I finally got around to washing them last night.  So, very soon, I will be able to report back to you as to how wedgie-free these are.  Not as exciting as a review of an xbox 360…but hey, someone’s gotta speak the truth about this underwear! Lots of companies claim stuff, but do they always deliver?

I shall soon know the truth…stay tuned!

The Way To Cook, on DVD is indeed a video version of the classic book of the same name.  The set includes two DVDs, each with three of the six parts of the video series.  Disc One includes “Poultry”, “Meat”, and “Vegetables”, and Disc Two discusses “Soups, Salads & Bread”, “Fish & Eggs”, and “First Courses & Desserts”.

I was mistaken when I said that this aired on PBS years ago, now I don’t believe it ever did.  It was produced by the same people who did Julia’s TV series, but it was designed to be a direct-to-video project, to tie in with the book, and indeed you can see and hear Julia talking about “tapes”.  Lucky for us, we have DVDs now, and you’ll soon understand why!

The content is NOT regular TV show episode-like, it is short segments in which Julia demonstrates a specific recipe or technique.  Each segment is numbered…the “Poultry” ones are in the 100’s, the “Meat” ones are in the 200’s, and so on.  If Julia uses a technique that was demonstrated in another segment, it will say on the screen where to find it.  Now that this is on DVD, it is wicked easy to just go to the menu and find the exact segment you want to see.  Must have been a royal pain when the only way to get this was on VHS tape!  It was harder than getting an instant life insurance quote, back in the days before the internet!

To make things even easier, the DVD set includes a rather thick booklet that includes all of the recipes and techniques that Julia demonstrates in the DVDs.  They all have the coordinating numbers that they do on the DVD, so you can easily find them and follow along.

This set is highly recommended for anyone learning to cook, especially if you need video instruction.  You do not need to buy the book version of  “The Way To Cook” to benefit from it, as all recipes and techniques are included in that booklet.  But if you can afford both, go for it.  The two work together to show you…well…the way to cook!

So what do some people do when sick?  Read trashy novels, like this one, called Butterfly, by Kathryn Harvey.  As you can probably figure out from the photo on the book’s cover, this is NOT a nice wholesome G-rated book.  It’s loaded with sex, so if you don’t like this sort of book, then don’t read it.  Srsly.

I first read this book back in the 80’s.  I was working at a bookstore at the time, and one of the other women there had picked it up, and was raving about how good it was.  So I bought myself a copy (we got a 40% discount), and agreed, it was quite delightfully trashy.  I re-read it yet again when I was sick.

Beverly Highland is a self-made wealthy woman who is the mysterious owner of a high-priced women’s “club” called “Butterfly”, located upstairs from a ritzy Rodeo Drive men’s shop.  Membership is restricted to only the most beautiful, wealthy, and powerful women.  At Butterfly, women can experience any fantasies they wish, and yes, they mean sexual.

The storylines alternate between three of Butterfly’s members, Trudie, Linda, and Jessica, each of who has her own reasons for seeking what Butterfly has to offer.  But the main storyline focuses on the life of the mysterious Beverly.

Born Rachel Dywer to impoverished parents, with a twin sister who was given away at birth, the then-homely young girl runs away from home at age 14, after being brutally raped by her own father.  On the roads, she meets a guy named Danny Mackay, who she quickly falls in love with and starts sleeping with.  But Danny is not a nice guy, first, he forces Rachel to live and work at some sleazy whorehouse, while he keeps most of her pay.  He also gets Rachel pregnant, and he cruelly forces her to get an abortion, even though she desperately didn’t want one.  She vows that one day, somehow, some way, she WILL get her revenge on Danny Mackay.

Rachel transforms herself into Beverly by getting plastic surgery, as she begins her climb to the top as a successful businesswoman.  As time passes, she surrounds herself with people who were either screwed over by Danny somehow, or by men like him.  Meanwhile, Danny is on his own ascent to greatness, first by becoming a very successful televangelist, and later, as a Presidential hopeful.  Of course, he’s running as a conservative Republican, speaking out against stuff like prostitution and abortion (two things that he forced upon poor Rachel, what a hypocrite!).

