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You are here: Home / 2006 / Archives for October 2006

Archives for October 2006

Gritting my teeth

October 5, 2006 by Tricia

Thirteen Things about MY KARAOKE NEIGHBORS

1. OMG! As I sit here writing this post on Wednesday afternoon I’m slowly being driven crazy by the “karaoke” neighbors that living the adjoining house next door.

2. No, they aren’t Karaoking, thank goodness ’cause that’s bad enough. No, they’ve been playing some gawd awful instruments in the last few days though. ALL DAY.

3. Last year the son brought home a Tuba. Yeah a tuba. Probably due to a music class at school. Well I think he brought one home from school, but I’m starting to wonder if his parents and or uncle just went out and bought it for him because I’ve heard it a few times in the last month or so, including today.

4. I think I might start screaming soon. Most of this week I’ve been hearing bad electric guitar. It starts around 8 in the morning. Then the music stops around oh noon or so and I get to listen to some vacuuming or perhaps floor hockey. Whatever they are doing at that time they hit the walls a lot. Vroom vroom bang, clunk, bang. This is usually accompanied by loud singing.

5. Now, if you’ve been reading my blog for any length of time you probably know that I don’t sleep very much because of my abdominal pain (Crohns), and I am in fact awake most of the night. Lately I’ve been going to bed sometime between 5 a.m. and 6 a.m., and I sleep until perhaps 11 a.m. but thanks to my neighbors I really haven’t been getting that tiny bit of sleep lately at all.

6. If the guitar playing was half decent I might not mind it so much, but I’d still probably want them to turn it down a bit. However they are playing pretty much full blast through an amplifier in their basement or living room. I haven’t quite pinpointed where the sound is originating, but it doesn’t really matter because I can hear it from the bedroom upstairs, the main floor of my house and even in my basement.

7. One word of advice for anyone out there learning guitar. Don’t plug your electric guitar into an amplifier while you are still learning a song and playing it over and over again. Especially if you are not catching on very well. You can play it unplugged and still hear it. When you do get good enough at the song and want to hear it properly, don’t blast it – you still might not be as good as you think you are.

8. Honestly – don’t do it, this is why neighbors kill each other.

9. Sometime between two and three each afternoon the music starts up again. Usually it’s bad guitar played very loudly. The same one or two songs or parts of songs over and over again.

10. Today it’s something else. I haven’t quite decided if they are playing an accordion – badly, or perhaps a keyboard that sounds a lot like an accordion. It sounds like they are attempting to play very bad polka music on it. That’s how bad it is- I can’t tell which instrument it really is! Help me!

11. This is at least twenty times worse than the poorly played electric guitar, and 10 times worse than the foghorn tuba. Speaking of the tuba. They haven’t mastered any form of song on that yet. It’s just notes, often the same off key note over and over again. Luckily the longest they usually play this is about 30 minutes.

12. You can imagine how irritating this might be if I was healthy, and if I was getting a good sleep each night, but it’s almost unbearably irritating when you’ve only had three hours sleep and you are in pain and are feverish. On top of that, my husband is an amazing musician. He plays 16+ instruments and sings too. I’ve developed quite a fine ear for music and this only increases the “quit now while you are still lucky to be alive” factor of this irritating new hobby of our neighbors.

13. We’ve talked to our neighbors about their loud karaoking before, asked them to perhaps turn their speakers so that they don’t face our house, and they did for a while. Don’t get me wrong they are nice enough people and generally co-operative, but they forget after a while and start up again. Now I suppose we’ll have to talk to them about they’re musical instrument playing. Oh, how to do that tactfully? I don’t think it’s possible. A couple of years ago, when we were renovating our living room dining room area (still a work in progress), we even built a floating sound proof wall on the side that adjoins their house. It helps to some degree but not enough.

One thing that I do know – The next house that we purchase will not be a semi-attached-detached. No way! I’d actually love to buy their house someday and turn this into a nice sized house. Now that would be nice.

I’m playing music now too- at a moderate volume. Rob Zombie anyone? Or Perhaps some Black Sabbath?

Fairies wear boots,

Oh ya got ta believe me.

I saw it, I saw it,

With my own two eyes.

Happy Thursday!





