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The “Do Not Call list” doesn’t work!

March 14, 2009 by Tricia

Sometime last Fall our Canadian Government finally got around to creating an official “Do Not Call” website where Canadian residents could go and add their home or even their cell phone numbers to a list that would supposedly be checked by telemarketers and keep you off their call lists.

Sounds great right? Finally a way to get those pesky telemarketers to stop calling our home at all ours of the day and evening.

Uh huh …

Guess what? Just about anyone can register as a “telemarketing firm” by paying a $50 fee. Once they’re registered they can access the list and copy it. That’s fine if it’s a legitimate telemarketing business in Canada who’s trying to abide by the Do not Call laws. However, since just about anyone can register as a telemarketer and it’s not checked an unscrupulous person could sign up, download the list and then sell it to marketers in other countries who don’t have to obey our Canadian telemarketing laws and regulations.

If you live in Canada you’ve probably seen new stories from January onward talking about how the Do Not Call list is being abused.

Chris and I added our number to the list in either late November or early December. By the end of January we started to get even more calls from telemarketers than we normally do! I’ve always been hesitant to pick up the phone when I don’t recognize the number, so what I’ve been doing is checking out all the 1-800 numbers that are calling on the internet.

Some of the calls we are getting are from companies that just call to see if anyone answers the phone and if someone does they know the number is live and they turn around and sell the phone number to other marketers! Other calls are from scam companies stating they can lower your credit card interest rates or provide an extended warranty for your car (even though they don’t even know if you have a car or if it’s a 25 year old clunker!), others are calls stating that “you’ve won a free trip” or membership cards to gyms or membership stores.

It’s a pain in the butt! I don’t sleep well at night so I sometimes sleep late into the morning. I can’t even do that anymore because the calls start as early at 8 am and go on until almost 10 pm! These days we try to remember to unplug the phone late at night before we go to bed and then I plug it back in once I’m up.

There’s a number on the Canadian Do Not Call list website that you can call and have your phone number removed. I already had our number removed about two weeks ago, but the calls are still coming. I shouldn’t have added our home phone number to the list in the first place … God only knows how many illegal telemarketing lists our number has been listed on in the three or so months that we were on the list.

If you’re in Canada were you silly enough to add your home number to the do not call list? And if you are elsewhere do you also have a do not call list that telemarketers in your Country are supposed to abide by?

Don’t you just hate telemarketing and survey calls?





Filed Under: Canada, Home and Lifestyle, Items to Try, Toronto Tagged With: calls, Canada, canadian, Do_Not_call_list, illegal, list, phone, phone_calls, remove, ringing, scams, telemarketer, telemarketers

What a beautiful day in Toronto

March 6, 2009 by Tricia

It was just lovely today here in Toronto. Warmer than most early to mid-Spring days! By 3 pm it had reached 18 Celsius (64 F)! We’re supposed to have above zero weather up until next Wednesday or so, but it looks like today will have been the warmest – unless something changes over the next few days forecast wise.

It was far too nice a day to stay inside. Earlier in the day I looked outside at the garden, there were still a few small patches of snow in the shady areas, but it was melting fast. For a few minutes I even contemplated doing a little yard work – tidying up the garden, but it’s far too early. I’m sure we’ll have some freezing weather before the end of March.

So … Midnight our young Labrador Retriever got the most benefit from the nice day. She got a nice long walk with me in the afternoon and then when Chris came home from work we all went out for a very long walk. All in all, Midnight probably got two hours worth of walks today.

In the winter when there’s lots of snow Midnight likes to roll in the snow. We’ll be walking along and she’ll jump on someone’s lawn or in a snow bank and either roll around in the snow or do a faceplant and slide her body along the snow as I walk along side her. I try to make sure the snow is clean where ever she does this. It’s pretty funny to see the faceplant slide. I’ve seen her push her body like that through the snow for 10 feet or more. I’m sure anyone watching must wonder what the crazy dog is doing.

There’s very little snow now – only in really shady areas. That didn’t stop Midnight though … she tried to roll in the wet and sometimes muddy grassy areas and even attempted her faceplant slide. Of course I stopped her each time as I didn’t want to bring a dirty muddy dog back into the house. LOL

She tried to roll in the wet grass a few times when Chris and I took our evening walk, but it was just too wet and muddy.

We did something different for our evening walk with Midnight. When Chris came home he told me that our hospital was finally getting two new Restaurants. Al we’d had before was the hospital cafeteria and a coffee/ quick food area in the lobby that was run by the cafeteria staff. The new restaurants or food places are Subway and a Panzerotto Pizza. The Subway shop isn’t open yet but the Panzerotto Pizza had opened today.

So we walked to the hospital and while I stood outside with Midnight Chris went inside and ordered us two Panzerotto’s (They are like folded fried pizza’s, yummy, some might call them Calazones?) and some chicken wings. The place was really busy and I ended up standing outside with Midnight for over 45 minutes! It was probably busy because it was just after 7:30 so a lot of staff were getting off work and visiting hours were about to end so maybe some of the visitors were getting food before going home too.

Since there were a lot of staff getting off work I wasn’t too bored waiting for Chris to get our food. I talked to a few nurses and other hospital staff that I knew. One ER nurse that I used to work with had just received a new Bedat watch for her birthday. Man was that a nice watch!

After walking home Chris and I sat down to eat our food. I’m soooooo full now. That Panzerotti was filling! I don’t think I’ve had one for several years and now I know why … they make you feel so stuffed! In fact the panzerottis were so filling Chris and I only had two wings each so there’s still 10 left for us to have with tomorrows dinner.

