The Newpoint Terry Waterproof Mattress Protector
is absolutely fantastic. If you have any one in the house that is potty training or with incontinence issues, this is this mattress protector is the product to use. On Amazon, this mattress protector comes in sizes from Twin (currently at $9.88) to California King (currently at $29.99).
So, what’s so great about this mattress protector? Well, previously, I was using the flat waterproof pads sold at Babies R Us or Target. Inevitably, when a bed wetting episode did occur, the urine would just run around the mattress pad and soak into the layer below. Even when I had the entire mattress covered with an assortment of pads, with enough liquid, the barrier would be circumvented. Additionally, these mattress pads felt uncomfortable because they were firmer than the underlying mattress and trapped heat.
In contrast, the Newpoint Terry Waterproof Protector simply works. It’s a soft, fitted sheet that envelopes the mattress. Much more comfortable to sleep on in that it doesn’t bunch up, feel hard, or trap heat. Also, it has kept the underlying mattress completely dry up to now. I bought one to test, and now I have bought two more for the rest of the mattresses in the house.
I first heard of Old Mandarin Islamic through the Check, Please! Bay Area television show on KQED. You can view that episode on the KQED website or download the free episode from iTunes. Anyways, I finally made my way to San Francisco this past weekend for a taste test and ended up enjoying a feast at Old Mandarin Islamic.
First off, I’ve been to many Chinese-Islamic restaurants in the Bay Area and in Los Angeles. Usually, I opt for the noodles and sesame bread。 However, based on my recent re-discovered fondness for hot pot, we ended up with hot pot and a bunch of other dishes.
As you can see, the Old Mandarin Islamic hot pot is quite different from the Little Sheep Mongolian hot pot. Besides the different cooking vessels, the Old Mandarin Islamic broth was much clearer and lacked the distinct medicinal taste of the broth from Little Sheep Mongolian Hot Pot. Since the Old Mandarin Islamic meat coming out of the broth was not as strongly flavored, the restaurant provided some dipping sauces.
The lamb from Old Mandarin Islamic is as tender and paper thin as the one from Little Sheep Mongolian Hot Pot. However, if you compare the photos, the Little Sheep Mongolian Hot Pot lamb appears a bit more fatty. Besides the hot pot, we also tried the 生煎包, the cumin beef, and a vinegary napa cabbage dish. I really should have picked up the take-out menu so I could be more precise with the names of the dishes.
The real stand-out dish was the lamb stew. I cannot recall the English or Chinese name, but this stew had a rich, savory sauce with the most tender pieces of bone-on lamb I have ever tasted. I would return to the restaurant for this dish alone. It was that good.
The Koret Children’s Quarter is located at 320 Bowling Green Drive in Golden Gate Park. Also known as the Children’s Playground, the Koret Children’s Quarter features an abundance of activities for young children, including swings, an artificial (concrete) surf with larger-than-life hermit crabs and other marine animals, a sandbox, and two climbing and play structures that include the usual ladders, tunnels and slides. The Koret Children’s Quarter also offers a two-track concrete slide where young children can ride down the concrete hill on a side of cardboard or in a cardboard box. Cardboard boxes from Costco appear to be particularly popular.
Nearby is the Golden Gate Park carousel, which is housed in the rotunda with doric columns.
A $2.00 fee buys you a ride. For children 6-12, the price of admission is only $1.00. Children 5 and under ride free when accompanied by a paying adult.
Had no idea where the brass ring was hidden, so no free ride for me. Besides the usual ponies, you can also hop aboard a lion, billy goat and rooster, if you so inclined.
Simply a great place to spend a morning or an afternoon. The only downside is that parking may be difficult to find if you arrive late and the park (and parking) fills up quickly.
Today, a co-worker asked if I could open .pages document. Of course, I thought. Send me the document. After all. I have iWork installed on my MacBook Pro.
See. Even though we have just entered 2010, the latest version of iWork is iWork ‘09. And, my version is iWork ‘08. Surely, a version of iWork that was released the year before the current version can open all .pages documents.
Nope. In the perfect world, I could use an older version of Pages to open a .pages document created by a newer version of Pages. Granted, everything might not look perfect, but at least I will have some access to the content. Sort of like the way that users running Lynx can still access the Internet. Sure, you can’t waste time watching YouTube videos or playing Desktop Tower Defense, but you can read articles on the New York Times.
Yeah, it’s not a pretty sight, but at least it works. So, for a product with such low market share, how can IWork afford not to be minimally compatible between versions. I’ll take a stripped down text only viewable copy over not being able to access the document entirely. The only way around this mess is to install a 30 Day Free Trial of iWork ‘09. Not going to buy it though since I’m sure iWork ‘10 version is just around the corner.
The Mountain View Costco hosted another Yamaha piano special event last weekend. I’ve been tracking them for a while: March 2008, April 2008, and August 2009.. Prices appear to be up from 2008, but the same as 2009.
On the floor, I saw a Yamaha Grand Piano GB15 PE 5′ 0″ listed for $8,799.00 with a $225.00 delivery fee. The Yamaha Upright Piano T118 PE (Polish Ebony) 48″ was listed for $3,699.99 with a $150.00 delivery feed. The same piano in mahogany was $3,999.99. Finally, the Yamaha Grand Piano GC1M PE 5′ 3″ was listed at $13,999.99 with a $225.00 delivery fee.
I’m not as interested in the digital pianos because I suspect that like all electronic goods, they will depreciate as the technology becomes outdated. Kind of like the way Sony LCD TVs plunged 60% in price in the last 18 months.
