Tricia's Musings

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



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The Brazilian takes his leave

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I just realized that our Brazilian boarder is going home tomorrow and I haven’t even written a rant post about him. What a change.

It’s not that he’s been a perfect boarder, but he certainly was better than the first two that we had. The first boarder slept all the time and seemed depressed. We just couldn’t connect with him at all. The second boarder was manipulative and lied continuously. I still have nightmares featuring the second boarder. **Shudder**

The only problems that we’ve had with this Brazilian student has been that he goes out with his new friends a lot lately every night. Now that’s not bad, in fact I kind of like it because we have the benefit of having a boarder and the extra income but the boarder isn’t around. No, what bothers me about him being out is that he doesn’t call and let us know whether he’ll be coming home for dinner or not. His room and board includes dinner so I’m obligated to provide a meal for him, but it’s kind of hard to figure out whether I should be planning a meal for two – me and Chris – or for three when he doesn’t let me know whether he’ll be home.

The other complaint is that all of the products he uses are extremely scented from his deodorant to his shaving cream. That’s a problem because I seem to be very sensitive to scented products. I get immediate intense migraines when I’m subjected to scented products like perfume or cologne, and occasionally I start having trouble breathing and have to use my puffer.

By tomorrow evening we’ll have our home back to ourselves. We had wanted to get another short stay boarder but we haven’t had any luck with the “English studies” agencies. None of them seem to be looking for home stay parents right now. I wanted to have another boarder for October and November and then have the house to ourselves for the whole month of December. I really don’t want to have a homesick student around at Christmas time.

Monday is our Canadian Thanks Giving day. On Sunday we’ll be going to my husbands parents house for a Thanks Giving get together, but I’m not sure what we’re doing on Monday. I might invite my sister and her kids over and cook us a nice Turkey with mashed potatoes, candied sweet potatoes and carrots, and peas. If I do that, I suppose we’ll have a pumpkin pie too. Yum. Yeah I think I’m going to do it.

Are there any other Canadians out there that are going to family gatherings this weekend?





Is Bin laden Dead?

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Bin Laden There are reports in the news that state that Bin Laden might have died in late August in Pakistan due to a typhoid infection.

True or false I don’t know:

CBS: Bin Laden Alive or Dead?

France, US, unable to confirm report bin Laden dead

So what do you think? Are the rumors real this time round? After all we’ve heard it before haven’t we?

I’m pretty sure that this won’t make any difference in Al Qaeda’s agenda even if this is true. Do you feel the same way?

A clash of color

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I awoke Sunday morning, bleary eyed to my husband saying “I made a coffee for you, are you getting up?”.

I rolled over and opened my eyes and I was greeted with the vision of my husband dressed in a shirt – medium blue- and shorts- royal purple.

Blink, blink. “Uh, Chris, what the hell are you wearing?” The clash of colors so bright I was just about blinded. He replied that he’d just thrown the clothes on when he woke up. Honestly, I wouldn’t have been all that surprised if I’d looked down to find green socks on him too.

I obviously didn’t marry him for his fashion sense. Luckily he must have remembered what I said about the color of his clothes clashing, because when we went out grocery shopping later in the afternoon he changed.

Anybody else married to someone who doesn’t seem to realize that the color of the clothing they are putting on clash? Or to someone who just doesn’t care?

Oh well. I don’t have much to complain about. I mean I’m married to a sweet guy who makes me coffee in the morning, and tries to help out and take care of me when I’m not feeling well.

I guess I can try ignore the fact that he would wear shorts all year round if he could and pretty much does. This is a guy who drives me to work on occasion in the dead of winter, -20 Celsius (-4 F) outside, wearing shorts, sandals, and often my puffy blue short winter coat. Yep, that’s my man.

Tell me about the one you love’s strange habits.

On Saturday night, my husband and I, and our boarder, were watching a movie when we heard the sound of many sirens outside. They went on and on. I decided to check out what was going on so I went to our front door and peered outside. The air was hazy and full of smoke.

We ran outside to find out where the problem was, and we saw three fire trucks and an ambulance less than a block away. Neighbors were poking their heads out of their front doors, standing on their lawns and walking down the street towards the trucks and source of the smoke.

We had a huge fire here four years ago just around the block from us. Five houses burned down and one person died. Every time I smell a lot of smoke or hear a lot of sirens I remember that scary day.

Luckily this time it was just a small fire in a neighbors backyard. I don’t know what the source or cause was, but the firemen took care of it quickly and the ambulance wasn’t needed. I took some photos but I haven’t checked them yet to see how they turned out.

That’s twice in one week that we’ve had fire trucks in front of the house or nearby. Geesh, I hope there isn’t a third need for the firemen in the neighborhood anytime soon.

Did anyone else have any mildly exciting happenings this weekend?

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Hey, it’s click and comment Monday! If you want to participate, click on one of the links in my blogroll and leave that person a comment. Then visit their renter or a link on their site and travel to various sites in that manner. Try to visit up to five different sites as you travel around. Perhaps you’ll discover a new site that you really enjoy by doing this.

The Brazilian Boarder

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I mentioned earlier that I’d tell you about our third boarder. Well, the time is now.

We’ve taken in few boarders over the last few months to help pay the bills around here. I’ve been off work due to illness for over 9 months now and I have NO income coming in. So we had to come up with a plan to bring some money in or else we’d be in a lot of trouble with bills or rather with not being able to pay the bills.

