36 INCH MICROWAVE VENT HOOD

omg i am so excited... i have found the ULTIMATE... WATER... BOTTLE!!!!! (the purple one on the left). For the last 10 years I have been on a quest to find THE BEST water bottle and I have finally found it (well... until I find one that actually cleans and fills itself!)

Just 2 days ago i was at evil walmart looking for a second water bottle (like the light green one in photo) because they are the only company that makes a water bottle i can deal with (mostly because it doesn't leak). unfortunately, the only ones they had in stock were red, and i'd heard you're not supposed to drink out of red plastic : (. so i talked to the manager and he said they should have different colors if i came back on tuesday. i planned to come back later in the week, even though it's a pain in the ass for me to get to walmart (the only reason i went in is because it was close to robbie's soccer game). Just a note here... how it is that the only peninsula location for WALMART is at the Los Altos / Palo Alto border (2 of the richest towns on the peninsula) is beyond me!!!

anyway... the reason(s) i wanted to get that kind is because it was easy to drink out of, sturdy, and BPA free. I did have another bottle before that (an eddie bauer one), which i really liked a lot (see dark green bottle), but it had two MAJOR design flaws. it leaked if it tilted over, and it made this awful slurpslurpslurpslurpslurp sound when you drank out of it. like, it took forever for the liquid to come out. but i still loved it because it was bpa free, sturdy, held a lot of liquid, had a rubber grip on the side, AND you could fit it in a cup holder (the latter two which did not apply to the walmart one)...

But the not-fitting in a cup holder thing was the lesser of two evils... It got to the point where I just couldn't deal w/a leaking water bottle anymore!!! i suspect it ruined my cell phone and a few other things in my purse on different occasions. Many people had bitched about that particular type online (the fact that it leaked) but dammit... it was hard to ditch (i kept putting it in my purse thinking, it won't tip over THIS time... yeah right). Overall it was a really good, sturdy bottle. At the TIME it seemed easy to drink out of... in the same way "dial-up" internet didn't SEEM slow, till you got broadband. Also, it didn't break when I dropped it on the floor (i'm kind of a klutz so this has happened a few times) and i really like the fact that you can grab the handle it with your pinky on your way out the door. As much as I hated the leaking and slurping / slow-to-suck-the-liquid out issues, i liked it enough so I actually spent an hour looking for another one online, but eddie bauer discontinued them (i guess because of the leaking issue) and I couldn't find a single one on ebay.

i've tried other bottles over the last few years (that you can see in this pic). i used to drink out of crystal geyser bottles with the sport cap (LOVED those) till i found out that type of bottle is dangerous to re-use. they weren'r really very easy to wash, either. And after a while they got so crunched and crushed and old looking, I'd be getting funny looks from friends, like, you're actually DRINKING out of that thing?? On another occasion i bought a blue "Bali sport" bottle (holds a ton of liquid but can't say much else about it) and a somewhat pricey purple "camelbak" bottle (it doesn't hold as much as the eddie bauer ones, and i could never get used to the fact that you are supposed to "bite" on the plastic mouthpiece to make the liquid come out... as you can see i took it off but i still didn't like it). there's also this other cheapy (but large and bpa-free), clear-ish, light-blue-ish bottle i got from walgreens that had a sports cap i really liked, but the damn thing broke when i dropped it on the ground by accident!!! : /

as you can see... this has been a major quest of mine to find the ultimate water bottle.

anyway - i was at big lots today (just went in there to get plain white envelopes - which they didn't even have) and lo and behold... they had a whole shelf of these water bottles (see purple one on left) that looked JUST like the eddie bauer one, and it looked like they fixed the design flaws (there was this little rubber piece that looked like it was added to stop the leaking). i was so anxious to test it out that when i went to costco (next) i actually rinsed it out in the sink at the bathroom and tried it out - and it works PERFECTLY!!! no leaking when i shook it, and no slurpslurpslurp!!! the liquid came out very quickly. and i am SO excited about being able to put it in a cup holder again! woohoo!

i am going back tomorrow to get a bunch of these. they were just $4.50!! totally worth it. in my opinion, a really good water bottle is priceless because i will drink WAY more water when i really like the bottle i am drinking out of. i tend to get really dehydrated, very easily, so i have

26 oz Aluminium Bottle - BPA Free Lining
Twist-Off Cap With Larger Finger Loop Thumb Rest And Carabiner
Second Side Or Wrap Imprint Available At No Additional Charge
Great For Ice Cubes, Free Assembly, Recyclable
Product Size: 10- 1/2"H x 2- 3/4" Diameter / 9"