Month: August 2011

Weekend Outdoors

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The weather this past weekend was so beautiful and dry (unlike the rainy weekends we’ve had lately) that we spent as much time as possible outdoors. Saturday we took advantage of Morton Arboretum’s reciprocal agreement to visit the Chicago Botanic Garden for free. Can you believe it’s been three years since our last visit? I can’t believe how quickly time passes! We decided to check out the gardens at dusk for a different perspective. At first we were kicking ourselves for the poor timing since there was a ton of Ravinia Festival traffic going into the lot when we arrived but luckily the two lines eventually went their separate ways.

Train

Our first stop was the Model Railroad Garden which we’ve never visited before, probably due to the additional admission fee (because we can be so cheap sometimes). The theme was Landmarks of America, although it featured both Comiskey Park (now called U.S. Cellular Field – blech!) and Wrigley Field which I thought was interesting. Apparently they change the theme periodically so we’ll have to keep an eye on it for the future.

After the trains we just walked around the gardens taking pictures of anything that caught our eye, like this carp who I guess was expecting us to feed him.

Hungry Carp

His little carp friends quickly joined him looking up at us expectantly. It reminded me of the carp at Indiana Beach. Later on a group of ducks approached us when we sat down by one of the ponds so I’m guessing these animals get fed by guests regularly.

Fountains at dusk

After we got tired of walking around (for two hours) it was pretty dark so we decided to leave. We consulted our Yelp app for somewhere to eat and found ourselves at a little organic burger joint. Unfortunately despite the glowing reviews we were not impressed. The meat was dry and had a funny flavor to it. I’d rather eat hormone-injected beef I guess.

Sunday was another beautiful day so we packed a picnic lunch and headed to Pottawatomie Park. We claimed a picnic table, ate lunch, people-watched, and played frisbee. It was so relaxing and peaceful.

Chicago Botanic Garden photos at Perfect Pixels

Acer Iconia Tab A500

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Acer Iconia Tab A500

This is our new toy. I’ve been wanting a tablet for awhile but wasn’t willing to spend $500 for something I didn’t really need. When this tablet went on sale at Target ($399 with a $100 gift card) we decided to get it to share until I was ready to buy one for myself since it wasn’t my first (or second) choice but Joe would be fine keeping it as his own.

Since we’ve had it for over a week now I can safely grade my Android tablet experience.

Pros

  • It’s pretty easy to use.
  • The screen quality is quite nice with a crisp, bright resolution.
  • There’s lots of apps to choose from between the Android Market and Amazon’s App Store.
  • I can view Flash content (although not as completely as I had hoped).
  • Angry Birds is more fun to play on a bigger screen.
  • It’s great for watching podcasts or listening to music while working out on my elliptical machine.

Cons

  • I can’t type worth a damn on it. It took me five minutes to type out the first sentence in this post and then I got fed up and turned on my desktop. I can type faster on my iPhone! Plus there’s a noticeable lag between the time I type a letter and it appears on the screen which is super annoying.
  • Certain apps, like Words With Friends, don’t update on Android properly. Joe was having a hard time with WWF on his phone too yet it updates flawlessly on my iPhone.
  • Rearranging apps on the personal screens is a big pain in the arse.
  • Most apps aren’t designed to take advantage of the tablet screen size. Even YouTube shows up tiny compared to the overall screen size (it does the same thing on my 42″ plasma through the PS3).
  • Flash content doesn’t necessarily work properly. I couldn’t get my cat in Sushi Cat 2 to move around so it was pointless trying to play on the tablet and that’s reason #1 I even considered Android besides the price – I wanted to access Flash!
  • You really cannot properly share a tablet with the rest of the family unless you enjoy constantly having to log in and out of various apps and websites because you cannot define different users. For some things like Facebook, which doesn’t have a dedicated tablet app anyway, I just installed Opera so I can log on through there while Joe logs on via the native web browser. Tablets are being treated as personal devices much like phones but I think the developers should consider the fact that if you have a few people in a family they cannot afford to buy a tablet for each person.

Overall I think this tablet is ok but not really worth spending more than a few hundred dollars on. I’ve been spoiled by my iPhone and miss the iOS experience. The only thing Android currently does better than Apple is handle notifications (when they work – ahem – Words With Friends) and background downloading of apps, both of which should be improved with iOS 5.

I’m holding out to see what Amazon has up their sleeve as I’ve heard rumors of a tablet coming out this Fall, although the chances that it will be better than an iPad are slim to none as far as I’m concerned. I really want an iPad 3 when it comes out if I can stomach the cost. I could handle $400 but that’s as much as I’m willing to pay so I doubt we’ll be getting another tablet anytime soon.

