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First Trip to Ikea
I browsed around an Ikea store for the first time and it was pretty cool. They’re known for having the cheap furniture you put together, but the furniture is all Scandinavian-style, hip, urban stuff.
Sure a dresser from Ikea might only be $200, but unless you’re climbing on top of the stuff I think it’ll last a while. I’ve pretty much limited myself to cheap furniture for the past twenty years and it’s lasted fine.
Keep in mind the sofas and padded chairs will kill you slowly with cancer, but their dressers, bed frames, and bookshelves should be safe. What? You don’t know about the killer furnishings sold by national chains? Here’s the quick run down and you can read more about it elsewhere: California requires pillows, mattresses, foam padding etc to be treated with an anti-burn chemical that apparently causes cancer. Certainly the fumes/smoke is toxic when it is burned but dust that comes from it is also pretty nasty. Big chains like JC Penny and Ikea that sell nation-wide use this chemical outside of California just for convenience.
You can find out pretty easily if the furniture has been treated with the flame-retardant. Look at the label for an indication that the material complies with California technical bulletin 117 (TB 117).
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OLG Casinos are Smoke Free
OLG Casino in Thunder Bay
djhsilver (Flickr)Joan and I stopped in our first OLG casino in Saulte Ste Marie after crossing into Ontario. I enjoy playing video poker from time to time and we figured the ATM there would be a good spot to pick up some Canadian dollars. We were pleasantly surprised that the entire casino was smoke-free. It was great and much more enjoyable walking around. Some of the casinos in the states have a “smoke-free” section but the smell is still there and they generally don’t have many options for gaming.
I was chatting with one of the employees to find out who owned the casino. I didn’t know if it was like in the states where casinos were allowed in some sections of the country. The employee explained that it was government run. Interesting…kind of like a large-scale version of the video lottery machines you find in some restaurants and bars.
A couple of days later I read a poll in one of the local papers that really seemed to indicate that gambling is not well received by a lot of Canadians. I found a little more evidence of this while finding the photo above. There were four OLG casino photos on Flickr with creative commons license and two of the four (including this one) came with some comments that indicate that the casinos are not respected.
The night before leaving Ontario we stayed at the Prince Arthur hotel in Thunder Bay, which was just a couple blocks away from the OLG casino pictured above. Our one-night stay in the hotel came with a couple of $10 vouchers for games at the casino so we headed over after dinner. Signing up at the casino got us an additional $10 so we had $30 of money to play with. After a bit of video poker and video blackjack, we left the casino with $21. This along with the $15 voucher for breakfast in in the hotel restaurant made for a nice discount.
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