This year, Chinese New Year falls on February 14, 2010. My regular source of red envelopes is the local bank or 99 Ranch supermarket. Many Chinese bookstores also have red envelopes available for purchase. If you want to make your own, you can find free Ni Hao Kai-Lan Chinese New Year Red Envelopes at the nickjr. website. Just print them out, and cut and paste to assemble. Since I do not have a color printer, I used the Find Edges filter on Photoshop to make a colorable version, which is probably more fun for the kids anyways.
I love my Omron Pedometer. I am constantly checking it throughout the day just to make sure that I am on track to meet my fitness goals.
With pedometer secured, I am totally focused on “step currency.” That’s a term for my personal game where I earn steps (or points) throughout the day for completing certain activities. So, I am now figuring out how many steps I will be rewarded with each activity. Huge stores are priceless. I picked up 1,000+ steps at Costco a few days ago. That really helped boost my step count. The pedometer also totally reverses my normal strategy. Ordinarily, parking karma means securing a prime spot right by your destination. However, if you are trying to boost your step count, parking a little further away is now a positive, not a negative. Imagine, fighting for that spot in the parking lot that is the furthest away. A total change in thinking for the better.
Previously, I had purchased Little Sheep Hot Pot Soup Base from 99 Ranch for $4.99 per package. Not an unreasonably price. It worked better the second time with shabu shabu meat from a Japanese supermarket than my first attempt with 99 Ranch’s frozen stuff.
On a return visit to 99 Ranch for more soup base, Little Sheep was no more. The store had sold out. Fortunately, I had noticed that the Little Sheep Soup Base package listed myAsianStore.com as the distributor. So, with nothing to lose, I gave them a try. I ended up picking 10 packages of Little Sheep Hot Pot Soup Base for $3.99 per package. Shipping set me back another $5.92, for a total of $45.82. However, that’s still about 8% cheaper than buying for $4.99 per package at 99 Ranch. Good deal.
I recent purchased an Omron HJ-112 Digital Pocket Pedometer
. Amazon also sells the Omron HJ-113 Digital Pocket Pedometer
, but only through a third-party. Besides the obvious color difference, the HJ-112 has a front reset button to zero out your stats, and the HJ-113 does not.
First, I am a reluctant adopter of a pedometer. I thought it would end up being another pointless gadget to lug around throughout the day. However, after just two days of use, I am really glad I purchased it. The Omron HJ-112 pedometer is a rather basic model. No stored stats with accompanying maps or color charts like the RunKeeper iPhone App. However, the trade off is that the Omron HJ-112 pedometer boasts a tremendous battery life measured in months, unlike the iPhone 3GS while running RunKeeper.
Anyways, the pedometer has really proven to be a good motivational tool because it made me realize how little exercise I was getting during the work day. On my first day, I only mustered around 500 steps at work. Hard to hit that 10,000 daily step goal when the prime hours of the day are wasted in sedentary work while plopped right in front of a desk. I thought I would be generating a few thousand steps at work, but that was not the case. Anyways, I soon realized that I had to take full advantage of every opportunity to walk, such as walking (instead of driving) the kids to school or eating at a cafe down the street instead of at a restaurant in the same work complex.
Another lesson I learned is that stealing a 1-2,000 steps throughout the day is a far more manageable practice than trying to meet the entire 10,000 step goal all at once. From parking down the street at work to taking the long way to lunch, you can add to your tally without ending up completely drained for the day.
Goodnight Moon
Why are there so many books about going to sleep at night? Because kids do not like going to bed at night. That’s where the timeless classic Goodnight Moon
comes in. Goodnight Moon is a quaintly illustrated book about bedtime for a bunny. It offers an introduction to items found around the house, though hopefully you won’t have a young mouse scurrying around in your child’s room. It also sets a routine for your sleep defying child where you can say goodnight to everything in his or her own room and hope the child goes to sleep just like the bunny.
Brown Bear & Friends
The Brown Bear & Friends Board Book Gift Set
offers children a menagerie of animals to follow around. These books teach children not only about animals, but also about colors and the sounds that animals make. I really like book sets because if your child likes one of the books, they’ll probably like them all. Then, you end up with a couple books to rotate amongst during story time.
Curious George
The Complete Adventures of Curious George
features all the classic Curious George stories that many parents may have read when they were children, if they grew up in the United States. I really enjoy sharing the Curious George stories that I had once read a long time ago. You should be aware that there are more modern Curious George stories out there that are illustrated in the style of H..A. Rey. These stories are shorter and lack the plot development of the classic ones. The kids will probably not notice, only you as you long for the good old days. Again, book sets are fantastic provided that your child loves Curious George. After you are finished reading the first Curious George story, there’s another one right after that. You don’t have to search for a new book that the kid likes. Just give them more and more Curious George.
Thomas the Tank Engine
The Thomas the Tank Engine Story Collection (The Railway Series)
features the classic Thomas the Tank Engine a/k/a Thomas the Train stories. If you dare to purchase this book, you will be reading Thomas the Tank Engine stories for weeks on end. For the novice parent, this book offers a semi-complete introduction to all the great engines that call the island of Sodor home. However, this collection is really male-centric, so you won’t see any female engines, like Emily, shunting trucks and hauling freight. The illustrations also come from the classic Thomas books, so the cheeky little engine will not look completely like his modern counterpart. Again, just a thing that only the adults will probably notice.
Llama Llama Red Pajama
Llama Llama Red Pajama
is yet another book about going to bed. I really enjoy finding new books that are wonderfully illustrated and present an interesting and creative story line. I’ve also read Llama Llama Mad at Mama
, which details an epic meltdown while shopping, something all parents eventually go through. That book also introduces children to the concept of a treat, which is essentially a bribe for good behavior.
