My favorite things: Gadgets

This is a continuation of "my favorite things series." For this one Andy and I both put our heads together and thought of the most used gadgets around the house.

1. iRobot Roomba 560 Series

• What it is: This is our daily vacuum, with just the push of a button (or not, see below) it will vacuum the whole living room.
• Why we love it: Hello! It's a vacuum that runs by itself! It's seriously amazingly fun just to watch but it does a great job at picking up animal hair. Bonus is that I can program it to run at a certain time of the day for each day of the week. Example: Monday schedule to run at 10AM, Tuesday to run at 9AM.

2. HoMedics SoundSpa Premier AM/FM Clock Radio

• What it is: It is an alarm clock with a built it sound machine.
• Why we love it: I have such issues with sleep. I grew up down the street from train tracks so I am use to falling asleep with a lot of noise. Before we got this alarm clock we would have to sleep with a heater or fan on all night just so I could fall asleep. Andy wasn't exactly thrilled with that scenario. Now I just push a button and fall asleep to my choice of sound. It's marvelous.

3.  Nintendo Wii

• What it is: I'm going out on a limb here and assume you don't live under a rock and you know what a Wii is.
• Why we love it: It's one of our favorite things to do together and a great way to pass the time. We have used it quite a few times when we have had people over as well.  Plus it doubles as a work out system for me!

4. HTC Evo (My phone) iPhone 3g (Andy's Phone)

• What they are: Our main means of communication with the outside world.
• Why we love them: Our phones are crazy awesome. Navigation, social networking, web, and of course the actual phones. These get the most use our of any gadget in our house. 

5. Califone 1005 Record Player with built in speaker for Education and Instruction

• What it is: Does anyone remember those large, black, circular disks with grooves (call records) that when a needle glides over the surface it plays music? Yeah, this thing plays those.
• Why we love it: This is more Andy's thing so I'm turning over to him. ... You really can't get much better than vinyl when it comes to music. The scratchiness adds a whole new level to the music. Elvis knew it; that's why his music sounded so much better on Sun than RCA. But anyhow, I love the vinyl, and this record player is REALLY good quality. Guess that's what you get for it being specifically for speech and auditory therapy. 

So there you have it, the most used gadgets in the SalTal household. More favorite things to come in the future. See you again tomorrow...I hope!