As a busy Mom, I often find myself with extra time while my daughter is at an activity or before I need to pick her up from school. When I am out and about, it often does not make sense to go home so I typically look for a place with WiFi so I can blog, check e-mail, surf the web, etc from my laptop or iPad instead of my iPhone.
Today, I had about 30 minutes after I finished shopping at Target before I needed to pick my daughter up. I could have gone home (10 minutes in the opposite direction from school). I would have spent more extra time driving than I would have at home. Fortunately our Target location recently added WiFi, so I'm sitting in their cafeteria with my iPad. (As an added plus, I can now check prices online while in the store). 3G service (even phone service) was pretty spotty in spots of the store before.
Panera used to be my go-to spot. With 5 Panera locations in my town, it is easy to find one near me. However they have started limiting their WiFi sessions to 30 minutes. I understand the need to limit time, but 30 minutes seems excessively short. If I connect while I wait for my meal to be ready, by the time I'm done eating my 30 minutes would be nearly up. A few weekends ago, I visited while my daughter was a birthday party. I had a little under 90 minutes. It was too early for lunch, so I ordered a drink when I arrived and then ordered lunch. Even with two purchases, I still only got the 30 minutes. I was meeting friends there the other day but was arriving early after dropping my daughter at school. I had to bring both my laptop and my iPad to bump it up to an hour of online access.
I will also use McDonald's. As a bonus, their sodas are only $1 so it doesn't cost me very much money to stop there.
What about you? What do you do when you have some down time before picking your child up from an activity?
- Posted using BlogPress from my iPad
