What do you think of when you think of Brookstone? Do images of relaxing massage chairs come to mind? Or perhaps nifty gadgets and accessories for the gadget-holic in your life? Or maybe just super cool toys. Like this AR.Drone Quadricopter. I was lucky to receive this hands-on demo of total coolness. It is controlled by your iPhone/iPod/iPad and can take videos from the front and side. Can you imagine sending it over your house to take photos?
But if you're more practical minded, here are some travel accessories that you might like:
Lightweight hanging Toiletry Kit with tons of zippered pockets for super-organized travel
4-in-1 Power Charger that can power just about any portable device with an A/C outlet, car, USB port or 9V battery
n•a•p® Plush Eyemask that can be heated or cooled for total eye comfort and zzz.....
Wordlock® Luggage Lock where you can use a word instead of numbers to remember your combination
*** If you'd like to enter win any of these Brookstone travel accessories, please fill out the form below. The Brookstone giveaway is open to all US residents. ***
For extra entries, do any or all of the following:
Tweet about the Brookstone event or giveaway (using @mommybytes and @brookstone)
Promote this post using StumbleUpon, blog post or other social media (one entry only)
The Brookstone giveaway ends Friday August 12, at 11 pm EDT.
Hope to see everyone at BlogHer. Not only do I get to see everyone again, my mom will be making her third appearance! (She should start her own fan club .)
Disclaimer: Brookstone provided products for me to review as well as for the giveaway.
At work, I try to exercise during lunchtime, either by going to the gym, biking, or walking. When the weather is cool in the spring and fall, walking is the exercise of choice. For years I walked in my iPod oblivion, but I would always notice beverage cans tossed by the side of the road. I always thought that one of these days, I ought to bring a bag with me and pick up the cans to recycle.
Last fall, I finally got it together and brought bags to pick up cans during my walks. The bags would fill up much quicker than I imagined, usually within the first mile of the walk. No matter how often I walked, there were always plenty of cans to pick up. A lot of the cans were half full, so I would empty them out before placing them in the bag. Sometimes, this was a pretty gross proposition, so I ended up wearing blue nitrile gloves for my walks.
Ninety percent of the cans were beer cans, with an occasional soda or energy drink. I began to wonder where these cans came from. Some were grouped together, indicating a bunch of kids sitting around chugging beers. But the majority of beer cans looked like they were thrown right out of moving cars. Checking the Internet, only Mississippi allows driving with open containers of alcohol. It is certainly not legal in Massachusetts or New Hampshire, where I work. I asked some co-workers and sure enough, they knew others that drank beers on their way home and chucked the cans out of the window. In fact, those people celebrate then end of Daylight Saving Time, when that cops can’t see them drinking in the darkness. Well now, that’s news to me, no wonder why there are so many beer cans along the side of the road (more in Live Free and Die NH than MA, mind you).
The very first time I walked back to work with a bag of beer cans, I was a bit worried about what people would think if I dumped a bunch of beer cans into the can recycling bin. I thought of leaving them in a recycling bin outside someone’s house, but that would be even harder to explain. I ended up dumping them in the work recycling bin, with a few co-workers looking on. Everyone thought it was a cool idea and I soon became knows as the “can lady” or “beer girl”. Even the general manager of our company stopped by and joked whether times were tough. He often asked whether I was going can picking when we ran into each other near lunchtime. Even people from my home town saw me picking up cans. I was that kooky blue-handed can lady, heading up a recycling revolution, cleaning up the environment, one can at a time!
After a few weeks, another co-worker asked that I save the tabs to donate to the Shriner’s Hospital. I started to remove the tabs as I picked up the cans during my walks (way too gross to pull them afterward when the bag is half soaked in beer). Sometimes I lost the tabs on the way, but I did manage to amass this many:
That’s 211 aluminum can tabs. Since then, I’ve learned from Snopes that the can tabs are hardly worth their time and energy. Basically, they say that you'd be much better off getting the full 5 cent redemption and donating that to your charity instead of the tiny fraction of a cent they get for the pull tab. At $427 for a million tabs, that is 0.000427 cents per tab, instead of 5 cents for the whole can. Still I liked to collect the tabs to count how many cans I’ve picked up during my walks.
Recently I bought a sheet of these super cool, super cute Go Green forever stamps. On the back of the Go Green stamp sheet, there is some information about the small steps we can all take to be greener. I learned this fact about recycling:
Is it enough to make a difference? Absolutely. Recycling just one aluminum can reduces waste—and saves enough energy to run a computer for three hours. Multiply that by 10—or 200—cans.
Wow, my 211 cans can run a computer 24/7 for nearly a month!
