Tricia's Musings

Random Thoughts about life in general, living in the big city of Toronto



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I’m trying to use my Wii daily to get fit and active

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I’ve started using my Wii on a regular basis again. You might remember my posts when I purchased the Wii Fit and then the Wii Console (that I didn’t know I needed for Wii Fit) on Ebay? Well I used the Wii through January, but then my Crohn’s got worse and I just couldn’t use the game for a while.

I use the Wii mostly for exercising or playing games that get me moving. I haven’t used the Wii Fit all that much, but I’ve been trying out My Fitness Coach and the brand new EA Sports Active and I really like both programs. I like how they vary the exercise routines and I can use the Wii Fit board with some of the EA Sports Active workouts too.

Game wise I’ve been using Wii Sports to play tennis, boxing and bowling and I also have Wii Ski and a few other games that get you up off the couch and moving.

Last week I bought Mario kart as I thought it looked fun. My husband and I both played a few games one evening, but I didn’t really like it all that much. Maybe I should have rented it and tried it out first? Uh huh.

I’m glad I bought the Wii because with Crohn’s – when it’s bad, I can go through long periods where I’m not all that active due to the pain and other symptoms that I have so I’m trying to use it when I can just to up my activity level a little bit. Of course when I’m feeling semi-ok I also try to get outside and go for walks, work in my gardening (I have gardening marathons where I’m in the garden for 8 hours at a time) and do other things … but the Wii fits in when I’m not well enough to do a lot of outdoor activities.

I was wondering if any of you are also using PS3 players? And if you are, do you also have a Wii or have you tried playing any Wii games? I was wondering how the two game systems compare. Obviously my main goal with the Wii is to get a little more active and to use some of the great fitness programs that are available. However I was wondering – game wise – how do the two systems compare? It seems like there are a lot more true action games in PS3 so if you are a true gamer it might be more suitable to use PS3 over the Wii system.





My dog goes nuts over cardboard

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My Labrador Retriever has a cardboard box fetish … ok, well anything cardboard or paper it seems.

It all started a few months ago when I was replacing a box of soda crackers and noticed Midnights interest in the empty box. I let her take it and off she carefully tottered to her doggy bed in the living room with the long box covering most of her muzzle and her eyes. I’m surprised she didn’t bump into any furniture as she took her treasure to her special place.

Now whenever she sees us carrying a box or paper she wants to have it for herself. We don’t let her tear things up very often, but occasionally we’ll give here a cardboard pop case or a cereal box. I guess if our recycling container started to get too full she’d come in handy … we could give here all the paper and cardboard stuff and let her tear it up for us and make it smaller for the recycling container. LOL

She’s actually tearing into a Coca Cola box right now while we’re trying to watch TV. She’s noisy as she tears so we have the TV volume up quite a bit. At least she’s having fun and it will keep her busy for about half an hour.

I don’t have a picture of tonight’s activity, but here’s one I took a few weeks ago of Midnight tearing up a cracker box:

Black Lab chewing box

At least she’s well behaved – she won’t help herself to a box or the mail, she waits until we give her something – thankfully!

Have you ever had a dog that liked to tear up cardboard and paper?

I think we’re in recession recovery mode now here in Toronto

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The news reports have been saying over the last month or two that our housing market here in Toronto was starting to get back to normal … well not totally normal, but close, and now I have true proof that it is indeed getting better. recession

My brother and his wife who live just outside of town decided to buy a Condo around the beginning of May. Their kids are in their 20’s and they don’t need a big house and all the maintenance that goes along with it anymore, so I guess that’s why they decided to move to a Condo.

They put their house up for sale on May 10th and it was sold on the 27th … not bad for a housing market that’s not quite as hot as it was two years ago! Hmmm I wonder if the people that own the house next door (currently inhabited by renters that are slowly driving me nuts) might decide to put that house on the market again soon? That house needs a lot of work though so I’m sure it wouldn’t sell fast without at least some of the work being done.

I was talking with my brother this evening and he was telling me about their new condo. It’s 1,400 square feet so it’s a good size. Two bedrooms, kitchen, sun room, living room/ dining room, balcony and all the amenities that go along with a condo such as party room, swimming pool, sauna and rooftop barbecues I think. Sounds pretty nice.

The building is about twenty years old and my brother says the kitchen is outdated so they are doing to renovate the kitchen shortly after moving in. They redid the kitchen in their current house too so I joked with him that he’s going to be a professional kitchen renovator by the time he’s finished the condo kitchen! They don’t know exactly what kind of kitchen reno they’re going to do just yet – ie tile floors or hardwood, stainless steel appliances or who knows maybe even copper sinks but I’m sure they’ll enjoy figuring it out and of course the finished product. It’s the work in between that might be a pain! LOL

I used to say I’d never live in a condo – especially after living in an apartment for 14 years before we bought our house. But now that I’m so sick with Crohn’s I can see the advantages of not having to trudge upstairs to use the bathroom and not having yard work and home maintenance to do!

How is the housing market in your area? Did it bottom out once the recession hit and is it recovering now like ours here in the General Toronto Area (GTA)?

Perfect weekend for getting things done around the home

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Chris was busy today while I lay like a lump on the couch. Yeah, my Crohn’s is up to no good again.

We have three screen doors on our house, two at the front and one at the back and all of the handles started not working properly earlier this year. The doors just didn’t latch closed when they shut. So Chris spent some time replacing two of the handles and then with my help he rehung the screen door at the back that had been rubbing in one corner at the base – which of course caused it to not close properly.

Now that we’re starting to get nicer weather and want to have the doors open more often to let air in, it’s important that the screen doors close securely. I mean, we live on a busy street and our dog could literally push the doors open if we didn’t make sure they closed properly.

Tomorrow, if it’s not raining and if I’m feeling a bit better I have a few more seeds to plant in the garden and then we might go out shopping at some electronics stores. Our Home Theater stopped working, oh … about two years ago and we’ve tried everything to get it working again, but it just won’t work.

Every time we turn on the Home Theater system we get an “overload” message. We’ve unplugged various addons from the back (DVD player, cd player etc) to see if that helped and it didn’t, we’ve also plugged the machine into a different outlet and that didn’t help either. Then, about two weeks ao, on the advice of a salesperson at an electronics store Chris took the Home Theater apart and checked to see if the heat sink was covered in dust (it wasn’t) and checked for fuses inside the machine. We did find about 5 fuses but none of them looked blown so I guess the system is just plain blown and we’ll have to replace it.

So … maybe tomorrow we’ll go out and see if we can find a new home theater system receiver (without speakers and subwoofer since we have those) that isn’t too expensive and see if that will work. I really miss having the home theater system. I mean, we can’t watch DVD’s easily anymore and I can’t listen to CD’s unless I put them on the computer. I know I’d listen to a lot more music if we could get the home theater system working again.

Anyway, I guess since it looks like it will continue to rain on and off all weekend we’re just going to get things done around the house – mostly inside stuff unless the weather really clears up.

What are you doing this weekend? Are you going out to do something interesting or just doing home maintenance stuff like we are?

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