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I have visited many Applebees all over the US and Canada. I have liked them quite a bit in the past. This time on my birthday we decided to go to the Applebees on Country Hills Blv., the only one in Calgary.
We were there around 3pm on a thursday afternoon, and so needless to say, found parking right in front of the door. We were grateful for this as we were bringing in a baby in a stroller.
Once inside the greeting staff, seemed a bit lost and confused, they didnt know where to put us with a stroller and all, and so for 5-7 minutes we stood at the front as the girl frantically ran around cleanign tables and muttering inaudible stuff we couldnt understand. Finally, she took us to the back, and we realized she was looking to put us in a quiet spot with lots of space. Good for her!
The wait staff, and server were very friendly, very curteous and very caring of the fact that we were here with a baby, they even split our food, which we were sharing into two plates, so it would be easy for us to each eat our meal without having to reach over, all this with a baby.
The bathroom was quite clean and the change table functioned well and was clean.
The only complain I have is with the food, it was barely palatable, and the quality has gone down lots since I have last visited an Applebees. The Nacho’s nuevo were quite good however.
All in all, even though this restaurant has been attached to a family tradition (my husband and I allways went to an Applebees for a meal when we rented a car, yep we have rented quite a few cars :D), I must say I will pass on this restaurant in the future. Either we will need to stop renting cars, or look for a different place to fulfill our family tradition.
Written by Smriti on November 3rd, 2008 with no comments.
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I visited the Blenz coffee house on Bernard Street in Kelowna this past week. I have been to this cafe a few times before and have really liked it. I have found it to be a good alternative to the Starbucks one block up on the same street. Although its a franchise, and I would anyday prefer to visit a locally owend cafe rather than a franchise, I find this particular coffee shop a good choice. Firstly, it is a Canadian company (Go Canuks!), and secondly its new and doesnt have the crazy hype that Starbucks has associated to its name.
So this particular visit, I happened to go there with a baby in a large stroller, and 4 other persons, one of whom was in a wheel chair. Despite our crowd, we found a perfect spot in the coffee shop where we could all sit together and have a pleasant time. There was lots of space for the wheelchair as well as the baby stroller, and we managed to find chairs to pull up to the two leather armchairs.
The only few drawbacks are, this place didnt have a baby change station so I had to get help and change my baby on the sink in the bathroom, not very convenient or hygenic, and secondly the drinks, although very tastely are very pricey, pretty much comparable to Starbucks.
But if you are willing to pay a good price for a drink, dont have a baby to change and are looking for a nice ambience, I would recommend you visit Blenz coffee house.
Written by Smriti on November 3rd, 2008 with no comments.
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The KFC in Southcentre mall is based in the foodcourt but a bit away from most restaurants. When I got to KFC at lunchtime on Thursday it was not very busy there was just one lady infront of me so my order was taken quickly.
I orderd a classic combo that has a chickenburger and fries and drink. The fries where put on my tray right away while the burger still needed to be cooked. To me it would have bin better if the fries could have stayed a bit warmer instead of cooling down on my tray.
The Chicken burger was not bad taste wise but less vegtable mix could have bin nice now i needed to peal a lot of the vegtable mayo combo of because the pack was just to much for this one little burger.
My conclusion. I don’t know what will be on my food list next time I visit Southcentre mall maybe I will try a different place for lunch. But KFC was not to bad so it will keep being an option.
Written by George on November 1st, 2008 with no comments.
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The Mermaid of banff. When I got this book I was interested by the title and based on the cover I thought it was a kids book. You can’t be to picky at a garage sale so I got it.
It is not a kids book and the Mermaid of Banff is only a tiny part of this book.
Jan Mark writes in this book about a coast to coast trip she makes in Canada she skips a big part in the middle and the whole top of Canada but besides that she writes about Canada. For me not originally from Canada I have to say I learned a lot from this book it told me a lot about the history of the country. It also told me about places in Canada I didn’t visit yet but now are on my to visit list.
The Mermaid of Banff is a great book to read it reads easy and quickly and keeps you busy. Try to find a copy and if you can’t find one you can write me I am willing to sell my for what i payed for it.
Written by George on October 27th, 2008 with 1 comment.
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The A&W in Sunridge Mall is the first restaurant in the food court but not to many people seem to be eating A&W on the day that I visited this A&W lines to other food places are long but at A&W I got helped right away.
