Tricia's Musings

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



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Archives for May 2010

I can’t believe he did that!

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I’m starting to wonder if my neighborhood is going downhill.

I live in a nice middle class area where most people seem to take care of their homes and there’s very few break ins or other crime … but still … it’s changed since we moved in almost 9 years ago.

I mean, the other day, after I had taken our dog outside to do her business for the last time that evening – around 11:30 pm, I saw a car stop in front of our house. As I was starting to close our front door I saw a man get out of the drivers side of the car and walk around to the back door on the passenger side.

The man sort of bent over a little bit and I wondered if he was talking to someone in the backseat or if he was leaning in the back window to get something.

I don’t know why I paused at the door to watch him, but I did. Little did I know that my husband who’d just gone upstairs to get ready for bed was watching from the bedroom window as well.

The man stood at the side of the car for a few moment and then walked around the car, got in, and drove off.

My husband called down from upstairs “Did you see what that guy DID?”

I said “no … I just thought he was talking to someone in the backseat.”

Then my husband said:

“That guy just PEED ON HIS CAR!”

“What?”

“He was peeing on his car!”

Who does that? Who pees on their own car … or well, I don’t know if the man owned the car, but still, who pees on the car they’re driving around?

Plus it’s not like I live on a quite side street. It’s fairly busy with cars going by 24 hours a day.

I know sometimes you just have to pee and you might not be in a place where you can easily get to a washroom … but why did the guy pee on his car? Why didn’t he walk into my neighbors yard and pee behind his big maple tree or walk down the side street that’s just beside our house?

Would you ever do that? Pee on your own car I mean?

Anyway … now you can see why I’m wondering if my neighborhood is going downhill. LOL





I got a Kindle!

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Well … I bit the bullet and went and bought a Kindle. I’ve been look at the Kindle and thinking about getting one for at least a year.

Last weekend I finally decided that the time had come to get one. Why .. well maybe it had something to do with the super heavy novel that I’m trying to finish reading (The Girl who played with Fire). The thought of reading it on something that weighs just over half a pound was appealing. I mean, have you see how thick and heavy the novel – The Girl Who Played with Fire is? It must weight four or five pounds!

I ordered the Kindle on Saturday and it arrived last Tuesday – a day earlier than had been estimated. Of course I had to play with my new toy within minutes of it’s arrival.

I had already downloaded a few (21) free Kindle books from Amazon over the weekend. Did you know they have quite a few classics (pre 1923) that they offer for free? They also have a version of kindle for the PC so even if you don’t get an actual Kindle you can still read books created for the Kindle on your computer or even your iPhone or iPad.

The first thing I did with the Kindle was to start reading the instruction manual that came loaded in the Kindle. The Kindle was very easy to figure out, but reading the manual gave me a way to start getting used to using the Kindle and reading a book on a computer like doohickey rather than on paper. It only took me about 10 minutes into the manual to start becoming very comfortable reading on the Kindle.

I still haven’t finished reading the manual. I wanted to get started reading something I was interested in as soon as possible so I transferred the many free books that I’d found on Amazon to my Kindle and later that evening I went shopping for more books – Ones that I actually paid for.

Kindle books come in a wide range of prices. To justify the expense of buying the Kindle I’m trying to get books that are $6 and under … so I guess I won’t be getting any newly published books for a while. I’m in Canada so the prices and deals aren’t as good for me as it is for my American friends. Oh and I’ve also found several other websites where I can download or buy more books that will work on the Kindle.

So I guess I’ll be reading as much as possible in what little spare time I have.

I’m not thrilled with how Amazon is set up for finding Kindle books. If you’re just browsing it’s kind of hard to find books in the price range that you’re interested in. It’s kind of tedious like filling out an employment screening form. I certainly got used to reading on the Kindle faster than I have searching for books I want to read.

Do you have a Kindle or have you tried reading eBooks on your computer, iPhone or iPad? How do you like reading books on something like the Kindle? I’m enjoying it, but I tend to read on my side in bed so I’m terribly afraid of falling asleep and dropping the Kindle only to wake up as it crashes to the floor!

