Yesterday was a particularly busy shopping day. The night before the microwave died as I was making dinner! Ahhhh! No I wasn’t making “microwave dinners” or anything like that, but I do tend to use the microwave pretty much daily when I cook. I use it to heat things, steam vegetables, cook foods – it’s a well used appliance. I couldn’t live a day without my microwave or at least I didn’t think I could.

So … after doing the usually things like picking up some of my prescriptions (man I hate having Crohns!) and then getting groceries we started looking in a few stores for microwaves. I didn’t want a tiny microwave. Our previous one had been a 1.6 cubic ft microwave. Yes- big enough to put a good size dish, bowl or plate in. See I told you I cook in it. Unfortunately most of the stores that we went to had only .9. 1.0 or 1.2 cubic ft microwaves. I never realized how hard it was to find larger ones!

Finally we found the one we were looking for in two different stores – we’d gone back and forth doing a price comparison since the stores were close together. The store we eventually bought from had the microwave that we wanted listed at a higher price, but when we told them the other store had them for about $25 cheaper they immediately told us they’d match the price … then they said that oh .. the only ones we have of that model are in open boxes. So .. they said that if wanted an open box microwave that they’d drop the price a further $50 and then add a 3 year store warranty. We looked at all three open boxes and picked the one that looked like it had only been opened in the store. I’m so happy we got that deal! It was easy on our debit cards – that’s for sure!

The microwave worked just fine when we got it home and set it up so so far so good! It was a busy shopping day as I said .. but a very successful one!

I got rid of a lot of stuff from that room. Clothes, old computer gear and even a Keyboard that had a problem with one of it’s switches. I hated getting rid of that keyboard! It was kind of like this mpk 49 model. It was my keyboard that I’d had for years and years. My husband played it every now and then, but he mostly plays his guitars. I should have kept the keyboard and tried to fix it.

Oh well …

Well .. I guess I’ve got the jump on spring cleaning this year. I’ll be painting and renovating by the time spring arrives this year!

As it turns out she went to the store just the other day and ended up buying an upgraded version of the TV that was in that package, but just a little smaller. I think she’s going to be really happy with her new TV. She has a slightly older model of TV right now so I’m sure she’ll be thrilled this Friday once the new TV and home theatre is delivered and installed.

I’ve got a nice Plasma TV but I know the LED’s are really nice. Someday .. when my Plasma stops working I’ll probably switch to an LED too. Do you have a nice flat screen TV at home?

Lets see – I certainly haven’t finished my Christmas shopping so I have quite a few gifts to purchase, plus there’s a few items that I need around the house that I wouldn’t mind finding on sale either.

For instance I’ve been hoping to upgrade our desktop computer for quite a while and I’d love to upgrade the hard drive. I really like Maxtor hard drives and I’ll bet that I can find a great deal on one with say 500 gb of storage.

I’m sure some of you are planning on doing some online shopping today too. What kinds of things do you plan to shop for on Black Friday?

A couple of weeks ago I put the warm duvet on our bed but I’m still freezing. Maybe I’m just cold this year? I’ve been thinking about taking a look at electric blankets. I have a queen sized electric blanket in my closet but my husband moved the plug and controls away from where we keep the blanket for some reason and now we can’t find it … so that makes the blanket pretty much useless – well as an electric blanket anyway. So .. I guess I need to get an new one.

Is your home getting cooler now too? Are you dreading winter? What are you doing to stay warm?

If we were going to get a second cellphone I have no idea which kind to get. Something simple or another smart phone? I love my current smart phone and so does my husband … so maybe something like a Atrix 4G might work? But then if we want to keep thing simple since it’s a second cellphone that we’ll barely be using maybe a really bare bones cellphone might be better? Any ideas?

Now I’ve noticed that my new laptop is acting up. It really shouldn’t be .. I even had to completely wipe the hard drive and reload all the software but just three weeks later it’s acting up again … so I’m not confident in my “new” laptop. So .. now I’m thinking of a backup laptop. It doesn’t have to be a high end fancy laptop – just reliable.

I’ve been looking at some of the acer laptops and I found a couple that I’m interested in.

Before I go and buy another laptop (the one I bought in February is an Asus) and end up unhappy … perhaps my readers can tell me what they think of Acer Laptops?

I think part of the reason is because he usually ends up doing his work on the desktop computer and I don’t think he likes sitting there as much as he used to. So … I’m thinking about looking at clearance laptops to see if I can find a decent yet inexpensive laptop for him. He might enjoy being able to blog where ever he wants to write a lot more.

I think the other reason he’s slacked off on the blogging is because he just hasn’t been finding topics to talk about that really interest him. He’s a musician, but articulating his interests in the written word isn’t that easy for him. His posts are good when he does write so I’m going to keep encouraging him.

I was out in the garden earlier this afternoon after it had been raining most of the day and the roses just smelled heavenly … oh yes, I have lots of roses that have the old rose smell and it’s fantastic .. that’s why I said that the garden is the place to be.

The only thing missing from our garden or backyard – as my husband would say, is one of those dlp lcd projectors. He’s always wanted one of those to use outside for movies. You see our yard faces the back of our neighbors house and he figures we could just project a movie right onto our neighbors wall while sitting in our lovely garden surrounded by flowers and lovely smells. Pretty cool idea eh?

I’ll think about it … maybe we’ll do it this year.

As it turned out the Windows staff were there to promote the Windows Live software and one of the guys showed me the photo editing software which was really cool. You know, the photo editing “to the cloud” software that you see in the television commercials where you can pick out the best background or the best smile. Like I said it was really cool. I already have the software on my computer but I haven’t used it … now I think I’ll give it a try.

They also talked about how Windows gives you 25 gb of free Cloud disk space. You can use it like one of those free data backup services if you wanted to or to share data with others if you gave them permission to access files. It’s definitely worth using – I mean it’s free and it’s not like Microsoft is going to let it’s servers crash!