Ryan James O'Sullivan

Its been a while since I’ve made a sac joke err wrote about my Sumosac.  In my original post I promised a review if I was able to remove myself from my sac.  Unfortunately due to work and having responsibilities I have in actual fact had to leave the loving embrace of my Sac.  I now at this unfortunate time find myself attending to some of that responsibility stuff so I figure, eh, now is probably my only chance to write this review – let’s get’er done.

So here is my review:

19 months – Chillin’ from Tammy O’Sullivan on Vimeo.

No seriously, that’s it.  Ok, ok – I’ll give some details.

Let me just say from the outset – spending $250 on this thing was a GOOD decision.  For something that can easily be billed as just a glorified Beanbag Chair it is honestly the most versatile piece of furniture I’ve ever owned.  I can think of at least 6 comfortable positions that I regularly use with the Sumosac and they all are for different things: Sitting upright while playing an involved sports game, Reclining back playing a more casual game or reading, sitting sideways watching some TV and on and on.

The versatility might actually be the first flaw one could find with this thing.  It is so flexible by nature of its design that it is actually possible to find uncomfortable positions, and not just a little annoying: god-I-really-should-move uncomfortable positions – no – more like the: spine destroying god-if-I-dont-move-now-Im-fucked kind of uncomfortable.

I have three basic uses for my Sac (I’ll tell you when you are older… err sorry I cannot control myself) and it accomplishes them all very well.  My primary use of the Sac is for playing console games.  This thing is in my office and it is there as a piece of home entertainment center furniture.  I’ve got to say I’ve had recliners, and other lazy boy style “man chairs” and this thing just rocks the competition for video gaming.  You can be sitting almost bolt upright, slouching just a little or going full on lazing on your back and side and this thing will support you adequately.  As a piece of gaming furniture I just can’t see how this thing could be beat, especially given the price tag.

The one other thing that some people might find troublesome is just how bloody huge this thing is.  I have the Sumosac Couple, the four foot model.  And let me say – this thing takes up A LOT of space.  My buddy Jim (in a total Bogart move) bought the biggest model (mostly because he is the biggest consumer whore ever to grace this planet) and I don’t quite know how he has any house left after the thing expanded out of the box.

One neat thing about the size is that it has also become a children’s toy.  Paige absolutely loves climbing up the Sumosac and she jumps, slides, and generally finds some way to give her mother a heart attack whenever she gets close to it.

So is it worth the price tag, and floor space commitment?  A resounding yes for me!  I’ve never been this happy with a furniture purchase in my life and I would gladly recommend this to anyone and everyone who is looking for something to lounge around on in their entertainment or family rooms.

Sunday was one of those days…

Tammy is having surgery this week so we elected to leave the baby up north with my parents for a few days (we are heading back up on Thursday when my vacation starts). This is the first time we’ve been separated from the baby for a prolonged stretch of time so it was, as you expect, very difficult to leave her.

So Sunday was tough enough on its own – what we found when we came home did not help matters.

For months now our neighbours have been complaining about Tammy’s smoking. Back in the early spring they approached us and let us know that Tammy’s smoking was causing trouble for their asthmatic son. Being good neighbours we did what we could to accommodate this: We moved Tammy’s porch swing out to the back of the yard and Tammy committed to smoking well away from the building so as not to cause our neighbours any grief.

As we moved through spring our neighbours attitude towards us grew more cold and it was clear they were not satisfied. Once summer came things started to get a little more tense: When Tammy would go out to smoke you would hear windows slam shut, doors slam shut, etc. As time continued to pass it would get worse and worse. Soon the random slammings were accompanied by rude comments made just loud enough for us to hear, music being turned up to full volume levels, banging on the walls and on and on.

Yesterday we get home and I realized with the baby gone I have no responsibilities to attend to – a really odd feeling when you are used to spending the daylight hours attending to the needs of an energetic little year and a half old. So what do I do with this new found freedom? Surely I get lots done around the house, go out and ride my bike, or something equally as productive? No sir, I go to sleep!

Until suddenly I am woken up the sound of banging on a door… wait… that’s my front door! I struggle when it comes to waking up so the banging stops before I can get myself oriented to answer the door. “Where the hell is Tammy?” I think to myself. As I lay back down to fall back asleep I had the answer – screaming erupted from my backyard. I was catching little bits of the yelling: “white trash”, “lung cancer”, “you stupid bitch” but I jumped out of bed when I heard this nugget “I am going to turn your backyard in to a bonfire”. Orly? Time for me to get my ass out of bed I think.

So I get up and open up the window (to get the full experience of course) and I see Tammy talking on the phone (being a good girl, not rising to the insults being thrown at her – through the whole thing she said not a word to the neighbour and kept talking to her mother who was on the phone – good for her, I would have gone to town) with our neighbour standing in her backyard JUST.GOING.OFF.