Beverly and her close circle of friends and associates keep a very close eye on the comings and goings of Danny Mackay.  Beverly actually supports his campaign, financially and otherwise; Danny, of course, does not recognize her as homely little Rachel Dwyer.  Beverly is simply setting him up so that he takes his fall from grace from the highest point possible.  As you can imagine, she is seriously pissed at this sleazebag, and it’s well deserved.

You will have to read the book to see how it all goes down…why did she open Butterfly?  Does she succeed in her lifelong mission to destroy Danny?  How did things turn out for Trudie, Linda, and Jessica?  And what about the twin sister?

If you enjoy this book, then you must read the sequel, called Stars.  This book not only continues the war between Beverly and Danny, but the twin sister gets into the picture, as well.  The twin has a rather interesting history of her own, so it’s well worth reading.

If you have kids who can read, do NOT leave these books laying around on the coffee table!  Graphic sexual content, and some violence mean that you should save this for when the kids are in bed.  Enjoy!

I hate the thing more than ever now. Usually I’m good at making risotto, but I made the worst risotto EVER on that stovetop. Either the burner gets TOO hot, so stuff burns, or not hot enough, so that it’s hard to maintain a steady simmer.

I not only had to throw away this risotto, but it looks like I’ll have to toss these lamb shanks I made on that stovetop.  They just didn’t cook up right.  They should have…I almost NEVER screw things up like this.  It HAS to be the shitty quality of this stove.

I can’t afford to go on like this.  Yet another reason that I’ll be using alternate appliances for most of my cooking now.  There is nothing wrong with the oven on this thing, I just have to clean it manually, since the self-clean feature has been known to blow out the computers inside the thing.  I won’t be taking that chance, I can’t afford $400 or whatever it costs to have Sears fix it, and I’m sorry, but I will NOT allow the landladies’ work release workmen into my house to fix it.  And, to answer a question, no, they won’t stay with me and supervise, they often leave these guys in their OWN unit alone.  And then they wondered what happened when  it was discovered that their checkbook had been stolen.

The other day, I came upon this page, which is full of nightmare stories about these flat top stoves.  Ellen, whoever she is, obviously hates these stoves as much as I do now, as do many people who posted on her website.  Yeah, it’s a few years old, but one read of this will talk you out of buying one of these pieces of junk.  Many times, Ellen advised people who rent to buy electric hotplates, as I did, so they could still use various types of cookware, and also still be able to do stir-frys (something that doesn’t work well on the flat-top.

I decided to ask Rick Bayless, who is on Twitter, what he thought of these glass-top stoves.  He’s a celebrity chef, but he’s known for responding to people who ask him questions on Twitter.  So I asked him, and I got this response in less than an hour.

If they are induction, i love them RT @catmommy9 @Rick_Bayless What do you think of those glass-top ranges?

Of course, mine is not induction, it’s radiant.  That’s why it sucks.  I guess the induction burners are the ones that are more sensitive to temperature changes, as with a gas stove.  I’m assuming that Rick does NOT like the cheapy radiant ones, like I am stuck with.

I am hating the stupid landladies more and more with every passing day, for making me have this thing.  There wasn’t anything wrong with the old one, I don’t know what the Sears guy did with it, but I suppose it is gone forever.  Nothing ruins your joy of cooking more than having crappy tools and appliances.

But what would THEY know?  They say they got the same stove for themselves, but they never cook anything.  Their trash and recycling is loaded to the brim with assorted pizza boxes and other take-out/fast food packaging.  And let’s just say that they could both benefit from an alli diet pill, or two or a hundred! Yeah, that’s mean, but not as mean as how they destroyed my joy of cooking in buying this piece of garbage.

I need to win the lottery, soon, so I can get the hell out of this dump and have the kind of stove that I want!

