Tricia's Musings

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



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Are you watching the Olympics?

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So – are you watching the Olympics?

I’m kind of obligated to watch since the Olympics are being held in my own country this year. 😉

I have a feeling that we’ll be watching men’s hockey in just a little while as my husband is a HUGE hockey fan. Canada is playing Switzerland. Hopefully it’s another sweep for our guys. Bet those guys don’t need maxoderm LOL!

I’ve been hearing a lot of complaints about the Olympics from foreign media. That makes me sad. I know there’s been problems with the speed skating ice and of course the weather doesn’t help any for skiing, snowboarding or any of the other outdoor sports. Hey … Vancouver is the warmest it’s ever been in 104 years! Who could have predicted that?

Ironically I think Canada is having a warm spell this winter. We’ve had an almost snowless winter here in Toronto. Right now there’s only a tiny bit of snow on the ground and it’s melting because it’s above zero outside. So I’m not all that surprised that Vancouver and it’s nearby mountains have barely any snow. I feel sorry for those in the US who’ve been slammed time after time with snow storms this winter and here we are up here in the Great White North enjoying a spring like setting.

Anyway … back to the Olympics … if you’ve been watching what’s your favorite sport or sports to watch?





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?

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?

I’m so ready for this head cold to go away

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Well I’m still feeling like crap today, unfortunately. My head feels like it’s blown up to twice it’s size, I’m dizzy and my nose is stuffed. At least my nose isn’t running as much nor are my eyes tearing as much as yesterday. Maybe my decongestants are finally starting to work, or perhaps the cold is starting to get a bit better?

I think I’m just going to rest this evening and hope that I get a good sleep tonight. I haven’t been sleeping well all week, so I’m do for a good night’s sleep. Chris and I need to look for life insurance, so maybe I’ll put in some time on the computer and look for a life insurance online quote or something. Or like I said, maybe I’ll just relax … I can’t do that tomorrow.

At the moment we’re trying to patiently wait for a call from Best Buy. We bought a Plasma TV two weeks ago but it’s been on back order. Since we bought it they keep telling us every few days – it’ll be in on Monday, it’ll be in on Wednesday and so on … the latest was that it would be in today. Hopefully it is.

If our TV made it to the store we’ll pick it up tomorrow and then probably spend a few hours setting it up, hooking up our home theater system and of course finishing rearranging the living room. We did start that last week, and we managed to get the small renovations finished that we started, but when I started to get sick with this darn head cold we put rearranging the furniture on hold until we get the TV (or at least until this weekend). Hopefully I’ll be feeling a little better by tomorrow … especially if our new TV does arrive.

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