Tricia's Musings

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



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Interesting dinner

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My husband is heating up the left overs from last nights dinner out. It seems that half the people staying in our home brought home a doggy bag yesterday since they servings were so huge at last nights restaurant so we have lots to choose from!

I’m going to finish my baby back ribs, and have some of the left over Pad Thai and Singapore noodles. Chris is having the Pad Thai, Singapore noodles and some left over pasta. Interesting combinations I guess, but it should be good.

I can smell the food heating now and my stomach is beginning to growl. I must go and eat – NOW!





Ohhhhhh what a weekend!

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I’m supposed to be in Niagara Falls right now.

Chris’ brother came to visit from Chicago and our house has been full of people since Saturday. Chris’ brother, T, brought his daughter and son, as well as a friend of his daughters so that was four extra people, then Chris’ younger sister came to visit with her husband and their young daughter. Include Chris and I in that total and that makes nine people milling around our tiny home!

On Saturday evening we went to The Taste of the Danforth. Never try going to the most crowded street festival you’ve ever been to with nine people! OMG we spent more time losing the teenagers and looking for them than doing anything else. I was so terribly disappointed since this was my first time going to the taste in three years and it was a disaster.

After we got back from the Taste of the Danforth more people came to our house! A few old friends of Chris and his brother showed up and we sat in the garden and talked, and drank until the wee hours.

On Sunday we were supposed to go to Ontario Place, The beach, a beach club, dinner and then the CN tower. Well … it rained for a good portion of the afternoon so we made it to the Beach Club and sat on the patio under under umbrella’s by the lake. It was actually pleasant even though it was drizzling for at least two hours while we were there. We then ended up going to a nice restaurant in the Beaches called Quigley’s. I had a few of the baby back ribs I ordered (very large portion sizes) and yum, all of the home made very delicious fries that came with my meal. I doggy bagged the remainder of my meal, and so did a few of the others we were with so we have lots of left overs to graze on this evening.

Our plans changed, again, as usual … and we were supposed to do the CN Tower today and Niagara Falls, but I just wasn’t up to it. I’ve been getting sicker and sicker over the last couple of weeks and two days of house guests, staying up late, drinking when I shouldn’t and being more than a little bit over stressed must have made me feel worse because I had a terrible night last night. I don’t know how many times I was up to the bathroom. I felt so ill, nauseated, in pain, fevers, chills … there was no way I was going anywhere today – including the doctors appointment I was supposed to have at ten a.m.!

I’ve spent much of the day lying on the couch groaning in pain. I’ve only just come back to life and it’s already after 7 pm!

I did have fun getting together with our friends and family, but considering how ill I’ve been it was too much for me. Plus I shouldn’t have drank anything! Not that I drank a lot mind you. Two drinks on Saturday and three on Sunday. That’s not too bad, but considering I don’t really drink much anymore that was enough.

I took photos of the crowds at the Taste of the Danforth and some lovely shots while at the beach – including one of my husband when he went swimming. He climbed up on some rocks and mooned everyone! LOL Yeah, I got a snap of that!

I’ll post some of the photos over the next few days.

Time for Taste of the Danforth

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Toronto is a wonderful city to live in. Beginning in May and clear through to fall there’s something to do almost every weekend. There’s the Toronto Street Festival, The Gay Pride Parade, Food Festivals, Caribana, the Just for Laughs festival and my favorite event of all – The Taste of the Danforth.

We moved into this part of Toronto, Greek Town, The Danforth, in June of 2001 and almost every year since we moved here we’ve been going to The Taste of the Danforth.

Unfortunately we’ve missed the last two years because Chris’ brother always picks this time of year to come for a visit from Chicago. This year he’s visiting again, but I’m determined that he’s not going to stop us from going to the Taste of the Danforth this year.

It’s a shame not to go. We only live about 10 minutes away from the festivities. It’s so easy to walk back and forth to the festival that it’s almost a crime not to go.

The Taste of the Danforth is of course on Danforth Avenue in Toronto. Several blocks of the Danforth are closed off and all of the restaurants and stores set up tables and serving areas outdoors. It’s a time to experience the culture of the area and taste the many foods of the various ethnic groups that live in this part of the Beaches and The Danforth village.

The area is mainly Greek so there’s naturally going to be a lot of Greek foods, but there will also be foods from India, Spain, China, Thailand, Muslim foods, Irish and even vegetarian foods.

The Taste of the Danforth is always held on the second weekend of August and it runs from that Friday evening at 6 pm until Sunday at 6 pm. In that time period there should be well over a million people wander the Danforth, tasting foods, stopping in beer and wine tents, putting their kids on children’s rides, and listening to live bands. This year along with a number of musicians and bands there will be performances by Second City and some of the performers from “We Will Rock You” the Queen and Freddy Mecury related theater production that’s running in the Canon Theater in downtown Toronto.

As I said I’m not going to let my brother in law stop me from going this year. He can sit in our garden if he doesn’t want to go. I’m going. The only thing that will stop me is my own health and I’m determined to go no matter what so I’ll have to be awfully sick if I don’t attend this year.

If you live in the Toronto area come on down! It’s worth the trip.

We’ll have visitors soon!

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My brother in law is going to be visiting this weekend from Chicago. He’s bringing two of his teenage kids with him. Oh this should be fun!

We called my brother in laws cell phone last night right around midnight just to see where he was. You see he’d said that he expected to be at Chris’ parents house by 1 or 2 a.m. Unfortunately it took him about two hours to get out of Chicago yesterday so he was behind in his drive and he was just at the US Canada border in Sarnia. Yeah, he was way behind – about four hours behind!

We found out that this trip isn’t just a visit to Canada to see relatives. When his kids were born we thought that he’d filled papers for them so that they’d be dual citizens of both the USA and Canada. You see, up until a year or two ago my brother in law had retained his Canadian citizenship and his wife is American so his kids should be eligible to have citizenship in both countries.

So right now I’m not sure if his kids have their Canadian papers or not. I don’t think they do since my brother in laws mission this visit is to secure Social Insurance Numbers (SIN) for his kids. I would have thought that they’d have had that since birth.

Hopefully things go smoothly otherwise that’s all we’ll hear about most of this coming week!

Chris’ brother was supposed to come to Toronto on Friday but now he might not come until Saturday due to this paperwork problem that he’s trying to resolve.

As long as we get to go to the Taste of the Danforth this weekend I’ll be happy. We didn’t go last year when Tim came down because he had his youngest child with him and he was afraid of losing him in the huge crowd!

A hot sticky car

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Speaking of heat waves and humidity! If this heat wave keeps up were going to have to look into getting Auto air conditioning. The air conditioning in our car died about three years ago. When it’s not too hot it’s not really a problem. We don’t mind driving with the windows down.

It’s just when it’s this hot that the idea of getting into the car and driving around is almost unbearable.

We’re supposed to go out of town to Chris’ parents this weekend. If it’s still this hot it’s not going to be a pleasant drive.

We should get the air conditioning repaired, but we have to replace the whole system since there’s some kind of leak that couldn’t be fixed last time. It’s pretty expensive to get a whole new air conditioning system for a car and that’s not something we can afford right now either.

Nope, we’ll have to suffer.

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