Consumerism:

Bought two things – one a little while ago, and one yesterday, as something to take my mind off the disasterous election results.

From a while ago, we bought a Roomba Red. This is a purchase I’ve been mulling for months, because fundamentally, I’m not going to vacuum every day. I was vacuuming about once a week, but Mobius was shedding like a madman over the last month or so, and it was crazy. He’s also tracking dirt into the house, when the ground outside is wet. So we’d end up with hair everywhere, and little dirt clods that would fall out of the gaps in his paws. So, the notion was either we’d need to vacuum on a more regular basis, or buy a robot to do it for us.

I’d heard good things about the Roomba from a friend who’s roommate has one, and I thought, well, this sounds like the thing for me. There’s a new, cheaper, and better model out now with the second revision of the hardware, and the Red seemed to fit the bill at ~$140, with a coupon, at Sears.

So far, it’s been quite good. As a vacuum, it’s pretty powerless, but the flip side is that you turn it on, and it runs around for two solid hours, and you can use it every day with essentially no effort. So, while it’s not gonna tear up all the pet hair on the first pass, on the twentieth, the house will be, and has been, pretty clean. It’s noticable, and it takes essentially no effort. It gets stuck on rug tassles sometimes, and if you fold them under the rug, it gets stuck on the bulge. So that’s the only issue at the moment. But otherwise? Not a problem at all. It sucked a *ridiculous* amount of pet hair up from under the bed, where we tend to say, never vacuum ever, otherwise.

Great little thing, and if your floor isn’t covered in cords, I’d highly recommend it.

The other thing, which I picked up yesterday, was a cast iron griddle. Not a griddle pan, but it’s a double-sided griddle/skillet that spans two burners. It’s *BADASS*. The stove gets it ripping hot, and the grill side of it’s got nice, raised thingies, to properly grill steaks and such. It’s insane, and once hot, takes like ten minutes to cool down to a reasonable temp. Crazy stuff.