Tricia's Musings

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



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Waiting for dinner – it smells heavenly in here

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I’m currently waiting for a slow cooked beef stew to be finished. It smells delicious in here! Mmmmm.

I added extra vegetables … like a couple more potatoes than the recipe called for, and carrots – for some reason the crock pot recipe I’m using didn’t list carrots and the pot is just full! I think we’re going to be eating stew for a while. I’ll have to freeze some of it I think.

I have a feeling that after finally eating dinner tonight I’m going to be on the computer looking for the top weight loss products LOL. Nah … the recipe is actually fairly low calorie and low fat. The stewing beef I used didn’t have any visible fat and I browned it in a pan before adding it to the crock pot. Plus the beef broth that I used was all fat free. So it’s going to be a health dinner, especially with all those fresh veggies.

If you want the recipe I wrote it out on my blog “My World” (see the link at the top of this post). I’ll let you know if it tastes as good as it smells!





We’re very happy with our new TV

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We finally got our new HDTV on Saturday! So far, we’re very happy with the TV that we had to wait more than three weeks to get.

The new TV is a Samsung 50 inch series 8 plasma HDTV (PN50B850). It’s supposed to be one of the thinnest TV’s on the market right now, and for a plasma, it has one of the brightest pictures.

It took us a couple of hours on Saturday to get the new TV hooked up properly on the new TV stand which has a mount that holds the TV about a foot above the stand. Of course hooking it up to the Home theater system was part of that 2 hour or so set up too.

Once we had it all hooked up correctly we were amazed by the picture! We thought we had a fairly nice TV when we got the Samsung DLP several years ago, but this picture is much much better! Of course the DLP’s light bulb was getting old so the picture might have not been quite as bright as it would have been if it had a new bulb in it.

When I registered the TV at Samsung a tiny message came up when I typed in the serial number. It said the TV was manufactured on January 31st – two weeks after we’d ordered it, so in a way our TV was made just for us! Made to order anyway since it was on back order for a few weeks. LOL

The buzzing problem that this TV model has been notorious for hasn’t reared it’s ugly head as of yet. I had heard that Samsung had a fix for the problem and since our TV was just made hopefully it has the fix built in and we won’t experience that dreaded buzzing problem that I’ve read about so much in various forums and reviews.

We haven’t had a lot of luck with appliances and electronics in the last year or so, i.e. broken washing machine, broken toaster oven, furnace making weird sounds, DLP TV dying and other problems, so we’re hoping that our luck has changed and no problems crop up.

I haven’t played with any of the color levels on the TV yet. It’s just in standard viewing mode for now. Apparently with a Plasma you’re supposed to run it in standard for about 100 hours before you start playing with the settings in order to avoid any burn in problems. Of course this TV has a built in screen wipe that we can turn on if we do notice any burn in that will apparently erase it quickly.

Along with a new home theater system (a Yamaha 6230) we also got one of those high tech remotes (we got a deal!). The new remote was easy to set up. I customized everything by hooking it up to my computer and now all we have to do to watch tv is hit one button on the remote and the TV, home theater and PVR all turn on to the correct settings. This will make it a lot easier when our in-laws or other guests come for a visit. The old remote confused my father in law to no end and all he really had to do was hit separate power buttons for the TV and cable box (PVR) so getting it down to one button should help. I hope!

I’ve spent the last few days watching the new TV while still recovering from that darn cold I got. Geez … I’ve had the cold almost as long as we were waiting for the TV to come in. LOL I’m happy to report that my cold seems to finally be going away. Just a few sniffles now. Now if only I’d stop getting emails for Sacramento homes for sale when I live in Toronto I’d be a happy camper!

Anyone else have a Plasma TV … perhaps even the one we have (a Samsung PN50B850)? Are you happy with it?

We lost another good neighbor

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One of our neighbors passed away last week. He’d been diagnosed with cancer and had been sent home to be cared for by his family when it was discovered that his cancer was too far advanced to help.

I think it was August when he was sent home and he was given about two months to live at that time. It looks like he lasted longer than the doctors expected, but I don’t think his last months were very good.

He was an elderly man in his 80’s. Luckily he had his family constantly around him to comfort him and help care for him. I’m going to miss him, he was a good man.

We don’t have too many elderly neighbors left! When we first moved here pretty much all of our neighbors were in their 70’s or 80’s. Now they’ve either moved away to live with family, live in a retirement home or have passed away.

