Weekend Recap

So I drove up to San Francisco on Friday afternoon. Skipped out of the office at lunch fairly unnoticed, although since Monday was Columbus Day, I had a feeling it was more obvious than normal. The drive was uneventful and dull. Luckily the presidential debate was on so time went by faster than I thought it would. Pig was very well behaved and we shared some fries and chicken nuggets from McDonald's on our way up. When I got to my grandparents' house, my mom, Aunt Marilyn, and Aunt Laura were all inexplicably wearing their glasses (they usually wear contacts) and had baseball caps on backward. I think it had something to do with an inside joke about the mahjong game they where playing. Weird thing is I could barely tell them apart. I'm not contributing to the stereotype that all Asians looks alike (although you figure with the billions of us out there, there's bound to be some repeating) but damn, my family members really do look alike, especially when they're all wearing glasses and backward baseball caps. I quickly settled into what I do most when I'm up at San Francisco - eat, play with the dogs (my Aunt Marilyn has a yellow lab named Boris) and watch tv. I know that sounds boring but I find it relaxing.

Best part of the trip was the buffet we went to on Sunday morning for my Grandpa's b-day. It was a very fancy buffet at the Ritz-Carlton up on Half-Moon Bay (I think that's what it's called). Anyway, we had a private dining room that overlooked the ocean. And the buffet - good god, that was some buffet. There was sushi, shrimp cocktail, crab claws, caviar, prime rib, and tons of fancy gourmet food things like cauliflower cream with truffels and chilled asparagus soup. The desserts were awesome - I think I had about five different desserts. My mouth still hurt from all the damn kankersores (I actually got a few more on the other side of my tongue so now I'm officially a mute on a liquid diet) but the food was so good that I managed to eat through the pain.

So anyway, there was a lovely surprise for me when I got back to the office today (Tuesday - I called in sick yesterday to drive back home - technically I was sick - the kankersores were killing me and I developed a cough over the weekend) My carpet cleaner came!!! So I tried it out at lunch. It worked really well - it got out all the stains that I could see. It cleaned the high-traffic area although it's harder to tell how well it worked on those areas since it's not like cleaning a spot that actually goes away. I think I'll be able to tell better after it dries. My carpet must be filthy. The dirty water that the machine sucked up was really really disgusting.

Here are the pros:
The price (altogether with shipping and handling it came to $125)
The size (12 lbs), will fit easily into my closet and won't be hard to move around
Easy to assemble
Suction Power - I think it cleaned "deeper" than the Rug Doctor I rented before
Ergonomic - works like a vacuum cleaner so it doesn't hurt my back (which the Rug Doctor did)

The cons:
The clean and dirty water tanks are small so if your carpet is really dirty, you'll have to change the water pretty frequently
I could only find it online at Target.com so I had to pay S&H fees

Anyway, it's called the Bissell QuickSteamer PowerBrush if anyone is interested.