Today it is a Mama burger meal and that also shows up really quickly. I look for a nice place to sit and start with some of my fries with some of the ketchup (they gave me two little bags). The fries are not that great, and the reason is simple they didn’t get cooked long enough so they are kinda raw and raw fries are never a great to eat.
The burger is good with the toppings it should have and nice and warm.
So what will I do next time. yeah after the KFC experince in this same Mall A&W is definitly a step up but still not like any A&W you can get in a normal restaurant.
Written by George on October 26th, 2008 with no comments.
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After reading the cover of this book I got intrigued by the idea to read about one day as a Sweet Shop owner and decided to give it a go. And let me tell you this after reading the cover I got kinda disappointed.
The book is not really about just one day but more about his whole life from starting the store, his wedding, the war, his kid and so on.
But it is an intriguing book that even after I put it away lots of times always pulled me back and I even finished it without getting the real punchline of the book.
So is The Sweet-Shop Owner a good book? I don’t think so but it offers some nice parts that make up for the many bad once. I would not recommend the book but when you are low on books to read then just give it a go and let me know what you though of it.
Written by George on October 16th, 2008 with no comments.
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I recently had a baby and needed to use a breast pump to collect milk for my newborn child. I wanted to use a product that was BPA free, and found that Medela is the only company on the market that gaurantees that every plastic part of their breast pump that comes in contact with milk is BPA free. Since this was the product the hospitals used as well, I decided to investigate. The Medela breast pump comes in various prices, sizes and capacities. The one the hospital gives to use, and recommends is a 2000$ electronic pump, the Medela Symphony. This can be rented at any drugstore in Calgary for 3-5$/day, or 75-100$/month, depending on where you go. Super drug mart is the cheapest and Kendall pharmacy and Shoppers drug Mart the most expensive. Once you rent this pump, you also need to buy tubing, the membrane, and breast mold, costing about 50$. If you use this pump in the hospital, perhaps you can take the parts you used from there.
The other options are these- Some people prefer to buy an electronic lower grade Medela pump for about 400$ new, or 200$ used on e-bay or such. I would suggest renting, unless you plan to use this pump for more than a month. I didnt need to.
Infact, I bought a 67$ manual Medela Harmony breast pump, which comes with two BPA free plastic milk bottles, the breast mold and handheld pump, with a nice book on instructions and tips to breastfeedind and proper storage of breast milk. The only problem was, if you push on the moldable breast mold instead of the hard plastic clamps it comes with the mold very quickly warps and doesnt make a proper suction around the breast anymore. I returned mine for a new product (even though they clearly state they will not return this product once opened, if it is defective or breaks right away they will excahnge it at Toys-r-us). I have since been using the manual hand pump, I pump about twice a day and this product works fine for me. I have noticed that the manual pump can be attached to an electronic motorized attachment which was about 125$ at Toys-r-us.
I would highly recommend the hand held manual Medela breast pump for occasional use, if pumping more than 3 times a day, I recommend the electronic breast pump from Medela.
Written by Smriti on October 5th, 2008 with no comments.
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Upon recently having a baby, I got a gift certificate to this baby store in Calgary. I had visited their Market Mall outlet and was quite happy with the environmentally conscience products they carry. Since i live closer to the Crowfoot branch, I decided to go there. I need to find washable or flushable diapers for my new baby, she was only 6lb at the time. Well, once I was in the store, the two nice ladies whom were helping other customers didnt bother to greet me, or even look at me. I browed around for 2-3 minutes, when I noticed that both the sales women were now free, and simply chatting and complaining to each other. I made eye contact with one, and she was polite enough to ask me if I needed help. I said yes, I needed this particular product. The girl promptly said, well, the only thing we have is for babies over 8lb, and turned around to go. I stopped her and asked if they had any slow flow nipples that would fit a Medela feeding bottle, to which she said they had no slow flow nipples and I should probably go to Shoppers Drug mart and look for them there. I asked her if she had any other product that could help me, and she said no they didnt. So I said thanks and decided to look around anyways. In the meantime, I noticed a frantic dad had come in, he asked the other sales girl if they had any pacifiers for a newborn (which I know that they do have). The sales girl promptly said no they didnt and that he should go to Shoppers Drug Mart or TOys-r-Us and look there.
