Tricia's Musings

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



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The guide to buying a house humidifier

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I love Autumn – the fall colours, and the crisp cool air, but unfortunately when it starts to get cooler and cooler the furnace soon comes on. Once the air outside gets cooler and the furnace starts going on several times a day I find the air inside the house becomes very dry. My skin gets drier so I have to use more hand creams and body lotions, and when the air is really dry I even get a slightly sore throat.

The first few years that we owned our house this wasn’t so much of a problem. We have a humidifier built into the furnace. All we had to do was remember to turn on the water supply once the cool weather hit, and clean the tray and uh roller/filter regularly, and the air in the whole house was much more comfortable. Unfortunately one of the sides of the piece that holds the filter in our furnace humidifier broke last year and we couldn’t find a replacement.

The air was so dry in the house that it affected my eyes! One morning I woke up and my left eye felt like someone had punched me right in the eyeball. It hurt so bad I ended up in emerg a day or so later, and the doctor there got me an emergency ophthalmologist visit for the following day because he thought the pressure was elevated in my eye.

If the pressure had been raised in my eye during the ER visit it wasn’t by the time I saw the ophthalmologist. He diagnosed me with dry eye which as I’ve described can be a very painful condition. He even tried suggesting I get something inserted into my tear ducts to help me create more tears to soothe my eyes.

Uh huh. I opted to go out and get a humidifier. It helped a lot! Unfortunately it’s only big enough to humidify one floor of our house, so we have it upstairs right now.

Now I’d like to find a new humidifier that will humidify the main floor of our house, or even the whole house. I was looking around on the web for some information on humidifiers and I found the complete guide to buying a house humidifier. This seems to be a pretty good site if you are having trouble figuring out just what kind of humidifier you need for your home.

The section of the guide that talks about the optimum humidity levels for your home was very helpful. As were many of the other section. Now I think I know what type of humidifier I want to get for our house, all I have to do is get out there and get one.





Rate your doctor and get 5 free songs

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Hey folks. I think I told you about Vimo before. It’s a site that lets individuals or small businesses shop for and compare health insurance plans, Health Savings Accounts (HSAs), doctors and dentists in a side-by-side format.

You can even comparison-shop for surgical procedures if you’d like.

Right now, Vimo is offering a coupon to any consumers who go to their site and rate their doctor. With this coupon you’ll be able to get 5 free songs at emusic.com. The songs are MP3’s so you’ll be able to play them on your ipods or whatever music player you have. Even better- if you have more than one doctor that you’d like to rate you’ll get a coupon code for each doctor. In other words, if you rate two doctors you’ll be entitled to 10 free songs.

My sister liked my photos!

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I spent some time talking on the phone with my sister on Saturday night. We live in the same city but we don’t really get together or talk all that often. She has her own business and she’s often busy and me – well I’m often not feeling that great, so I guess that’s why we don’t see each other much lately.

Anyway she’s off to Mexico! Lucky girl. A week away from home just as it’s getting cold here. I’m envious.

While we were talking I told her about my photoblog and sent her a few links to some of the shots on the site that I’m particularly happy with. I was very pleased when she told me that she really liked the photos.

I’m not just pleased because she liked them. I’m pleased because she’s an Artist and she liked them. She hasn’t been doing her own art work for a number of years now- partly due to having twins and her own business and lately she hasn’t been able to do any painting because she suffered a brain injury in 2004 as a result of a surgical operation she had to have done. She’s much better now but she lost a lot of her fine muscle control with the brain injury and she doesn’t know if she’ll be able to paint again.

During our conversation I was trying to encourage her to use her artist eye in photography. I’m sure she’d be a great photographer. It was through this part of the conversation that I mentioned my photoblog.

Now we have plans to go to some of the Funky areas of Toronto and take some photos together when she gets back from her vacation. I think we’ll have a lot of fun.

FAFSA Online Guide

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I don’t have kids, let alone kids that might be old enough to be applying for Federal Free Financial aid, but I know that a lot of my readers are parents so I thought I’d pass on some information about FAFSA online.

The site is a complete FAFSA guide, with everything you child will need to know about applying for federal financial aid. Who knows your college aged child might qualify for scholarships, grants, and other aid opportunities.

>FAFSA online provides a complete walk through of the FASFA form. They even provide an audio walk through if you prefer to listen to the guide as you fill in the paper work. It looks like it makes the whole process much easier and much more understandable. They even include 9 FAFSA secrets that will help you fill out the forms to your child’s best advantage – such as using bad investments that you’ve made in the past to offset other investments in order to bring down your total net worth.

It’s recommended that all College aged children apply for FAFSA, so why not get a little help while you are filling out the forms?

Shreddy the Doberman Sheppard

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I was just speaking with my sister and she’s off for another holiday! I’m green with envy. I need that holiday too.

Any way, this reminded me of how my husband and I used to take care of one of her dogs when she’d go on a family vacation every winter years ago. She had this dog called Shreddy. Shreddy was a German Sheppard Doberman mix. She was bigger than most Shepard’s but she had long hair rather than the short hair both of her parents had. Shreddy looked like a big fluff ball. LOL

My husband was always afraid of her. Well he’s afraid of all dogs. Shreddy loved to sit at his feet in our apartment. He’d lean over and pet her and every time he’d stop she’d growl. One day he called out to me sounding quite afraid “I’m tired of petting her but she keeps staring at me and growling every time I stop!”. I had to explain to him that she wasn’t really growling – she was begging for more. It took a while for Chris to get over his fear of her even after he understood that she was just sitting with him because she loved being pet.

Remember I mentioned her long hair? Well every summer my sister and her husband took Shreddy to the dog grooming salon to have her fur pretty much shaved off. She’d get way too hot in the summer without the haircut otherwise. She looked so funny with her hair shaved off. The short hair was gray instead of being the black and white shades that it had been when it was longer. It also made her look more like a puppy.

After she’d get her hair cut she’d hide for a couple of days. She knew she looked different. Once she got used to her new look though she’d have a burst of energy. Maybe that contributed to us thinking she looked more like a puppy when her hair was shorn off.

Shreddy is no longer around and I miss her. One of our neighbors has a dog that looks a lot like she did and I always think of Shreddy and what a great dog she was when I see our neighbors dog.

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