Gratitude – 02/18/2009

Today, I am grateful for:

1. The Transformers sequel.  I, unlike my wife, thoroughly enjoyed the first one, and am very much looking forward to having my senses once again assaulted by everyday vehicles transforming into machines of great destructive power.  I am not expecting this movie to have tremendous heart, soul-searching depth, or good acting.  What I am expecting is giant robots beating the living tar out of one another to a thumping soundtrack, and I’m fairly confident that in this respect, this movie will not disappoint.

2. Tim Horton’s on GPS.  We now have every Canadian’s favourite coffee shop plugged into our Garmin, so I am never more than three button-presses away from knowing just how far I would have to drive to get to a Tim’s.

3. Cusinart mixers.  Our Sunbeam mixer bit the dust this weekend, in the most disappointing of ways.  I would have thought that, when a mixer moves toward the bright white light, it would do so in a shower of sparks or a shimmering fireball of blue flame or, at least, a small twist of acrid smoke.

No such luck.  This bad boy just stopped working.  No telltale whine, no grinding of gears, no nothing.  It just stopped.  My wife and I were not terribly disappointed, because this particular mixer had proven itself to be somewhat a piece of crap, for reasons I may discuss elsewhere.  Suffice it to say that, unless all you ever plan to do with this thing is fluff egg whites, you will likely be disappointed with its performance.

Enter the Cuisinart blender that we just picked up to replace it.  It has an 800 watt motor.  I don’t even know what that means, but any time you have that many watts dedicated to doing nothing but twirling dough about in a bowl, you know it’s gonna be good.  My biggest concern was that we wouldn’t have the blender in time to make waffles this weekend, but fortunately Amazon came through in style and delivered our new appliance-toy in record time.  Let the waffle eating commence.

photo credit: Steve Keys