Bad Luck

Sorry for not posting in a while. We have been ridiculously busy every single day. We have also been realizing that we are unlucky in many things that we've purchased. Things just seem to have a problem. Since there are so many things to mention, I will list them in point form below with a brief description.

 

Saeco Talea Giro Plus

 Coffee Machine: The coffee machine normally works great. Makes fantastic coffee... most of the time.If you only use it for espressos then it works flawlessly. The only time it was messing up was when we frothed the milk first to make a latte or cappuccino. First of all the milk would not froth properly. It would mostly bubble. After I was done frothing the milk, I would make an espresso. Well, the first espresso that was made right after you froth the milk would come to half the desired quantity. Obviously this was a problem. Brought the machine to be serviced once. They told me it was fixed. The frothing problem definitely was fixed as the milk froths beautifully now, but the espresso quantity problem has not. We have to bring it back to service this weekend. Lucky for us it's still under warranty.

Television: The saga continues. Yes, this is our second set. This time the television works fantastic. We absolutely love it. However, after watching it for a couple of days, we realized a huge oval patch on the screen that was 'cloudy'. I've heard of LED televisions having this problem around the edges but never in the centre of the screen. Anyway, we went back to the store we bought it at and they gave us no problem at all. Our salesman actually felt very bad and told us that we had very bad luck. The problem can only be seen under specific conditions, mainly when the screen is very bright (Ex. when looking at the sky, ocean or a white background). I took a picture of it and hopefully you can see what i'm talking about (pay attention to the front part of the bird. You should see a pale colored oval in the middle of the screen). The thing about problems like this, is that once you see it for the first time, it's all you look at. But hey, at least the television wasn't physically damaged this time. We need to wait about 2 weeks for our replacement.


The 'clouding' effect visible in the sky. Oh the irony!


Sofa: The sofa creaks. Plain and simple. This is not a $300.00 sofa either. This is a higher end couch bought in a higher end furniture store. It almost sounds as though pieces of wood are rubbing together. We are going to go check that out this weekend as well.

Fridge: Don't get me started on this. This has been going back and forth with Samsung for over 2 months. They have the worst customer service experience i've ever experienced BY FAR. There are scratches on the fridge door that were there on delivery and Samsung refused to change it. Anyway, very, very long story short, I wrote to the office of the president of Samsung Canada and got a response within an hour. They will replace the door however I have not gotten any news from them yet.

Well there you have it folks. Hopefully nothing else will surprise us and bite us in the ass in the next few weeks.

What is the lesson learned here boys and girls? Keep your bills in a safe place, because it's not an 'if' you will need them but a 'when' you will need them.

Spending Quality Time with the Wife

My wife was a little disappointed last night with the amount of couple time we spend together. We both thought that living together would allow us more ''us'' time, but the fact is it hasn't. There is always something to do, groceries to buy or people coming over. Basically, most of the time we're busy. Another thing that doesn't help is that we do not necessarily have the same interests. I play video games, she doesn't, I watch TV shows that she doesn't, etc... I like my time to be able to do these things as well but then it really leaves us with minimal ''us'' time.

What we're having trouble with now is finding a balance. She likes to cuddle together in bed, but I like to stay up late. So what I told her is that I would come to bed early with her a few times a week. This will cut down on my video game playing time but I want her to be happy and to do what she likes to do as well. She also expressed her interest in watching some TV shows with me and maybe some movies together. We do not watch the same televeision shows at all except The Walking Dead. What I would like to do is maybe look up some easy watching shows that we would both like and then get into those shows together. It will allow us to cuddle up on the couch together as I know that's what her real goal is. In the movie department we are okay because, even though she will never admit it, she likes horror movies. They are the only movies she won't fall asleep watching. The good news here is that I am a horror movie buff and I own over 100 horror movies.

I also like my alone time and I need to express that to her without making it look like I don't want to be with her. She needs way less alone time than I do so it's hard for her to understand the importance of alone time. In fact, she hates being alone and I absolutely love it. It gives me time to think and to do the things I like to do without any else around to bother me.

We will find a compromise and i'm sure in the end, we will both get what we want. I just wish there were more hours in a day...

TV is great!

Finally the TV has arrived and is in good condition. The picture is great and the setup was easy. It looks great right out of the box and I haven't yet played with all the settings.

The size is just right. My wife was worried it was going to be too big but now she loves it. It's just perfect. We sit about 9.5 - 10 feet away and it is a 60 inch television.

I have a HD receiver (satellite), a USB hard drive and my PS3 hooked up. All work great. I even attempted to play call of Duty in 3D and that worked great too. However, playing more than 15 minutes with the 3D on was giving me a headache. The passive 3D (as opposed to active where you need battery operated glasses) is a nice touch.

The picture below is kind of blurry and it makes the TV look kind of small. In reality, it's big. Not obnoxiously big, but hey-look-at-me big.

Ikea Strikes Again

My wife and I went to Ikea last night. We had to bring back a broken light bulb and my wife wanted to purchase those cube organizing things. Don't know exactly what they're called but it's basically a piece of furniture with 4, 6 or 8 cubes that can be used to display picture frames or store magazines, etc. She wanted one to be able to organize her teaching materials.

