A Few Things That Came In

I've had a few things come in the mail lately that I thought I'd show you.

First, a few Bruins things, a shirt and water bottle and a rally towel that they threw in:

That's a new shirt (and please god they don't get eliminated tonight, tainting my feelings toward this shirt*), with the nicknames of all the players on the front, and this on the back.

*If they do, I will have to try to reframe it in my head as commemorating the excellent overall season--but that will be hard. Please, please, please win tonight.

If you're curious about the water bottle, because I know I'm interested in such details, I'll say that first off, I was confident in its quality because it's a Tervis, and they do solid work. 

• This one is vacuum insulated, which should mean water stays colder longer, and the bottle doesn't get condensation on the outside. We have a lot of Tervis tumblers and they are good, but in the heat and humidity of Florida, ice melts pretty fast, and they do get slippery on the outside.
• The carrying handle on the top is also very helpful. It's wide enough for three fingers, which spreads the weight to carry it, much better than the single-finger kind (again, arthritis in my hands).
• The surface of the bottle is slightly textured, which I like because it's not at all slippery to hold, and the base has a rubber layer, so there's no clinking when I put it down. (You may laugh, but that does bug me.)

The top works well for my hands, which is important to me, considering that I got rid of my Corkcicle water bottles, which I had bought in various sizes, because once you put ice and water in, it sort of vacuum-sealed the top, and I had an awful time getting them open again.

With this one, you unscrew the top bit:

And then the top opens easily and snaps in place out of the way, revealing the drinking spout. And the spout isn't metal, which is good as I don't like drinking from those.

The whole top also unscrews, for easier filling. It doesn't quite work with my ice maker, because the ice comes out of that in a slightly wider space, but filling a glass with ice and then pouring the ice in the bottle works fine (and again, easier than the Corkcicle was [which I'm not trying to run down, just explaining why it didn't work as well for me, despite its great insulating properties]).

Now I suppose you would like to know how it does with keeping ice cold (and do note, it's not for hot drinks, and it doesn't go in the dishwasher either, though I doubt it would fit in any case). It arrived midday Friday, and I filled it with ice and water. When I drank the water that night, it was very cold, but there were only a few small bits of ice floating to the top, and I thought it had all melted. It was only on Saturday morning that I looked inside and saw a block of fused-together ice cubes that probably filled it two-thirds of the way up! All day Saturday I put more water in, and drank it, and only by late Saturday night did all the ice finally melt, wow!

The only flaw to it, and it's totally my fault, is that I didn't actually realize how big a 40-ounce bottle is. Duh, ccr! The thing is big! And thus heavy when filled (edited to add: 1.32 pounds, according to Tervis). Can't blame them for that. (I already ordered a 24-ounce one, which is 1.05 pounds.) Still, very, very happy with it overall.

A completely unrelated purchase was a project bag from Stitched by Jessalu, her April limited edition. I'm a little cautious of buying sight unseen, but her bags are always good quality, and when she said "lilacs" I couldn't resist.

Tulip shipping bag! Very pretty.

Nicely packaged, and with some (safely wrapped) candy thrown in (I'm noting that because once I got something where the person had thrown in a few Hershey Kisses, and good luck getting the chocolate off the fabric, there).

I do love it!

Because look how pretty!

Pretty inside, too.

No buyer's remorse with that one, happily.

Have you had any fun things come in lately?