You are in My World Now

I’d love to have a vacation property

Tricia — Tue, 16 Mar 2010 21:04:47 +0000

I was talking to one of my neighbors the other day and he was telling me that he’s looking into buying a vacation property.

That’s something that my husband and I have always wanted! A cottage by the lake or a beach house somewhere. Oh wouldn’t that be nice?

It seems the dream might come true for our neighbor. He’s leaving sometime this week to take a look at Outer banks foreclosures and he hopes to get a deal on a property. I’ve heard the Outer Banks are lovely so I imagine that he’ll fall in love with one of the sites that he sees.

Do any of you have a second property that you use for vacations or weekends?

Our neighborhood is going through a lot of changes

Tricia — Fri, 12 Mar 2010 22:19:30 +0000

Our neighborhood is quite a mix! It used to be pretty much all Greek – since it is of course part of Greek Town here in Toronto, but now that many of the residents are getting older they are moving out (or passing away) and their homes are being filled by young couples from all backgrounds … like my husband and myself I suppose since we bought our house from people who had lived in the neighborhood for over forty years!

Sadly, I’ve noticed that over the last few years a number of our older neighbors have been passing away. We just lost one a month ago and now I hear that a dear lady that lives only two houses away is starting to become extremely forgetful. I have a feeling her daughter will be trying to persuade her to move in with her or perhaps go to a nursing home sometime in the near future.

I also heard from her son that she’s been appealing a decision for social security disability in the last few months. She certainly shouldn’t have to fight for coverage, but it seems that’s the way it is these days.

It’s funny how neighborhoods change over time isn’t it? We’ve only been in our house for about 9.5 years and it’s changed a lot in the last few years.

Have you been in your neighborhood for a long time? Have you noticed that some of the people that have lived there for 30 or 40 years are selling their homes making way for a younger group of neighbors?

Our dog is finding golf balls in the park

Tricia — Wed, 03 Mar 2010 22:09:50 +0000

My husband does most of the dog walking in this household. Our Lab gets a walk each morning and evening with my husband. If I’m feeling up to it (remember I have Crohn’s so I feel awful quit often) I give her an additional walk in the afternoon.

We try to vary where our dog is walked. It’s never the same route, however, my husband has been taking our Lab to the park just down the street a little more often than he usually does in the dead of winter. Why? Well … since we’ve had an extremely rare lack of snow here in Toronto this winter the park is a great place to go with the dog. Usually the park gets all the excess snow dumped in it in the winter, but that hasn’t really been happening this year. So as long as we don’t mind a slightly muddy dog it’s a great place to take her.

Some of our neighbors must have been taking advantage of the mild winter we’ve been having because our dog has become a great source for used golf balls LOL. Yep, she’ll come up to us with two or three golf balls in her mouth. Someones been getting in a little putting practice it seems.

When you walk your dog does he or she find interesting or unusual items to bring home?

I just can’t shake this cold

Tricia — Wed, 03 Mar 2010 21:27:25 +0000

Man am I miserable. I’ve been suffering from my second cold in two months for the last week or so and it’s just not getting any better. I now have a cough and I’m not sure if it’s just from the cold or if it’s turning into bronchitis or something worse.

This sucks. My nose is stuffed, I’m coughing and my ears are blocked up too. Oh and every time I stand up a wave of dizziness comes over me. I’m just not anywhere near myself at all. I can’t think and I seem to be forgetting things easier. That’s one of the reasons why, along with the cough, I’m wondering if this is becoming pneumonia. I had pneumonia in 1998 for about two months and I swear it was the worst illness I’ve ever gone through. i was in a fog the whole time. I’m starting to feel that way again.

So … I’m trying to rest (mostly unsuccessfully), eat healthy, and I’m drinking juices and taking vitamins. Oh and I’m also drinking lots of hot drinks like coffee and tea as it soothes my throat. I’m also taking decongestants and yes, my allergy relief which I take every day anyway since I’m actually allergic to my dog.