Anyway, we arrived at the maze, umm, I mean Ikea around 7:50 p.m. For those of you who've been to Ikea know that you must follow the path to reach the exit. The path leads you through all the rooms of a house. Living room, bed room, kitchen, office, etc. Well, this syrategy worked on us pretty damn well last night. As we were walking through the living room area, we spotted a coffee table. It was a simple, off white table. Some might say it was a little too simple but we both liked it. The size was perfect as well. Then we saw the price. It was $39.99! We couldn't believe the price. Sure, it's not the best built or fanciest coffee table on the market but it suits our needs pretty well and for the price you seriously can't wrong. Did we really do an impulse buy for a coffee table? That's definitely not our style especially not for furniture. Impulse buying, for me at least, makes me very uncomfortable. However, for that coffee table, I was confident. I'm not sure if it was the price or the fact that I knew that I could bring it back if we didn't like it but I felt fine about it.

Both of us were excited to see it mounted so we decided to set it up as soon as we got home even though it was close to 10 p.m. The mounting was extremely easy and took about 20 minutes or so. Once done, we flipped it over and we both realized the size was even more perfect than we thought. I think it looks great and for the price, it looks fantastic. I hope the pictures below give you an idea of how it looks. It actually looks much better in person.

TV Update: What the Hell??!!

Got the TV delivered last night!! Exciting right? Wrong. It's exciting when the TV actually works.

We mounted the beauty in about 10 minutes to its stand. We put it up on the TV stand and it looked awesome! Was it big? Yup. Was it obnoxiously big? Probably, but it was still awesome! Anyway, it was time to put it on! The moment i've been waiting for. I hit the the power button and I waited.  If I was waiting for 2 big cracks at the bottom of the screen that extended all the way to the top then I got exactly what I was looking for. Damn it! I couldn't believe it.

By the time I tried the TV, the store was already closed. I called them first thing the next morning and they told me I had to go down to the store.

We ended up going to the store in the afternoon around 4. To be honest, they were extremely nice and understanding. I was looking for an excuse to gey mad at them but I couldn't find any. I even had the director of the store come and excuse himself. Long story short: they are picking up the broken TV and delivering a new one on Wednesday.

TV Update: Delivery Time Set

''You're delivery is scheduled for tomorrow between the hours of 8 a.m. and 11 a.m. Thank you for shopping at Future Shop''

Me = Excited

It feels like Christmas morning!

Pictures will be posted for sure! Stay tuned!

Delicious Dinner

I wouldn't usually blog about stuff like this but I felt I just had to. I finished work a little later tonight and when I got home I was greeted by a delicious smell. The smell of tomato sauce sauteeing with spicy fresh pancetta! My wonderful wife made me a rose-styled pasta with fresh pancetta and anise seeds. Let me tell you, this thing was delicious! She also tried to please me by adding ground hot pepper powder (which we got directly from Italy when we visited family there a few weeks ago). She added quite a bit as the dish would probably not be edible by the average joe but for me it was fantastic! I'll stop here and let the picture below speak for itself.

TV Update: Delivery Attempt #2

I took it upon myself to call Future Shop. I want my TV! I spoke to the manager and he told me my TV was coming in on Wednesday directly from Sony. He also made me aware that they need 48 hours to set up an appointment for delivery. Since that was the case, I made the appointment for Friday. I will definitely take pictures of it when it arrives. For now, I will continue to enjoy my 43" Samsung plasma.

TV stand is up!

It took about 3 hours (with help) but finally the TV stand is up! It looks much better than I though it would and it has lots of room to store stuff. I HAD to put a TV on it to see how it looked so I unboxed our 43" plasma Samsung TV as we still haven't received our 60" Sony LED. It looks a little lost on the stand as you can see but hey, at least I got to watch some TV and play some Playstation! 
Our big TV better come soon!

Buying a TV Stand

We finally bought our TV stand last night. We bought it at Ikea as the price was good and it looked pretty decent. Before actually getting to the purchasing stage, we looked at approximateky 5 - 6 stores which in my opinion, only made the decision harder.

Practically, the TV stand is awesome. It has sliding doors so you can hide a bunch of stuff behind it (Blu Rays, Playstation games, receivers, etc). As for the look, I like it alot but my wife had to be convinced. This was probably one of the hardest things we've had to buy so far apart from the actual house. Name an aspect and she wasn't sure about it. Size, color, practicality, quality, etc. The fact that we saw so many models before this one didn't help either and just added to her confusion. If we were to finally buy a TV stand, we had to find some type of compromise. In that case, what we did is we took the actual piece in chocolate brown and the sliding doors are a glossy white. The glossy white is what convinced my wife. She and I both think it will look nice and original. The reason we went with white is because our couches are chocolate brown. Buying the unit and doors chocolate brown would darken the room too much and make things too uniform. Now, what our intentions are is to buy a white (or off-white) coffee table and rug. Wow look at us, like two interior decorators who have no idea what we're doing!

Our goal is to mount the stand this Sunday morning. Hopefully it gets done as we are both anxious to see how it looks. Pictures to follow.