Imablog Perspectives of a Canadian in the Old/Deep/New/Geographic South: This is where I ramble on about nothing in particular and post a few nice pictures.

Review: ingenuiTEA

I'm not a huge tea drinker. I used to be years ago. Now that I have one of these ingenuiTEA cups (courtesy of my brother), getting back into the tea habit will be made that much easier.

Using it is super easy.

1. Add tea leaves
2. Add hot water
3. Steep
4. Put ingenuiTEA over cup
5. Profit!Drink!

ingenuiTEA holds 16 oz of water, so you can make 2 or 3 small cups of tea to share with others, or one big cup to enjoy all by yourself.

Pro: If you like loose teas (which I prefer), it makes brewing single cups really easy. The strainer part is fine enough that you don't end up with tea leaves in your cup (unless you like that sort of thing). It's also fun watching the tea drain out. Also comes with a little dish to catch drips. Microwave and dishwasher safe too!

Con: Because ingenuiTEA sits on top of the cup, you can't really see how full your cup is getting (unless it's clear) so you'll kind of have to guess from how much has drained out. You'll have to be quick because ingenuiTEA drains pretty quickly. Of course if your cup is bigger than the amount of water you've put in, this isn't a problem.

The Baker's Dog: Doggie noms

The dogs have thoroughly enjoyed their treats from The Baker's Dog, especially the Lamb and Rice ones. The lamb and rice cookies are small hard cookies that the dogs seem to really like. First they crunch crunch crunch, then sniff around for any crumbs they might have dropped and lick them up. Then they look at me hoping for another one.

Nala was a little sceptical about the PB and Honey treats at first. When I first gave one to her, she took it, then dropped it out of her mouth as if to say "what the heck is this?". She usually does this any time I give her something new though and eventually decided it was good to eat. The other dogs didn't hesitate at all before downing them. I'm not sure they even chewed.

While The Baker's Dog probably won't replace The Good Dog Bakery as my dog treat source, mostly because they're just down the road from me (and they also sell some pretty rocking treats that the dogs love), Baker's Dog will definitely be on my list for regular purchases. Paul Reynolds has done a great job setting up the online store and making the online purchase experience fun and easy, especially with the custom labels. In fact he made it almost too much fun and I ended up sending out gifts to a few dog owning friends before I made myself stop.

Sending out bags of treats with a picture of your own pet(s) couldn't be simpler. Create an account for yourself at the store and add the treat of your choice to the shopping cart. Adding a photo is as easy as uploading the photo and selecting the region that will be printed on the label. There's a one time fee of $4.99 for each photo, and after that you can use it on as many bags as you like and as often as you like. You can even share the photo with others (they won't have to pay the fee) so they can use it for their purchases.

Two paws up (any more and the dogs would fall down) for The Baker's Dog. Go visit them, online or in person if you happen to be in the Myrtle Beach area.

The Baker's Dog: Taste Testing

The dogs received a present courtesy of Paul Reynolds at The Baker's Dog today: a sample of Paul's new doggie Oreo-type cookies for taste testing and a mixed gift bag of dog biscuits.

Note: the dogs would like to say that the mixed gift bag had absolutely no influence on how well they enjoyed the doggie oreos (I suppose I should call them sandwich cookies or something to avoid trademark infringement). They happily enjoyed all of the treats equally.

The new sandwich cookies are pretty substantial: two of the lamb and rice cookies dipped in carob with a solid yogurty type filling between them. They look pretty tasty, and I have to admit I was tempted to nibble on one because they looked so good. I'm not sure how many calories each one would come out to, but these probably aren't something you want to give your dog lots of or you're likely to end up with a very chubby dog. They'll definitely appeal to dog owners looking for a tasty wheat/corn free treat (me being one of them) to reward their dog with.

On to the taste testing. Simba and Barkley aren't exactly the most discriminating eaters, so they gobbled down their cookies right away and came looking for more. Simba did pause a little bit to lick the carob coating before eating his though. Nala is much more discriminating and had to sniff and lick her cookie a few times before eating it.

Nala's a pretty messy eater and ends up dropping crumbs all over the place, which Simba is always more than happy to help clean up.

Nala making sure to get all the crumbs she dropped.

Final verdict: based on how fast the doggie sandwich cookies disappeared, two paws up. Barkley is still sniffing around looking for any crumbs that might have been missed. Paul, the dogs will be very disappointed if these don't become a regular item.

