Tricia's Musings

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



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Archives for April 2008

Garbage pickers – identity thieves?

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Something odd happened last night. I took our puppy Midnight out front at about 12:30 a.m. so she could do her final business of the night and we were both startled to see two people picking through our neighbors garbage.

There were two guys riding around on bikes that had what appeared to be home-made trailers attached to them. They were stopping at every house to go through the garbage.

Now I don’t mind if someone takes something that I’ve set out that we no longer plan to use. Maybe a broken chair that someone thinks they can repair, an old TV or something like that, certainly not my Rimowa. In fact when I’ve put items like that out I’m usually glad someone came by and took it because I’m pretty sure the garbage men wouldn’t take some of the things we’ve put out.

These guys weren’t just looking for furniture, appliances or other loose items by the garbage though. They were actually opening up garbage cans or garbage bags and going through them.

When I first saw the two curbside pickers I was about to go outside with Midnight but I pulled her back and waited hoping they’d go away. Midnight must have realized I didn’t trust the two young men and she watched them from the screen door and let out low rumbling growls.

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I’m So Stuffed!

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Chris and I went grocery shopping in the early evening and we came back with fresh Halibut steaks, new asparagus, corn, fresh organic strawberries and salad fixings. We also bought some wine – a Pignot Grigio.

So guess what we had for dinner?

I marinated the Halibut in a mixture of chopped chives – fresh from the garden, dill, paprika and a tiny bit of cayenne pepper and a splash of the white wine.

As the fish marinated, I prepared the asparagus by rinsing them and snapping off the woody ends (they were young asparagus so the ends were pretty good). I then placed them in a microwave steamer container. When I cooked them I put them in the microwave for about four minutes, took them out, drained the tiny bit of water that was in the container, added a tiny bit of margarine and a splash of lemon juice and microwaved them again for 30 seconds. Yummy.

I shucked the husk off of two corn and steamed them in the microwave as well (5 minutes).

As if the fish that Chris eventually barbecued on the grill, the asparagus and corn weren’t enough I also made a salad with fresh chives, green onion, sweet onion, organic salad mix, tomato, radish, cucumber and tomato.

We also had a glass or two of that lovely wine and I’m a little light headed right now.

For desert we finished off some fresh pineapple that we already had. I chopped it up and mixed it with some of the strawberries that we’d purchased at the grocery store.

The meal was delicious, but it was much larger than we normally have these days. So I’m stuffed.

I think I might head for bed soon!

What did you have for dinner?

BTW Our puppy got to taste a few new foods tonight. We gave her a small piece of strawberry, fish, and radish. She seemed to love them. We also gave her some cucumber, salad leaves (spinach and lettuce) and a tiny piece of pineapple. She’d had a taste of each of those before. She’s not big on the leaves but seems to really like cucumber.

A lovely spring weekend in the city

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white Tulips

Such a dreamy picture of some of the white tulips that I grow in my garden …. It’s the perfect time for a gardener to be dreaming of tulips and other spring flowers too. The weather is finally beginning to warm up and all the plants in my garden are beginning to come out of their dormant state.

I was just saying on my gardening blog that it’s such a beautiful day here in Toronto that I expect to go outside this afternoon and tidy up my garden. Hopefully I don’t become obsessed and stay out there for hours!

We’d also like to take our dog out for a good walk today.

Last weekend we went to Cherry Beach twice (although Sunday was super cold and windy, especially at the beach, so we ended up going to The Brickworks for our walk). It was beautiful! Yesterday we ended up going to The Beach and walking on the boardwalk. So today … if I can pry myself away from the computer and then from the garden, we’d like to go to Cherry beach again.

I just love living in Toronto. The weathers fairly nice most of the year (not this past winter!) and there are so many things to do. I love it. Plus now that we have a dog we have more incentive to get out and enjoy what this great city has to offer.

What have you been doing on this beautiful spring weekend? Working in the garden or doing something outside as you enjoy the great weather?

Gardeners, Plant and Nature lovers can join in every Sunday, visit As the Garden Grows for more information. GTS participants remember to check in at As the Garden Grows each week so that we’ll know you made a new post!

Planning a wedding? Don’t forget the wedding favors

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It’s that time of year again. I bet you think I’m talking about Spring? No. I’m talking about Wedding season.

Somewhere near you mothers, mothers-in-law, brides to be and their Maids of Honor are frantically plotting out all the details of an upcoming wedding shower or late Spring / early Summer wedding. Listen carefully, you can almost hear their chatter.

If you happen to be involved in planning a wedding shower, or perhaps you’re the lucky bride, you might be interested in taking a look at the unique wedding favors at HQ Wedding Favors.