This spring, my recycling career came to an abrupt halt one morning when my boss approached me. He asked me whether I was the one recycling cans from outside in the cafeteria. I told him yes and that the general manager knew about it. But he said that there were complaints that beer cans in the cafeteria “were not appropriate”. Granted, the cafeteria didn’t smell like beer, but if you opened the lid and took a whiff, you could definitely smell it. But the cans were obviously from outside, they were soiled and dirty. No one is sitting around work drinking beers during off hours!
I am not one to argue with my boss, so this chat ended my recycling career. I still am the recycling police at work, but I’m not about to risk my livelihood to clean up a state that I don’t even live in. So now when I go on walks, I simply walk past this scene:
Maybe I should just get people to stop drinking beers on their way home! If it’s not one crusade, it’s another.
The last time I knitted something for Dova, she posed with it for exactly one photo and refused to even smile nicely. It has sat in a drawer ever since. Such gratitude!
Knitted Strawberry Hat, January 2008
I refused to knit her anything else until we were at a craft store last winter, and we both fell in love with this yarn on clearance. The color was called "Chocolate Cupcake" and it looked simply delicious! Dova says it is chocolate raspberry ice cream.
She maintains that she will wear the new scarf in the winter, hopefully with actual clothes. One thing is for certain, she sure is beautiful.
June flew by in a flurry with end of year events that seemed to stack one on top of another. Last year, in Herculean super mom fashion, I managed this schedule one Saturday:
Coach Dova’s soccer team in her last game.
Have ice cream at the end of year soccer party.
Hug the soccer kids goodbye and grab Dova’s soccer trophy.
Rip off Dova’s soccer clothes and put on her dress.
Rip off my soccer clothes and put on my dress in the car.
Clean Dova’s ice cream hands with a wipe.
Rush to the piano recital now in progress (Adam and Doug were already there).
Record Dova in her first piano recital, as well as Adam’s performance.
In a matter of minutes, we went from this:
to this .
I could finally relax being in the audience, but it was extremely hectic and I vowed never to do simultaneous events again. Here are the videos of Adam and Dova from last year’s recital if you’re interested (i.e. you’re my mom).
This year, my soccer coaching career had thankfully ended but the musical tiger mom had taken over. And although we didn’t sign up for simultaneous events, it ended up being busier than ever since I was now directly involved in the recitals.
After the talent show fiasco, our kids’ piano teacher asked whether I’d like to play that piece at the recital. I never wanted to upstage her students, so I hadn’t considered performing with them before. She said that one of her students really liked In the Hall of the Mountain King and would love to hear the “real” version performed. Adam loved this piece as well and played a simplified version last year.
A week before the recital, our piano teacher asked whether I would accompany one of her voice students on the piano. It was a last minute request, but I looked at the music and agreed. So far so good, one solo that I knew in my sleep and one manageable accompaniment which I had a week to learn, no over-extension.
The day before the recital, we rehearsed with the vocalist. At the end of the rehearsal, our piano teacher was uneasy about another piano accompaniment that she was having trouble with. She asked me on the off chance whether I could learn the piece in one day. Well, let’s see. I sat down and sight read the music, to which our piano teacher said that I already played it better than she did. One day to learn a piece? What’s on the schedule… Adam’s last soccer game of the season, driving one kid to a birthday party and the other to a playdate, and then the end of season soccer party. Sure, I had time between driving the kids and after the party. I agreed to do it. I’m not sure whether I thought it was a good challenge, or I’m that cocky, or what! Doug says my middle name is “Over-extension”.
On the day of the recital, I arrived a half hour early for the rehearsal with the new vocalist. It went off without a hitch. In fact it was one of the most beautiful pieces I’ve ever heard, Homeward Bound by Marta Keen (not a link to the actual performance, it wasn’t mine!). The performance went flawlessly as well, and I actually enjoyed being part of creating this beautiful music.
Since I'm free to post videos of my own kids, I can proudly put my tiger mom hat on and show them off. Dova was confident and poised in her performance.
Adam had been shunning me for practice lately, so I hadn't actually heard him play his piece in weeks. He performed Bach’s Minuet No. 3 evenly and expressively and we were all quite impressed! In fact, he played this piece better than I would have at his age. See for yourself.
Luckily our camera ran out of memory so I don’t have to share my performance that day (you can always view the talent show version). The only thing I regret about performing in the kids’ recital was that I was put at the end of the program. Through his two years of lessons, Adam had been progressively moving down the program as he learned more difficult pieces. In this recital, he was finally placed last out of the students (he played Bach’s Prelude in C later on). Except his mom stole the last spot on the program.
But there was a surprise in store. After my performance, the piano teacher presented me with a trophy for all my efforts. It was partially to make up for the unjust treatment during the talent show, and partially to thank me for helping her out. My very first music trophy! It was a super sweet gesture.
.)
