So this week will, in Bert’s annals anyway, forever be marked with a happy face. For this is the week that we got our Roomba.

It all began with an IM while I was away:

Bert ‘hey, do you want any input into the vacum cleaner or should I just go ahead and buy one?’

Me ‘oh go ahead, it’s only a vacum cleaner afterall’

Me (again) ‘as long as it’s not like a Roomba or something’

This was followed by a long period of IM silence from Bert.

So anyway, this week our brand new Roomba arrived after a rather long delay - I think the guy from ebay was writing the address at the rate on one line per day - with a break every other day to recharge his pen or something.

I have to admit, despite my initial misgivings (I figured that the whole thing must be a gimick) the Roomba is actually pretty cool, especially when it goes back to its dock all by itself.

Meeka also seems to have settled into a Roomba routine. Everytime the Roomba starts up, she rushes into the room that it’s vacuming and one-by-one picks her toys up off the floor and carries them into the other room.

I think she thinks she’s ’saving’ her toys from the Roomba. I know that after all the training trying the get her to pick up after herself, all we really needed to do was get a robot vacum cleaner.

I wonder if the same trick works on kids.