Tricia's Musings

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



You are here: Home / Blog

I hate it when the power goes out!

by

The power was just out here from 3:30 until about 4:30 pm. I hate it when the power goes out. I was in the middle of doing something on the computer – just about to publish a post in fact and boom … out goes the power.

For a while we seemed to have several short power outages each month, but it’s been pretty good over the last year … well except for that transformer that blew up in January that was just across from the hospital that’s just down the street from us. That caused the power to be out for about two hours.

At least we have a gas stove and a barbecue so if the power had been out for a long time we still would have been able to cook. Actually if was out for a few hours we’d probably have to cook as we have a lot of food in the freezer that would be thawing! LOL

While the power was out I was BORED. I couldn’t do any work on the computer or watch TV so I thought I’d go into my backyard and take some photos of the flowers that are currently blooming. Only problem was that my neighbors were in the driveway and their backyard BBQ’ing and talking loudly. I like quite when I’m taking nature photos so I ended up just staying inside with the dog and reading a magazine.

I have the news on now and I’m trying to find out what caused the power to go out, but it doesn’t look like they’re going to talk about it.

Does the power go out in your area every so often? For short periods or hours at a time? What do you do when the power goes out?





Thinking of going back to school?

by

In recession times it’s not uncommon for those who’ve been laid off or those who’s jobs might be on shaky ground to think about returning to school. I’m sure there are many people who have recently considered returning to school either to study further in their chosen field or to make a complete career change.

In the early 90’s, during that recession, I did a complete career change and so did my husband (boyfriend at the time). We were both jewelers and the jewelery trade wasn’t doing well, so we took turns going back to school. I became a nurse and my husband became a computer technician.

If you are considering going back to school you might be interested in taking a look at the online Master of Arts in Organizational Leadership course at Lewis University.

There are five concentrations in this course which will equip you with leadership and progressive management techniques, they are organizational management, not- for -profit management, Public administration, training and development, and higher education – student services.

They also offer an online Masters of Science in Information Security. The course is highly dynamic and it provides students with the managerial and technological tools to work with government agencies and businesses in order to safeguard them from threats to their data and computer systems.

I actually like the idea of online courses. They offer flexibility in that it’s often easier to fit an online course of study into your life. Lewis University also offers competitive tuition and has generous financial aid programs.

I know that if I were thinking of making a career change and possibly going back to school I’d probably look into an online course first. Have you ever thought of furthering your career by going back to school?

Recovering from a busy weekend

by

I think I’m still recovering from the weekend! Man did we do a lot of stuff!

On Saturday we decided to visit some of the buildings in the Toronto Open Doors event. We started with the Don Jail – an empty unused jail that dates back to the 1800’s which will soon, oddly enough, become part of a hospital. It was the last chance for the public to see the inside of the building for free.

Unfortunately the lineups were over three to four hours long so we decided to purchase tickets for one of their upcoming Ghost tours of the Don Jail. So sometime in the next month or so Chris and I will be going on an evening tour of the jail which is said to have many ghosts.

After not getting into the jail we decided to visit this old bowling alley that had just reopened. They had the old Brunswick five pin bowling pins that worked on a string system. We got to see how that worked and were offered free bowling. We didn’t bowl because we decided to go to Tod Morden Mills which was also participating in Open Doors Toronto.

At Tod Morden Mills we went into the art gallery and East Side Players theater – we got to see the theater control room as well, and then we visited some of the old houses on the property. We also took a walk on the wild flower trail there and I took some photos.

When we got home I finished planting some of the annuals that I’d purchased oh, about two weeks ago, and then Chris and I had chicken, sausages and grilled potatoes on the BBQ.

Sunday was spent doing more work in the garden. Chris cut the lawn and I planted some seeds and also reseeded the lawn.

Then yesterday even though it wasn’t really the weekend it always feels like it since Chris has Mondays off we did a little more yard work and took our Lab Midnight to the vet for her annual shots. She’d woken up early yesterday morning and threw up. She does that sometimes … I think it’s because she likes to try to eat weeds when we take her out for walks. No matter how hard we try to get her to stop doing that she always finds grass or some weed to bite at.

Anyway … her vet check up was good. She’s healthy. No worms, no heart worm and the vet was pleased with her shiny black coat.

I liked having such a busy weekend, but my body didn’t! I think I’m paying for it today. I feel like I took a handful of weight loss pills or something. My stomach is growling, I’m hungry … but everything I eat is going through me at high speed! Not good. Oh well … I’ll probably feel better tomorrow if I take it easy today.

So how was your weekend? I know that my American readers celebrated Memorial day – I’ll bet that many of you had family and friend get together’s, BBQ’s and went to see fireworks.

It’s so warm it feels like summer!

by

It’s so nice here this week! Last week it was so cold, you’d swear it was still early Spring! Now it feels like July here in Toronto! Right now it’s 28 C and with humidity if feels like 30 C (86 F) and it’s supposed to be fairly warm over the next week or so too.

We’ve been spending a lot of time outside now that the weather’s nice. The weekend was cool – close to freezing! However I still planted most of the annuals that I’d purchased. Now that it’s warm out I’m sure my new plants are loving it.

Midnight, our Lab, is loving the weather too. She keeps ringing the bell we have attached to the door so that she can go outside and play with her toys. We don’t mind, we want to be outside when it’s this nice too. I mean, who knows – it might get cold again! This is Canada after all!

Are you having warmer than normal weather in your area too?

We’re having a barbecue tonight – chicken grilled over mesquite. Yum.

I wish I could afford a new Laptop

by

I’m getting so frustrated with my Laptop lately. It seems to be getting slower and slower – especially when I run my weekly antivirus scan. Man that takes forever!

I’ve been looking at new Laptops over the last month or so each time we go to a store that sells them. I thought our 60 gig harddrive was big, but it looks like most new laptops have 300 gig harddrives now! Oh and more memory too!

I certainly can’t afford a new Laptop right now. We just had the brakes fixed on the car and bought two new front tires, plus two weeks ago our brake line had to be replaced too. So with all the money we put into the car this month, plus regular bills there’s no way we can shell out more for a new Laptop no matter how much we’d love to have a second laptop in the house.

This weekend I think we might try to buy some more laptop memory. This notebook has 1 gig of memory but if we can double that I’m sure it will help the computers performance when memory hogs like the antivirus scan.

BTW my computer is completely virus free. I’ve done all the checks and as I said scan it regularly. So it’s not a virus that’s slowing it down. It’s a too full harddrive and software that hogs memory.

Meta

Search this site

Tags

blog blogs camera Canada Chris computer crohns dinner dog Family flower flowers Food friends funny garden Gardening Green Thumb Sunday Health and Fitness Health Fitness and Beauty holiday home Home and Lifestyle house husband IBD Inflammatory bowel disease Internet Music neighbors pain photo photos plants puppy Shopping sick sleep spring Toronto TV Video visit website Wordless Wednesday