Tricia's Musings

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



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A great day for gardening and barbecuing

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It was such a nice day today! My husband had today off since it’s Good Friday so we took advantage of the great weather (24 C! 75 F unheard of temps here in Toronto for early April) and spent several hours outside tidying up the garden.

We spent a lot of time working on the garden beds in the front of the house. Of course this is always slow going because we know a LOT of our neighbors so we were stopping to talk to them briefly every so often.

While we were outside we saw our old awful renter neighbors drive by a few times. They seem to be hanging out at a house down a side street that’s opposite our house so we can see them quite easily. Since our old neighbors and the people they are hanging out with are basically criminals my husband and I thinking of putting in some kind of security system … maybe one of those wireless security systems of course we’ll have to price it out, but with people like that hanging around we’ll feel better knowing we have a security system.

After we were finished tidying up the front garden beds and moving a few plants around (ever try digging up a rose that’s been in place for 10 years? AH!) we did a bit of work in the backyard and then my husband fired up the BBQ.

We just finished eating some fantastic tasting hamburgers. I was starving so it’s great to have that tasty food in me!

Did you take advantage of the holiday today and perhaps get some yard work done as well? Or maybe you got together with family?





It’s been a busy few weeks!

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I’ve had a busy couple of weeks! I guess that’s one of the major reasons why I haven’t been writing all that much.

1. Our terrible renter neighbors moved out on the 19th of March. This was after a terrible week or so of cars parking in our driveway at all ours of the night and tensions going up and up. It’s certainly a relief to see them gone!

2. As I mentioned in earlier posts I had pneumonia – probably thanks to having two bad colds in a row. So that slowed me down and made it hard for me to get anything done.

3. Then I got knocked out my that aural migraine last week. The next day I happened to have an appointment with a neurologist to see what was going on with my numb thigh (it’s a compressed nerve in my hip that’s causing that awful burning sensation!) so I mentioned to him that my migraines had been getting worse and that I was starting to have lots of visual symptoms so now he’s sending me for an MRI and made some suggestions as to how i can try to combat the migraines without adding more medications to my already huge amount of daily meds that I have to take. Did you know that 300 mg of Magnesium a day might help migraines? I didn’t – but I’m trying it out. I’ll let you know if it helps.

Oh and before I can get my MRI I have to have my eye sockets xrayed. Why? Well if you’ve ever had an MRI they always ask if you’ve had metal in your eyes and unfortunately my answer is always yes. I used to be a jeweller. A Diamond cutter to be specific – which means I cut designs in gold with a fast spinning diamond. Naturally that caused tiny pieces of gold to fly around and even though I always wore goggles sometimes a tiny piece of gold would get inside the goggles and stick in my eye. This would result in my blindly making my way down several flights of stairs in the Jewelry building that I worked in in downtown Toronto to see an optometrist who would then pull the pieces of gold out of my eyes. I’m pretty sure that I don’t have gold in my eyes anymore – but it’s best to check before I have an MRI of my head.

4. The other big thing that’s kept me busy in the last three weeks is that I’ve been editing every single page of my reptile care page. I had an offer from Google Adsense to optimize one of my websites so I’ve been working with a really nice guy from Google, even had a phone consultation with him, and I’ve been slowing working his suggestions into my huge HTML based website. Do you know how long it takes to edit every single page of a huge HTML website? Forever! LOL

Between being sick, stressed and doing a huge amount of work on one of my sites I feel like I’ve been on a treadmill in the last few weeks.

Hopefully things settle down and get back to normal again soon!

Why do I enjoy watching so many medical dramas on TV?

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You’d think that since I’m an ER nurse (well one that’s on medical leave) I wouldn’t be all that interested in watching medical shows on TV, but they are still one of my favorite form of television watching.

I used to love watching ER. Oh I’ll admit the early years of the show were the best, but I watched every episode right until the series ended last year.

