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You are here: Home / Archives for Culture / Canada

Keeping in touch with a family that’s spread across the country

June 22, 2011 by Tricia

My family is really spread out across the country. I have a niece that just moved to New Brunswick with her husband, and my middle brother lives in Vancouver … just those two alone cover both sides of the country! So … we’ve all been talking lately by email and we’ve decided to try either setting up Skype or Google Chat.

A couple of my brothers have already set up Skype, and one of my brothers who happens to have just treated himself to a Mac computer is really experimenting. He’s been trying out things like Nettalk on his iPod and I think another application on his Mac and iPad, plus he’s the one who got all of us thinking about trying Google Chat although it seems like most of us are more familiar or more comfortable with using Skype.

I haven’t set up Skype on my computer yet. I’ve been too busy getting my yard and garden in order after all the Fence whoha. I’ve spent the last two weeks working on my garden and yard doing all the stuff that I would have done in the last two months if I hadn’t had to delay everything for that darn no character fence. Yes I’m a tired and not so happy camper .. but hopefully I’ll get happier as my garden recovers. Oh and speaking of the neighbors who put in the fence? They’ve barely spoken to us since they put it in and their kid is making a racket again. I almost feel like they were nice to us and got their kid to be a little quieter so that we’d go along with the fence and now that it’s in they could care less that their little girl is waking me up. She’s even back to slamming doors again. Sigh … I don’t think I’ll be using the video side of Skype … I’ll scare my family with how tired I look lately.

Anyway … I will install Skype and maybe set up Google Chat soon. I keep telling my family that too. Hopefully by this weekend. I want to experiment with it. In the mean time I’m still communicating the old fashioned way with my family … ie by phone. My second oldest brother’s birthday this past Friday, the one who bought himself a Mac, so I was sure to call him on his birthday. He had a great day with his family. Picnic with his wife, dinner out with his kids and I think he said he was thinking of getting a golf buddy tour gps watch for himself … yes another treat. Oh well he deserves it.

If I do manage to set up a Skype account I’ll let you guys know … maybe I can Skype with some of my blogging friends too. Of course if I do I’ll never get any of my work done …





Filed Under: Blogging, Canada, Computers, Cool stuff, Family, Home and Lifestyle, Internet, Items to Try, Socializing, The Neighborhood, Toronto, Web and Technology Tagged With: brother, brothers, busy, communicate, country, Family, fence, friends, garden, google chat, grrr, install, Internet, keep in touch, mac, neighbors, not happy, sister, skype, spread out, talk, talking, video chat

Our Nephew is trying out for an NHL farm team

June 22, 2011 by Tricia

Our American nephew is coming to Ontario next month to try out for a hockey team. If he makes it the next step could be the NHL. He’s certainly talented enough. I have a feeling that he’s going to be living in Canada very soon.

There’s only one problem .. he’s already a Canadian citizen, which of course isn’t a requirement, but since his father is Canadian his dad was sure to get his three children citizenship while they were young so they are duel citizens – something that I don’t think you can do anymore – the problem is that he doesn’t have a Canadian passport. So my brother in law is calling us and emailing us with questions about the paperwork and of course it’s all a made scramble since there’s only a month or so left before he needs it.

Now I’m sure my brother in law could have figured out most of this on his own and probably a lot earlier than this if he wasn’t a computerphobe. Yep … he’s pretty much afraid to turn on the computer .. although he’s getting a little better than he was a few years ago. At this rate maybe by the time he’s an old man perhaps he won’t need our help with all the Medicare part D plans or other health care related forms that I’m sure he’s bound to run into by that time. LOL

We’re looking forward to seeing the two of them when they come for a visit in July. I think it’s going to be a fairly quick visit. The hockey tryouts are in another part of the province .. closer to my hometown than where we are living now, but my husband might drive out there and stay with them in the hotel so that he can spend more time with them and cheer on our nephew. Wish him luck!

Filed Under: Canada, Family, Home and Lifestyle, Life with Chris, Toronto Tagged With: american, brother in law, Canada, children, citizenship, drive, father, forms, hockey, hockey tryouts, kids, NHL, ontariio, paperwork, Passport, province, travel, trip, try, visit

Everyone’s back from Mexico now

June 16, 2011 by Tricia

Well it looks like the gang that went to Mexico for the last week are back in Canada. Yep. Remember a few months ago I wrote a post about how my husbands niece was getting married in June … in Mexico .. and how we couldn’t go because we just couldn’t afford it? Well, the wedding was this past weekend.

