Tricia's Musings

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



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Archives for 2007

Get a better job with a language training course

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I’ve just come across a site that my readers might be interested in if you are either planning a vacation to a Country where the language spoken isn’t one that you know well, or if you are planning on working in a Country where having a second or third language might be to your advantage.

Travelers, nurses, doctors and engineers might be interested in visiting the Language Trainers website. They offer courses for people with no previous knowledge of a language – ie in the case of someone visiting a foreign Country for an extended vacation. I know I’d love to have at least a basic understanding of a Countries native tongue if I was going to visit a Country for a month or more.

They also offer Business Language Courses for people who are moving to other Countries for work purposes. That’s why I mentioned professions such as Nursing, Doctors and Engineers earlier as all of these professionals are often needed for work in the Middle East, and Europe and knowing the language of the people with whom you are working is very important.

The Language Trainers not only offer Business Language Courses. They also offer exam preparation Courses for people who need to prove knowledge and training in a particular language for their employer or in order to enter University. Business courses are also available to those who need to learn a second or third language for their workplace.

Courses are offered in many different languages. Please visit the Language Trainers for more information and pricing.





Crohn’s sucks

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Just checking in.

I rested as much as I possibly could from Friday up until Monday, took all of my pain medications properly and I’m still in pain.

I give up. There doesn’t seem to be anything that I can do to make this Crohn’s attack stop.

In the last two and a half years I’ve done everything from watching every single thing I eat – and of course I still have to because there are things that I just can’t eat at all as they cause me pain and digestive problems. I’ve tried only having clear fluids – water, broth, jello, and flat ginger ale and then when I moved to solid foods I’ve tried only eating soft fairly bland foods – rice, chicken, apple sauce, scrambled eggs, boiled eggs and things like that. I’ve actually eaten fairly soft mild food items for most of the last two years because I can’t eat a lot of veggies- especially raw, or fruit as I just don’t tolerate them well at all.

I’ve been on meds for my crohns – a combination of antibiotics and anti-inflammatories and now I’m off all of those too. I had to stop the antibiotics in 2005 because I developed a reaction to them. the combo of antibiotics and Pentasa (the anti-inflammatory for the bowel) made me feel the best, but once I stopped the flagyl I started getting worse again. Now I’m off the Pentasa because my G.I. doc wasn’t sure that they were working, plus being off them might make it easier for the camera pill that I’m going to swallow next week to see whatever happens to be going on in there now.

I don’t know what to do. I don’t sleep because of the pain but I tried my best for almost four days to sleep as much as possible. I think it helped a bit but not enough.

This is the most frustrating disorder. I hate Crohn’s. I hate it!

Every week, or dare I say ever day, since I stopped the Pentasa has been worse than the one before. I can deal with almost all of the symptoms. The one that bothers me the most and is a constant is the pain. If the pain would just stop I’d feel so much better.

Tax time is coming up

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Tax time is coming up soon and if you are like me the idea of figuring out your taxes is a bit nerve racking, if not stressful as well. If you are like me you second guess yourself – “Did I fill in all the forms correctly?” “Did I forget to include an important receipt?” and “Did I get all the tax breaks that I deserve?”. Have you been there before? Have you had those questions running through your head? I have!

Well, I’ve come across a site that might make some of you very happy. Well, my US readers anyway. The site is a United States Tax Forum and you’ll find a lot of great information in the various threads and sub forums on the site.

There’s a forum for small business owners, one that discusses Individual tax forms, Accounting and bookkeeping, and one that’s for tax professionals. As tax time approaches you can go to the forum and post your questions or perhaps even offer to help other forum members if you are knowledgeable about filling out the tax forms.

I know that when I’m filling out my own tax papers I always looking things up online so that I can get the paperwork done properly, and of course to my best advantage. This year, my US readers, can use this forum to get answers from others who perhaps have more experience with the in and outs of the forms.

The US tax forum is absolutely free to join. Why don’t you visit the site now, and bookmark it where you’ll be able to find it easily come tax time?

Safe computing – get antivirus protection

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I find that a number of people come to me when they have questions about their computer. Often this occurs when a problem as developed. I’ve learned overtime that one of the first questions that I should always ask is- Do you have antivirus software on your computer?

Unbelievably in this day and age when huge denial of service attacks on big companies like Yahoo.com and Google.com commonly make the news, these people often tell me that they don’t have antivirus software on their computers. Why not? With all the spam we get and websites set up to load Trojan worms onto our computers when we view a site or open an email I can’t understand why anyone would leave themselves vulnerable to leaving their computer and precious data open to that risk. Don’t they know that if a virus attack is bad enough it could wipe out their whole computer leaving the information on their hard drive useless and almost impossible to retrieve?

I always recommend that they get an anti-virus software package immediately so that they can check their computer for virus, Trojans and even spyware that might be affecting their computers performance. It’s so easy! Just click here and you can have a Norton Antivirus Download. It’s that simple. Why risk your computers data?

I use Norton Antivirus myself and I find it very easy to use. I’ve set it up to monitor my browsing and my email as it comes in, and to be on the safe side I have it scan my whole computer once a week. I haven’t had a single problem since I’ve been using Norton Antivirus. If you’d like to learn more about Norton Antivirus I suggest that you read Norton Internet Security 2007 articles and other info: and make your decision after viewing all of the information on that page.

I can usually fix computers for them, but what kills me is that most of the time, if they had antivirus software on their computer in the first place I wouldn’t have to.

Chilly January Beach

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no swimming

You know, when I started Green Thumb Sunday, oh so many months ago, I really thought that when the winter months rolled around I’d perhaps have photos of snow covered pine or cedar branches and trees, frosted, ice covered dead flowers that perhaps looked interesting, icicles, or my snow covered garden in winter.


But no … I can’t do that. It’s barely snowed at all this year. We’ve had a few very light dusting’s of snow, often in the middle of the night that’s already been melting away by dawn. No shoveling. No icing roads. Nothing of the sort.

So I’m afraid that I can’t display frosty winter garden scenes. Not today. Not yet anyway. If this keeps up I’ll be digging out old photos of winter nature scenes that might be suitable for Green Thumb Sunday Winter editions.

The photo that I decided to show you today was taken last January. It was a nice winter day. Perhaps it was only -5 Celsius (23 F). Most winters that would be a fairly nice January day. Perhaps it was even 0 C (32 F).

Either way it felt warm enough and it was a bright sunny day, so Chris and I went to the beach. Something we tend to do more often in the winter months than we usually do in the summer. Yes, we’re weird that way.

On the beach you can see more snow than we’ve had so far this Winter. I love the No Swimming sign. As if! Do you know how cold Lake Ontario would be in the winter? Brrrr

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

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