Tricia's Musings

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



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Archives for 2010

My dog cracks me up

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My Labrador Retriever is such a Ham. She had her dinner a little while ago so her tummy is full and she’s a happy camper.

She’s lying on her dog bed playing with her nylabone. A few times a day she rolls over on her back, with her bone in her mouth and starts kicking up her legs and barking. I guess she’s really happy to be playing with her bone … but it’s kind of weird too because it comes out of nowhere. It’s also noisy since Midnight has a very loud bark!

I know I’m biased but I also happen to think my Lab is pretty smart. Last night it was raining fairly hard here in Toronto, so when my husband took Midnight out in the evening to do her business he happened to mention that he’d dried off her feet (on the front carpet) as he brought her in. Well Midnight heard the word dried and she immediately went over to her crate and jumped up so her front feet were touching the top of it and she used her nose to point to the towel that’s folded at the back of the crate. Yep … she knows if she’s really wet we’ll use the towel to dry her off. Of course, Midnight doesn’t really want to get dried off … she wants to play with the towel. Everything is a game to her.

My husband just went out with our dog and I decided to try teaching her a new trick before they left. We always keep her leash on top of her crate so I asked her to “bring it’ to me. It took a while before she got the idea of what I wanted her to bring to me, but with a little help she eventually brought me her leash. We gave her a cookie for her efforts. I’ll give it another try later this evening or tomorrow to re-enforce the idea. She’s pretty good that way, she learns new things fairly fast.

Now if I could just teach her how to search for cheap auto insurance since we’re in desperate need of less expensive insurance that would be great … but I think I’m going to have to do that job! LOL

Do you have a dog? Do you teach your dog new tricks? Is your dog a fast learner?





I really love my neighborhood

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Have I mentioned lately how friendly the people in my neighborhood are? I swear, even though we live in a big city, it’s almost like we live in a one street small town – at least in our immediate area.

I know .. most Torontonians probably wouldn’t say that as it’s not known as being the friendliest city, but it’s true for my area.

The neighbor behind us has invited us to his son’s wedding – or rather, I suppose it’s his son himself that invited us to his wedding. It’s the weekend after next. We were invited to the eldest son’s wedding when he got married two or so years ago but we couldn’t make it for some reason, so we’re looking forward to attending this wedding.

I don’t think I’ve been to a Greek wedding before.

Actually I ran into my neighbors daughter when I was outside a little while ago and she told me she’s in the wedding party. She was just coming back from having her bridesmaid dress fitted. She showed me some pictures and the dresses look a little like prom dresses.

Anyway … everyone in my neighborhood is just nice. Some drop off food – tasty desserts when they’ve been baking, others do favors for us like mowing our front lawn or shoveling our walkway when they’re out doing their own chores. Of course we return the favors.

It’s just a great place to live. Our house could be a bit bigger and I’d love it if we were in a detached house rather than a semi-detached as I can hear my nearest neighbors at times … but hey – most of the things about living here are good.

Do you like your neighborhood and or your neighbors?

My neighbor and his car

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One of my neighbors has this old car that he keeps parked on the street in front of his house. I’m not sure what kind of car it is, but it looks like a car from the 50’s and for the most part it’s in nice shape or it was until recently.

We’ve talked to the neighbor about his car in the past. It’s a fantastic looking car and it’s obvious that he’s put time into caring for it … but it seems like he’s not taking care of it as well as he used to in the last few months.

The car is parked on a street that I can see from my front door and every time I look out I see this green car that looks like it’s slowly sinking into the ground on it’s passenger side. I don’t know if it’s tires on the passenger side are flat or what’s going on but it looks odd. It just seems a shame. It’s such a nice car and he was always out side taking care of it like he was putting in Ferrari parts and now it looks like the car is falling into a sinkhole or something. Weird.

Do you have any neighbors with old collector cars that are getting run down due to neglect?

Strange – our visitors are missing

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I’m having a strange week. My husband and I both have relatives in town from Vancouver. that’s odd to begin with that we’d both have relatives from the west coast in town at the same time, but there’s an even stranger thing going on … they seem to have disappeared!

Yep …

Chris saw his cousin that was visiting Toronto on Saturday at his parents house. On Tuesday his cousin and her husband came to Toronto on business and they were supposed to be in town for a few days. My husband made plans to get together with them, but we still haven’t heard from them!

Then .. on Wednesday afternoon I got an email from my brother saying that he was at the Vancouver waiting for his plane to Toronto. He was coming into the city for business and he’s supposed to leave sometime on Friday.

I guess he’s here … but I still haven’t heard from him. Usually we talk on the phone, or meet for dinner or heck – he ends up staying at our house. This time … not even a phone call or an email.

It’s strange! I sent him an email but I still haven’t heard from him. I know he usually had back to back to back meetings when he comes to Toronto, but we usually get at least a phone call or something. Really odd.

Now if only one of our friends would disappear for a while! LOL My friend broke up with her boyfriend and I guess I’m her go to person. She calls me and emails me several times a day. I love her but it’s too much. Oh and lately her emails ask about Weight loss pills that work fast and how else to lose weight quickly. You see she’s ready to get herself back on the market.

So have you ever had someone tell you they were coming to visit and then you didn’t hear from them?

Winter is coming soon!

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I can’t believe that it’s already November. It seems like the last couple of months have just flown by.

It’s getting colder here too. Our furnace has been on several times each day over the last week or so. I guess it won’t be long before I’ll be pulling out our winter coats, hats and gloves.

I was looking out my kitchen window at my backyard and some of my neighbors backyards and I realized that we still have a lot of work to do to prepare for winter. We’ve done some yard work such as putting away the patio table and gathering up the solar lights and so on, but we still have to tidy up the garden beds and empty the pots and planters that held all of the annuals.

My neighbors are much further ahead then we are. One of our neighbors plant their whole backyard with veggies in early summer and they just cleared everything out a week or so ago so their yard is just soil now. Another neighbor was working in his backyard today, putting away his plant pots and other gardening tools and making sure the hot tub cover is secure and he moved his BBQ right outside his patio door for easy winter barbecuing.

Hopefully it’s not too cold this coming weekend, because we’re going to have to get out there and get all of the work done that needs to be done before winter arrives.

Oh and on Saturday I saw my first snow! How sad. My husband and I were standing in the kitchen and we both saw what we at first thought was rain, but then we realized that it was snow falling. It actually snowed hard enough that the ground was wet for a while afterwords. Thankfully it melted right away!

Is it getting colder in your area too? Have you seen any snow yet?

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