suction

we went to get a new vacuum this afternoon. i'd looked at godfrey's website and picked out a $179 vacuum and possible $50 attachment piece. we walked in and i told the guy which vacuum we wanted and he went to get it down so we could do a test run. just before he grabbed it he asked how big our house was. i told him and he said that the motor was not powerful enough and it wouldn't last us more than a month or so with the amount of space we have. he pointed behind us to another vacuum and said this is the low end of the range of what we needed ($299). we just looked at each other thinking he's just trying to get us to buy the more expensive vacuum. he started pointing out all the feature like "its so tough you can stand right on top of it" (which he did and i was thinking "when would you ever stand on top of your vacuum???") and "the sides are made of [i can't remember] and therefore will not scratch" (who cares if your vacuum has some scratches on it-- it lives in the closet except when no one is around but the person using it). then he asked if we wanted to see how much suction it had and did this:

we were sold. its not that light a little beast and if it can hold itself up in the air its gotta have some decent suction to it (we also tested it out sucking up ground in pet hair on the carpet-- i think they shaved persian cat to get the fur-- and rice on a hardwood floor--you don't even need to do anything to the attachment moving between carpet and hard floor). we decided since we were going to get the expensive vacuum that we wouldn't get the $50 attachment piece. as the sales guy was ringing up our sale he asked if we'd take the attachment if he dropped it down to $40 (he'd showed us a demo of how it works and its pretty cool). we decided to go for it. its such a cool attachment. it basically sucks almost all the dirt into this clear plastic barrel that attaches onto the hose so the vacuum bag is the last point of dirt. this means the bag lasts much longer (and i'd assume all the filters and stuff in the vacuum too). when its full all you do is twist off the barrel and dump it in the bin. nice and easy. he also helped us take it to our car (which we parked the furthest possible from the shop since we didn't know exactly where the shop was and just went into one of the back parking lots off the main street).
i vacuumed the lounge room (which i had just done last nite with the old vacuum) and got SOOOOOO much dust and dog hair. this vacuum definitely works better. i also did the hallway (which didn't get done yesterday) and ended up with even a bigger ball of hair and dust swirling around in the barrel.

now we have a nice clean house and i don't think i'll ever forget how to spell vacuum again (i think i just used that word more now than i have my whole life).