Photos from Savannah

We had our first proper family vacation this week in a very long time. (By “proper” I mean one that wasn’t tagged on to the end of one of The Spouse’s business trips).

We’re lucky that Kiddo is a very good traveler, but I have to say that it’s just recently that we’ve been able to really enjoy seeing the sights with her. When she was a baby, traveling involved trying to do some of the things we wanted to do and packing enough food, baby gear and toys/distractions to keep her occupied while we did it. (And we did a lot of it. She had stamps from four countries in her passport before she was a year old.)

Now, though, she’s really excited about seeing and exploring new places and things herself and it’s really fun to see and experience things we enjoy through her eyes. This was her first trip to the ocean (that she was aware enough to notice) and first time swimming in a swimming pool, among other things. She had a blast just watching the tugs and container ships travel up the Savannah River across the street from our hotel.

I’ll post more about what we did later in case anyone else is headed south with a two-year-old in tow. Savannah and Hilton Head, SC are fabulous family vacations.

September 26, 2009 | Comments Closed

Pretentious useless crap for all

I just went to register on the Target website today for the express purpose of slamming the ridiculous Michael Graves-designed broom and dustpan set I purchased last week.

Since I can’t find it using the search engine, I assume it’s not longer available. I haven’t been back to the store to see if it’s still on the shelves. I went to replace our perfectly functional but worn out Libman. Instead, I purchased the cute blue-and-gray Graves model because it had a matching stand-alone dustpan with a hook for snapping on the broom when not in use.

Brought it home and found that, if you aren’t careful to avoid putting any pressure at all on the dustpan, the cheap plastic on the underside buckles so that you end up brushing all the dust underneath the pan instead of into it. The next day, I was sweeping the kitchen again and the plastic top of the broom handle came off in my hands. The broom was two days’ old!  (Anyone who knows me knows that vigorous cleaning is not my hallmark. Trust me when I say I wasn’t treating the broom roughly by any stretch of the imagination.)

Good design is wonderful, but rendered meaningless when the resulting product is manufactured with the cheapest materials and shoddy workmanship.

It’s now propped against the wall by our back door awaiting at trip to the landfill unless I can find some way to recycle it. (Can’t find the receipt—yeah, yeah, I know, OK?) Avoid at all costs.

September 19, 2009 | Comments Closed