My husbands mother, nephew, sister and brother in law all went to Mexico last week. His other brother (father of the bride) and the bride and groom and the rest of that family are from Chicago and they went to Mexico last week as well … so along with all the many other invited guests it was a week long party from what I understand!

I think they mostly stayed at the resort, but they did go on a few bus tours to a few places. I know my mother in law wanted to see some ruins. My brother in law told us about driving atvs and how much he liked the atv power steering. I guess he’d never had a chance to drive ATV’s before so he had a great time. I just hope he hadn’t been drinking too much when he did it!

We might go to see the in-laws this weekend, if we do I’m sure we’ll see lots of pictures from the wedding and hear some interesting stories about all the things that we missed!

Filed Under: Canada, Family, Home and Lifestyle, Items to Try, Toronto Tagged With: atv, brother, Canada, chicago, drinking, Family, fly, fun, mexico, mother in law, Niece, Party, resort, Toronto, Tour, Wedding, week

A smelly situation

June 10, 2011 by Tricia

Wow … the neighbor that I wrote about in my last post, the one that made a ton of noise last weekend while renovating was actually kind of human this evening! That’s a first.

I actually had to call him earlier in the week. I didn’t want to, but I had to. You see, they’ve been renovating a lot and haven’t done much with their backyard and as a result they’ve piled up some stuff in their backyard … like an old carpet that they pulled out of the house and several other things and with all the rain that stuff got wet and I think it started to rot and smell and well … it smelled so bad that it made me wonder if something had died in their yard!

He finally came by this evening and after doing some renovation work inside for a few hours he came outside and started cleaning up some of the mess. I think that mosquitoes had started breeding in the wet rug too because I’ve been getting bit by them all week and I almost never get mosquito bites lately … but I must have had 100 this week alone! I’d better not get West Nile thanks to my neighbor and his wet rotting rug! LOL

My husband and I happened to be outside in the backyard doing some work when our neighbor came outside to clean up his mess and we all started talking. It was the first decent conversation we’d had in months. I guess one the machines that he’s using inside needs a new part or something so that was slowing him down .. he and my husband were saying something about thrust bearings but I’m not sure exactly what they were for.

Anyway … he bagged up the smelly stuff but didn’t take it away yet. Hopefully he’ll be back tomorrow with his dads van to haul it away then I’ll know for sure that I’ll be able to enjoy my beautiful garden without that awful smell!

Filed Under: Canada, Home and Lifestyle, Items to Try, The Neighborhood, Toronto Tagged With: awful smell, backyard, bites, carpet, dead animal, garden, mosquitos, neighbor, neighbors, no personality, old rug, rain, rotting, smell, smelly, talk, talking, terrible, west nile, wet

Inconsiderate people – Sick and tired of them

June 4, 2011 by Tricia

The neighbors in the house next door showed up this afternoon to renovate their house. This is the house on the other side of us that`s been unoccupied for over a year.

I don`t understand why our neighbors only show up to renovate sporadically. For example they didn’t show up all week or even last weekend, and then today then arrived at about 3:30 pm with a few relatives and started banging away.

My husband and I went out in the late afternoon and when we came home it was after 8 pm and there was a huge van squeezed into our shared driveway. It was so big it was hanging out over the sidewalk. I hate it when they do that because people passing by can`t walk on the sidewalk and there are a lot of people going by with strollers, carriages and even handicapped people so it`s not fair to block the sidewalk. Plus I`m pretty sure that if the police came around they`d get a pretty hefty fine, but of course they`d probably come to our door first thinking it was our vehicle. GRRRRR.

Then .. just a little while ago they started using a hammer drill or some other kind of loud drill. It shook our house. Bad enough for us … but their house is a semi-detached too and their closest neighbor (ie their semi-detached partner) is an elderly lady! Poor Helen is about 85 years old and I`m sure she doesn’t need to hear that kind of noise. It probably made her think her seniors life insurance was running out! LOL

I can`t believe how inconsiderate they`re being. I wanted to go and talk to them – about the noise and the van in the driveway but my husband doesn’t want us to have anything to do with them. He figures they`ll get a ticket for parking the van that way at some point and that the elderly ladies son will eventually speak up for her. Her son is a wimp so I don`t know about that …

Anyway I`m kind of sick of inconsiderate people.

Filed Under: Canada, Home and Lifestyle, The Neighborhood, Toronto Tagged With: awful, driveway, elderly, hammer drill, house, inconsiderate, neighbors, noise, people, senior, sidewalk, van

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