Oh and if anyone knows of some good sites where I can get really good deals on eBooks I’d love to hear about them.

My site’s worth what?!?!?

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Ha … A few years ago I set up Google alerts for all of my husband and I’s websites and blogs. An alert just came in for this blog – Feverishthoughts.com from a website called Yandalo.com estimating this domains worth at $110,486.36!

Hmmm I’m not quite sure I believe that. I have six subdomains on this domain which means there are seven sites associated with this domain in all and while they all have page rank, and very good site traffic as well as a combined low Alexa score I’m not sure the domain is worth that much.

Still it’s kind of cool to see an estimated value like that.

Maybe I’d better start taking my daily multivitamin and work harder on my sites so that someday they really might be worth that much!

Have you ever checked any of the sites that estimate the value of a domain out to see how much your site is worth? If you have do you think the site under or over estimated the value of your site?

The Pentasa Fairy

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I ran into one of my neighbors daughters earlier today. Well … I didn’t actually run into her, but you know what I mean. LOL

My husband and I had just come back from shopping and as she was walking down the street towards her car she stopped to say hello to us.

She’s the lady I have called in past posts – “The Pentasa Fairy”. Why? Well she works in a medical building and when she found out I was taking Pentasa for my Crohn’s (it’s an anti-inflammatory type medicine) she went around to several of the gastrointestinal specialists in her building and collected sample boxes of Pentassa for me. Between December and March she dropped off meds at my house twice and all in all she gave me enough that I went about 5 months without having to pay for this expensive medication. Pretty cool since we don’t have a drug plan. I figure she saved me about $800.

She’d just drop it off in a bag outside our door … she’d never knock she’d just leave the meds and go … We started saying oh wow the Pentasa Fairy’s been here when we’d find a bag full of Pentasa samples outside the door.

One of the first things she asked me today when we were talking was if I had enough Pentasa and when I said I’d run out of her “gift” she said she’d ask her doctors if they had any more. It would be sweet if she could get more because it really helps us out.

It sounds like she makes a habit of getting drug samples from the doctors in her medical building. She gets everything from blood pressure meds to medicines that treat acne for people she knows.

Many of our neighbors are Greek – not odd since we live in a fairly Greek neighborhood. While my husband and I were talking with our neighbors daughter she told us that they always refer to my husband as Saint Christo in part because he’s so nice is always doing nice things for the people in our neighborhood and also because his name means “Christ” in Greek.

She then asked me if my full name was Patricia and yep – it is. Then she told me that my name in Greek sometimes means Virgin Mary. LOL So Chris and I are Christ and the Virgin Mary. No wonder the neighbors were so happy when we moved in!

Do you do nice things for your neighbors or have one or two in your area that do very nice things for you? I love my neighborhood it’s just full of nice people like my neighbors daughter.

Darn food allergies

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Well I think my weird new allergies have finally settled down. Man I hate having to add more foods to the list of things that I can no longer eat. Between my allergies and Crohn’s the list is getting fairly long!

So no more pineapple, no more shrimp or any kind of shellfish … and the list goes on. I never did eat much shellfish, but occasionally … perhaps for my birthday I’d ask my husband to take me out for Lobster. Now I can’t do that. Grrr

At least a lot of the foods that I can’t eat due to allergies are ones that I only ate once in a while – it would be worse if it was something that I ate regularly … Uhm … but then, now that i think about it- when I add in the foods I can’t eat because of Crohns (like corn or any kind, raw veggies and so on) I guess there is a lot of regular foods that I can’t eat that most people eat at least once a week if not daily.

Do you have some foods that you can’t eat because you’re allergic to them or because your body doesn’t react to them well? It kind of sucks doesn’t it?

Ok gotta run .. my neighbor just got a new tm-t88iv printer for their business that they want to show me … plus they want to put up a new fence between our houses in the backyard because the one we share is about to fall down so we have to discuss what we’d all like and when to get the work done.

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