Brother P-Touch Followup

Over the past few months, I’ve tested how durable the Brother P-Touch labels are and used them to organize our play room.  So how have they held up?  Quite well, as a matter of fact.  The labels have shown no sign of wear and tear.

However, as the weeks went on, I realized that the play room wasn’t a great durability test.  Sure, the kids can be rough, but they tend to be rough with their toys, rarely with the containers the toys are stored in.

Meanwhile, we had a little problem.  You see, to help the environment, and save money, we use reusable water bottles.  We drink out of them daily, take them on trips, and send them to school with the boys.  For the school water bottles, we like to make sure that the bottles have our name on them in case they get misplaced.  Our usual method of putting the name on involved permanent markers.  These worked well until a couple dishwasher cycles wore off the ink.

IMGP5408_CropEnter the Brother P-Touch.  I printed off a few labels and affixed them to the water bottles.  Then, they got sent to school, coated with the usual mess of smeared lunch products that the kids always get on their water bottles, and tossed in the dishwasher at the end of the week.  This was repeated at least eight times (most likely more — I lost count).  The labels show no sign of wear at all.

To me, dishwashers seem like a fantastic durability test.  They combine jets of hot water and detergents to peel away stuck on materials.  Combine these with kids handling the labeled bottles for a week with food-tainted fingers and it’s amazing that the labels have shown virtually no signs of wear and tear.

Since they’ve proven both their durability and usefulness, I’m going to have to find more items to label in the house.

Disclaimer: I wrote this review while participating in a campaign by Mom Central Consulting on behalf of Brother P-Touch and received a product and gift card to facilitate my review and a promotional item to thank me for taking the time to participate.

Happy PiEinstein Day!

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In honor of Albert Einstein’s birthday, I wore my Einstein tie today.  Yes, that’s my USB tie clip (from The Lovely Teaspoon) keeping it in place. (Side note: Self portraits with my cell phone are tough!) Since today is also Pi Day (3/14 => 3.14), I’m thinking I should order a pizza pie for dinner and pick up an apple pie for dessert.  Or maybe a chocolate cream pie.  mmmmm….. Pie!

Oh and I totally stole that title from one of ThinkGeek’s tweets. (Cleverness credit where credit is due.)

Exhaustion and the Night Terror

nicubunu_Emoticons_Sleeping_faceRight now, as I write this blog post, I’m on my third blogging idea.  Why did I ditch the last two?  Because I just couldn’t think of the words.  It wasn’t a fault of the topics, I fully intend on blogging about those later this week.  Instead, the problem was my own brain.  My brain was too exhausted to form the words.

You see, on Sunday night, before we went to sleep, JSL woke up with another night terror.  For those who don’t know, a night terror is like a nightmare, but worse.  JSL was shaking, incoherent (seriously, he could have been speaking Chinese for all we know), and crying.  Picking him up and hugging him didn’t calm him down at all.

Finally, we brought him to the couch and I turned on a kids’ television station hoping that the familiar audio would snap him out of the dream.  The combination of the lit room, our voices and the television finally worked and JSL came out of it.  After sitting on the couch for a few minutes, he was calmed down (and tired) enough that he asked to go back to bed.

Later that night, at around 3:30am, I woke up to cries coming from the boys’ room.  JSL had woken up again.  I sat by his bed and soothed him until he fell asleep.  Then, I climbed back into my bed.  As I was falling asleep though, I heard a loud *KLUNK* coming from the boys’ room.  Fearing that one of them fell out of bed, I rushed in… to find nothing wrong.  So back to bed I went again and, as I was falling back to sleep, JSL woke up again.  This time, I sat by his bed longer until I was sure he was fast asleep.  Yet again, I dragged myself to bed.

This time, JSL stayed asleep until it was time for me to wake up, at around 6am.  Meanwhile, the dreams I had weren’t restful at all.  I don’t remember them all, but recall that one involved a mystery person pursuing me for unknown, but sinister, purposes.  The end result was that I awoke exhausted.

After all of this, and a full day’s work, trying to get creative for blog posting caused my brain to lock up.  Hopefully, I’ll have a good night’s sleep and my brain will function better tomorrow.  Otherwise TechyDad no make words good on blog.

Disclaimer: The "Emoticons: Sleeping face" clipart above is from OpenClipArt.org.

Earworms of the Parental Kind

Anonymous_trble_clefIt used to be that I would find certain songs running through my head.  Tunes came from such artists as Billy Joel, Barenaked Ladies, and Bon Jovi.  They may have annoyed me slightly by climbing into my brain and refusing to leave, but at least I could rock out to them for awhile.

Then I had kids.

Joel and Jovi quickly were replaced with Wiggles and Laurie Berkner.  Don’t get me wrong, I like their music.  I’ll freely listen to them with my kids and will dance around the house with those songs blaring.  What I don’t want, though, is for their music to set up shop in my mind and continue running when no kids are around.  It’s a little embarrassing to find yourself humming Toot Toot Chugga Chugga Big Red Car in the office.

The other day, I was going for some blood work.  As I walked into the building, I found myself humming a tune.  Only this tune wasn’t from a mere children’s singer.  No, this was one worse.  It was from a children’s TV show.

Yes, that was running through my head.  It would not leave.  I had no choice, but to counter it with the most powerful grown-up earworm that I could think of.

Mission accomplished.  The kiddie earworm was driven back.  But for how long?

Disclaimer: The "trble clef" graphic above is from OpenClipArt.org.

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