I certainly remember what planning a wedding is like. I pretty much did all the planning for my own wedding myself. My parents lived 5 hours away and Chris’ parents also happened to live out of town. Oh, a few friends, my sister and Chris helped, but as the Bride to be I was pretty much making all of the major decisions.

Call it wedding brain or temporary insanity I even, more than briefly, considered catering my own wedding! My mother eventually talked me out of that idea and I’m still ever so glad that she did.

Needless to say it was a very hectic and stressful time for me, as I’m sure it is for most brides to be and their friends and family.

My wedding was to be the last wedding in our family. My parents had five children and I was the youngest and last to wed. My parents, aunts and uncles were getting older and I knew for some it might be the last time we’d all get together. So I took pride in trying to make my day a special experience for all involved.

I think actually picking out the wedding party favors and gifts for our parents and guests was one of the more pleasant and enjoyable tasks that I had on my long list.

Along with selecting more traditional items such as match books with our names and wedding date printed on it I also selected a variety of wedding favors to put together as a small package for our guests. I honestly can’t remember all of the items I picked out, but I believe it consisted of edible wedding favors, candles and coasters. Generally items that I hoped would be used rather than stored away in a dusty closet.

One of my favorite items that I selected to place on each table along with a center piece of Fall flowers was a disposable camera. I still hear from people that attended our wedding reception who enjoyed being able to snap photos of the people they were seated with at their table. We’re pleased too, because I believe we managed to get at least one picture of every single person who attended the reception. I treasure those photos.

Earlier I mentioned the online shop HQ Wedding Favors. I would have enjoyed looking through such a site when I was planning our wedding. Of course, Chris and I got married in 1994 and there weren’t very many stores of this kind online at that time nor did people feel as comfortable shopping online as they do now.

I would certainly recommend that anyone who’s taking part in the planning of a wedding or perhaps a wedding shower take a look at HQ Wedding Favors as they have some lovely items. You’ll find special gifts for bridesmaids, groomsmen, the flower girl and ring bearer, bridal jewelry, guest books, thank you cards and invitations, wedding cameras and much more!

I especially like the designer cosmetic bag which would make a great gift for bridesmaids, and items for groomsmen such as personalized flasks and the tailgating buccaneer.

Take a moment to have a look at the online shop and I hope the wedding goes well!

Cryptic messages?

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I was rudely awoken at 6:30 this morning by the ringing of the telephone. I’d had a bad night, again, and had only fallen asleep an hour earlier. I was too groggy to realize what that horrible ringing sound was and make it to the phone on time to answer it.

Fortunately or unfortunately the caller left a message. It was a woman, and along with the telephone service message “A Fido customer has left the following message”, the only thing she said was “Are you up yet?”.

Huh?

Was this a prank call?

There was no caller id above the number which came from a cell phone (hence the unnecessary Fido service message).

For some reason I decided to look through the numbers that our phone has received recently and I discovered the same number had called on Wednesday morning, and Sunday night. In the old call log the number had a name over it and it belonged to one of Chris’ co-workers. A co-worker who had been calling in sick at work on Wednesday and Thursday which resulted in Chris being called in to work early on each of those days. That flu that we both suffered from is going around!

So I thought to myself, should I wake Chris up? Maybe the guy is calling in sick again today? Hmmm but it was a female voice? Maybe his phone did some weird forward to our number? Maybe it was his wake up call forwarded to our phone? None of that made all that much sense.

I didn’t know what I should do.

In the end I decided not to wake Chris. He was scheduled to work at 10 a.m. and normally gets up at about 7:45 a.m. when he works that shift.

I’d just managed to fall asleep again when the phone rang again. It was just before 7:30 a.m. and it was Chris’ boss this time round. Chris’ coworker had in fact called in sick and she was hoping that Chris would come in to work as soon as possible. I told her I’d get him up and get him to call her.

In the end Chris was out the door by a bit after 8 and I didn’t get any real sleep at all thanks to those calls and a little black puppy.

I guess we’re going to have to call Chris’ sick coworker to find out what that heck that first message “Are you awake yet?” was and who left it. Chris thinks it might have been the guys mother since he still lives at home.

Not only have we had that weird message on our home phone this week, but when I checked our cell phone I discovered a few messages that would have been much better left on our home phones answering machine. For instance the TV repair company called our cell phone and left a message asking us to call them back to schedule the service call appointment.

Unlike most people with cell phones we only turn ours on at the most once a week and some times as little as once a month! It’s in no ones best interest to leave a message of any importance only on our cell phone. I guess I’ll have to change our message and tell people that unless they know we are out and have our cell phone on that they should leave messages on our home phone.

Have you had any strange calls or strange messages left on your answering machine lately?

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