This is apparently based on the book of the same name, and was a six-part series on PBS back in the eighties…although I don’t remember it.  Maybe the PBS station where I was living at the time didn’t carry it.

Anyhoo, I am very much familiar with the book.  I have it, and I’m always saying that if you could only own one cookbook, this would be the one.  In the book, Julia gives simple, step-by-step instructions for basic, or “master” recipes.  And then she expands upon those with variations.  From the description on Amazon of this DVD set, this looks like pretty much the same idea.  So, if you feel you need a little extra instruction beyond what still photos in a book can provide, this would be a great companion to the book.  Just remember that Julia was never into counting calories, so you may want to look for a good diet pill review along with it. But then again, Julia lived to be almost 92 years old, so eating as she did wasn’t so bad, after all!

I ordered it, just because there is not allowed to be a Julia DVD set that I don’t have. I just love her, and can never get bored watching her!

I’ve been collecting the season DVD sets from the PBS cooking series America’s Test Kitchen.  I was recently watching Season 1, which I haven’t seen since it aired ten years ago.  The show has changed somewhat since then, but mostly due to some of the cast coming and going.  The “man on the street” interviews quickly disappeared, and John “Doc” Willoughby left as Science Editor for a gig at Gourmet magazine.  That magazine has since folded, I suppose he’s still working on the website/TV end of the brand now.

During Season 1, they made a Bacon-Wrapped Meat Loaf with Brown Sugar-Ketchup Glaze. It looked awesome, so I decided to try it. I already had the companion book for the first season, so finding the recipe was easy. Although I think they have printable recipes on the DVDs.

Fortunately, this recipe is available online for free.  At the Cook’s Illustrated/America’s Test Kitchen websites, only current content is available free…too see archives of past issues/seasons, you have to either own the book or get a paid membership to the site.  However, it seems that host and Cook’s editor Chris Kimball has not forgotten the older recipes from earlier seasons, as he presented this one last year on the CBS Early Show.

This is a rather awful morning show, but I try to catch Chris’ weekly segments.  They are usually sometime during the 8-9AM Eastern time hour; that information will save you from having to suffer through this horrifically awful show.  Srsly.  If I have to hear either Maggie Rodriguez or Erica Hill point out to the world that they are pregnant, I’m gonna gack.  Yes, we can SEE that you’re both knocked up, do you have to point out out every five minutes?  I can’t wait until they both go on maternity leave.  But then, they’ll come back and do segments about getting rid of belly fat after pregnancy. And endless baby pictures. This sort of crap makes the show even more unwatchable. Only Chris Kimball’s segment is worth bothering to watch.

Anyhoo, here is the segment online, complete with Chris’ tips and recipes for good meat loaf.  You can learn how the test kitchen came up with their recipe, and why some ingredients work better than others.  The test kitchen recipe, the one I made, is the first one on this page.

A few tips from me…if you can’t find ground veal, or it’s just too expensive, use the much less expensive ground turkey or chicken.  I didn’t remember reading the gelatin tip in the book, but it’s probably worth a try if you do not use the veal.  But mine, with chicken, came out just fine without it.

I also could not find any ground pork when I went shopping.  So I used sweet Italian sausage instead.  Hey, it’s basically ground pork with some extra seasoning in it.

Some stores sell something called “meat loaf mix”, which is two parts beef, one part pork, and one part veal, as called for in this recipe.  However, I have found that these pre-made packages aren’t big enough.  To make a decent sized loaf, you need two pounds of meat.  I buy individual packages of each ground meat, weigh them out on a scale, and then I find I have almost twice as much as I need for the meat loaf.  That’s okay.  I just mix the extra meat all together and make spaghetti sauce or something from it.

This meat loaf is easy to put together and very tasty.  Try it!

I wrote that post ages ago, but just got around to finally buying the AcneFree kit about a week and a half ago.  Already, I am seeing results, and so far, I am very happy.

