The reviews are true. The keyboard isn’t wonderful. The software keyboard isn’t half bad, though… so I find myself flipping back and forth, for now. The app situation is weird. With such a nice browser, are the apps I’m downloading even necessary? I don’t know the answer to this one, either. Another case of “time will tell.” I loaded some music on it, but will it replace my iPod for the train rides to work in the summer or for car rides? Too early to tell. I’ve only used the camera to try out the Amazon price-matching app. I haven’t even tried the GPS yet, and that’s what really eliminated any doubt… the new, free, google-maps based turn-by-turn navigation.

So far, though, it’s pretty awesome. I will keep you posted on my findings

I think this would be a good time to mention that I’ll be at Mom’s house the weekend after Christmas. Sarah and I will only there for a few days, but we might have a little bit of free time if anybody wants to get together.

that’s “colossal” coffee milk. right next to the 2% and the “ultimate” chocolate

Mom enclosed her front porch with sliding glass doors last year. It’s gone through a couple furniture set-ups, but I think this year is a pretty nice layout for the family. I’m sure this picture is a grainy mess, but the cameraphone can only do so much. I’m tempted to break out my real camera… which reminds me: when i pack later, my camera needs to be accessable on the plane. It was way too tightly packed away on the trip out and there were some decent sights out the window on the way out here.

my favorite little chicagoland diner… close to one of the schools I work at. haven’t been there much this season. they have free wi-fi now!

I developed a taste (read: addiction) for apple soda way back in 1995, on a school foreign language club trip to Mexico. At all the cool little restaurants we ate at, we would ask what kinds of soda they had and apple was always on the list among the cokes and sprites and roor beers. Prior to that, I’d only had some sparkling apple stuff at holiday parties and such. I had a bit of a hard time finding it back on the east coast. the Jones green apple variety was way too sweet. The Izze apple was closer, but a little too much like juice. I was hoping to find some online a couple years ago, since coca-cola bottled an apple fanta… and my search didn’t turn up any american products, but I did find Sidral Mundet. Now, I tend to have a supply of Manzanita Sol in the house all the time. It’s a little sweeter than the authentic stuff, but it’s yummy, and probably closest to what I got in restaurants in Mexico. And it’s at a lot of grocery stores and gas stations. Yay!

tied down with care. makes me miss my jeep(s), though I don’t think I ever actually used them to pick up a christmas tree. we also got free cups a hot cider and a free apple cider donut. yum.

in case it’s not apparent, that’s a big round bail of hay dressed as a turkey. we bought a christmas tree… pretty different from when I lived with my parents and we’d run out and get one as close to the day as possible, and then leave it up until St Patrick’s day. It’s also a far cry from my hand-me-down “lottery tree” that served as the whole of the holiday decorations in Woonsocket. It may have come out this early on one or two years, but taking it out of the closet was a lot less effort.

I’m the picture of health, eh? Found another big honkin’ Arby’s sign. did i mention that there’s a flickr group dedicated to these signs? for reference (and so I don’t forget), this one is at 5656 la grange rd, la grange, il (according to the GPS).

i didn’t see any actual flying trees, but it is a pretty impressive assembly line

the Y i work for on the weekends is selling trees for the holidays. Apparently, they’ll be up there on top of the stack, chucking trees to each other. If i get a chance, I’ll try to snap a pic of that

two large arcade style DDR dance pads in the dance studio of one of the high schools I work in. I peeked inside. There’s handrails and everything.

just testing ability to post via eMail… but people like this little drawing by Mark, so I’ll leave it up, I guess

it’s cozy… has a fireplace in a big common room. The heat is a bit much in the little bedrooms, once you close the doors. It’s also fun to tell the kids we’re “staying with a hairy friend” when they ask where we’re sleeping.

stack of camp mattresses. I totally forgot to take any ropes course pics for blogging.

There was also a threat of canceling the Adventure Ed overnight for one of the schools because of some new electronic filing system that all trips have to go through and some CPS paperwork and legal department bull… but I guess they finally worked it all out today. We got the go ahead this afternoon. We were on the verge of coming up with some sort of concelation day for all the kids who had signed up. They were still signed out of their classes and stuff, so they were technically ours for the day, but we probably would’ve been restricted to school property. I’m glad that didn’t end up happening. The high ropes experience is really a key element in my mind.

Psyched that I got the mophoblogging going again. I was doing that stuff back in early 2005 (via Livejournal). I’m pretty sure moblogs and that term existed then, but I wonder if I could’ve coined mophoblogging, or snagged a related domain name or something.

A Dunkin’ Donuts with a counter and stools? Reminds me of Main st Webster, before the remodel (no cigarette machine). i should’ve asked if they had mugs.

so bored… but at least i got the mophoblogging working again!