Tricia's Musings

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



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Archives for 2008

No health benefits for me anymore

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A few weeks ago I was notified by my workplace (where I’ve been off on medical leave from for over two years) that my health benefits were about to end. That sent me into a panic as I take a lot of expensive medications each month and for the most part they were covered by my health insurance package.

So Chris and I got busy and filled out forms for another form of health benefits through the hospital where my husband works. However, we’ve just found out that that package is only for brand new employees. Funny that he never got the paperwork when he first started working at the hospital eh?

So now Chris and I are trying to decide whether it’s worth paying hundreds of dollars each month for prescription coverage and for other health benefits that we generally do not use often (massage, naturopath, chiropractor etc) or if we’ll just pay for my meds out of pocket. The first thing I’ve got to do is figure out how much my meds really cost us each month. While we’re trying to decide what to do – and paying out of pocket while we’re deciding, I think I’ll also look into some cheap life insurance. We lost some life insurance coverage when I lost my benefits package too. Groan.

Anyone know of some relatively inexpensive health insurance packages in Canada?





I need to buy my puppy a flute or a horn

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Wordless Wednesday

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Midnight loves chewing on her bone. It keeps her occupied when we’re busy or when we’re trying to watch TV.

Oddly enough she doesn’t just chew the bone. No … she sticks her nose in the hollow end and blows into it.

IMG_3887 All we can hear when she’s doing this are weird huffing, snuffling sounds. I swear she’d probably be able to make sound come out of a horn or flute if we got her one.

Of course this is the dog that also likes to play in her water by ducking her nose into it in order to blow bubbles.

Does anyone else have a dog that blows bubbles in their water dish or who sticks their nose into things – frequently?

She’s very nose oriented I guess ….

Cream Cheese Bagels and Laptop Computers Do Not Mix!

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I’m such a dork. Look what I did yesterday –

cream cheese on keyboard

This is truly only something I could do. I’m such a spaz!

Yeah … well … I was eating breakfast while working on my laptop. Consider this a lesson learned.

I leaned over to write something down on a piece of paper and PLOP went one half of a bagel covered in cream cheese onto my keyboard. Wrong side up of course!
Ugh!

What a mess!

I took the photo that you see above after I’d swiped at the cream cheese covered keys with a paper towel. It looked much worse before I wiped it.

I quickly realized that if I continued to try to wipe the cream cheese off the keyboard that I’d probably end up pushing it into the cracks between the keys and likely under the keys as well. So I went upstairs and I got several q-tips so I could try to clean the keys without pushing the cream cheese all over the place.

My husband was home since it was his day off. He was just shaking his head at me as if I do this every day! Then he remembered that we happened to have toothpicks in the kitchen, so he brought me the box and I started using them to pick the cream cheese from between the keys.

The toothpicks worked great!

As I cleaned the keys I also discovered that there was quite a bit of dust under the keys … well more than dust – more like dust balls and surprisingly quite a bit of my very fine auburn hair! Bleh! Who knew I was losing so much hair! I sure didn’t.

Considering the fact that I ended up cleaning dust balls from the whole keyboard I’d say that it took me well over an hour – perhaps even two hours to clean the keys. I even finished up by vacuuming the laptop and keyboard to get all the fine dust that I’d loosened with the toothpicks. Then I gave the keys a swipe with a rubbing alcohol soaked cotton ball to give it a final cleaning.

After all that, the laptop looks almost brand new again! I didn’t realize how dirty it really was. Thankfully I didn’t spill liquid on the keyboard … at least the cream cheese dried out a bit and started to flake off after a while.

Oh yeah, the puppy got in on the action too once I pulled out the vacuum. She loves that thing! So she got a vacuum too. Hey … she’s shedding – I’m pretty sure I vacuumed some of the loose hairs right off her.

What’s the worst thing you’ve spilled or dropped on your keyboard? And did you manage to clean it off?

Personalized gifts, stories, songs and DVDs for kids

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I’ve just come across a site that I think parents will love. The site is called Kids Personally and they specialize in personalizing kids DVDS, children’s book , kids songs, gifts and several other items that can personalized.

I’m not exactly sure how they personalized kids DVD but they can actually put pictures of your child in popular DVDs such as Spiderman, Dora the Explorer and other DVDs that are popular right now.

The companies premise is that a child using a book that’s been personalized or listening to a song that’s about them will pay more attention and likely learn more from the story that’s being told. Plus I’m sure it would make a child feel very special if they were to get anything with their name or image on it. I know when I was a kid I felt very special when I was given a name plate for my door that had my very hard to find name on it.

Kids Personally even has items like personalized alarm clocks that sings the childs’ name. How cool is that.

I don’t have any kids, but I do have young nieces and nephews. I think I just found a great site for Birthday and Christmas gifts for them. Visit the site to hear sample songs and view some of the great items. I’m sure you’ll like them.

Garden awash in flowers

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My garden is alive with flowers this week. Almost all of the rose bushes are heavy with spring blooms and other flowers like my Johnson’s Blue Geranium are going wild.

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Here’s a close up of one of the tiny flowers:

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Needless to say, Chris and I are enjoying the garden this year. The plants are healthy and many are quite a bit taller than they were last year at this time thanks to the heavy winter snow coverage they got a few months ago. I’m sure that protected them and helped keep them healthy.

Even the bumble bees are enjoying the garden. Here’s a little fellow collecting pollen from a tulip.

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How is your garden doing this week? Is it full of blooms too?

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!

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