Since I keep hoping that I’ll get better soon and get back to work, we didn’t want any long term boarders. That’s probably a good thing since the first two, particularly the second, didn’t turn out to be very good boarders. We are “home stay” parents. What does that mean? Well people from other Countries come to Toronto to learn English in a private school. While they are in Canada they stay in English speaking homes so that they are truly immersed in the language that they are here to learn. The students that we “host” could be anything from teenagers to adults of any age. The average stay seems to be two or three months.

Our first two boarders were from South Korea. The first was a male and he was 19, and the second was female and she was 21. The first boarder didn’t talk much – he slept a lot though! – and we couldn’t get a good read on his personality. This made things a little awkward and uncomfortable. The second talked too much and ended up being extremely demanding and lied to us about just about everything. She even told our neighbors that she had three body guards back home. I’m certain that was a lie too.

For our third boarder we decided to switch agencies (Various agencies put students in touch with families willing to house them and teach them English). So now we have a Brazilian man staying in our home.

I was really hoping that our Brazilian guy would be great eye candy. Hey I deserve that after the brutal experience that I went through with the last boarder don’t I? There’s absolutely nothing wrong with his looks, but sigh, he’s not the gorgeous hunk I was hoping for.

Our Boarder is a really nice guy. Very polite and helpful. He arrived last Thursday. I wasn’t feeling very well when he arrived so Chris took him out and showed him a little bit of Toronto. They came back with a case of beer! I didn’t think this was the best start … but it’s worked out ok. The boarder had paid for half the case – something the other two would never have thought of doing.

Chris was off work on Friday and Saturday and I was feeling a little bit better, so we took our boarder out around Toronto again on Friday. Mostly it was just to a few shopping malls because he wanted to pick up a few things. Saturday I had kind of been hoping that we’d go to the Zoo. I haven’t been to the Metropolitan Toronto Zoo for a few years and I really enjoy it. However it was a rainy day, well at least the morning was anyway, and I wasn’t feeling quite as well as I was on Friday. We did end up going to the Toronto beach area and we walked around for a couple of hours on the Beach and in the touristy area nearby.

On Sunday the boarder did his own thing, and then he started his classes on Monday. We’ve fallen into a nice pattern. He must be touring the town on his own because he usually doesn’t come home until about 7 pm. We have dinner shortly after he arrives home, and then he sits with us for a while. He’s usually up in his room studying or preparing for bed by 9 pm or so.

So far so good … but then I thought the other two were doing well in their first week too, so I’ll reserve final judgment for a while. He’s 31, so he’s more mature than our other two boarders were, and he seems to be a generally nice guy. He even tries to do the dishes each night after dinner … at least his own, and he’s been washing his breakfast dishes in the morning too. So no fuss, no mess, and he’s not in our face all the time like our last boarder was.

It is a bit taxing having someone around who’s first language is not your own. It seems that our male boarders haven’t been quite as good at English as our female boarder was. The latest one understands most of what we are saying, but there’s times when we say something and have to try to explain it several different ways before he begins to understand. For the most part this is fine, but when I’m not feeling all that well it can be a bit draining.

At least I’m not ranting this time round!

Friendly Fire?

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(Wordless Wednesday below this post)

Canadian Troups have taken a lot of loses in Afghanistan in the last few months.

This past week has been particularly bad. I hate to hear about our brave soldiers losing their lives while fighting with the enemy or because they were ambushed by the Taliban, but at least they went there knowing that that could happen. However when I hear that our soldiers were killed or wounded due to friendly fire I get really angry.

PANJWAII, Afghanistan (CP) – The sun lifted into a clear sky with the usual haze of dust at 5:30 a.m. Monday while two U.S. A-10 Thunderbolts swept down the narrow Arghandab River valley, blasting away at supposed Taliban positions.

A young corporal from Newfoundland glanced toward the heavens, noting one aircraft’s sickening low-pitched moan as it shattered the ground with a 10-second burst of about 300 shells the size of pop cans.

It’s far from the rat-tat-tat usually associated with a machine-gun.

“It’s like the noise a whale makes when it runs into a ship,” said Cpl. J. R. Smith from Mount Pearl, N.L.

An hour later, the soldiers found out more than 30 Canadian soldiers, including Pte. Mark Graham who died, were the unintended targets at the bottom of that strafing run. A giant Chinook helicopter was needed to ferry out all the wounded.

How can something like this happen?

In earlier reports it was stated that the Canadian troups were aware that the US fighter planes would be passing over within a half hour. If the Canadians knew the Thunderbolts would be passing by, why on earth did the US pilots not know that the Canadians were right below them? How did they mistake the Canadian troups for Taliban Insurgents?

I don’t understand. I want some answers as to how something like this could happen. 30 injured, 1 dead (a father, an Olympic relay runner). Of the 30 injured only 5 are expected to return to duty.

I don’t mean to offend any Americans that might be reading this. I’m sure you (an American) would be upset if other UN troups accidentally killed or injured your soldiers, right? With all the high tech equiptment available these days you would think something like this would be impossible.

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In other news, I’m sure that just about everyone has heard that Steve Irwin passed away. He’s the Crocodile Hunter if you don’t know him by his real name. As a reptile owner and lover, some of his antics used to upset me. I thought he took too many risky chances with wild animals, and that he might have at times accidentally encouraged others to do so, and in doing so this would end up giving reptiles and even worse name in peoples minds. But he was an animal lover, an educator and he had a passion for life that most people never attain. He’ll be missed.

One of my favorite memories of him was from an episode where he was sitting in a sandy area with a small bearded dragon. He was busy telling the view audience that beardies are usually friendly and that they either don’t bite or rarely bite when the little guy jumped up and bit him on the nose. It was hilarious.

You’ll be missed Steve!

And to all the people who have been posting jokes and making fun of his death. Shame on you.

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