Tricia's Musings

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



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I think we’re in recession recovery mode now here in Toronto

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The news reports have been saying over the last month or two that our housing market here in Toronto was starting to get back to normal … well not totally normal, but close, and now I have true proof that it is indeed getting better. recession

My brother and his wife who live just outside of town decided to buy a Condo around the beginning of May. Their kids are in their 20’s and they don’t need a big house and all the maintenance that goes along with it anymore, so I guess that’s why they decided to move to a Condo.

They put their house up for sale on May 10th and it was sold on the 27th … not bad for a housing market that’s not quite as hot as it was two years ago! Hmmm I wonder if the people that own the house next door (currently inhabited by renters that are slowly driving me nuts) might decide to put that house on the market again soon? That house needs a lot of work though so I’m sure it wouldn’t sell fast without at least some of the work being done.

I was talking with my brother this evening and he was telling me about their new condo. It’s 1,400 square feet so it’s a good size. Two bedrooms, kitchen, sun room, living room/ dining room, balcony and all the amenities that go along with a condo such as party room, swimming pool, sauna and rooftop barbecues I think. Sounds pretty nice.

The building is about twenty years old and my brother says the kitchen is outdated so they are doing to renovate the kitchen shortly after moving in. They redid the kitchen in their current house too so I joked with him that he’s going to be a professional kitchen renovator by the time he’s finished the condo kitchen! They don’t know exactly what kind of kitchen reno they’re going to do just yet – ie tile floors or hardwood, stainless steel appliances or who knows maybe even copper sinks but I’m sure they’ll enjoy figuring it out and of course the finished product. It’s the work in between that might be a pain! LOL

I used to say I’d never live in a condo – especially after living in an apartment for 14 years before we bought our house. But now that I’m so sick with Crohn’s I can see the advantages of not having to trudge upstairs to use the bathroom and not having yard work and home maintenance to do!

How is the housing market in your area? Did it bottom out once the recession hit and is it recovering now like ours here in the General Toronto Area (GTA)?





Perfect weekend for getting things done around the home

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Chris was busy today while I lay like a lump on the couch. Yeah, my Crohn’s is up to no good again.

We have three screen doors on our house, two at the front and one at the back and all of the handles started not working properly earlier this year. The doors just didn’t latch closed when they shut. So Chris spent some time replacing two of the handles and then with my help he rehung the screen door at the back that had been rubbing in one corner at the base – which of course caused it to not close properly.

Now that we’re starting to get nicer weather and want to have the doors open more often to let air in, it’s important that the screen doors close securely. I mean, we live on a busy street and our dog could literally push the doors open if we didn’t make sure they closed properly.

Tomorrow, if it’s not raining and if I’m feeling a bit better I have a few more seeds to plant in the garden and then we might go out shopping at some electronics stores. Our Home Theater stopped working, oh … about two years ago and we’ve tried everything to get it working again, but it just won’t work.

Every time we turn on the Home Theater system we get an “overload” message. We’ve unplugged various addons from the back (DVD player, cd player etc) to see if that helped and it didn’t, we’ve also plugged the machine into a different outlet and that didn’t help either. Then, about two weeks ao, on the advice of a salesperson at an electronics store Chris took the Home Theater apart and checked to see if the heat sink was covered in dust (it wasn’t) and checked for fuses inside the machine. We did find about 5 fuses but none of them looked blown so I guess the system is just plain blown and we’ll have to replace it.

So … maybe tomorrow we’ll go out and see if we can find a new home theater system receiver (without speakers and subwoofer since we have those) that isn’t too expensive and see if that will work. I really miss having the home theater system. I mean, we can’t watch DVD’s easily anymore and I can’t listen to CD’s unless I put them on the computer. I know I’d listen to a lot more music if we could get the home theater system working again.

Anyway, I guess since it looks like it will continue to rain on and off all weekend we’re just going to get things done around the house – mostly inside stuff unless the weather really clears up.

What are you doing this weekend? Are you going out to do something interesting or just doing home maintenance stuff like we are?

Thinking of going back to school?

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In recession times it’s not uncommon for those who’ve been laid off or those who’s jobs might be on shaky ground to think about returning to school. I’m sure there are many people who have recently considered returning to school either to study further in their chosen field or to make a complete career change.