I actually haven’t been sick with a cold or any kind of respiratory infection since 1998 when I had that bad case of pneumonia so I’d forgotten how bad colds hit me I guess.

Hopefully in a week or so I’ll be back to normal and with any luck I’ll stay cold fee from the rest of the winter. Man I hate this.

I can’t believe how fast my hair grows

Tricia — Fri, 19 Feb 2010 22:14:56 +0000

I think I’ll be going shopping this weekend. As I mentioned in one of yesterdays posts I’m putting myself on a better skin care routine – moisturizing daily. So now I’m on the hunt for the best wrinkle cream.

Ok well maybe not wrinkle cream specifically … but really aren’t all moisturizers kind of anti-wrinkle since keeping your skin moisturized can help delay or minimize wrinkles?

I also have to get my haircut. I swear my hair grows so fast that I have to get my hair cut every four weeks or so otherwise it looks awful. Needless to say … it’s been about two months since my last haircut so yes, my hair looks bad! LOL

I actually think it might be my hairdresser. She used to cut my hair great, but I’ve noticed over the last year that even after a week my haircut doesn’t look as good as it used too … so maybe I need a new stylist too?

I’ve always had a hard time finding someone who can cut my hair well. I don’t know why … I have fairly nice hair – it’s fine with some wave and lots of body – not too difficult to work with or at least i don’t think it is … so why do I have so much trouble finding a good stylist? Do you have trouble finding someone who can cut your hair properly too?

Just about Everything on TV is a rerun this week

Tricia — Fri, 19 Feb 2010 22:05:17 +0000

I didn’t sleep well last night and now I have a really bad migraine. I hate headaches!

I can’t do much of anything. I’m trying to do a little work on the computer, but it’s not going well. So I’m going to try to relax and just watch some TV for a while. Too bad it’s mostly reruns on this week and next too – thanks to the Olympics.

I have been watching the Olympics here and there, but I’m not interested in every single event … and the stations I normally watch all have reruns on so there isn’t much choice for a girl with a headache. Hmmm maybe I’ll get stuck watching an infomercial on adult back acne or something. LOL

Headache, headache go away!

Slow Cooker Beef Stew

Tricia — Thu, 18 Feb 2010 23:42:35 +0000

I’m making stew for dinner tonight. I haven’t made stew in oh … a decade or more! LOL

My mother used to make stew for dinner regularly and everyone loved it except for me. I always hated stew. Oh it was always a little better the next day, but I still didn’t like it very much. For some reason though, my mom could get me to eat canned stew (Puritan Irish stew). I thought it was great.

I think my taste buds have evolved in the last while – or at least I’m hoping that they have because it seems like I’ll eat dishes and foods that I wouldn’t touch when I was a kid or young adult.

Anyway … I’ve been using our slow cooker quite a bit this year. I’ve made at least three slow cooled roasts and I even made barbecued back ribs once. Now I’m trying a tasty sounding stew recipe that I found on the Canadian living website.

I’m throwing in lots of root vegetables – a small store near us has veggies that are always fresh in fact they’re way fresher than the ones we get in the grocery store!

Here’s the recipe that I’m trying out this evening:

Slow-Cooker Hearty Beef Stew

1-1/2 lb (750 g) stew beef
1 tbsp (15 mL) vegetable oil
1 can (28 oz/796 mL) tomatoes
2 onions, cut in wedges
2 cups (500 mL) chopped peeled sweet_potatoes
2 potatoes, peeled and chopped
2 stalks celery, chopped
2 bay leaves
1-1/2 tsp (7 mL) italian herb seasoning
2-1/2 cups (625 mL) beef stock
1 cup (250 mL) frozen peas
1/4 tsp (1 mL) each salt and pepper
1/2 cup (125 mL) all-purpose flour

Trim and cut beef into 1-inch (2.5 cm) cubes. In large skillet, heat oil over medium-high heat; brown beef in batches. Transfer to plate.