Friends of Trees

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Sunday we decided to cash in our soon-expiring Groupon and visit the Morton Arboretum in Lisle, IL. It’s been a few years at the very least since our last visit because admission is a little steep at $11 per person. We lucked out on the weather which looked threatening but cleared up soon after we arrived.

We rode the Acorn Express which took us on an hour and half narrated tour of the arboretum and learned a lot of interesting things including the fact that the White Oak is the Illinois state tree. I’m sure I learned that in school but didn’t retain the knowledge.

After the tour we decided to become members of the arboretum when we learned that their reciprocal agreement includes the Chicago Botanic Garden, another place we love but has gotten more expensive to visit ($20 per car) over the years. So for $64 ($80 minus what we paid for admission that day) we can now visit both places to our hearts’ content and you can bet with my favorite season – Fall – quickly approaching, we’ll be getting our money’s worth! I’m super excited just thinking about it!

We packed a picnic lunch so we ate before getting in the car and visiting more of the arboretum on our own. We spent four hours there total which was such a nice relaxing way to spend a Sunday.

Kitchen Appliances & Cookware

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I’ve always firmly held the belief that you don’t need to own a million different kitchen appliances, but yet somehow this year I’ve purchased a new blender, toaster oven, a belgium waffle maker, and the newest addition to the family, a Sunbeam hot air popcorn maker (image shamelessly borrowed from Target where I got it for $17 a few weeks ago).

I love this thing because it makes really good unburnt popcorn unlike the microwave bowl I purchased awhile ago. That picture is a bit misleading, however, as it shoots popcorn everywhere! It’s like a machine gun! It’s quite loud too, so it will probably scare the bejesus out of kids, pets and old people who still have their hearing left (although not for long if they stand too close). Not having to use oil saves calories better allocated toward all the delicious melted butter that any self-respecting person is going to pour all over what was once a healthy snack. Nom nom nom nom!

If you’re in the market for new cookware like we’ve been for oh, two years, I highly suggest Macy’s. When they have sales you can get some really great stuff for cheap like we did two Christmas’ ago when we replaced all our plastic food storage with glass Pyrex. We were looking around at Macy’s a few weeks ago and came across this awesome stock pot marked down to $9.59 from the original price of $39.99.

A couple of weeks later we were back at the mall because I had that Kohl’s gift card I won burning a hole in my wallet and we nearly bought a new cookware set for $120 (our out of pocket cost after a 15% coupon and my gift card) but I was concerned about the weight of each piece. Sure, that’s probably the mark of a quality product but I’m a little girl and I don’t want to bench-press my skillet if ya know what I mean. We found a nice set at Macy’s (their own brand, in fact) for $100 that met all our must-haves – non-stick, nice color, silicone handles that aren’t ugly, and a covered stockpot larger than 5 quarts. Now if only I’d get off my lazy butt and take them out of the box, clean them, and start using them!

Tools of the Trade Cookright Hard Anodized 12-Piece Cookware Set
Set includes: 1-, 2- & 3-qt. covered saucepans, 8-qt. covered stock pot, 4-qt. covered sauté pan and 8″ & 10″ fry pans

Coins & Apples

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It’s crazy that banks no longer cash your change for you. Well, to be fair Chase did but then they implemented a service fee on all their accounts so we closed ours and they don’t do it for non-customers. Bank of America offers the service, but get this, they take your change and then ship it somewhere to be counted. They promise to credit your account later for the value. Um, who the hell is opting to trust them with that because I sure as hell won’t!

Coinstar gives you the full value of your change if you get a gift card or e-certificate instead of cash. I had forgotten about this so we had amassed $85 in change until this weekend when we decided to just bite the bullet and use Coinstar thinking we’d have to give them a cut of our money. The Coinstar machine at Walmart only gives you iTunes credit or cash but the one at Jewel is full-service and includes gift cards.

Thanks to them I now have $20 in iTunes credit to buy apps (I had been surviving on $15 from Valentine’s Day or possibly my birthday), Joe has $25 for Starbucks, and the rest went toward Amazon.com because we get a lot of stuff there. In fact I’ll be using all of it shortly to order a recharging station for our Wii because I’m sick of it eating through batteries, even the rechargeable AA’s. I’m also ordering a Kindle for my step-daughter’s birthday. Let’s just hope she takes better care of it than her iPod Touch which could not be fixed. The place Joe called said not to even bother coming in because once they are water damaged they are $300 paper-weights. Fantastic. Perhaps if she’s lucky the iPhone 5 will be released soon and I’ll buy it because then she can have my 3GS. It only has 16 GB whereas her Touch had 32 GB but that’s what happens when you’re careless with your possessions. Lesson learned for her.