I guess we only have two older neighbors now.

The older lady closest to us is becoming a bit like my former stalker elderly neighbor Sofie. She calls us a few times a week to come over and help her with things around the house. Things like changing her vacuum bag for her, or checking out some strange noise she’s heard.

I feel bad for her because she has really bad arthritis in her hands. I think she just started getting some special treatments for rheumatoid arthritis from her doctor, but it will take a while to work if it’s going to help her.

It’s strange how the neighborhood is changing. I know all neighborhoods change, but I don’t think it will be as friendly once all the older folks are gone. I’ve said many times that living on our street is kind of like living in a one street small town (good and bad in that way because everyone knows your business). Now the new people moving in don’t seem to be quite as friendly.

Anyway … I don’t know if we’ll get a new neighbor in the house owned by my neighbor who died or not. One of his daughters had lived with him on a permanent basis. Perhaps she’ll just continue to live there or maybe in the spring we’ll see a for sale sign on the lawn.

Has your neighborhood changed a lot since you moved in?

There’s a big ding in our new TV stand

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Crap! As those of you who have been reading my posts this week know, we’re getting our new TV this weekend. Well … my husband decided to put the stand that we bought for the TV together this evening so we’ll be ready when we get the TV.

The stand is heavy! When we brought it home last weekend we had to get a guy from the store to help put it in the car, and then once we got home my husband got one of our neighbors ( a really big guy!) to help carry it into the house.

So now my husband and I were unpacking the heavy massive thing, in the kitchen on the ceramic tiles and one of the front legs has a huge ding in it!

I guess if it were at the back of the stand it wouldn’t be so bad, but the dent is right at the front on this stainless steel leg. It would look awful if we didn’t replace it!

Luckily the guys at Best Buy said that we could just bring the defective piece in and they’ll replace it with another one. I’m thankful we don’t have to try to repack the box that took us half an hour to open and bring all the parts back!

Chris just drove to the store with the bad TV stand leg. Hopefully he’ll be back soon so we can get this thing together and off my kitchen floor!

Don’t you just hate when something you’ve purchased is damaged?

Finally rearranged the living room

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Remember that mini-renovation project that turned into a bigger job that I told you about last week? Well, my husband and I finally finished it!

You see, in preparation for our new TV my husband and I decided that we wanted to rearrange the living room. Sounds simple enough, right? The only problem was the electrical outlets where the TV was going to go in the “new arrangement” weren’t hooked up! We’d disconnected them a few years ago when we were doing other reno projects in the room and never hooked them back up.

So my husband had to rehook up two electrical outlets and we put baseboard molding along that wall. We still have to put baseboard molding around the rest of the room (and finishing putting the Tin ceiling in too!).

We did finish the electrical hook up and the baseboards, but we didn’t rearrange the room because that’s when I started getting sick with this terrible head cold. Yes I still have it! Luckily it’s not quite as bad as last week, but now I’ve got fevers with it, so I’m hoping it’s not about to turn into pneumonia or something. Sigh.

Yesterday we got word that our TV will be ready for pick up on Friday, so since it was my husbands day off and I was feeling ok we decided to get to work and rearrange the room.

I’m now sitting on the opposite side of the room typing this post on my notebook computer and it feels weird! We used to have the loveseat and couch close together sort of in an L-shape but now, I’m on one side of the room on the big couch and my husband is on the other side on the loveseat.

Let me tell you, rearranging all that furniture wasn’t an easy task!

We have really big living room furniture! We have a large leather couch, love seat and an easy chair. Plus we also have a 50″ HDTV and a big dog crate in the room. The living room and dining room are connected (we knocked down walls when we first got the house) so it’s like one big room, but of course we do have a dining room table so it’s two rooms in one big room. The actual living room is about 15 feet wide by 20 feet long. Not a lot to work with when you have big furniture. LOL

We moved the big couch, easy chair and love seat around several times before we finally found just the right spots for each of them, We thought the TV was going to go on the opposite wall from where it had been, but we discovered that it looks much better in the corner by the window on an angle. Yes, it blocks the window just a little bit, but this configuration works best.

It does make the room feel a lot bigger, but it’s going to take some getting used to!

Do you ever rearrange the furniture in your living room or bedroom? If you do, do you find it feels a little strange for a few days?

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