In 18- to 24-cup (4.5 to 6 L) slow-cooker, crush tomatoes with potato masher. Add onions, sweet potatoes, potatoes, celery, bay leaves, herb seasoning and beef; pour in 2 cups (500 mL) of the stock. Cover and cook on Low for 10 to 12 hours or until beef and vegetables are tender.

Add peas, salt and pepper. Whisk flour with remaining stock, stir into stew. Cook, covered, for 15 minutes or until thickened. Discard bay leaves.

** I also added about a cup of red wine, four carrots and 6 garlic cloves and I’m cooking this recipe on high in the slow cooker instead of low. **

Hopefully this stew tastes fantastic. I was drawn to this recipe because it had sweet potatoes in it. I don’t think I’ve ever had a stew with sweet potatoes in it and I love them … so it should be good.

I’m making white rice as well. We’ll probably serve the stew on top of the rice.

Do you ever make beef stew and or use a slow cooker to prepare meals for your family? If you do use a slow cooker what are your favorite recipes?

I have to start treating my skin better

Tricia — Thu, 18 Feb 2010 23:23:27 +0000

I just realized that since I’ve been home on medical leave (five years now!) I haven’t really been taking care of my skin like I used to. By this I mean, when I was working I’d spend some time each morning (or afternoon or evening depending upon my nursing shift) caring for my skin.

I’d always put moisturizer on under and then before bed I’d put a little bit of moisturizer on my skin as well. Usually a cream specifically for night time use.

I haven’t been doing that since I’ve been stuck at home. Oh sure, I put moisturizer on occasionally, but not every day like I used to.

Why am I thinking about this now? Well I’ve noticed that my skin is kind of dry and well .. I think all those olay regenerist reviews in the magazines that I read are getting to me. LOL maybe they’re doing some kind of subliminal advertising?

Starting this evening I’m going to start putting moisturizer on my skin more regularly. Hey, I’m getting older – gotta protect the skin! Good thing I have good genes! Everyone says I look at least 10 years younger than I am (real problem when I was in my 20’s!) and so do my brothers and my sister. So it’s not too late!

Now if only I could sleep better! I’m sure that would help too.

Our websites should be loading faster now

Tricia — Thu, 18 Feb 2010 23:14:33 +0000

In my last post I mentioned that I’ve been spending quite a bit of time this week getting our blogs up to date. I forgot to mention that I also installed a new plugin that should make this page load a little bit faster.

It’s WP Super Cache. I did have an old cache plugin that I’d been using for years, but Super cache allows me to gzip the blog which in turn should really make it load faster. Now, gzip can be a little hard on some shared servers, so I didn’t enable it on all of our blogs (remember we have 17!), but rather I only enabled it on our blogs that get more than 100 page views a day.

I wanted to make my sites faster for my visitors, and I also wanted to make them load faster for Google as it’s rumored that page load speed might be a factor in search engine rankings in the near future. I used a free seo tool or two to check the load speed of a few of our sites before and after enabling super Cache gzip and wow … the pages load a heck of a lot faster!

Do you ever work on your websites to make them load faster for your visitors?

It takes a lot of time to update all our blogs!

Tricia — Thu, 18 Feb 2010 22:57:52 +0000

I guess it’s been a little while since I last posted! I’ve been so busy lately with appointments and getting this and all our other blogs up to date!

I can’t believe how much I hate updating the version of Wordpress each time it updates as well as all the plugins that update following a major WP version release. Not to mention the plugins that still work, but that for some reason I can’t access from the admin area without getting a “you don’t have permission to access this page” message. LOL So I’ve also been looking for WP plugins to replace the ones I can’t access anymore.

I think I’d rather be reading about adult acne treatments than spending two days or so in a row updating our 17 blogs!

I shouldn’t complain. It’s a lot easier to update all of our blogs now that Wordpress has a built in updater, but still it takes time … time I don’t have.

Do you dislike having to update your blog whenever new releases come out?

You are in My World Now

I’d love to have a vacation property

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