Now this year a new crop of medical TV dramas are on ranging from more nurse oriented shows like Mercy, Nurse Jackie and HawthoRNe to Trauma which covers the paramedic side of medical drama. I even watched the short HBO series Bloodletting and Miraculous cures – mainly because it was a series that developed from a book written by one of the ER doctors that I’ve worked with for several years.

I also watch House regularly, although as with ER I think the earlier seasons were better than what’s being produced lately. Likewise with Grey’s Anatomy and Private Practice. Geez there’s a lot of medical shows isn’t there? Maybe they all just need to take a multivitamin and they’ll get better?

These shows are full of errors – from having too many doctors and not enough nurses, to medical errors, to patients going from deathbed to miraculously healthy by the next day. LOL

Of all the new shows I think I like HawthoRNe best. It captures the emotions of being a nurse in the ER much better than most of the shows I watch regularly.

Although, just like Mercy, I don’t understand how the nurses that are supposed to work in one area end up working all over the hospital and even assist during surgical procedures. In real life, in a big hospital, nurses work where they are assigned whether it’s the ER, a medical floor or in the OR … they aren’t all over the place .. nor are doctors unless they are specialists – then they might be seen regularly in a few areas of a hospital over the course of a shift.

I think I like watching these shows because I can spot the mistakes and I get a little thrill when I spot them. LOL Maybe these shows keep me on my toes?

Anyway .. do you like watching medical dramas on TV? Which ones are your favorites and which ones could you do without?

How do you handle unwanted door to door sales people?

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I was just saying on my other blog how much I hate door to door sales people … well at least the ones that are trying to sells services or items that are an obvious scam!

We just had a guy at the door trying to sell us a service to repair our brickwork … but believe me he looked like he should be buying a ton of acne medicine rather than wasting his time trying to scam us on work we don’t need done to our home.

Our dog just freaks when someone comes to the door too. She barks her head off. Of course she just wants to make friends with whoevers at the door, but they don’t know that because she looks like she means business.

Maybe next time a solicitor comes to the door we’ll just let the dog bark and bark and scare them away?

How do you handle door to door salesmen? Do you talk to them or just leave them standing outside?

The awful renter neighbors have moved out! Yeah!

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I’m very happy to say that our neighbors from hell moved out yesterday! Yeah!!!!!

They were going to be formally evicted by the Sherrif on Tuesday if they didn’t move out on their own and luckily they took the initiative and moved on their own.

Of course, even though they apparently haven’t payed rent to the homeowner for five months or more (as well as bills like gas and electricity apparently) they still legally have possession of the house until noon on Monday … and they are taking full advantage of that by putting a note on the front door that says “we still have possessions inside and you can’t legally enter until March 22”.

So as far as I can tell the home owners are going to stay away until Monday and unfortunately … those awful soon to be ex renter neighbors are back outside right now. I guess they are moving a few last things out of the house with the big van they jammed into our tiny driveway.

I peaked out a few times yesterday while they were moving their things into the big moving van they’d rented. Man … just like the last renters they didn’t put much thought into their move. Things were coming out in garbage bags … you’d think that most familys would have few luggage sets or at least pack their things in boxes … but oddly enough both of our renter neighbors moving item of choice is the large dark green garbage bag … maybe it’s suiting since they were “garbage” neighbors.

Chris and I are very happy that the criminal element is going to be gone from our neighborhood. Over the last week there have been so many cars, jeeps, SUV’s, and pick up trucks parking outside the house or in our driveway at all times of the day and night that we feared that when it came time for them to be officially kicked out that there would be trouble.

We talked to the home owners yesterday to let them know that we finally saw the awful renters moving out and they said that they’ll probably sell the house after this. That’s a relief because just last week the woman was talking about renting again! Ah .. they’ve had two very bad renters so far … I couldn’t believe they were thinking of renting again! With their and our luck they’d probably make another awful choice and we’d have to live with the neighbors from hell all over again for another 6 months or so … instead, if we’re lucky we’ll get new “real” neighbors in a few months! I can’t wait!

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