Random Thoughts about life in general, living in the big city of Toronto
by Tricia
One of my friends recently started dieting. She’s been working out, jogging, watching what she eats and now she’s started taking hydroxycut. This is a supplement that’s supposed to help you lose weight fast.
She asked me what I thought about the product and I just don’t know much about it. Has anyone tried hydroxycut? I think she’s been doing well with her weight loss plan so I’m not sure that she needs to do much else.
by Tricia
I’m so envying my blogging friend RennyBA. You’ve seen him here many times as he’s a faithful commenter.
He recently had some very good friends come and stay with he and his family and they did some outings together. One of the things they did was go canoing on a beautiful lake. Lovely.
I swear I was born in a canoe. I used to white water canoe – now that’s an adventure!
Being Canadian you either play and live hockey or you are an avid camper and or canoeist – or something in between. Trouble is I haven’t been in a canoe in ages. It’s like a craving now after reading his posts and looking at all the photos they took.
I miss canoing and boating so much! We have a pop up trailer. I think I’m going to get a canoe sometime this summer and use it. I must get back into a canoe.
I can always store the canoe where we keep our trailer. Might as well have the complete outdoor package together right?
Does anyone else enjoy canoeing or boating?
by Tricia
It’s amazing how much different our life is since we got our house six years ago. We’d been living in a small apartment, paying fairly low rent given the area – and we didn’t really have the same kind of bills that we have now that we have a house, but it always seemed like we were struggling to get by.
When we living in the apartment we were both paying off student loans, had a car payment, paid for cable, internet, car insurance, and telephone and paid our rent (only $725 which is cheap for a nice apartment in a good area of Toronto). We both had full time jobs that paid decently too.
I really have no idea how we got by without having applied for a student loan consolidation. We would have saved a lot of money on interest and our monthly payments probably would have been lower too.
Still we pushed on. The student loans were our biggest bills other than rent back then. I am glad that we don’t have student loans to pay off anymore. I’ve thought of going back to school but it’s the loans that scare me! If I ever do back to school you can bet your boots I’ll be consolidating the loans next time.
I think getting a house gave us more of a sense of responsibility. We used to buy what we wanted when we wanted. Now we think about it for quite a while. We still buy what we want but by the time we’ve put all that thought into it we’ve often saved the money to pay for that item outright.
I know our living expenses are higher in the house – mortgage, property tax, water bill, telephone, cable, cell phone, internet, electricity, oil for the oil furnace, insurance – no car or student loans anymore though, and yet we still seem to have extra money and I’m not even working these days.
Sure I make some pretty good money via the internet, but Chris makes less than he did when we lived in the apartment so income kind of evens out. As I said it must be just that we are more responsible with our money these days.
by Tricia
Do you remember I was talking about how Chris wanted our basement, when we are done our renovation, to be a true rec room? Well, after having so much fun over the weekend with his sister and brother-in-law he’s adamant that the basement must be a rec room full of manly toys to play with or on.
You see, once my brother in law came back from the concert that he’d gone to – Roger Waters, he said it was fantastic! – they all went out to play pool, and later they came back and we played poker. Now along with the pool table that he’s got his eye on he wants us to look at poker tables too!
Geesh! I just bought him a new video camera! Now he wants more toys? Don’t they usually say it’s the women that spend all the money shopping?
Well at least we never impulse buy. Anything that I write about that we’ve purchased, particularly if it’s an expensive item, is something that we’ve thought about and discussed for quite a while.
Maybe he’ll get his new toy, but we’ve got to finish the basement first!
by Tricia
I think I’m going to cook a nice dinner tonight. I feel like we haven’t been eating well over the last week or so.
I’ve been so tired and not feeling well that I just haven’t felt like cooking so we’ve made really easy stuff. Well … Chris has, and uhm, if I guy can’t cook well I’m pretty sure you know the types of things he’ll make – grilled cheese, soup, macaroni … we’ve even had some take out food too. Yup, we’ve been eating bad. I don’t really like those foods when I’m feeling well and I hate them when I’m sick.
Tonight I think I’ll pull out the nice cookware and maybe make a nice chicken dinner with lots of veggies or a veggie packed salad.
Actually I think I’ll go out into the garden later and see if I can find some tomatoes. Chris and I had a tiny tom or cherry tomato – one each, the other day. Those were the first tomatoes from the garden and the taste of that single one stayed with me for at least an hour. It was so good. Hopefully there’s a few more ripe ones out there. The large tomatoes aren’t ready yet unfortunately.
What are you going to cook tonight? Something tasty or something fast?