In the early 90’s, during that recession, I did a complete career change and so did my husband (boyfriend at the time). We were both jewelers and the jewelery trade wasn’t doing well, so we took turns going back to school. I became a nurse and my husband became a computer technician.

If you are considering going back to school you might be interested in taking a look at the online Master of Arts in Organizational Leadership course at Lewis University.

There are five concentrations in this course which will equip you with leadership and progressive management techniques, they are organizational management, not- for -profit management, Public administration, training and development, and higher education – student services.

They also offer an online Masters of Science in Information Security. The course is highly dynamic and it provides students with the managerial and technological tools to work with government agencies and businesses in order to safeguard them from threats to their data and computer systems.

I actually like the idea of online courses. They offer flexibility in that it’s often easier to fit an online course of study into your life. Lewis University also offers competitive tuition and has generous financial aid programs.

I know that if I were thinking of making a career change and possibly going back to school I’d probably look into an online course first. Have you ever thought of furthering your career by going back to school?

Recovering from a busy weekend

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I think I’m still recovering from the weekend! Man did we do a lot of stuff!

On Saturday we decided to visit some of the buildings in the Toronto Open Doors event. We started with the Don Jail – an empty unused jail that dates back to the 1800’s which will soon, oddly enough, become part of a hospital. It was the last chance for the public to see the inside of the building for free.

Unfortunately the lineups were over three to four hours long so we decided to purchase tickets for one of their upcoming Ghost tours of the Don Jail. So sometime in the next month or so Chris and I will be going on an evening tour of the jail which is said to have many ghosts.

After not getting into the jail we decided to visit this old bowling alley that had just reopened. They had the old Brunswick five pin bowling pins that worked on a string system. We got to see how that worked and were offered free bowling. We didn’t bowl because we decided to go to Tod Morden Mills which was also participating in Open Doors Toronto.

At Tod Morden Mills we went into the art gallery and East Side Players theater – we got to see the theater control room as well, and then we visited some of the old houses on the property. We also took a walk on the wild flower trail there and I took some photos.

When we got home I finished planting some of the annuals that I’d purchased oh, about two weeks ago, and then Chris and I had chicken, sausages and grilled potatoes on the BBQ.

Sunday was spent doing more work in the garden. Chris cut the lawn and I planted some seeds and also reseeded the lawn.

Then yesterday even though it wasn’t really the weekend it always feels like it since Chris has Mondays off we did a little more yard work and took our Lab Midnight to the vet for her annual shots. She’d woken up early yesterday morning and threw up. She does that sometimes … I think it’s because she likes to try to eat weeds when we take her out for walks. No matter how hard we try to get her to stop doing that she always finds grass or some weed to bite at.

Anyway … her vet check up was good. She’s healthy. No worms, no heart worm and the vet was pleased with her shiny black coat.

I liked having such a busy weekend, but my body didn’t! I think I’m paying for it today. I feel like I took a handful of weight loss pills or something. My stomach is growling, I’m hungry … but everything I eat is going through me at high speed! Not good. Oh well … I’ll probably feel better tomorrow if I take it easy today.

So how was your weekend? I know that my American readers celebrated Memorial day – I’ll bet that many of you had family and friend get together’s, BBQ’s and went to see fireworks.

It’s so warm it feels like summer!

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It’s so nice here this week! Last week it was so cold, you’d swear it was still early Spring! Now it feels like July here in Toronto! Right now it’s 28 C and with humidity if feels like 30 C (86 F) and it’s supposed to be fairly warm over the next week or so too.

We’ve been spending a lot of time outside now that the weather’s nice. The weekend was cool – close to freezing! However I still planted most of the annuals that I’d purchased. Now that it’s warm out I’m sure my new plants are loving it.

Midnight, our Lab, is loving the weather too. She keeps ringing the bell we have attached to the door so that she can go outside and play with her toys. We don’t mind, we want to be outside when it’s this nice too. I mean, who knows – it might get cold again! This is Canada after all!

Are you having warmer than normal weather in your area too?

We’re having a barbecue tonight – chicken grilled over mesquite. Yum.

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