The AcneFree system is almost identical to the Proactiv system.  It comes with three products, a cleanser, a toner, and a repair lotion.  They are used together, in the order listed.  Although the instructions say to use the products twice a day, I only use it once a day.  When I first started using the Proactiv, I used it twice a day as instructed, but that caused my skin to be red and irritated.  Cutting it down to once a day worked much better, and I started to see good results.  Since AcneFree contains pretty much the same ingredients (mostly benzoyl peroxide), using it twice a day would have the same effect as the Proactiv did.  For my other daily face-washing, I still use the Rare Minerals cleanser, as it does not irritate the skin at all.

I’ve noticed that my face is clearing up, just as it did with Proactiv.  I’m beyond pleased so far!

The one downside is the packaging.  Proactiv has easy flip-up caps.  AcneFree’s caps need to be screwed off, and then it takes a bit of effort to squeeze the product out through a rather small hole (at least in the case of the cleanser and the repair lotion).  I used to like to use the Proactiv cleanser in the shower, but this cap makes it more difficult.  So I use the Rare Minerals cleanser in the shower in the AM, as it has a more use-in-shower-friendly cap, and then use the AcneFree at the sink in the PM.  I’m willing to put up with this slight inconvenience, being that AcneFree costs less than half of what Proactiv does (especially when you factor in shipping costs).  As long as the actual product works, I’m happy.

In addition to the lower price, the great thing about AcneFree is that you can buy it at many national chain stores.  Here is a list from their website, surely you have at least one of these stores where you live.  On that same page, you can enter your city/state and/or zip code, to find a store near you.  No hassles over auto-ship, no shipping fees, you just pick some up when you need it.  You’ll never be stuck with so much product at home that you can build furniture out of all those boxes.

AcneFree DOES offer an auto-ship plan.  But I can’t say anything about it one way or another, I don’t know how hard it is to cancel or anything.  It’s something that you can try at your own risk.  But to avoid hassle, I suggest that if you want to try AcneFree, get it at a store first.  That’s the only guarantee that you’ll not be stuck with endless shipments (and credit card charges) that may or may not be easy to stop.

They also make a bigger kit, a Severe Acne formula.  They also had that one at CVS, when I bought mine.  If you are a teenager, or a parent of a teen with severe acne, and nothing else has been working, it might be worth giving this a try, before ordering Proactiv.  The Severe kit has four products in it, and retails at $29.95, which is still cheaper than the standard Proactiv kit.

So, if you’ve been seeing those Proactiv commercials on TV, and have been tempted to give it a try…don’t!  Not until you’ve given AcneFree a try first.  I think that once you do, you’ll be glad you did!

Note: I am not affiliated at all with AcneFree or University Medical.  I purchased this product on my own, for my own use.  I posted this review here to let readers know of what I feel is a good product.  And if it saves even one person from dealing with all of the hassle I had with Guthy-Renker/Proactiv, I’ll have done what I set out to do!

As you may know, our landladies recently replaced our still-perfectly-good stove with a new one.  I did not ask for this, and was given no input as to what type of stove I wanted.  You’d think that after having lived here for something like 15 years now, I would have been asked first.  If I’d had the choice, frankly, I’d have just said that the old one was fine, no need to spend money on a new one.  Seriously, I don’t understand when people forever see the need to replace things that are still in perfect working order.  We’re the sort of people to use things until they die.

This is the stove we got.  If I were the one who was making the purchase, I would have read the reviews first.  For the most part, the reviews are good, but the few bad ones concern me enough, in that they would have made me NOT buy this particular stove.  For one thing, I’m concerned about the computers on the inside going on the fritz, it supposedly is something that would cost $400 to fix.  One person said they had this happen after using the self-clean feature for the first time, and was told by a Sears technician that this is a common problem.  Now I am afraid to use the self-cleaning feature.  I haven’t used it yet, because I’ve only had the stove for a few months, and the oven has not gotten dirty enough yet.

