Over the Holidays

Yes, I know I haven't updated in a while - sometimes you just don't feel like it, you know? Ask Teresa, she knows what I mean! ;)

Christmas was great, but seemed busier than usual, only because we split Christmas day between Marn's family and Dad's side at his place. Normally the whole day (from breakfast to dinner) is at Marn's house, and we typically don't get out of our PJ's all day.
Christmas in previous years spread across 3 days, and this year 2, so it seemed short, but busy.

As part of our gift to each other, we purchased Adrienne and Den's old Espresso machine from them. It's great, but we're not having much luck with the seal around the filter holders. It leaks every time - sometimes worse than others, even after putting in a new rubber seal, re-seating it, reversing it, etc.. So I don't know what we're doing. Maybe it's the grind (doubt it because using "normal" coffee grinds, or none at all still causes leaks), maybe it's the machine, maybe it's something else that we can't figure out. It seems to me that the filter doesn't get tight enough to the seal in the machine. They said they used it before shipping and it was fine, so it must be something we're doing. or not doing. If they LIVED CLOSER, they could check it out and see for themselves.... maybe during their next visit. When is that going to be? *elbow*
Marn on the other hand isn't too concerned about the leaking because she doesn't drink coffee anyway. She uses it for making her "earl grey misto with shot of vanilla", or London Fog as it's also known as. It does steam milk quite well, though! Not sure if it was worth that much just to steam some milk....

New Years was pretty low key. We had invited some people over, but did so really late and most people already had plans or had decided to stay in, so we had Marn's parent's over for a 3-course fondue. Cheese, main, and chocolate. It was awesome! When they left (for their neighbours party), we settled in for a night of Guitar Hero and watched the ball drop (in Toronto), then went to bed. Woohoo!

Echo has been out of his crate since "the incident" (although confined to the downstairs) and overall he's been pretty good. His worst moment (ever for behaviour/destruction) came at the expense of Marn's eye glasses... I can't remember if I blogged about this yet? Yes, he completely destroyed them, barely recognizable as eye glasses. Marn LOVED them too, so that made it hard. He has chewed paper and magazines otherwise, which although we hate, it could be a LOT worse.... paper, and tearing it into tiny pieces, is his fetish. Marn has since re-ordered the same pair which haven't come in yet, and will be careful where leaving them while not home!

Since buying the new washer and dryer, we've put new flooring plans on hold for a while, but we're antsy to get started on the tile back splash that we want to do. We haven't decided on a tile yet, but love a slate flooring we saw a few weeks ago and might use that as the back splash as well. I bought a wet saw on sale as part of my christmas gift too, so we would use that to cut the slate into quarters. We absolutely LOVE the look of slate, understanding that it can be harder to lay and has more upkeep. Some people at the stores say it's easier to lay, but all agree it's more time consuming and more upkeep with the sealing. Anyway, we hope to get back into thinking about that again soon.

The floors also won't be started until after my student loans are paid. Yes, I still have some to go, but they will be paid off before the end of February. In fact, either the week before, or right on my birthday they'll be completely gone!! We are so excited! And to celebrate we've decided to go out to a fancy dinner at this new place in Waterloo we've been wanting to try. We'll combine it as a birthday/no loan celebration. The loans are at a level now where we can just focus on paying them off before doing anything else. Yes, people will argue I should have been doing this years ago, but when you're faced with a mountain of a loan with other plans for spending money (ie: new home, vacations, decks, fences, appliances, etc, etc.), you tend to just keep paying what they tell you with nothing extra. Well instead of another year or so of low re-payments, we're killing it now, now that it's a manageable amount.

With the "new found savings" that we'll realize after paying this off, we're going to continue the same "payments" into a separate account to make extra mortgage payments throughout the year, and keep some as emergency funds. Or that's the plan anyway. We'll see how well we stick to that. We are spenders at heart!

Well, that's it for now. It FRIDAY! Looking forward to the weekend...

Totally Lucked Out

We've been trying to find the game Guitar Hero III for the PS3 even since getting back from the cruise, with no luck whatsoever. We actually saw it in the States while coming back to Canada, but thought we'd wait instead of having yet another thing to lug back with us, although Marn wanted to get it because she'd been hearing from patients about how hard it is to get. It turns out that it's one of the hottest things for Christmas this year, and next to impossible to find in stores or online.
Most of the stores say, we don't have it, but check our website often... which we've been doing. No luck, and I started settling on the idea that we'll find it after Christmas, no worries...
Well, today just before lunch I decided to look online again, first Best Buy - no luck. Then Future Shop - no luck - but I did notice that my usual "local stores" selection was wrong. So I fixed that and added Cambridge, Waterloo, London and Mississauga.... to my surprise the Waterloo store showed it as available for in-store pick up! So I went ahead and started the ordering process, like I've done in the past but never let me finish saying it wasn't available. This time it let me. I was able to select in store pickup, choose the Waterloo store, finished the transaction, and 5 minutes later received an email saying it was there waiting for me! Yahoo! So tonight or tomorrow I'll be picking it up, and this Christmas we'll be "rockin out" with a video game. lol should be fun!