Now these people have three kids and the language that was used was mind blowing for someone who had three kids in the living room behind her watching. And I’m a foul mouthed asshole saying this. When Tammy made her way back inside after she hung up with her mother we had a good laugh and we started get back on with our lives. Not to be…

All of a sudden there was a furious banging on the door. I wonder who that could be? Sure enough it was our darling neighbour pounding on the door again and Tammy called through the door “I’m not dealing with you right now while you are like this” which of course was the sensible thing to do. If your neighbour is a psychopath and they come banging I highly recommend you don’t answer the door and … CALL THE POLICE.

Every one of those movies that centers around a neighbourly dispute that ends up with a massacre I always think to myself – jesus people, when they started threatening your life and coming to the door at odd hours with an axe why didn’t you think to call the police to at least make them aware?

So call the police we did and eventually the boys from 33 Division came to take our complaint. The officers who responded were great and patiently waited through the history of relations with our neighbour (which have until this smoking thing been without incident). They went over to talk to our neighbours and when they came back to update us they informed us “talking to them was an unpleasant challenge”.

The Coppers were on their way with a warning for our neighbours to back down issued and we hoped peace would return to 12 Castlegrove.

Sometime after all of this a shouting match erupted in our hallway as another neighbour went to our next door neighbours to complain about the language used in her tirade. Once this had occurred we figured we should let our Super know what is going on as soon as possible (we were going to hold off until Monday for regular office hours, it being Sunday and all).

After our report of the situation was delivered our Super asked us how we were doing with our basement? Uh, What? We’ve been out of town 24 hours – we had been up north. So down to the basement we go…

IT HAD FLOODED! Wonderful, happy Sunday folks.

So that was Sunday. A disaster in neighbour relations followed up with a SURPRISE YOUR BASEMENT IS RUINED! It had only been about 12 hours since the flood so we did manage to recover most of the stuff but I did lose some books and we had to wash some clothes several times to get the flood water stink out of em.

Needless to say I cannot wait for vacation to start on Thursday night…

This weekend the weather forecast was looking rather craptastic and my sister Amanda is moments away from popping out my Nephew so we decided to stay in the city for the weekend  At the start of the day it was looking like any other weekend in the city: Laze around, clear out the TiVo, commit random acts of computing and get some time in the backyard or park across the street for Paige.

The thought of another weekend lost to routine was too much to bare and I suggested we grab a nice dinner downtown and maybe go for a walk along the waterfront.  We decided to hit up The Old Spaghetti Factory and end our evening taking a walk along the boardwalk at Woodbine Beach.

The Spaghetti Factory was great as always.  I decided since we were on a bit of an adventure I would order something different; I ended up going with the Spicy Chorizo Sausage Penne and I was not disappointed.  Tammy had the boring ol’ Spaghetti with Meat Sauce.  When it came time to get the parmesan cheese on her spaghetti however things got interesting:

That’s right… the lid popped off the dispenser!  After some laughter a new serving was quickly delivered.

You never know how Paige is going to handle a new restaurant and she loved it too.  Her favorite item was the minestrone soup.

It was a great meal and we had a lot of fun there.  After dinner we were off to the beach

My usual waterfront hang out in Toronto is usually a bit further to the west in Marilyn Bell park.  My years working at Exhibition Place, particularly during the CNE were made a little more sane when I could take a relaxing hour or two and sit and watch the boats go by.

So this was my first time in “the beaches” proper (I refuse to call it The Beach) probably since my grade school days.  I must admit that I was impressed.  There were signs of the ongoing city workers strike (the beach clearly hadn’t been cleaned in a bit so there was some obvious litter but it was very minimal in a city that hasn’t seen garbage clean up in nearly three weeks) but all and all it a was a beautiful place to spend the evening.

Paige certainly had a lot of fun

As someone who spends as much time as possible in the summer in cottage country I must admit that I was pleasantly surprised by just how much Toronto had to offer.  It is very easy to forget and take for granted all the stuff there is to do in your back yard – I know for sure I won’t let another weekend in the city go by without considering my options for what we can do as a family to make things more interesting.

And speaking of interesting – a funny story before I conclude.  We decided to leave our stroller by a park bench while we all sat out by the water.  We had been very passively keeping our eye on it and just as we were starting to leave it vanished!  We quickly scanned the board walk and saw our stroller being pushed away by a group of people!  I’ve never seen my asthmatic wife run so hard in my life.  She bolted and started hollering at the people and in the end managed to get our stroller back.  Their explanation? “We thought someone left it”.  Uh huh.  So another thing to remember if you do a weekend in the city – you are still in the city and need to be mindful of that

I wouldn’t have changed a thing – it was a perfect evening.

For a full look at pictures from the day check out my related flickr photoset here.

Yes ladies and gentleman the moment you have all been waiting for has arrived – Today, July 6th at approximately 6:21pm EST in the 2009th year of our Lord – My sac arrived.

It's my Sac in a Box

About a week late (due to a delay in customs – I cannot imagine why the above box would cause any concern) and after taking one of the most inefficient shipment routes I’ve ever seen (Quebec->Mississauga->Whitby->Toronto->Don Mills) my Sumosac has finally arrived.