I also don’t like that there seem to be a million restrictions as to what you can and can’t use on it to cook in.  I had heard that cast iron is not recommended; however, I have been using mine anyway, because other people say they have used it on these kinds of cooktops, and have been okay.  You just have to be careful not to drop the heavy iron pan on the glass, or drag it on the surface, lest it get scratched.  So far, no problems.

Look at this, from the owner’s manual (you can click it for bigger, will open in new tab/window):

This is just a small part of the whole book.  It seems that I’m expected to jump through a zillion hoops to keep this cooktop from being scratched or broken.  What a wonderful way to kill my joy in cooking, huh?

Anyhoo, that leads to the stovetop smoker, which I definitely CAN’T use on this stove.  Not only does it break two rules of the cooktop (the bottom is not smooth, it’s ridged, and it’s big enough to overhang even the largest burner), but even Camerons, the manufacturer, warns against this.  This is from the manual from the smoker:

Well, since Camerons makes a big deal out of telling people this, I’d best heed their advice.  So I ordered the single burner hot plate seen above.  It’s mostly so I can use the smoker, but given the fact that this damned cooktop is supposedly so fragile and needs to be treated with kid gloves…it might end up being my ONLY cooktop.  Because if this stove breaks, it’s staying broken until we move out and the landladies opt to fix or replace it for the next tenant, and they can go and suck eggs if they expect US to pay for it.

Either they will blame me for breaking it, and refuse to pay for the repair…or they WILL pay for the repair, but cut corners by hiring one of their regular cast of skeevy workmen, rather than a Sears technician.  And I will NOT have the skeevy workmen in my house, not when I’m here alone (landladies often go out and allow skeevy workmen free reign of the basement and their own unit upstairs).  Even if Mike were here, I still might not want them in here, every single person they hire is a smoker, and none will respect our rule about no smoking in our apartment.  Mike is severely allergic to cigarette smoke.  If he is exposed to it for too long, his entire face puffs up to the point where he can hardly breathe, and then I’d have to call 911.

And I am NOT going to pay Sears to repair it myself, not when I don’t own it.  All the law says is that the landladies must fix the stove if it breaks, nothing about who they have to hire to fix it.  I just don’t like the skeevy workmen; I have seen cleaner, classier looking guys panhandling on the streets of Boston.

Mike is also severely allergic to whatever additives they put in supermarket smoked sausage; this is why I got into sausage making and bought the smoker in the first place.  I also enjoy using it for other things.  Why should I have to give that up, because of someone else’s stupid choice of a stove?

So if the cooktop breaks, I’m keeping quiet about it.  I’ll just use the hot plate, my George Foreman grill and rotisserie, my toaster oven, and my NuWave oven to cook.  I’ll do my best to be careful, but it just makes me nervous all the time, with all the warnings about the alleged fragility of this thing.  If I had my way, I’d never have agreed to this stove.  If we owned our own house, I’d want a gas/propane stove, but that is not possible here.  I’m not a huge fan of the electric coil stoves, but as a frequent cook who gives a stove a good workout, they are the lesser of two evils.  I am convinced now that these glass-top stoves are more for people who hardly ever cook anything, and want something that just sits in the kitchen and looks pretty.

It works just fine, I just don’t like the fact that it is too easy to break it, and very expensive to fix if it does break.  And that doesn’t even include the inner computers inside the thing.

Gack.

The basic gist of the thing is this dude who’s the CEO of Waste Management goes to work as a regular employee; he does things like riding the garbage truck and picking up trash, cleaning nasty old porta-potties, stuff like that.  He learns a lot about what it is like to be a regular worker, and comes away from the experience with a new appreciation for his employees.

If I ruled the world, I would create a similar TV show called “Applebee’s Slaves”.  My show would not only feature top-level executives at the Applebee’s restaurant chain working as cooks and servers in their own restaurants…but they would also  be forced to live on their pay.  For six months.

