Tricia's Musings

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



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GMAT prep courses for my niece

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Wow, time sure flies! I was just thinking about my husband and I’s nephews and nieces and I can’t believe that almost all of them are in their teens or in their young 20’s! It certainly doesn’t like that much time has gone by since they were babies!

As I said time flies!

We got a call from our niece in Chicago last night. She said she’s looking into gmat prep courses as she’d like to take a graduate business administration course. She said she’s looking into the Gmat prep courses at Knewton because they have the practice items, practice Gmat Cats, 36 live teaching hours, live office hours and a membership time of 12 months.

I don’t know much about Gmat prep courses, but I like that it’s online. I’ve become quite a fan of online courses in the last several years. You can still work and pay the bills while you’re learning!

I’ve you’ve taken a Gmat prep course I’d love to hear where you took it so I can pass that information on to my niece. It might help her decide where to study!





How do you talk about an acne problem with a teenager?

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Just before Christmas my husbands brother and his two sons came to our house (from Chicago) for a visit. They were the first of three rounds of house guests that we had over the holidays.

While they were here visiting I noticed that my nephew suffers from really bad acne … maybe it’s because he’s a hockey player and gets so sweaty. I think he plays just about every day and in fact most of their visits to Canada, especially in the summer, revolve around hockey and hockey camps.

I decided that I’d try to do a little research on acne treatments for him … try to find some of the best acne treatments however I’m unsure how to broach the subject with him.

I mean, I want to help him out. I know the teen years are hard enough without having terrible acne, but it must be bad when you have terrible acne!

Any ideas as to how I can bring up this subject with my teenage nephew – especially if I find something that might really help him out?

Happy New Year – did you make any resolutions?

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Happy New Year!

Yes I’m a little late in greeting the new year on this blog, but better late than never!

I hope that you had a Merry Christmas, Happy Holidays and ended the holiday season with a happy start to the New Year. Thanks to all of you have been regular visitors over the year(s). I can’t tell you how much I appreciate your visits and the thoughtful comments that you leave me.

I generally don’t make new years resolutions, but blogwise, I’d like to resolve to be better about replying to comments and getting out and visiting many of your blogs. I do visit many of them regularly, but I don’t always leave comments, I’ll try harder to leave comments this year. My main problem in not keeping up with this is because we (my husband and I) have so many blogs and websites to maintain that it leaves very little spare time, but I’ll try harder to make the time.

Another, necessary resolution, is that I’m going to try to lower our regular monthly expenses! As I’ve said many times we’re going through tough times and have no money to spare, but if we can lower some of our regular bills it might help a bit.

For example – our cable, internet and cell phone bill all come from the same company. We used to get a 15% discount for having three services with them but they changed that in August and now we’d have to get a fourth service (home phone) in order to qualify for the nice discount. I’m considering moving from the regular telephone line we have with Bell Canada to the Rogers Home phone as it will cut our phone bill in half or more. The rates are just so much better with Rogers … plus there’s that discount, but I don’t full trust the service. So I’ll think about that one for a while longer.

The other thing I’m thinking about is to drop down to a lower cable package to save money. I do like my premium channels. Considering that I’m sick with Crohn’s and there’s times when I can’t do much else other than watch TV (reading while in pain doesn’t work well for me, can’t concentrate) that will be a hard cut, but I think we might have to do it.

Our electricity company, Toronto Hydro, has a new billing system where the price of electricity used is higher during the day and lower at night after a certain time. It’s called “Time of Use” so we’re making an effort to run the dryer on the weekend or evenings when we do laundry and run other appliances that use a lot of energy in the lower cost time periods. We’ve always been pretty good about our electricity usage, but we can probably lower our bill by a few more dollars a month. Maybe ..

I’m also going to go in search of low life insurance rates to see if we can get a better deal. Our rates are already pretty low, but I might find something a little better.

Did you make any resolutions this year? Are they practical and ones that you can probably stick to?

House guests and an end of the year wedding

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My niece is getting married tomorrow! She planned her wedding in only two months or so! I’m sure she must be relieved that the big day is almost here.

They had been planning to get married in June 2010, butt her fiance joined the Canadian Forces and as a result of his upcoming training and possible deployment they had to move the wedding date up.

So they went from a beach wedding to one in a restaurant setting. Considering that it’s in a restaurant/bar you’d think it would be a small wedding, but from what I hear I think there’s going to be about 150 guests … I also seem to remember hearing that it’s going to be catered by a company other than the restaurant … I think it’s called Syracuse catering.

Right now we’re just waiting for my brother from Vancouver and his wife to arrive. They are in the air now and should arrive at the airport at about 8 pm. We’re looking forward to their visit. They’ll be staying with us until New Years eve and with luck they’ll be home in Vancouver just before Midnight on New years.

