Diamonds are a girl's best friend

I had planned to go to church this weekend, but decided to hibernate yesterday. Although the temperatures did go above freezing, but there was freezing rain. The new washer and dryer arrived and they are amazing. I didn't seem to be stuffing a load in and there are 2 rinse cycles on the washer. L and I ate apple fritter doughnuts from Tim Horton's on Saturday and loved them so much, M got some more yesterday. I hadn't had one for awhile so maybe that's why they tasted extra good. We chose those because we read that they are one of the more healthy kinds of doughnuts.

L and K go on Xmas break at the end of the week. L is giving gifts to 7 of her teachers, as it's her final year of high school. The Olympic flame is in town and will be at various venues this week. M decided to mail some Olympic t-shirts to some relatives in the U.S. as a Christmas gift. It's funny how he's all caught up on the Tiger Woods gossip, just because he's this sports icon. Normally, he's never that aware of all the scandals going around.

Oh, one of the friends we had dinner with on Friday had recently celebrated their 25th wedding anniversary. Her husband gave her this beautiful diamond ring encircled with smaller diamonds. Wow, she was really happy with that.

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Windfall

Financial Abundance angel!
She really does work like magic!

A friend sent this abundance angel to me in an email, and I thought it was a nice wish to share.

M said he saw this well-dressed lady in Walmart with a small child. She tried 2 credit cards and 1 debit card and they all failed. She was unable to pay her $40 bill.

It's that time of year again, the newspaper delivery man has started to leave the paper right in front of our door. So it must be 'tip' time.

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Lock De-Icer

Well, it was a busy day yesterday. It started when one of my car tires complained about air pressure, so in -8C (16F) weather, I took the kids to school then stopped off at the gas station. However, this has been my 3rd or so time doing this, so the process went quite smoothly. There was another lady there ahead of me, but there was a man in another car that came to help her. So I was proud of my non-mechanical self. I've found the major thing for me to remember when I'm doing this is to make sure I'm wearing my progressive lens eyeglasses, so that I don't have to squint at the tire pressure readings on the gauge.

Then, I had a few errands to run, and get my exercise in before I picked the kids up again. L just had a half day of school.

Towards evening, I went to the mailbox only to find the lock was frozen shut. Really, it feels like January or February. We have super mailboxes on the street corners in the suburbs that you access with a key. So, what we do is go hunting for the bottle of lock de-icer and that usually helps a lot. It didn't this time, so we'll try again later. L says she managed to force it open last year.

After that, I took K to his tennis lesson. Then we had plans to meet some people for dinner, so my only problem by then was to find a nice, warm, yet dressy cardigan to wear for the occasion! I heard they had 80 cms of snow in Northern Ontario, roads were closed off.

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Friendly Banter

Yesterday, I decided to have the coffee and muffin special at McDonald's after my workout ($1.46 including tax). A retired gentleman was at the cashier. He told her he's almost coming to regard her as a friend. In fact, he told her he could add her as his Facebook friend. She laughed and said 'Oh, you have Facebook too?'. He said 'Of course I do!' (Well, I enjoy this friendly banter). The manager was telling him he had spent 16 hours the previous night cleaning up a grease fire, declaring them to be the worst kind.

My girlfriend had given K a nice wallet for Christmas, but I had to exchange it for one with a change compartment. It was not that easy to find one. Where do men put their change?

Then, I waited for over an hour in the doctor's office. I needed to refill a prescription and decided to get the seasonal flu shot. This young lady sitting next to me was not feeling well, and thought it might be the flu. Oh dear. My doctor was suffering from allergies himself, he thinks it's to the cold, no kidding.

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The Connected Home

The other day I was just wondering why we would want to have a computer (internet capability) on our appliances. The news story below demonstrates with an excellent example. Distracting to say the least, what do you think, are you ready for this?

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Striptease

I woke up this morning to our first snowstorm of the year! It looks like about 10cms of the white stuff and it is heavy and wet. School buses are delayed and there is a car stuck in the snow just up the road.

Well, our old clothes dryer is pretty much dead, fortunately it managed to do half loads and we were able to finish a load of laundry. We decided to upgrade to a new washer as well, so they will be arriving soon. Things have changed in the last decade, and I'm sure we'll be impressed with all the new features. We really just got a basic set, nothing too fancy, but there have still been improvements. I told M I couldn't get excited about a new washer or dryer (basic white's just fine). I thought the most important things would be capacity and whether the company would take the old ones away for us.

We gave some 'Quality Street' chocolates to K's orthodontist and his staff the other night. The receptionist thanked us and assured us they would be enjoyed. A bit later on, the brilliant, busy, young doctor himself strolled out to the reception area to thank me personally, to say that I shouldn't have, and to wish me a Merry Christmas. Well, I had a big smile on my face for a bit! All I could think of to say was 'Don't work too hard', to which he replied 'I'm actually going to take a few weeks off for Christmas for the first time.' It can really be more gratifying to give than receive.

SoccerMom has this video on her blog today and I just had to share it. Bear with us!

Oh, Mmm at Hot Toast and Jam has taken over Lissa's Create Tuesdays, see my sidebar for details. There is already a lot of interest!


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Staydrenched

We had a sudden power outage late Sunday night. It was awkward, grabbing flashlights and lighting candles. L finished her homework with a lantern. We ended up setting the travel alarm so that we would be sure to get up on time the next morning. We have a gas fireplace in the basement, so we reasoned that if it got unbearably cold, we could use that as a source of heat. The power returned at 12.20am. (Whew!) The good side of this is that we were able to watch the season finale of 'The Amazing Race' before the outage.

This is the cutest video:

The drench Clever Hamsters jazz band - official ad

Here are some other good ones:

Identity theft on Facebook is easy

Florida State lineman

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