Filed Under: Thursday Thirteen Tagged With: accordian, amplifier, bad music, electric guitar, irritating, karaoke, Karaoking, keyboard, neighbors, Thursday Thirteen, tuba

What is going on?

October 4, 2006 by Tricia

I was just watching the local news and heard about two 15 year old boys holding down a 13 year old girl, spraying her shirt with lighter fuel and setting her on fire! She’s alive but has second degree burns and she’s probably scared for life.

>That happened in Mississauga, Ontario which is just outside of Toronto. Earlier today, another incident happened in that area but this time it was Etobicoke Ontario. Two students were injured when there was shooting in or near an Adult education center. Two men are in custody over that incident.

I believe I heard about one or two students being stopped last week just before they were going to go ahead with a plan to shoot up an Edmonton school.

On September 13th a gunman walked into a Montreal college and started shooting. He injured 12 – resulting in the death of one young woman, and then he killed himself.

What’s going on?

Then there’s the recent shootings in the USA. Tragic. Unbelievable.

This morning when I got up I heard about a woman who called 911 at 6 a.m. telling the police that her children were dead. Police went to her home and found her 1 year old and her 3 year old dead. She’s been arrested and I believe charged with their murder.

What is with all of these crimes against children and students?

Filed Under: General Musings Tagged With: children murdered, General Musings, school shooting, shootings, Teenagers set girl on fire

Saran Wrapped Vehicle

October 4, 2006 by Tricia

Wordless Wednesday



Larger versions of these photos can be found on my Flickr account.

Please ONLY add a link if you are a Wordless Wednesday participant. All other links will be removed.

Filed Under: Wordless Wednesday Tagged With: Canada, car, Danforth and Victoria, photo, Saran wrapped vehicle, Toronto, Wordless Wednesday

Crazy neighbors

October 2, 2006 by Tricia

I think I’ve been experiencing a bit of writers block these days, or perhaps it’s just the lack of material to write about. I’m still sick – of course, so I’m not getting out much.

My neighbor Sofie is the only one stalking me these days. Shelli gave up on that venture on Friday. Sofie is the elderly Greek lady who lives next door to me. We took our air-conditioner out of the window the other day so now she can see me sitting at the computer from her dining room window again. It’s kind of creepy to look out your window and see someone peering at you several times a day.

When she’s not looking for me via the window she’s knocking on my kitchen window, or worse, I’ll be walking into my kitchen and see a little wrinkled face staring at me. I just about jump out of my skin every time she does that. You’d think I’d be used to it by now since it happens at least 5 times a week, but I think that’s one of those things that you just never get used to.

I know she’s just a lonely old lady, but it’s seriously creepy!

I think I know why we have an increasing number of rats in our backyards lately too. BTW I never saw a rat around until last year, mice a few times yes, but rats – no. Sofie goes into her backyard and distributes her table scraps in her garden. Not just things that will decompose easily either such as fruit peelings or veggie scraps, no she’s burying things like meat and bone in her garden too. Naturally scavengers such as squirrels, rats and mice find these goodies. I’ve found small bone pieces in my garden and on my grass a number of times and now I know they’re coming from Sofie’s yard. It’s probably the squirrels finding them and then bringing them over to my yard to bury their treasure.

I’ll never get rid of the rats now!

Speaking of rats, my husband Chris played a joke on some of our other neighbors a week or so ago. Except he didn’t tell me about his little prank. So I’m sitting at home, on the computer probably, when I hear this furious pounding on our door. I open it up and it’s one of the guys from a few houses over.

Now, this guy happens to be gay, and he lives with his partner and two boarders. We’re friendly with them and we’ve been over to their place for drinks and they’ve been over to our house too. We also help each other occasionally with various household tasks like helping move things or helping with renovating etc.

We’ve got a big Canadian flag hanging on a pole outside our house, and they have a Canadian gay pride flag hanging outside their house. Ours was stolen a couple of years ago. It ended up being some of our friends playing a joke on us. They were going to cut up our flag and send us pieces of it in a ransom note! Until they saw a note that I posted in our window basically ranting and shaming the neighborhood for such a dirty deed. They felt bad so they gave it back unharmed.

These two guys knew this story and we’ve joked back and forth about stealing each others flags and we’ve said that our friends should have switched our flags instead of just stealing ours way back when they played their trick on us.