For those of you wondering what in god’s name a Sumosac is here is the basic run down:  It is a bean bag chair on crack.  Instead of the traditional pellet/ball filling that eventually will end up all over your house it is filled with furniture grade foam like any other chair you likely have in your house.  Basically this is the Cadilac of Beanbag-like furniture.

Is the price you pay (229 bucks in this case) worth it?  That’ll have to wait for my review a week or so from now – for now I’ll cover the unboxing, cause quite frankly after the build up I’m way too excited about unboxing this beast.

Out of the box it started to grow and grow

I had read quite a few reviews both before my purchase (the almost universal high praise in those reviews are what led me to buy this thing in the end) and while waiting for the Sumosac to arrive so I thought I had a good handle on what to expect when the Sumosac arrived – that would be a no – reading about what happens when you open the box just does not do it justice.

As soon as I removed the Sumosac from the box the thing started to expand… not a weak sigh of release for the foam – no, an epic explosion.  Within about 45 seconds the Sac had expanded to about double its shipping size just insane.

Scale at about Unbox + 5 minutes

Above is what it grew to at about the five minute mark as I frantically moved objects in our office/play room to accommodate our new rapidly growing addition.

The steps Sumoslounge provide are pretty simple:

Step 1: Your sumo arrives in a plastic duffel, vacuum compressed for shipping. Carefully cut open the duffel, working down the side from the opening at the top.
Step 2: Take your sumo insert and it’s neatly folded cover out of the plastic bag, dispose of the bag.
Step 3: Break up large pieces of foam without opening the zipper on the insert, use some muscle. (NEVER open the zipper on the insert – if you do, foam will be EVERYWHERE).
Step 4: Let your sumo sit at least 24 hours in a warm place to allow the foam to expand.
Step 5: Fluff and fluff again, then fluff some more. Just keep fluffing until all the foam is broken up.
Step 6: Assemble your sumo – wrap fully fluffed insert in its cover and zip to close.
Step 7: Take some time to find your favorite position, relax and enjoy.

So Step 3 is where the fun begins – I proceed to jump on this thing, roll around, get in punching matches; everything I could think of doing to break apart the foam I did.  And man it was a lot of fun.  Spending the last year or so as a quasi-cripple has limited the amount of physical fun I’ve had (I know, with the Sac jokes we are already on immature human overload).  THIS WAS FUN.

See - Fun.

You didn't believe me? FUN!

Ahem.  So now several hours later this thing is getting crazy large.  I debated with Tammy initially about what size to get and man I think I’d be out an office if we had gone any bigger.  We went with the 4 foot model and it is well on its way to reaching that size.  Already the thing is starting to get comfortable, in fact the first time I sat down I thought to myself – you know you can just stop expanding now, you are quite comfortable as it is.

Even Tammy is starting to love the Sac

So with the Sumosac in the house for 5 hours now I can say we’ve already had a lot of fun and even managed to get a few moments of quality time cuddled up in its embarrassing foamy goodness.  And that’s it.  That’s the Sumosac in the O’Sullivan house so far.  I promise if I can ever remove myself from the Sac long enough I will post a full review in a week or so.

For my birthday I had a lot of trouble suggesting things to Tammy to get me. I realized in the lead up to my birthday I’ve hit a point where I just have so much of the material stuff I want it has become increasingly difficult to come up with stuff I want. Now. That is a great place to be. I wish everyone could experience that feeling because it feels damn great.

After a lot of looking around and going through my bookmarks I did manage to find something really cool that I thought I’d never own – a Sumosac.  Go ahead, I’ll just sit here while you make the jokes… done?  No… ok ok… now?

So what is a Sumosac?  Basically – A high end bean bag chair, although instead of Beans or the typical ball shaped filling it is filled with furniture grade foam that never deflates.  Also these things are huge, not Ryan exaggerating as he is known to do huge… I mean HUGE.  The one I ordered is four feet wide and three feet tall.  This kind of big:

Sumosac

Originally I had wanted to get the five foot version but then I remembered I was married and that I had to live in this house after the fact so we compromised (she was buying it for me after all) and went with this 4 foot model.

So all of this is really cool – my birthday was a few days ago surely I am enjoying this bad boy now right?  You would be wrong.  The fedex man still has not come to bless me with his presence and I am left Sac-less err without my Sac errr shit I am out of low brow jokes to insert here err right I had a point err god damn tangent – MY SUMOSAC HAS NOT ARRIVED.

This appears to be a logistics fail in the making as Sumo has said they’ve shipped it and Fedex is saying they’ve yet to pick it up (although I’ve had two versions of the truth from Fedex – one person told me it’s en route and another that they haven’t picked it up yet from the shipper – the tracking info seems to give credence to the not yet picked up story so I’m going with that).

So there is my sac status (resist the tangent Ryan… resist) … when it comes I will have a review… once I get out of the chair that is.

Happy Canada Day everyone!