Tricia's Musings

Random Thoughts about life in general, living in the big city of Toronto



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Archives for 2008

My flamboyant rose

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I discovered this summer that I have quite the flamboyant rose! It’s called Climbing Westerland and as you can see from the photo above it has vibrant orange petals. It also has a lovely rose scent.

I adore this rose and it’s racy blooms. I only started growing this rose plant last summer (2007), so this has been my first full year with this rose. I must say, I’m not in the least disappointed!

On such a cold day sa this it’s nice to be able to see pictures and remember the flowers I adored all summer.





Neighbors bestowing gifts of food!

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I’ve told you before that I live in a great neighborhood and have great neighbors, right?

A few of our neighbors seem to have taken us under their wing so to speak and give us food whenever they have special family occasions or during the holidays. Remember I told you about our neighbor giving us a literal feast when they celebrated Greek Orthodox Easter?

Well … now that Christmas is getting closer some of our neighbors are starting to bestow gifts upon us. The little old lady two doors down traditionally gives us home made Baklava every year oh and sweet bread, but this year she brought us paella.

Maybe she’s bored or experimenting, but it was a nice treat! It was filled with seafood! Mmmm I love getting gifts of food! Now I just have to return her paella pan before I forget!

Do any of your neighbors drop off gifts during the holidays?

As I was saying in my last post we have no extra money so I can’t really afford to get any of our neighbors gifts, but maybe I can wipe up some treats in the kitchen.

Don’t you hate it when things start breaking down in your home?

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I rarely use our basement washroom, but for some reason, I used it earlier today. That’s when I made a discovery … the taps we have in that bathroom are beginning to break. Figures .. just when we have NO money we’re probably going to have to go out and buy a new faucet set.

My husband knew the taps weren’t in good shape, but he never got around to letting me know. Men!

If we can keep the taps for a while, well until we have some extra money, I’ll wait and get some Moen faucets. We’re eventually going to redo the basement and basement washroom so I’d like to pick out nice, quality fixtures if at all possible.

Doesn’t it figure that things start breaking down just when you can’t afford it? That happened to my sister in law and her husband. They just bought a new house (across the street from where they had lived) and once they moved in, in October they realized that their furnace wasn’t working so they had to replace it. They also had to replace the washing machine and dryer, plus their water softener and snow blower just broke down too! They replaced the water softener … at a cost of $2,500 bucks! Why??? I’m sure they could have lived without soft water for a while. I think replacing the snow blower (considering their new property is larger than their previous property plus it’s on a corner so that means more snow to shovel!) was more important.

Anyway .. isn’t that a run of bad luck? A new furnace, washer, dryer, water softener and soon hopefully a snow blower … that must be $15,000 or more in extra expenses they weren’t counting on!

I’m just keeping my fingers crossed that nothing else in our house breaks down. Our washing machine and dryer came with the house and we estimate that they are going on about 35 years old! Yeah, I’m sure they are energy hogs … we’re going to replace them soon … but hopefully not before we can afford to replace them.

Migrating to Google Feeds

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It looks like my RSS feeds, the ones that I set up on Feedburner, will be migrating over to Google Feeds sometime tomorrow.

I got an email from Google last week stating that my feeds would migrate to Google Feeds on the 5th. I didn’t request the migration, but I guess that they must be converting all of their Feedburner customers over to Google now.

Now that the day has just about arrived I’m starting to get nervous.

Will my Feedburner Feedsmith WP plugin still work? I use the plugin to convert my normal WordPress post and comment feeds to a Feedburner feed so I can accurate track my subscribers. Will I still be able to do that?

I took a look at the Google Forums and did a search for “Feedburner plugin” and a few other similar keywords, but I really couldn’t find much information as to whether it will still work once my feeds are on Google. A Google search turned up similarly unsatisfying results so I’m going to assume that the Feedburner plugin has continued to work for most people.

If you’ve converted your feeds from Feedburner to Google feeds and you use or used the Feedburner Feedsmith plugin would you be so kind as to let me know if it still works for you?

I have 30 Feedburner Feeds so I hope the migration goes well!

If everything goes well I’ll be able to monetize my feeds with Adsense. I’m not sure whether I’ll do that or not. I know that some of the big bloggers who are using Adsense for Feeds have stated that they are making money on their feeds, but I also know that people read RSS feeds not only for the convenience of being able to read their favorite feeds in one place, but also because the feeds are often ad free.

Have you added Adsense to your feeds? Are you making any money? How did your readers respond?

Now here’s a question for my RSS readers – how would you feel if I added an Adsense banner or two to my feeds? Would it bother you or would you be fine with it?

If I do decide to try Adsense for feeds I’d put the ad below the post. I HATE visiting a website and seeing big ads above a post. I mean, we visit websites or read feeds for the content and it’s just irritating to have to scroll down past an ad before you can read the content you came for, isn’t it?

BTW if you mainly read my sites by RSS feed or via an email subscription, if you suddenly stop being able to get my feed or if it looks like there’s no new posts (I generally post at least once a day) please let me know as there might be a problem with the feed thanks to the feed migration from Feedburner to Google Feeds.

Attack Kitten!

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Wordless Wednesday

pouncing kitten

Ready, set, POUNCE!

I don’t know what the kitten lying on the bed did, but the cute black kitten seems to think it needs punishment. Look at those claws as the kitten flies through the air! I’ll bet that hurt when it landed on the other kitten!

Actually, it kind of looks like the kitten on the bed is about to jump on something itself. Maybe it moved before the other cat had a chance to land?

BTW these are not my kittens, although I kind of wish they were. They’re so cute!

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