How was the weather in your area today? I’m pretty sure most of the Northern States and Canadian provinces had fairly nice weather today.

Filed Under: Canada, Items to Try, Our Puppy, The Neighborhood, Toronto, Walking Tagged With: calazone, dog, faceplant, friends, fun, melting, panzerotti, rolling, snow, spring, takeout, Toronto, walk, warm, wings, yummy

Grilling in my kitchen

February 27, 2009 by Tricia

Earlier this evening, when Chris came home from work, I suggested to Chris that we get a Foreman Grill. I’d got a notice from a department store in our area that the G 2 EZ Broil grill was on sale.

We’ve been eating a lot of boneless Skinless chicken breasts lately and I’ve been getting kind of tired of baking them in the oven so I thought the grill might be a great addition to our kitchen appliances and I was fairly certain that I’d use it just about every day.

So when Chris got home from work I told him about the grill. I’d also looked up some reviews on that particular model to see how others liked it and it had good reviews, so we went out to the store to get one. We also stopped by a grocery store to pick up some salad making supplies and some hamburgers.

After getting the new grill out of the box and setting it up we grilled two hamburgers on it. man is that thing fast! Only five minutes and our burgers were done. Yummy!

Along with our hamburgers in Pita buns we had steamed veggies (carrots, broccoli and cauliflower) and I made a salad with baby mixed greens, grape tomatoes (none of the regular sized tomatoes were ripe enough in the store), cucumber, green pepper and a little feta cheese. We haven’t actually had a salad with our meals for quite a while so it was a very nice addition. Plus I made us each a big salad so it was filling too.

I already have some thawed chicken breasts in the fridge, so tomorrow we’ll have grilled chicken. Sunday perhaps we’ll have some of the Sole Fillets I bought last weekend. Hopefully everything cooks nicely on the grill!

Now if only I’d remembered to look for compact flash cards while we were in the store earlier I’d be set. I need a new one for my camera. Oh well … we still have the rest of the weekend.

Filed Under: Appliances and Accessories, Dining and Restaurants, Home and Lifestyle, Items to Try, Shopping Tagged With: bought, chicken, cooked, diner, fish, Foreman_Grill, grill, grilled_food, grilling, hamburgers, kitchen, salad, sale, veggies

Cold or allergies?

February 24, 2009 by Tricia

Sniffle, sniffle, sniffle … cough, cough … That’s what my days been like. I think I might either be coming down with a cold or else my sniffles and coughing are remnants of the allergic reaction I had on Saturday night thanks to the shrimp that I ate. I’m still patting my self on the back for that great addition to our meal (NOT).

I still have some hives on my face and neck, and I noticed today that the area above and below my eyebrows is a little puffy and red … kind of like I just plucked my eyebrows.

So as I said I’m not sure whether I’m getting a cold or it’s still my allergic reaction that’s making me feel yucky today. Either way, I think that by the time Chris comes home tonight he’s going to find me curled up in our new Sferra sheets that I just put on our bed. All warm and cozy and trying to recover from whatever my body has decided to do to me today.

Hmmm maybe I’ll make myself a hot Toddy later … yeah that will make my raw throat feel better and make me sleepy too.

I hope that you guys are having a better day than I am!

Filed Under: Health Fitness and Beauty, Home and Lifestyle, Items to Try Tagged With: allergic_reaction, allergy, cold, cough, cuddle, hot_toddy, miserable, sick, sniffles, warm

I’m tired of freezing when I go to bed

February 22, 2009 by Tricia

I’m starting to get sick and tired of our bedroom being freezing cold when I go to bed. Our master bedroom is the coldest room in the house in the winter. Changing into my PJ’s each night is quite the experience as I end up covered in goose-pimples! LOL

We live in an older house. It was build in 1927 and as a result it’s probably not quite as warm as newer homes. Our bedroom is upstairs at the end of a long hallway so that likely makes it harder for the cold air that builds up in the room to escape. Remember cold air goes down (as in down a staircase) and warm air goes upward.

When we moved in we had some duct work done including adding a cold air vent in the master bedroom. I’m sure this has helped to make the room warmer than it would have been without the cold air return vent, but it’s still pretty darn cold in the dead of winter.

We did have an electric heater that we’d use in the bedroom for the first hour or so after we went to bed, but it stopped working in early December and we haven’t replaced it yet. After suffering through a very cold January (February has been warmer here, but it will get colder soon) I think it’s time to buy a new heater.

I’m going to watch for an electric heater to go on sale and hope that I can get one for a good price soon.

Our last electric heater was a tall standing one that oscillated to move the warm air around the room, but I’ve been look at this Honeywell Cool Touch heater and it looks like it might fit the bill. The description says it will heat a large living space so it might be too powerful for our small master bedroom.

What we’d normally do with our old electric heater would be to turn it on when we’d come upstairs to use the washroom and wash up before bed so that it would take a bit of the chill out of the room before we’d have to go in there to get changed. It also had a timer on it so we could set it to run for only an hour or so. That would ensure that the room was warm as we were trying to fall asleep, but we usually didn’t need it to run all night. Not once the bed was warmed up anyway.

Do you find the the upstairs of your house is a lot cooler in the winter than the rest of your home? Do you use a heater in your bedroom or do you just suffer the cold?

Filed Under: Appliances and Accessories, Home and Garden, Home and Lifestyle, Items to Try, Shopping, Toronto Tagged With: bedroom, changing, cold, cold_air, cold_room, electric_heater, heater, home, old_house, pjs, sale, shop, Toronto

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