I’m sure our Lab, Midnight, will be really excited to see them. She hasn’t met my sister in law before, but she’s met my brother several times this year and she loves him. I think my brother is her third favorite person (behind Chris and I of course).

Actually, this wedding tomorrow, will be like a mini family reunion for my family. It’ll be the first time all three of my brothers, my sister and I have been together at the same time in a few years.

I just hope that my back holds up tomorrow. I was busy last week cleaning the house and cooking – standing for hours and hours at a time, and it aggrivated my back. I have a herniated disc in my lower back and when I stand too long my back really starts to hurt and so does my tailbone.

I must have really done some damage because over the weekend my left leg, which is had been numb since last January, started getting a hot burning feeling just above the knee. If I lie down once it starts the burning sensation goes away but later it gets an itching feeling. My back is a little better today than it has been for the last four days, but I know I’ll be sitting and standing a lot tomorrow and I think my back will start to act up again.

My Crohn’s disease was also acting up in the last few days. It’s a bit better today as well … hopefully it’s even better tomorrow.

So that’s two things that could ruin my good time tomorrow … but unless the Crohn’s or my bad back are really acting up I’m going to try to make the best of it. I mean, I’m really happy for my niece and I want to enjoy her big day. I’m also excited about seeing my whole family together again too.

It’s been a busy holiday season for us!

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I’d like to take a moment to wish all of my regular readers and visitors a belated Merry Christmas and Happy Holidays. I hope that you’ve been having a great time with friends and family.

We had a great Christmas. In fact, I guess getting ready for the holiday and then having house guests are the main reason why I haven’t written a new post for a while. Sorry!


Our Christmas celebrations started on December 20th! My husbands brother drove down or is it up? from Chicago with his two teenage sons. Chris and I were supposed to go to his parents house (in Brantford (an hour and a half away)) for an early family Christmas dinner, but wouldn’t you know it … our furnace started making a high pitched whining sound late Saturday night!

We quickly called our furnace repair call center services line to see if someone could come right away to fix our furnace. I mean, it was so loud we, at first, had thought our crazy neighbors had a circular saw running outside in the driveway between our houses! So we’d turned off the furnace as 1. it didn’t sound healthy, and 2. who could live with that god awful sound!

Did you know that furnace repair people won’t come out to your house on an emergency basis unless your furnace has totally stopped working? Yeah … so .. we scheduled an appointment and as it turned out I stayed home to await the furnace repairman while Chris went to his parents house for Christmas dinner. Doesn’t it just figure that my mother in law actually cooked a turkey for the first time in years and I missed it?

It also turned out that the furnace repair guy canceled on us and didn’t come until Monday! Luckily the whining sound the furnace was making was only really loud the first time it occurred and our furnace kept on running until it was repaired. (it was a bearing problem).

Chris returned home last Sunday night with his brother and our nephews (and a little care package for me full of turkey dinner, yum). Our house guests stayed for two days. Once they cleared out we started getting ready for Christmas day. My sister and her boyfriend came over to join us for Christmas.

I’m sure many of you went through the same things I did as you got ready for Christmas. By this I mean the house got a major cleaning and so did the good china and silverware that hadn’t been used for a year or so! LOL Then I had to start getting the food ready.

I decided to brine a turkey this year. It was soooooo good! It had a mildly salty taste but oh it was so very very moist! Brined turkey is the best!

I brined our turkey in an extra large ziploc bag placed inside a cooler. The brine mix consisted of Kosher salt, brown sugar, and Rosemary, Thyme and Sage spices. Unfortunately the bag started leaking in the night – luckily I checked on the turkey at 2:30 am in the morning and struggled to get it into another bag and made more brine to soak it in!

I spent most of Christmas day preparing for the big meal. I cooked candied sweet potatoes and carrots, green peas, mashed potatoes with garlic, stuffing with garlic, onion and walnuts, a pumpkin pie and of course the brined turkey. The meal was delicious and we had a great time with my sister and her boyfriend!

If anyone would like my recipe for brined turkey just let me know. I’ll make a post with the recipe if there’s enough interest.

After a busy week of cooking, cleaning and visiting with family Chris and I have spent the weekend recovering! No boxing day shopping for us! I would have loved to gone out and bought some items at great prices (ie a washing machine maybe) but we just can’t afford it right now. BTW boxing day in Canada is like Black Friday for Americans- it’s the day with the best sales!

Now I’m gearing up for more house guests. My brother from Vancouver and his wife are flying in on Tuesday evening for my nieces wedding on the 30th and they’ll be here until the 31st.

We’re looking forward to our last guests of the holiday season, but also, by the time it’s over I’m sure we’re going to be in need of a few days rest as we’ll have been going for two weeks straight with visitors and holiday prep and goings on.

I hope that you had a great holiday! What are your plans for New Years?

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