I am not ready to let Madison (my 4 year old) use a real fishing pole yet. Right now, I envision many hospital trips if she had one. However, we have several magnetic fishing pole sets, and they are awesome. Basically, she goes fishing in my living room almost on a daily basis. She spends several hours catching her fish and then throwing them out back on the floor. Will (my one year old) likes to get involved in the game too. He either plays with the fish or tries to pretend to be the fish and grab the end of the string. The ball pit we have is a boat so it ties in quite nicely. The only thing we are missing is one of those gps tracking devices for fish. I really need to get a picture of her sitting in that boat with her pole. It is super cute.

I highly recommend a magnetic pole until you are comfortable that your children won’t cause serious damage with a real one. I don’t think Madison is ready this summer either for a real one. However, she is completely happy with the magnetic fishing poles and we’ll keep her using those until she is ready.

I am a person who never ever knows where she is. I do not have the internal sense of direction that everyone else seems to have. My guy instinct is usually not the right away. I have this problem here in Chicago (which I have an excuse since I did not grow up here), but I am still just as lost in Green Bay, Wisconsin (where I did grow up). When we were on vacation in Arizona, I had no idea whatsoever where we were. We drove up and down the main drag there several times, and I could never tell you which direction our hotel was. I swear, Bill wants to pull his hair out at times due to my inability to locate where I am. That is why I personally love GPS units. We have our own personal portable one (and yes, we did bring it to Arizona with us).

However, I use to work at Schneider National when I lived in Green Bay. They had a GPS tracking system (not sure if was the GPS Insight vehicle tracking system or not) that they used. The GPS devices were attached to all the cabs of the trucks we had. At all times, we knew where each one of the semis were. We also were able to track to make sure they were taking their breaks when they were suppose to and they were going the speed limit (and we had a rule that they couldn’t go over 55 mph. It was pretty easy to determine when they were over that internal speed limit that Schneider has set). I know when I left, they were looking at possibly outfitting all of the trailers also. That was going to be a tad bigger feat, since we had trailers all over the country. However, they didn’t even know where all their trailers even were!

This is just one of many uses for using GPS Insight. It costs around $1.50 - $2 per day per vehicle, but you can see what your employees are really doing. I can definitely see this being used in not only the trucking industry, but also in sales, the trades (like HVAC, plumbing, etc) , delivery vehicles, etc. The best part is that almost anyone can install this on their own on their vehicles. They also have GPS Insight support wiki for customers and a Blog for GPS vehicle tracking too. They make it easy for the customer to install, customize, and get help for any issues that may come up. For the business minded person, this is definitely something you should take a look at for your company.

If you are like me and have no sense of a direction, then you definitely need to think about getting a portable GPS unit. I know this was one of the best purchases we have ever made. A GPS unit can get you from your house to Winter Park real estate to Disneyland. Now, depending on what you want to spend determines the features you get. We have a more low end one, so it just tells us to turn in 800 ft. If you buy a more expensive one, it will tell you to turn on Morris Avenue in 800 feet instead. The screens also get bigger the more you pay. For someone who is not sure of what their needs are, I would definitely start with the cheaper ones and go from there. I now know what I want in our next one.

The only thing that drives me a little nuts is when it tells you to turn on a nonexistent street. However, I do love that if you don’t listen to its directions it will reconfigure the route and still get you where you are going. Bill, who has a sense of direction, uses this for work a lot. It tells him the number of miles and how long it will take to get there.

If you don’t have a GPS unit, what are you waiting for?

Idiocracy is one of those movies that you don’t intend on watching but you get sucked into it (trust me, I’ve seen it 3 times now and none where on purpose). The basic premise of this movie is that Luke Wilson becomes part of a government experiment and wakes up to find himself 500 years in the future. What he finds is truly sad. He instantly goes from average Joe to the smartest man in the world! The people in the future no longer think for themselves and buy into pretty much anything you tell them. You could easily tell them land for sale Branson, and they would be wanting to buy that, Hollywood, and the Golden Gate Bridge from you! It was a sad state. The movie is actually quite humorous, and it is scary that, at times, you can actually see some of this happening in our society now. People buy into commercialism and don’t bother doing research on a product. They just take the company’s word for it (Watch the scene in the movie about actually using water to get crops to grow). Heck, last election cycle worked like that too, didn’t it? Overall, this isn’t a movie that would make it to my top ten movies. However, it is a great Sunday afternoon flick to watch that doesn’t require a lot of thinking, and you definitely get some good laughs.

The one gift that I thought I would never want, because we would never use it is our George Foreman Grill. Honestly, I never dreamt in a million years that we would use it as much as we do!  It makes dinner so much easier and healthier.  I love that you can see the fat draining off your food.  However, your food remains just as tasty if not more so.  We often season our steaks and burgers right on the grill.  It doesn’t heat up your entire house, and cleanup is a breeze.  All you have to do is take a wet cloth to it.  We have made things like hot dogs, brats, steaks, chicken breasts, and hamburgers on there.  I even know people who have done bacon!  This is a must have in everyone’s kitchens!