Cookies are Definitely Involved

Hello my friends.  I'm sorry I've been gone for so long.  Things have been especially hectic at work and my elbows have been especially sensitive which makes me not so writey.

It's tax time which means I have a new obsession...what to do with my refund.  This year I stand to get a decent chunk of change since it's my year to claim The Boy (The Ex gets him every 2nd year).  Sure, the smart thing to do would be to send 100% of my refund to my friends at US Bank, but honestly they pretty much own me now and the amount of this refund wouldn't buy back my little finger. 

So I'm thinking a compromise is in order, maybe 60% to the bank and 40% to me, to buy some gadgets that I've been admiring. 

First, ther's this little gem:



It's called a Bodybugg and I've been lusting after it for a couple of years now.  As much as I obsess about my caloric intake from food/output from exercise you'd think I'd be thin but sadly this is not the case.  I'm SUCH a numbers geek, seriously I've been known to keep elaborate spreadsheets and charts on net calories compared to the weight loss result.   This doodad promises to take the guesswork out of it.  It's supposed to work with my phone to tell me one of the following two things

I hope that cookie was good because you now have to spend three hours on the dreadmill to work it off!
or
Good girl, nice workout, now you may have a cookie. 

I'm paraphrasing, of course, but cookies are definitely involved.

The next gadget I've been obsessively researching considering is this:



It's the Neato XV-11, AKA "The Roomba Killer".  Of course I don't actually want to kill my Roomba, as I stated here it's one of my favorite things, but it could be so much better, and the Neato seems to have a lot of the features that Roomba lacks.  So I'd like to get one of these for downstairs (doghair central) and put Roomba upstairs where the dogs don't go and less debris is tracked.  Think of upstairs is sort of like Boca Raton for Roombas.

And, the third thing I really want to get is:



It's a Scooba 230.  It mops!  I had a Scooba 330 a few years ago and it did a decent job, but it was big, bulky, heavy, hard to clean and not very durable.  The 230 appears to have solved the first four issues, the durability issue will remain to be seen.

Sadly this new version isn't available yet....the website says "Soon"...rumor is it will come out in the spring. 

These three items combined will be roughly 1/3 of my tax refund.  They are individually extravagent and combined they're nearly obsecene but they will make my house cleaner and my body leaner and doesn't that mean something?

The first person who points out that I would be leaner if I incorporated mopping and vacuuming into my daily routine to burn calories gets their very own voodoo doll modeled after them.

Besides....how would I know how many calories I burned?  I rest my case.

Today's lunch:  Amy's Pesto Tortelini.  Yummy yumm yum.