So back to the pounding on the door and A standing there looking furious. I opened the door and asked him what was wrong since he looked so upset. He said “Is Chris home?”, I replied that Chris was out walking with our boarder. “Which way did they go?” I told him that I didn’t know, but I thought they were off on a long walk so they could be anywhere.

He then asked me if Chris had taken their flag down and put it on their backyard patio. I didn’t know anything about this and I told him so. He seemed very upset though and he wanted to get in his truck and go and find Chris. At this point even if I knew where Chris was I doubt I would have told him because I was starting to imagine my husband being run down by a pick up truck over a flag prank.

When Chris got him I asked him if he did something to the guys flag and he said he’d taken it down, rolled it up nicely and tucked it in their backyard – a few days before. I guess the guys aren’t all that observant if they didn’t notice that it was missing earlier than that day. I told Chris he’d better go over and apologize to A since he seemed so mad.

Chris went and talked with them and came back saying that A wasn’t mad, but I don’t know, he sure seemed mad to me. I don’t think we’ll be playing tricks with their flag again! Now they’ll probably try to get us back though.

_________________________

It’s Click and Comment Monday – you know the drill, visit a link on my site and then leave that person a comment, then visit their renter or a link from that site and so on and so on. Visit at least 5 sites in order to spread the bloggy love.

Filed Under: The Neighborhood Tagged With: crazy neighbors, sofie, stalker, stalking, stolen flag

The Front Garden

October 1, 2006 by Tricia

It’s Doctor Moms last day here. I’m so sad, she’s been a great roomie and we’ve had a lot of fun visiting with each other. I’m hoping that all of my visitors have gone over to visit with her too. You can still vote for the Idiot of the week. Look over her last few posts to rate the Idiot selection and then select one to vote for. She’ll announce the winner on Monday. Go on, go vote.

________________________________

Join Green Thumb Sunday
Join

I thought that I’d show you a couple of the flowering plants that I grow in my front garden bed, and in our planted boulevard.

The flowerbeds at the front of our house were more of an after thought after we finished putting in raised flower beds with interlocking easy stone, and installed a patio in the backyard. We used some of the left over stones to create raised beds in the front.

The backyard garden was supposed to be our delightfully special garden, but the front has become a rival to it as it’s matured.

Here’s a photo of Autumn Joy Sedum.

autumnjoysedum

This plant starts out looking like a green succulent, but usually by the end of July the flower stalks begin to grow. As the flower buds develop the heads of the flower stalks are green at first, then they become a whitish colour. Personally I think they look a bit like cauliflower at this point. By the end of August the blossoms to be are turning a nice pink and the bees are starting to notice them. In fact they are often covered in bees.

By mid-September all of the tiny flower buds begin to open and they go from pink to this very pretty magenta colour. This colour will darken as the days get cooler. By the end of October the flowers will be finished and will have dried out. I think that they look sort of ornamental around this time when they are dried out, sort of like dried flowers – beige in colour but still interesting.

A few of the sunflowers that I grow in my front Boulevard Garden bed:

yellowsunflower4

Mr. Fab seems to think I’m freakishly tall (I’m not, I’m only 5′ 10 1/2″), but if he saw my sunflowers he’d realize that they are the ones that are freakishly tall. Some of them must be 14 or more feet tall.

We planted our front boulevard flower bed with Siberian Iris’, Salvia, marigolds, alysium, dahlia’s, daylilies, delphinium, malva, cosmos, peonies, spring bulbs, four types of sunflowers, and we have a Morning Glory vine growing on the “No Parking Sign” that’s in the boulevard flower bed.

From April until at least the end of October there is always something blooming in that flower bed. We planted it more for our neighbors enjoyment than our own, and they all seem to love it. Plus, we are the only ones with a planted boulevard for several blocks, so our house is very easy to find if a friend or relative is trying to find it.

Gardeners, Plant and Nature lovers can join in every Sunday, visit As the Garden Grows for more information.

Green Thumb Sunday Participants are welcome to leave a link below:

Filed Under: Entertainment, Green Thumb Sunday, Home and Lifestyle, Photography, Recreation, Tricia's Garden Tagged With: Autumn Joy Sedum, Gardening, Green Thumb Sunday, planted Boulevard, Sunflower, tall flower

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