Early Xmas present

or late, once they're delivered, I guess...
We finally bought a new washer and dryer last night and we're super excited about it - if you've ever been to our house while the laundry was going on, we know why!
The dryer squeaks VERY loudly for a good 5-10 minutes when turning on, the "start" button is broken, needing pliers to start it, and the auto dry feature doesn't work properly. Not to mention that one cycle doesn't even work anymore - it stops after about 2 minutes. And our washer leaks occasionally, doesn't clean very well, and more recently one of the main cycles that we use also decided to stop working, where it would simply just stop 5 minutes into the cycle.

It was time. We bought the old ones used off of Ebay before we moved into the house for $600, so they've done fairly well. They should have been fine for WAY longer, but the previous owners practically abused the things, and they were falling apart before we even got them. She did have 10 kids, though (foster parent), so the machines were probably working non-stop all day every day.

We bought LG's from Future Shop (of all places) as they were on for a great price for the set (unadvertised, about $600 cheaper than what Sears and the Brick are selling the same units for right now). They may have been a little more than what we wanted to spend (isn't it always?), but we didn't think we'd be able to afford LG's in the first place, so we're happy about that. They are one model under the "steam" models - actually the exact same model as those, but without the steam feature.



The cool things about this model is they include the stacking kit (which is usually extra), and the front control panel of the dryer can be removed and attached to the bottom of the unit, so that both washer and dryer panels are right on top of each other in the middle of the stack. Typically it would be on the top. See my photo edit: It looks upside down, but it's not.

Shivers

Last night I had a bad case of "the shivers". I don't know what it is about me lately, but about once a year I get this uncontrollable chill where the slightest breeze makes my skin absolutely jump and I chill right to the bone. It's a horrible feeling and typically it only lasts one evening/overnight. I can only best explain it as being hyper sensitive to cold (and "cold" in this definition is any normal indoor temperature, god forbid any real outdoor cold), and my whole body tenses up trying to fight the feeling. Every hair on my body stands straight up and feels like they want to jump right out of my skin.
I have to wear a hat and scarf, multiple layers of clothing and a jacket and lay on the couch bundled up while I burn up, yet freeze, and sweat uncontrollably. It's really really terrible. I usually end up taking a scalding hot bath, and then wear clothes and a hat to bed - sometimes sleep on a towel because I sweat so much. Thankfully I didn't get the night sweats last night as bad as I have in previous years, so the bed wasn't disgusting this morning. But my pillow had a nice wet spot. Marnie absolutely LOVES those nights, being a huge cuddler and all.... I should have slept in the other room.
And amazingly, this morning after sleeping in for a while (I wasn't going to go to work), I got up and felt (almost) fine. I ended up leaving for work at about 10am.

The last time this happened was last year about this time and Chris and Carey were over for a games night. I was there bundled up like it was 10 below, sweating away and they laughed at me....
I'm telling you, it SUCKS, and it leaves my body as quickly as it comes.

Tree Shopping & Christmas Baking

Saturday was spent getting our Tree at the tree farm in the morning, and then Christmas baking the rest of the afternoon with Marn's family.

Tree hunting was fun, but I wish Echo was a better dog on leash - boy what a pain when there are people wanting to see and pet him. He is actually getting better and more mellow in his old age, but it's taking too long with the leash. He should be better than this. When he wants to go somewhere, he puts his head down and goes - especially if it's people who want to see him! Even with the Gentle Leader on, it's hard work. Besides that annoyance, Echo was a hit, as he always is, and we had fun cutting down our tree. Here he is with his Santa hat:



No pictures of the tree decorated yet, because it's only about half-way done. Marn wants more and different decorations. We don't have great stuff, and not enough lights, so it's looking a little anemic right now...

When we got home from that, Marn's family came over to start the "yummy time" Baking. This is becoming a tradition where they all go to one person's house and try to get all the Christmas baking done.... This year it was at our house again (I think last year it was as well, mainly because we have room in the kitchen for it).
After that, Cand and Dave and the kids stayed a little later and we opened an early Christmas gift to watch; Pirates of the Caribbean: At Worlds End, in Blu-Ray High Definition. WOW, what a picture! There was a preview for Cars on Blu-Ray as well, and HOLY COW, I need to get that - the colours and picture clarity are unbelievable!
I think all of us fell asleep watching it (it's a LONG movie), so we'll have to do that again sometime.

SNOW!

If you've been living in a cave the last few days, you might not know that we're currently being hit with a TON of snow... It started last night, then stopped for a bit, then started up again this morning some time early. I woke up at about 7:30 to Echo wanting to go out, so at about 8 I finally gave in and let him go. I had to shovel the snow out of the way to let him out because the wind had created a nice snow-drift about 1 foot up the back door. I decided that since we knew this was going to be a horrible day with snow, I'd shovel the drive way - one of many to come today, I'm sure. It took me almost an hour and I was drenched with sweat and covered in snow. It was already about a foot deep or more in some parts, mostly due to the wind... now, at 2:30pm, it doesn't even look like I was out there at all! unbelievable! It's completely covered over and by looking at it from inside, about TWICE as deep as this morning! Did I mention that it's still snowing? Hard? Ok, not as hard as before, but still snowing. If I had to guess, we've gotten 2 feet today. Maybe not that much in reality, but because the wind drifts it right over our driveway, it's MUCH deeper there than a lot of places.
My back is going to love me tonight! To make it worse, 5 people on my court have snow blowers, so they're in and out in 30 minutes. This one's going to take me a while longer....