Tricia's Musings

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



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Archives for 2006

You give me Fever

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I’m conducting an experiment.

I put an egg on my forehead and I’m waiting to see how long it takes to cook.


Obviously I have a massive fever, and, maybe I’m a little bit delirious. I don’t know. How do you know if you’re delirious anyway? I just wanted to see if that old saying was true “your so hot I could fry an egg on your forehead”.

So far it seems to be working. The egg is starting to bubble a little bit on the edges, but it’s still runny. This may take a while.

I stayed up all night. Too much pain. Too hot. Too cold. Shivers and chills. Took too much pain medication. I didn’t get any sleep until 10 a.m. No wonder I still feel so bad huh? Guess I won’t be picking a domain name for my new site today. hmmm maybe when I do pick a domain I should call it “feverish thoughts”? Got any more ideas? Remember I started a contest a week ago and it’s still going visit “Name the domain” to enter.

Looks like that egg is almost done. No I’m not going to eat it. I don’t like eggs. Maybe my husbands hungry?

Where’s the bacon?





Sounds in the Night

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I thought I heard a noise!

I was sitting on my couch last night watching T.V. It was about 11 p.m. and my husband was working an evening shift. Chris wasn’t due back until after midnight.


I thought I heard a noise outside so I turned the T.V. volume down. It was still pleasantly warm outside, so while I had the front door closed, I still had the kitchen window at the back of the house open. I sat there, my muscles tensed, listening carefully.

Then the phone rang.

It was my husband calling from work. I started to tell him that I’d heard a noise but he was in a hurry. He wanted to get one of our friends e-mail addresses for one of the nurses at the hospital. I walked over to the computer and I was looking up the address while I spoke with Chris. As I started to look for the address I thought I heard more noise coming from the front of the house.

The front door knob rattled, then it clicked. I told my husband that someone was at the door. Then the door opened and it was our boarder. He nearly scared me to death and I told him so!

Well, it was actually our former boarder. You see, he packed his bags and moved out yesterday morning. He’d left his big suitcases here because he was going to travel around the province for a few days. He was due to come back sometime today to pick up his bags. That’s why he still had a key. Just in case Chris and I were out when he came back today.

Today. Not Yesterday at 11 p.m.. Today!

He totally took me by surprise and I think he’s lucky I wasn’t sitting there waiting with a gun in hand. We don’t arm ourselves for personal protection here in Canada – not legally anyway. But if I had had a gun, or something worthy of protecting myself with in the house, this would have been the perfect situation since he’d given me some warning sounds first. Now that would have taken him by surprise wouldn’t it?

Tell me folks, if someone has a key to your home but doesn’t live there anymore, and only lived there temporarily in the first place, would you think it wrong of them to just walk in at 11 p.m. at night without at least knocking on the door first to announce themselves?

Hey buddy you don’t live here anymore! You can’t just walk in and scare me half to death.

As you can probably tell from reading some of my posts, our boarder was starting to tick me off in the last few weeks. He came here from Korea to study English so he was away at school all day each weekday. Sometimes he’d come home by 5 p.m. or so but he’d head upstairs and go to sleep. I’d end up delaying our dinner until he woke up or until we managed to wake him up. I shouldn’t have done that, but I did.

Other times he just wouldn’t come home until 8 or 9 or even later, and he wouldn’t call to let me know that he was staying out and that he’d miss dinner or be late for dinner. How am I supposed to prepare a meal for someone when I don’t even know if they are coming home? I found his behaviour rude and disrespectful. The room and board that he paid for included three meals a day, but this isn’t a restaurant.

We have a new boarder moving in on the 10th. She seems like a very nice person. He was too, overall, but as you can see he did some things that I considered quite rude. At least after our experience with our first boarder I know now to have a few more rules, and to set them right from the beginning. I don’t mind if my boarder goes out after school with friends and has some fun. That’s great. All I want is a phone call so that I know whether I have to make dinner for them or not. I think that’s fair.

Anyway. What do you think? Have you ever had someone who happened to still have a key to your house come in unexpectedly and scare you?