In my browsing, I found a Green to Grow BPA free feeding bottle with slow flow nipples that I liked, and a separate package of slow flow nipples (I guess its not in the sales girl’s job description to recommend a product to a customer!). I brought my items to the front desk, where the two women were sitting and again complaining about something or someone. I asked how many nipples were in the package i was holding, the girl looked at it, and didnt know, so she asked the other girl, and she didn’t know either. SO they simply looked at me and said, that they didnt know. Anyways, I decided to get the items, my baby needed slow flowing nipples and bottles. So I pulled out my gift certificate to pay. The girl looked at it as if it was some kind of alien, then showed it to the other girl, and she said well, we dont take those, when I protested saying that it was a gift for 200$ from Bo bebe, she said, well its from the Market Mall location, you need to go there to spend it. I thought that was ridiculous so I told her so, so she said, ok they would take it, if I would spend the entire 200$ at that moment! I thought that was simply dumb and decided to leave without my items. In the meantime the first sales girl had rung my items through and said that I owed 35$, I said I wasnt going to buy anything, when she looked surprised that I didnt want to pay cash for my items, and irritated that she would now have to void the sale.
I wonder where in the world BoBebe hired these two idiots, they have obviously never ever even seen a child forget having or caring for one. I think stores like these should be more cognizant of whom they hire, and yes, they were also only interested in those customers whom were dressed posh and looked like they would spend a lot of money, talk about discrimination. I am NEVER going back here. Infact I went to the market mall store, and they were more than helpful, curteous and patient with new mothers and babies, not only looking out to make a buck.
Written by Smriti on October 5th, 2008 with 15 comments.
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After spending some time in the Sunridge Mall in the North East of Calgary it was time for lunch. The food court in Sunridge Mall offers all kind of foods but my choice was KFC.
At lunch time it gets pretty busy at the KFC in the mall and that meant that there are a few people waiting to get their food. When my turn to order comes up I order a Clasic combo and that is served pretty quickly even before most other people waiting.
They give you a paper cup for you drink and then you can just fill it yourself at the pop machine on the side of KFC my choice is Pepsi and the first Pepsi dispencer that i try gives me something that doesn’t even look like cola at all. So my second try is the Pepsi on the other side of the machine and I am in luck there is Pepsi comeing out at that side.
The food is OK it is nothing great but it feeds the stomach.
For me next time it will be something else at this food court. There is not much they can do wrong with deep fried chicken but still it the taste is not like I am used to from a chicken burger.
Written by George on October 2nd, 2008 with 1 comment.
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Who doesn’t like the idea of free phonecalls right any body does so when I found out about the MagicJack I was more then just interested.
Let me explain for less the 40 dollars you buy the start kit that gives you a year long free calls in the USA and Canada after a year it will cost you less then 20 dollars to renew for another year. The starting kit contains a USB box with a place to hook up a normal telephone. When you now put the MagicJack in your USB port of a PC or Mac then the MagicJack will start a program and you are ready to start calling like you normally do.
Yes it is easy and they even give you a free phone nr so that people can call you on the MagicJack to. I my case this prevented me from getting a home phone line and for the last 4 months I am using MagicJack and it works fine for me.
But I use it a bit different to next to normal calls I also use it to make and electronic ordering system make calls to our computer system and that doesn’t allways work but after a couple of retries i normally get it working. And by the way MagicJack states on there website that fax and modem traffic will not work so I didn’t expect it to work.
In those 4 months of using MagicJack only 1 mayor problem came up and that was that a phone nr that I use on a daily basis didn’t work any more. So then you need to try to contact MagicJack they don’t have a phone support what is a bit strange for a phone company. But they offer websupport chats.
The Chat person was very well informed about how things work and pinpointed my problem and was able to get it fixed over night. OK this kind of support is not ideal but I guess that is where they save on money and if the help the offer is good then why complain about it.
Then there is international calling. You can buy international calling credit and with that you can call to other countries then Canada or the USA. I use it to call Europe and then ends up to be 2 cents a minute. In the beginning calling international worked great. But then they changed there longdistance provider and now the call quality is bad sometimes and that means that recalling needs to be done on a regular basis.
So what did it think of MagicJack so far.
I like MagicJack a lot it is cheap and it works for my phone needs the biggest disadvantage is that you need to turn you computer on to make a phonecall.
The Tech support is good to although phone support would be nicer.
For now MagicJack is the way to go for me it works easier then skype or other voip systems because you can just use a normal phone to call your friends.
Way to go MagicJack
Written by George on September 30th, 2008 with no comments.
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