Tricia's Musings

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



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A pretty little rose

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Wordless Wednesday

This is a beautiful English Rose called Sharifa Asma. It has a lovely perfume like scent, but unlike some of my other roses the scent doesn’t waft in the air for any great distance. This is a rose that you must get up close to in order to appreciate it’s beauty and lovely scent.

I just love my roses. I grow a number of English roses, Antique roses, Hybrid teas and Floribundas. I wonder what will happen when spring and summer comes along and my puppy gets to spend more time in the backyard garden? I hope my roses survive!





Our neighbors can’t sell their house!

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Our neighbors who were trying to sell their home since late September finally took their house off the market. No one was interested in buying it.

We heard from one of the home owners that they had trouble selling because they have oil heating and their tank is very old and new owners won’t be able to get home insurance because of it … or something to that effect. So they’ve taken their home off the market until spring.

In the meantime they are replacing their oil heating with gas. They actually had the gas heating installed on Monday. Surprisingly it wasn’t all that noisy! Lucky for me.

We have oil heating as well and I guess we’ll either have to replace our tank in the near future or switch to gas heating. When we first bought our house I’d planned on switching to gas. I knew our oil tank was almost empty when we bought the house … unfortunately I didn’t know that the old owners were obligated to sell the home with a full oil tank and the tank was filled up the day we got the house I think! That kind of derailed my plans to switch over to gas since emptying the tank is supposed to be a pain.

Did you know that when we first bought this house the house beside us became vacant just a few months later? The former home owner had cancer and she passed away. At that time we considered buying our neighbors house as a second home that we could rent out for a few years and then eventually renovate both semi-detached homes to make them one home.

I guess now that I know what bad shape our neighbors home is in it’s a good thing we didn’t buy it five years ago!

I just hope that when they do sell their house that we get good quiet neighbors!

Puppy is driving me nuts!

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My puppy is making me so mad today!

It’s warmed up here in Toronto and all the snow has melted away. At this time it’s 14 Celsius or 57 F outside. Believe me that’s nice for early January!

Unfortunately our puppy is fascinated by the grass and dead leaves, and the plants in my front garden that she’s been walking over when we take her out for a “quick pee”. Every time I’ve taken her out today she’s spent more time trying to eat the leaves and grass than attempting to do her business.

We got our puppy in late November and she only really saw grass and leaves for a week or so before we got our first, very early this season, snow. So I guess she’s just exploring, but she’s driving me nuts!

It only took us three weeks to house train her and when she needs to go outside she just goes to the door. Unfortunately or fortunately she doesn’t bark, whine or scratch the door when she goes to it she just stands there and hopes we get the message. I kind of wish she’d give a small bark or whine.

Today she’s going to the door every 15 minutes or so though! The first time she really did have to go outside but all the rest of her pleas to go out have just ended up in her sniffing around, and grabbing mouthfuls of leaves or grass! Of course I end up with my hand in her mouth pulling all the stuff she’s gobbling up out! Ewww.

Midnight is getting better as far as her health goes though. We went to the vet yesterday for her third and final set of shots which included a rabies vaccination. We also brought in a stool sample to have it tested for worms and she’s finally clear of her round worms. Yeahhhh! The doctor also checked her eyes and ears and the infections she had in them are gone now too.

All we need is for her stool to become normal. Remember she had diarrhea for most of the time we’ve had her? It’s getting better but we’re still giving her Pepto Bismol to help her out.

Oh and she’s gained weight! I think our last vet visit was about the 18th of December and at that time she weighed 6.8 kg or 15 lb. Now just two and a half weeks later she weighs 9.4 kg or almost 21 lb. Yes that’s kind of small for a five and a half month old lab puppy but she’s not skinny. She’s muscular and lean. I guess she’s going to be on the small side for a female Labrador Retriever, but that’s ok with us.

The romantic rose

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This lovely rose is Yves Piaget a Romantica Rose. When this rose first blooms it has the classic hybrid tea look, but as the rose ages it petals open up as above. Doesn’t it have a floppy free spirited kind of look?

This rose blooms several times throughout the growing season, but it doesn’t bloom as much as I’d like. I’d love it to be full of flowers most of the time as they have a lovely scent.

Gardeners, Plant and Nature lovers can join in every Sunday, visit As the Garden Grows for more information.

One of the movies I was in is on TV tonight

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Long time readers of this blog might remember that way back when I had my own jewelry business (I would diamond cut designs on rings, bracelets, pendants and so on, gold plate jewelry and create jewelry molds – my business was called “Gold Cuts”) I also did some extra work in the movies and commercials.

Well … I did that for about two years when I was first starting my business, as well as working part time at jewelery store outside the city, working for another jeweler in the building I was in and at the Toronto Convention Center as a security guard. Yes, I held down a lot of part time jobs in order to pay the bills as my business got on it’s feet.

Of all the jobs that I did during that first year or two as I got my business going the extra work was by far the most fun. It didn’t pay all that well, but it was certainly an interesting experience. Plus it was fun to spot myself in some of the commercials and movies as they came out.

One of the movies that I was an extra in was called The Brain. It was supposed to be a horror movie, but I doubt anyone watching it was all that scared. It was a very bad movie!

I never did buy a copy of the movie when it came out and I think went straight to video, but Chris and I did rent it one night just for laughs. I think I can be seen in the movie five times. The best scene is one where I’m in the audience and I’m screaming in horror.

Last night I was going through the channels setting up shows I wanted to tape on our PVR (that’s like a TIVO) and I discovered that The Brain is being shown on DRIVIN tonight at 7:15 pm and again at 7 am on Sunday morning.

In the Toronto area DRIVIN is channel 327 on Rogers. I think you have to have the movie channel package to get that channel.

Just to show you how cheesy the movie is the TV description says: “Viewers of a talk show kill themselves after the host becomes allied with an alien brain.”

Uh huh … bad movie. LOL I think most of the movie takes place in the TV Studio so there’s no sexy scene or sexy corsets or anything remotely enticing! Believe me it would have helped the movie if there were some scenes like that.

If you are the least bit interested in seeing this movie be warned that it’s not a very good movie at all. If you just want to see me in it I suggest that you tape the movie and then fast forward until you get to the studio audience scenes and then watch for a girl in a blue dress. As I said there’s one scene where I’m doing a great fake horror scream and you can see my quite well in that shot.

This is the first time I’ve actually had a chance to make a copy of the movie. If I can I’ll try to get some screen shots of my “scenes“.

Let me know if you get a chance to see the movie.

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