. The entire back becomes a smooth surface so anything you’re trying to fit in doesn’t get hung up on it. The headrest actually goes under the front seat just to let it fit. Nifty.

The fact that it felt a little peppier off the start and has a stereo mini-jack so that anything, like say – an iPod, can be piped through the stereo as well pretty much seals the deal.

Or does it? How much more would all this glory cost us?

$2.00 (CDN) more x 48 months. Less then $100 over 4 years.

How can we not?

And I even like the colour.

This is part crazy, part awesome.

It looks like a scene from a comic book, but it’s a photo. They added a thin black line to every edge and used surfaces without textures.

I’ve been thinking about repainting my TV room (the Disney characters from the last owners have got to go) and I’ve been trying to figure out what to do. There are some recommendations for how to colour and light a room for the best TV experience, but I’m afraid it might be a little dull.

Edging the room like this might give it a depth and dimension to counter that.

Plus it’s really geeky.

Odd fact, Diet Vernors Ginger Ale – makes me sneeze.

It’s true, it just came to me today as to why I was sneezing sometimes for no apparent reason. I cracked open a can took a sip and let out a huge sneeze 15 seconds later. So I tried it again – and again I sneezed.

I started concentrating on what exactly I was feeling. So I took a third sip, and when the can reaches my face I get the scent close to me and I catch a wiff. There’s a unique… um… “tingling” in what I can only describe as the “top” of my nose. At which point my fate is sealed.

I’m going to have to get straws or something ’cause Vernors is pretty good. It’s a very strong ginger ale. A little bit of an after taste, but it’s worth it.

Now I need to find a tissue.

On the 12^th hour of the 12^th day of the 11^thmonth.

They started!

I heard my first Christmas song… brace yourselves people, this is gonna go on for a while.

At least they waited till after Remembrance Day. Next on the list is to get them to keep the Christmas decorations off of the shelves (and the malls decor) till after Halloween.