The fact is that these higher-ups, who do nothing but sit in their ivory offices all day, pressure their store managers to cut costs in any way they can.  This includes forcing employees on the closing shift to work for free.  I am NOT making this up.  I worked as a cook for that hellhole years ago, and they did it to me.  The restaurant closed at midnight, and that’s what time the managers were told to clock us out.  But we were not allowed to go home until the kitchen was cleaned to the manager’s satisfaction.  This could often take as long as two hours, depending on how busy the place was close to closing time.

I was paid ten bucks an hour.  So if I had to close every night, as was usually the case, and worked five nights a week, I was basically cheated out of $100 per week.  Money that we desperately needed.  At the time, Mike was still going to school at MIT, and the only money we had to live on were from my pay and his student loans.  It wasn’t much, that was for sure.  We couldn’t even afford a car at the time…after Mike’s old Ford Bronco II died its final death, we sold it to a junkyard for $75, canceled the insurance, and took the bus.

$100 a week may seem like peanuts to these hoity-toity higher-ups, but for us, it was a lot of money.  These people make millions in salary and bonuses for doing very little hard work; they can afford to buy diamonds, fancy cars, and other expensive toys whenever they want to.  They never have to worry about how they are going to pay their rent and buy food.  They think nothing about taking food out of people’s mouths, in order to be able to afford to pay themselves high salaries.  It is truly sickening.

What they did to me and my co-workers is illegal, but Applebee’s covered it up well enough so that none of us would have any way to prove that we worked until 2AM, while only being paid for no later than 12AM.  I have no idea if they still engage in this practice or not; even if they stopped doing this, I will still never patronize another Applebee’s restaurant ever again.  They stole thousands of dollars in pay from me and my co-workers during the time I was there, they will never get another penny from me.  Ever.

If the people who made these financial decisions were forced to live our lives, on what they paid us, for six months…no dipping into bank accounts or anything…maybe, just MAYBE, they’d understand and change their ways.

I finally had enough, and walked out on my shift one night, after the manager, in his usual cost-cutting ways, cut the entire kitchen staff for the night except me and some new guy who was on his second day, and wasn’t fully trained yet.  They even sent the dishwasher home.

Then it got busy.  Very busy.  The new guy behind the line was almost useless, so I pretty much had to work all three stations.  I was getting yelled at by the manager and servers for not getting all the tickets out within the 15 minute time allotment.  Yes, they had a rule that all food had to be out within 15 minutes of the ticket coming in.  They didn’t care if the kitchen was understaffed or not..dammit, MAKE that food magically appear on the plate!

I was getting very tired of being yelled at over circumstances I had no control over.  It was the manager’s fault for cutting most of the kitchen staff, but did he offer to come behind the line and help me?  Nope, he’s too good for that!

But as I saw more and more dishes piling up at the dishwashing station, I snapped.  I realized that I’d be working until 3, maybe 4AM, doing not just the regular cleaning behind the line, but dishes as well.  For not pay once the clock hit midnight.  I said, screw this, I’m not going to take it any more.  I’m not a slave; I expect to be paid for all of the work I do, especially if I’m doing the jobs of two or three other people in addition to my own.  As the tickets kept coming in, I walked off the line, went into the back room and got my bag and my jacket, and walked right through the crowded dining room toward the door.

The manager chased after me, begged me not to go, promised he would help me if I’d stay.  Where was this offer when I needed it, when I was literally begging for help?  Screw him. let him work the line by himself and see what it’s like!  I turned around, flipped him the bird in front of all of those customers, and walked out the door.

And it felt SO GOOD!

I found another job about a week later.  I simply told the truth as to why I left Crapplebee’s, that I was being overworked and not being paid for some of my time.

This is why I have so much resentment toward overpaid executives who do little work, while they allow the ones who do most of the work to suffer.  This is why I hate companies like AIG, who take OUR tax dollars to get bailed out of a mess that THEY caused, and still hand out hefty bonuses to people who already make plenty.  For once, I want to see these people walk a few miles in our shoes, and see how they like it!

