I wanted to shake up my life and go sailing (or learn on the job, so-to-speak) so headed to Florida to crew on a catamaran. This is about how it went or, rather, didn't - and my life since. Hopefully it will lead to a catamaran on the clear aqua blue waters of the Caribbean Sea, watching the sunset, a coconut rum and coke in hand. You must START AT THE BEGINNING of the blog, April 2009, to get the whole story...

Saturday, March 5, 2011

KINDLE SURPRISE

I get my KINDLE today!!!

It takes over an hour to get through the border, snaking very slowly up a steep hill. My old jeep doesn't like it much; by the last ten minutes it is blowing a lot of blue smoke. I keep turning it off to save gas as I have an almost empty tank - gas in the lower mainland is now at the unbelievable price of $1.30 a liter and yet still .99 just over the line so I want to fill up once I cross. I do as soon as I am over the border and I figure that I save $18.60 on gas alone. I save another $20 on two bottles of wine from the one grocery store in Point Roberts.

I pick up my Kindle and its lovely pink case (a great deal at $15.99), along with another package (more on that in a later blog), at The Letter Carrier - a great service for those of us who live in Canada and want to purchase online from sellers who, for some mysterious reason, won't deliver to a Canadian address OR want to tack on another $20+ to ship it.














I head over to a little cafe, the same one I went to two weeks ago when I picked up my underwater camera case. They have free wifi and lots of plug outlets. I order a shrimp sandwich and sparkling mineral water and plug in the Kindle to charge it up. It immediately knows it is MY Kindle - if you buy it from Amazon and have an account with them, then it comes registered already. A page automatically loads, welcoming me personally to the Kindle world and then loads a set of instructions. Reading through them, I find out how to turn on the wifi option and, once I do, SURPRISE!! - it begins to download all of the books I have purchased in the past two weeks on Amazon in anticipation of owning this great little device, and all without me having to do a thing. I am loving this gadget more by the minute.

I find reading on it a little awkward at first; I keep inadvertently pressing the page forward button - there is one on the left and the right and I am not sure which one it is I keep hitting but I soon get into the habit of placing my hands just below them (it mostly happens when I am typing on the tiny keyboard). As I read, each page loads very quickly and before long it feels just like reading a book. I have put off buying one of these because, avid reader that I am and being a very tactile person, I love the feel of a real book in my hands and turning the pages. But the dilemma of having enough reading material for a six week beach vacation pushed me into finally buying one. And you know, I don't think I am going to miss holding up a heavy book while lying on the sand as much as I thought I would.

I have Stephen King's Under The Dome on it. Try holding that aloft for a few hours.


****Apparently a friend tried to leave a comment and wasn't able to. If you are trying to leave a comment on any of these posts and can't, please contact me to let me know at useforsitesonly@gmail.com THANKS!****

Her comment was that she went and bought wine in Pt Roberts a few years ago and brought it back the same day and had to pay duty and taxes and wanted to know if I hadn't declared mine. I did declare everything, it was all laying on the seat beside me in plain view. I think with the free trade agreement that we now have, the border guards let much more through than they used to.
All photographs are mine and not to be copied without express permission from me (click on them to see the large version).
Some names have been changed to protect my butt.



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Amazon Store

Here's my Amazon Store called Sandra's Selections, full of my favourite things and constantly updating it as I discover more fav's. It's more for fun than anything as I've never made a cent off of it.