Comfy new bed

A new Pooch Planet ThermaCare memory foam pet bed was one of the items I won in the CSCLRC raffle at the dog show today.

Nala's been curled up on it ever since I brought it home this afternoon. She hasn't even gotten up to follow me around the house like she usually does. I think she likes it.

It's a pretty nice pillow that contains chips of memory foam (the package calls it MemoryLoft^™) that would otherwise have been disposed of in a landfill, making it a reasonably green product. The pillow is baffled with about 5 chambers to prevent the foam chips from getting bunched up and lumpy. The outer cover is removable and can be machine washed.

I think the fact that Nala hasn't gotten off the bed in the past 4 hours attests to the comfort of the bed. It's quite a comfortable bed, and I'm halfway tempted to use it for myself.

I may have to find a couple more of these for the other dogs.

Great American Grill

Tucked away in the back corner of the James Island shopping center at the corner of Maybank and Folly is a little family owned and operated diner called Great American Grill.

Over the years the location has been home to at least 2 other restaurants that I know of, none of which lasted very long. Great American Grill has been around for just over 2 years now, so they're probably doing something right. It's the kind of place where unless you work or live in the area, you probably wouldn't know it's there. There's a pretty local crowd, and a lot of regulars.

It's a diner, so the food is pretty basic and uncomplicated, but tasty. They serve breakfast (which you can get all day) and lunch. Everything is cooked to order, and if you sit at the counter, you can watch all the action. Portions are generous and as it says on the menus, "You'll never leave hungry". Service is always friendly, and you can pretty much order anything and get it cooked the way you want.

If you're there on a weekend, the Country Style Breakfast is hard to beat. Two giant buttermilk pancakes, biscuits and gravy, eggs, and sausage links, patties or bacon. It'll keep you going pretty much the entire day.

Great American Grill is located at 1739 Maybank Hwy on James Island.

Wild Olive

I'd heard about the Wild Olive a few weeks ago and was delighted to hear about another Italian restaurant on my side of the Charleston area. Sunday I went to check it out for the first time with a few people from one of the Meetup groups.

Although the decor was nice, my first Wild Olive experience was somewhat underwhelming. I opted for the Sunday spaghetti and meatball dinner special ($15), which includes salad and garlic bread. The salad with balsamic dressing was pretty good. Nice cool, crisp greens. The spaghetti on the other hand was kind of disappointing. The spaghetti was more like angel hair pasta (pretty thin) and came out rather overdone. The sauce and meatballs were still quite good though.

Not wanting to pronounce judgment after just one visit, I went back tonight for dinner to try something else on the menu.

This time the experience was much better and a 180° change from a couple of days ago. I opted for one of the specials of the night: the Legare farms porterhouse steak with gorgonzola mashed potatoes and wilted swiss chard. On the pricey side, but totally worth it. It was big enough that I could probably get 2 more meals out of it. The steak was probably one of the best I've ever had here. Preparation was very simple: salt, pepper, grill. Cooked to medium, the steak was very tender, and just plain delicious.

I was initially a little skeptical about the gorgonzola mashed potatoes, and not being a fan of blue cheeses, I wasn't expecting to like it much. Again, I was delightfully surprised. Smooth and creamy, the potatoes had enough gorgonzola to make it yummy, but not overpowering. I could have easily made a meal out of a pile of those mashed potatoes.

At the end of my meal, I started thinking about if, given the choice, would I rather go to Oak or Wild Olive (Oak is one of my favourite meat places to go to in Charleston). Tough choice, but I think if Wild Olive had the Legare Farms steak as part of their regular menu, Wild Olive would definitely win.

Wild Olive is definitely worth the trip.

4 stars out of 5.
$$-$$$$ (can be a little spendy)

Clipper Club do

For my birthday last week, I decided to indulge myself a little bit with The Clipper Club's Lifesaver package: shampoo, head/face/neck massage, hair cut and another shampoo.

It's a very relaxing process. Sit back and relax with a hot towel wrapped around your face while you enjoy the head and neck massage. Afterwards, you get a fantastic haircut and then another shampoo to wash out any loose hairs.

The Clipper Club is located just off Maybank Highway behind Wappoo Cuts (just past Mustard Seed and Boulevard Diner). It's a place I've walked past many times before, but never noticed until recently when Clipper Club got on Twitter.

Not only did I get to enjoy a nice relaxing massage, I also received one of the better haircuts I've had in a long time. It's also within walking distance of home, which makes it easy for me to get haircuts a little more regularly than I used to.

