Tricia's Musings

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



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Should I go shopping while in Vegas?

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I can’t believe it’s the nineteenth of October already! Our trip to Las Vegas is coming up fast! Two and a half weeks from now we’ll be in that busy city! Good thing our passports arrived yesterday huh?

I know I’m going to be at blogging conventions and I probably won’t have a lot of time to do much other than attend the conventions and perhaps some of the places along the strip where we are staying, but if I can I’d like to do a little shopping.

With our Canadian dollar being higher than the US dollar I might be able to find some fantastic deals.

When I was searching for a hotel for us to stay in I noticed that only about 10 miles away from the strip there’s a big outlet mall. I wonder if any other bloggers that are going to the convention might be interested in a shopping excursion?

I need new clothes! Plus maybe I can get a few Christmas gifts out of the way too? Chris has always liked playing golf, perhaps I could find some Mizuno golf clubs for him at a discount? I’m also still looking for a macro and a telescopic lens for my SLR camera and I’m pretty sure that they are cheaper in the US than they are here in Canada … yeah, maybe I’ll come back with some new toys!





On the ball this year – starting to shop early

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I think it’s time I started thinking about the upcoming holidays. By this I mean Christmas. I always have to try to force myself to do this early each year although it does seem kind of strange to be thinking of what to get people for Christmas in August, September or October.

Still … if I start thinking about it now I might be able to find some good deals and save money. Traditionally I’m one of those last minute Christmas shoppers and I really don’t want to do that this year. I hate shopping in crowded stores and picking over the leftovers.

So I’m trying to be smart this year. I might even do a lot of my shopping online if I can get my act together and come up with some great give ideas for all the people on my list.

I’ve already been searching and I was thinking I might get one or two of my young nephews some RC cars as I’m sure they’d love them. My oldest niece is going to have a baby so I might get her some things to pamper herself during her last trimester. My sister … no ideas yet. She’s really hard to buy for at any time as she likes to keep her home very minimalistic … so what do you get for someone that doesn’t want a lot of stuff?

I probably shouldn’t ask this, but … how many of you are actually already finished your Christmas shopping? Note to self – find a good poll thingy as I’m sure that 60% or 70% of my readers will say they are done or almost done.

I think this winter is going to be a cold one!

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I’m not looking forward to winter this year. I have a feeling it’s going to be a long cold winter.

Why? Well, last winter was very mild here for the most part. Yes it was very cold here and there, but we didn’t get much snow and it was above freezing quite often. Then the summer wasn’t too bad either. We had a cool June for some reason, but then July and August were fairly normal temperature wise.

When the weather is fairly reasonable through three seasons I know from experience that the next winter is usually pretty bad. Perhaps I should start packing now and look for some Orlando real estate so I can be in a nice warm area when it’s freezing here.

If you’ve never lived in a cold climate you probably have no idea how appealing that idea really is right now.

Actually considering that I’ve been working from home for much of the last two years I have thought of moving to another area with a better climate. If I can get my husband to work on his websites perhaps I can talk him into working from home too? Then we’d be all set to live anywhere as we’d both be free agents.

Do you ever think about moving to another country?

Old Friends

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Last night around 6 pm as I was waiting for Chris to get home from work the phone rang.

I always look at the display on the phone to see who’s calling and if I don’t recognize the number I often don’t answer it as it’s usually someone trying to sell me something or lately one of our Provincial political parties asking “Can we count on you?”.

So I looked at the telephone display and I saw the words “the Jewelery Doctors”. At first I thought why is a jewelry store calling me? I’m not in the business anymore and the only reason I could think of was that maybe something happened to my sister who’s still in the jewelry trade and they were calling me to help her.

Then a little light went on and I remembered that the Jewelery Doctor was our friend old Bob. Chris and I used to work in the same building as him when we were both jewelers. That’s how we all became good friends.

If you ever need custom made jewelery you must visit Bob. His work is not just “designer inspired jewelry”. No, it is designer jewelry. He can make absolutely anything you can think of and his designs are amazing. I didn’t do the same kind of work as Bob. Chris’ work in the trade was closer to Bobs and I know he aspired to create beautiful pieces like our friend bob.

We had a nice talk on the phone. I probably haven’t talked to him for about a year since he’s a hard man to get a hold of. Chris, in fact, had been downtown on Tuesday when he went to submit our Passport applications to the passport office and he’d dropped into the jewelry trade building that we used to work in to visit with my sister and some of our old friends. Unfortunately Bob wasn’t around when he’d dropped in, but he heard that Chris had been there so he was calling to say hello.

Unfortunately Chris wasn’t home when he called and when Chris tried to call him back he’d already left the office.

It’ll probably be several more months before we all end up talking again.

That’s one nice thing about good friends. Even if you don’t manage to talk or get together often it’s easy to fall right back into place once you do get together.

What a busy night!

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I can’t believe how busy I was last night.

A while after Chris came home he went upstairs and started re-arranging furniture in our smallest spare bedroom. He then began to put our new elliptical trainer together. I offered to help him of course, but he said he was ok doing it all on his own. I did end up giving him a hand here and there holding things as he connected them.

Anyway, while he was busy upstairs turning our spare bedroom into a mini exercise room, I did some work on my computer and then I went into the kitchen and cleared the double kitchen sinks and counter so I could prepare dinner.

When I cook I can’t stand a messy kitchen so I always clean everything up before I begin to cook and then I clean everything I use as I go so by the time dinner is served and eaten all that’s left is our dinner plates and utensils.

Why I do that I don’t know. It seems like a strange habit even to me, but I swear I’m one of the cleanest cooks you’d ever meet!

I was also taping the multitude of Thursday night shows on the PVR at the same time, but I had to keep running in the room to check to see how full the PVR was getting because we had a lot of shows on there from last week that we hadn’t gotten around to watching yet. I ended up having to delete about five shows just so I could tape all of last nights shows! It wouldn’t have been such a problem if we weren’t both busy doing other things and had been watching some of the previously taped shows as new ones taped – and then deleting them of course.

Chris took a long time upstairs! Neither of us thought the trainer would take long to put together, but between moving the furniture around to make room for the elliptical trainer and then putting it together I think Chris was upstairs for more than two hours! What a great guy for doing all of that for me, eh? Of course he’s going to use the machine too. I made sure he tested it out and liked how it worked as I was choosing which one to buy. We both might as well use it.

Along with making dinner and cleaning the kitchen I managed to finish watering the garden, and all the indoor plants. I even managed to set up a months worth of daily posts for my photoblog! I’ve been neglecting that blog (and others) lately. Only posting a couple times a week at most and traffic has died down. I’m hoping that getting back to posting new shots on it daily will bring the visitors back. I’m so happy that wordpress has auto-publishing.

All in all Chris and I had a very productive evening. Now I’m looking forward to working out in my new “fitness room”.

It will take me a while to build up some endurance on the elliptical, so my plan is to use the machine for about ten minutes at a time a few times a day for the first few days. It definitely gets my heart rate up so hopefully those little bursts of activity will reve up my metabolism and help me start on my way to getting back into shape. (quickly!)

What do you think? Is that a good plan? Anyone else have an Elliptical trainer at home or use one regularly at the gym?

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