Random Thoughts about life in general, living in the big city of Toronto
Wordless Wednesday
These tulips are long gone, but I couldn’t help wanting to show you how lovely a group of brilliant red fringed tulips look when a group of them are growing together in a garden bed.
These beauties made a lovely distraction as they were growing in front of several roses that were just growing their leaves as the tulips were blooming. Now the tulips are gone and the rose bushes are full of leaves and in the last few days the rose bushes have started blooming too.
Well it’s that time of year again when people are pulling out their bikes, teaching kids to ride tricycles or bikes with training wheels and so on.
I found a blooper reel that has a lot of funny (and sometimes painful looking) bike related bloopers. It’s got everything from kids on bikes crashing into things to adults doing dumb things with bikes and even exercise bikes.
Now I’m extremely accident prone. You might remember me taking about falling a lot a year or so ago. I had one accident where I was just walking down the street and for some reason I lost my balance and stumbled and ended up falling flat on my face – severely injuring my chin. It wasn’t funny at the time, but I know I staggered a few feet trying to stay upright and I’m sure if someone had caught it on film it would have been funny on a blooper reel.
I think the worst klutzy thing I ever did was falling down the stairs and landing on my in-laws brand new Delsey luggage. The bags were ok but I was banged up!
Anyway, if you like watching people doing stupid things or making klutzy moves here’s a funny video for you:
We had a knock at the door at about 2:30 this morning …
I had fallen asleep on the couch at about 11 pm, and Chris had gone to bed sometime after that. At about 2 a.m. I woke up – too hot because we didn’t have the air conditioning on and Chris had shut all the windows.
As it turned out Chris was awake too and he came downstairs to get some water and watch TV for a few minutes before trying to sleep again.
That’s when we heard a faint knock on the door. Or at least we thought it was a knock, but I also wondered if It was our new neighbors making noise in the house next door even though they haven’t moved in yet.
Chris got up and looked out the peephole and saw a skinny little man standing outside the door. He was saying something, but no matter how many times Chris said “what?” or asked him to repeat what he’d said we still couldn’t tell what he was saying.
Finally Chris decided to open the door. Apparently this guy is the brother of one of our neighbors. His sister was apparently on Vacation and he’d been downtown delivering wine to a bar in the Docks area when his van ran out of gas. He didn’t have any money and needed some to fill the tank.
Somehow he was on a bike. Where he got it I don’t know.
Chris pulled out his wallet and gave him 20 bucks. We had more money in my wallet but he didn’t have to know that.
I still wasn’t sure if his story rang true as I’d never seen him before nor heard our neighbor taking about a brother or anything.
He left saying he’d return in the morning with some wine for us (and hopefully the 20 dollars we’d lent him, although he didn’t promise that).
As of this moment – almost 5 pm, he still hasn’t returned and I have seen our neighbor that’s supposedly his sister … so I don’t think she was on vacation.
It was just so weird. Especially since I just wrote about how we don’t let strangers into our house. Well I guess we didn’t let the guy in, but we gave him money …
I’ll send Chris over to the neighbors later this evening when he gets home from work to check out the story.
Everyone that knows me knows that I’m quite the pet lover. I’ve been interested in all kinds of animals for as long as I can remember and I’ve kept several different kinds of pets too, ranging from lizards to my dog.
As a result of my interest in animals I keep my eye open for pet and animal related sites. Sometimes I can learn something new from these sites or I can refer someone else to the website so that they can get the information they need.
I was introduced to a site recently called Tame That Wild Thing. It’s just the kind of site that I’d recommend to people who are trying to decide what type of pet would suit their lifestyle best, or perhaps to those who are just starting out with a new pet and need to learn the basics quickly.
You can find information about birds, dogs, cats, hamsters, tropical fish on topics ranging from setting up an aquarium to raising a puppy and more.
The site is constantly being updated with new articles so it’s worth checking occasionally. I’m sure that many pet lovers will find this site helpful. I certainly could have used some of the puppy information 6 months ago!
A few minutes ago a man knocked on our door. We have a number of solicitors around here so I often ignore knocks at the door, but this man knocked so hard that the dog started barking and I decided to go to the door to find out who it was.
Well it was this man working for a company that I think was called Living Green. I stood in the enclosed front porch to talk with him as Midnight mostly watched from the screen door inside the house.
He asked me how old our water heater was. Honestly I don’t know. It’s a rented heater and it was here when we moved into the house. At the very least it’s more than 7 years old. Apparently our government is giving a rebate on water heaters that are older than 5 years. We can apparently have it replaced free of charge.
My first thought was ok well we’re renting our hot water tank in the first place so I could probably just call the company and have them replace it free of charge anyway …
He made it sound like if I didn’t let him in so that he could check the serial number and age of our hot water heater we’d lose out on the rebate.
I know our government is giving all kinds of rebates to those who upgrade their furnaces to more energy efficient models as well as those who work on their home to reduce energy usage such as improving insulation, replacing windows and yes replacing water heaters. So I wasn’t buying his pitch.
I’d had a gas company rep at the door a few days ago trying to get me to buy into a lower rate gas program too. Our house is oil heated (the tank was just filled up a few days ago at a cost of almost $800) so I wasn’t interested in his gas company pitch either.
I figure if these people that come to the door with sales or rebate offers are legit I should be able to get a pamphlet from them so that I can read the details of the offer on my own and also talk with my husband about whatever being offered.
Chris and I rarely let anyone that comes to our door with a sales pitch in the house. Particularly if we are alone in the home. You just never know if they are legitimate or not.
I’m not paranoid or anything. I’m just being safe. Plus … once you let a salesperson into your home, how the heck do you get them out? Also once you let a sales person into your home it’s a lot harder to turn down the offer – not impossible, but harder.
When I came back in the house I noticed that the TV was now set to closed captioning. Midnight must have hit the remote and turned it on somehow. I have no idea, but it took me a few minutes to try and figure out how to turn the closed captioning off again! I think she chewed on the remote as she would have had to press a few buttons to turn it on!
Puppies. You can turn your back on them for a second!