Life on the Road

I’ve been piling up things on my desk that I want to review, but haven’t gotten up the time and energy to post about them.

Let’s clear the air with a quick and to-the-point look at some of my recent purchases:

Jelly Belly: Coldstone Ice Cream Parlor Mix

Jelly Belly is THE name in Jelly Beans, and Coldstone is a big favorite around here.  We were delighted to find this mix of five flavors blending two yummy brands.

It was, in a word, horrible.  Bleah.

We didn’t even eat them all, and in our house, that really says a lot…

Both of these fine companies should be ashamed to put their name on junk like that!

I had Grandma get everyone in the family their very own Klean Kanteen for Christmas. Nick’s is the giant 40 ouncer – good for marching band practices – in black. Wolf and I got the standard 27 ounce size in silver and green, respectively. Jewel got an 18 ounce pink. We even got a 12 ounce in copper for R.T.

It is so nice to be able to fill and refill our own bottles – saving money, saving the planet, etc., etc. They stay cold. They don’t get smashed flat. I even got a nice shoulder strap…

But how do you drink out of them? I, for one, simply cannot stand to drink from the metal bottle – it sets my teeth on edge so badly that I shudder even thinking about it.

Luckily, we thought, they make handy sport-tops!

Well… Klean Kanteen: A, Sport Top: C-. Here’s what we found:

• The sport top is tough to open and close. I’m willing to accept that, if it’s in the name of leak-prevention. But…
• If left on its side or upside-down (hey, in the car, it happens!), it leaks.
• They are rather delicate, considering. Nick has broken two already, and given up on them – he can stand to drink from the metal bottle, so it’s not horrible. The first time I wrote it off to either a defective top or an incautious boy. The second time I saw it happen, which leaves a statistically improbable defective second top, or a defectively-designed article.

I don’t know quite what to do. It hardly seems right to have to keep buying (and discarding) the plastic sport caps (financially or environmentally). Klean Kanteen, are you listening?

Proving once again that you really do get what you pay for…

I got a cuticle clipper from Rite Aid for Christmas. It doesn’t seem like it should make that much difference, so why spend $20 when you can get this one for $2.50, right?

Well, there is a little misshapen bit at the very tip of the blades. Grrrr…

There’s no Rite Aid around here – but even so, I think I’ll just spring for a good pair.

I bought Wolf this Cotton Candy machine for his birthday (November), since he (and now Jewel, too) adores cotton candy.

Shopping for it was tough. There are basically two classes of cotton candy machine out there: Party fun, and professional. The professional ones cost hundreds of dollars, the party variety (from reading reviews) seem to by and large be worthless junk.

This one is expensive for a party model, but also seemed better-liked.

But, no…

It was crappy. It produced about two strings of fluff, then seemed to get gunked up inside and stopped working. (We tried several times…)

I had ordered it early to be sure it arrived in time, and it took us a while to find time for a cotton candy making trial… So naturally by then the website where I bought it wouldn’t take it back or exchange it. (Some of the comments on Amazon led me to believe a replacement might haved worked just fine!).

So “Ira Wood & Sons, Inc.” is definately FIRED, along with the manufacturer of the Nostalgia line, “Englewood Marketing Group, Inc.”

I had also purchased a bunch of the floss sugar and other supplies, which is all now sitting around collecting dust. What a fiasco!

We have a longstanding tradition of buying everyone in the house an Old Navy Flag T-shirt for the 4th of July. I get styles and colors that suit the person (as much as that’s possible), and since it has the year on it, it’s a fun memento.

But the 2008 shirts were… Well… Cheap.

Yes, I know they’re $5 shirts, and have been for ages. But they’ve never been JUNK before now.

I’m okay with there being a limited selection of $5 shirts, and then other more expensive versions you may elect. I’m okay with the not-particularly-cheap shipping.

The whole idea, after all, is that by offering something cool and cheap, they entice me to shop with them when I otherwise wouldn’t. They gain my business with this “gimmick” – and it worked!

But if the shirts themselves are icky, we’re not going to buy them. Here are the problems we’ve found (and obviously by now we’ve had the chance to give them a thorough testing):

• Poor cut/design. The men’s shirts, at least, don’t seem to have the sleeves cut or set properly, and they bind in the armpit when you move. (We only have men’s adult shirts, as the “Women’s” options failed my modesty standards tests). The kids’ shirts have too small neck openings; stiff fabric doesn’t have any “give” to compensate.
• Poor fabric. Not soft; not comfy; no “give”. Nobody wants to wear a cardboard shirt!

When we were shopping last year, we noticed a number of other companies were doing similar shirts, but since we had the Old Navy tradition going we didn’t pay a lot of attention.

I seem to recall seeing flag shirts at Bass Pro and WalMart, among others. I’ll have to investigate this year, and see whose flag shirts include the year (which is an important factor for us, but many don’t include)…

Because Old Navy is FIRED.