So glad I discovered the place. Now I wish I had known about Clipper Club earlier.

Cliq: Week 1

It's been a week now with the new ball and chainphone. I've already done a factory reset on it once, but overall it hasn't been too bad. Not great, but not horrible.

Pros:
As a handheld gadget it's pretty cool. Lots of apps to help you stay even more connected to the interwebs. If you're into the whole social media scene, there are plenty of apps to let your stalkersfriends know where you are and what you're up to. The MotoBlur interface Motorola slapped on top of Android lets you see what's going on in your social network at a glance.

The slide open keyboard is nice, and the bumpy keyboard is pretty easy to type on. The screen only reacts to finger presses and not fingernails or other stylus type devices so I find using the on screen keyboard pretty slow.

It's nice and compact, about 3/4 the width of my T3. Nice sharp and bright screen.

5MP camera takes reasonably decent photos. Like with any other tiny camera, don't expect great results in low lighting.

Cons:
It's a cell phone.

As a PDA/PIM tool, it (Android) kind of sucks (at least compared to my Palm based PDAs). Calendar comes from the 'cloud' (Google Calendar and/or MS Exchange) which is fine but what happens when you have no data or wireless service? Kind of hosed there in that event. Contacts come from all the accounts you set up MotoBlur with, which means you end up with a long list of contacts and probably more than a few duplicates from various sources. Multiple contacts belonging to the same person can be linked together, but that means going through a long list of everybody. ToDo and Notes have to come from third party sources, which aren't too hard to find in the Android Market. Basic PIM functionality can be replicated, but there's no integration between them. So now I've gone from a formerly state-of-the-art PDA with great PIM capabilities to a state-of-the-art cell phone/gadget with fairly rudimentary PIM capability. Two steps forward, one step back.

Ships with Android 1.5. Android 1.5 doesn't give me the wi-fi configuration options (without rooting the phone) to connect to the encrypted wifi network at work, options that are (should be) standard on any wi-fi device. They're options I have in WinXP on my 6 year old laptop. What's up with that?

It's a pig on battery. I probably need to spend some more time doing some optimization and figuring out what apps I don't need and can turn off. Still, you probably don't want to be very far away from a source of power with this thing though.

Review: Home-Ec 101: Skills for Everyday Living

This is the review I posted on Amazon.com.

Full of hints, tips and techniques written in that funny, quirky Heather style. If you know Heather (I do), you'll know what I mean. If you don't know Heather, you'll get an idea of the kind of person she's like as you read the book. Perhaps the most entertaining book on home economics you'll ever read.

Heather's book, like her website, is divided into 4 sections: Cook it, Clean it, Wash it, Fix it. Each section includes tips, techniques, hints and suggestions for dealing with various parts of the household, interspersed with posts from the website. You'll find the toilet cleaning tutorial on pg 66. Basic mending techniques for clothing are covered in chapter 10. Save time dealing with laundry by skipping the underwear folding (pg 119). Do you burn water in the kitchen? Head straight for the Cook it section.

It's a great book to read that will leave you chuckling and ready to take on the house.

Review: Heaven by Mur Lafferty

My first encounter with Mur Lafferty was at CREATESouth 2010, where she gave a very entertaining keynote speech.

The last few days I've been entertaining myself with her audio book series Heaven. The Afterlife Series started off in 2006 with Heaven and continues with Hell, Earth, Wasteland and concludes with War.

For me, the measure of a good book is how often my brain churns around in the world and with the characters. Books like Dune, Lord of the Rings, most anything by Robert Heinlein have all given my brain vast worlds to explore and have fun in.

Although I've only recently finished Mur Lafferty's Afterlife series, it has been spinning in my head since I started listening. It's a story that takes many different elements and combines them all together into an entertaining tale. Take two people, kill them, send them into the afterlife, turn them into gods that never quite grasp the full extent of their god-ness and see what happens.

When I'm listening to things, whether it's music, podcasts, audiobooks or the radio, my brain usually ends up tuning it out. Heaven managed to keep my brain entertained enough to keep listening. Mur does a good job of reading the story, and most of the time it's easy to tell the different characters apart. There is the occasional sprinkling of swear words in there, so probably not something you'd want to listen to with kids around.

The entire series is available from Podiobooks.com and is just under 18.5 hours (69 files, ~850 MB). Definitely worth checking out.