Another issue I was having were tons of unwanted calls from various numbers.  There were two different collection agencies who kept calling us, looking for someone else.  I guess the deadbeat either had this number before we did, or just pulled it out of their ass when they gave it out to the creditor.  In any case, it was getting seriously annoying.  One thing we learned a long time ago is not to argue with these collections people, even if you’re not who they are looking for, and do not owe them the money.  They do not care, once they reach an actual person, they will just try to collect the debt from that person.  I don’t know what the laws are about this sort of thing, but even if there are laws against it, these collection agency franchise places seldom obey laws anyway.

Our old phone did not have a Call Block feature, nor does Verizon offer it around here.  So, when I was shopping for a new phone, this was a must-have feature, I would not buy a new phone that didn’t have it.

When we went to the maul last weekend, I looked at various phones in stores, and I chose this one from Panasonic, model KX-TG6433M (pictured above).  I know I could have gotten it a little cheaper online than I did at Sears, but for one thing, I wanted to see the phones in person, and for another, I didn’t want to wait to have it shipped.  The collection calls have been coming in every other day now, from two different numbers, and I was getting sick of it.  I just wanted to buy a new phone, take it home, hook it up, and get it over with.

I absolutely LOVE this phone!  It is very easy to use and program.  I had the annoying phone numbers stores on the old phone, and it was easy to input them into the Call Block feature of the new one.  Now, when the collections people call again, the phone will ring once, very briefly.  The phone will recognize it as a blocked number, and then the person on the other end gets a busy signal.  It probably won’t stop these people from calling, but it does stop them from leaving messages on the machine.  It does make things much less annoying.  The phone will allow up to 30 undesirable numbers to be blocked…hopefully, I will never have that many, but it’s good to know, anyway.  Please note that in order for the Call Block feature to work on this phone, you need to subscribe to Caller ID from your phone company.  Caller ID is one of the greatest inventions ever, in my opinion, when it comes to keeping people from annoying you on the phone.  This Call Block feature serves very well to enhance that.

Speaking of Caller ID, this phone also has a Talking Caller ID feature.  At first I thought this would be annoying, but it can be turned off if desired.  However, I find that I like it.

I am horribly near-sighted.  If I am sleeping in, and the phone rings, I either have to fumble to find my glasses, and put them on so I can see the Caller ID, or just pick up the handset and bring it within a millimeter of my eyeballs so I can see who’s calling, and decide if I want to be bothered with them or not.  If I’m not asleep, but not right next to the phone, I can hear who’s calling, and not have to trip over cats to get to the phone and see who it is.

I was sleeping in this morning, because I had some insomnia issues for the past couple of nights.  Phone rang at about 9:45 AM.  The robotic voice said, “call from Plimoth Plantation“.  Since they are not annoying, I was able to pick up and talk to them without having to fumble for my glasses.  They just wanted to know what we wanted for the Valentine’s Day dinner that we’re going to there next weekend.  Chicken or beef?  They forgot to ask when I called the other day to make the reservations.  In case you care, I wanted the chicken, I figured that Mike would want the beef.  He wasn’t home for me to ask him, but I know how much he likes dead cow meat.

Even if you shut off the talking Caller ID, the display on the handset is very easy to read, even if your vision is not the best.  Another great feature that the old phone didn’t have, the old one was hard to read.

This phone comes with one base unit, two additional charging cradles, and three handsets.  The base is here on my desk, which is in the living room.  A second one is in the bedroom, and I put the third one in the kitchen, where I didn’t have one before.  The system can be expanded to up to six handsets, not that we’ll ever need that many.  It also comes with a wall-mounting unit that you can use for one of the cradles (which I didn’t opt to use) and a belt clip, which I probably will use for when I go downstairs to do laundry.

Rather than the type of battery that the old one used, this uses rechargeable AAA NiMH batteries, which can be found in nearly every store these days.  I like that a lot, too.

So, if you are still using a landline, and are in the market for a new phone, definitely check this one out!  I love mine!