Lifes Simple Pleasures

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Thursday Thirteen

Thirteen Things about Life’s Simple Pleasures

Cat over at Living with Multiple Personalities tagged me yesterday, so I thought I’d combine her Simple Pleasures Meme with this Thursday 13. I’m not going to tag anyone this time, but if you feel like playing just make a post naming some of life’s simple pleasures that you enjoy most:

Simple Pleasures:

1…. Those first warm spring days and the promise of summer to come.

2…. Walking in the rain on a warm day without a care in the world, just enjoying the feeling, the smell and sound of the rain.

3…. The first snow fall, and the feel of snow flakes as they land on your face and melt.

4…. The brilliant colours of Autumn leaves while they’re still on the trees.

5…. The feel of the sun as it warms my skin on a beautiful day.

6…. The sight of rolling hills, valleys, mountains. I come from an area with astounding natural beauty and I miss those hills and valleys dearly now that I live in such a flat area.

7…. Chocolate, melting slowly, delicious.

8…. Being awake early when all is quiet, watching the sunrise and feeling the first warm rays of the sun.

9…. The sound of laughter, be it from a child or adult. Laughter is infectious and you can’t help but join in.

10…. Rainbows in the sky after a rainstorm. They are always so magical.

11…. Enjoying the sunset, sitting on my porch or in the backyard with my husband. Watching the sky turn purple, then pink, then red.

12…. The look in my husbands eyes every time he sees me.

13…. My husbands warmth. His warm hands and body, so nice when I need warming.

What are your simple pleasures?

The Birds are taking over!

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Ok, how do I get birds to not build a nest under my window air-conditioner? I’m afraid that this is going to be like when we lived in an apartment and the birds are going to take over!

After a mostly too cool month of May we’re suddenly in the midst of a hot humid heat wave here in Toronto, and we don’t have central air. We have two window air conditioners that we put in each year and for the most part they do a pretty good job.

But, last year, the day we put the upstairs air-conditioner in the window some birds started making a nest between the bottom of the AC and the outside window sill where there is a good sized space. I think the birds were little house wrens or something similar. I didn’t mind having them there, but they did get noisy, especially early in the morning. Chirp Chirp and small little bird squabbles at 5:00 a.m. are not how I like to wake up.

Yesterday when Chris installed the upstairs air-conditioner he put a row of bricks underneath it to try to prevent the birds from noticing the gap and building a nest. It didn’t work!

I’m afraid the birds were waiting for their favorite spot. As soon as the AC was in and running we started hearing a lot of chirping outside that window and we could see the birds flying back and forth through the drive way with pieces of grass and other wonderful nest building materials in their beaks.

When we lived in our apartment we used to be bothered by pigeons. For the first few years they just visited, but after one particularly warm winter we could see the pigeons visiting our balcony regularly one February so we decided to check out our winter abandoned balcony and low and behold the darn birds had build a nest in a protected corner and already had eggs! We removed the nest and eggs but that didn’t stop them, they did it again and again.

The next year the pigeons succeeded and actually had their eggs hatch before we noticed. Being animal lovers we couldn’t hurt the babies so we let them raise their two young ones. I was actually curious to see a baby pigeon. I’d never seen one before. I can tell you that they are pretty big right from the start and quickly grow to look like smaller versions of their parents which is probably why I hadn’t noticed baby pigeons before since they are almost the size of their parents and look quite a bit like adults within a month.

Over our years in the apartment we tried everything to get rid of the pigeons and keep them off our balcony. We put out the fake owl. Didn’t work. We strung fishing line strategically across the balcony rail so it would catch their feet and disturb them when they would land. Didn’t work. We strung fishing line from our upstairs neighbors balcony and attached each line to our balcony railing. We put the lines about two inches apart. Yeah, that’ll work, they won’t be able to get through, it will hit their wings and scare them. Nope, didn’t work.

We ended up abandoning our balcony in the last two years or so that we were there. It ended up being a pigeon poop covered mess despite our efforts to get the birds to stop landing on and using the balcony. I hate pigeons!

Now, I’ve got birds building a nest under the air-conditioner. Oh, yes their cute harmless birds, but considering what happened to us last time birds started liking our property, I’m afraid. Very afraid. The birds are going to take over. I just know it! LOL Help!

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