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

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Long time no see Nephew

July 1, 2010 by Tricia

Our nephew stayed overnight on Monday. He’s my husbands sisters son.

It was the first time I’d seen him in maybe 8 years!

The odd thing is … I’ve been in the same house as him several times over the past 8 years. He is living at my husbands parents house and has been for at least the last five years … but he’s very antisocial.

He’d just stay in the basement with his friends or playing video games rather than come upstairs to join the family for dinner. He wouldn’t even come upstairs to say hi or eat with us at Christmas time. Isn’t that unbelievable?

I guess it’s the way he’s been raised. Ever since he was a little kid he’s always got everything he wanted. He also spent a lot of time with his grandparents and they let him get away with murder. I mean, when he was a little boy he’d ask for ice cream and they’d get it for him right away, then he’d take one bite and say he didn’t want it – he’d want something else. Oh and his grandparents would get it for him rather than make him eat what he’d asked for first or instead of just not giving him something else.

Isn’t that nuts?

So when I heard he was going to come and stay over at our house on Monday night I wasn’t thrilled. I mean, this kid couldn’t even come upstairs to say hello to relatives for a few minutes, even though he doesn’t have a chance to see them all that often?

Anyway I must say I was surprised by his visit. In a good way. He showed up wearing his hip hop clothing on Monday evening. He’s been working as an extra on a television show being filmed here in Toronto and he had to be back on the set early the next morning which is why he needed to stay over at our house (seeing as he lives an hour and a half outside of Toronto).

He was polite and friendly during his stay with us. We made him something to eat and he sat and watched TV with us for a while before heading off to bed at about 11 pm that evening.

It was the most time I’d spent with him in years.

Now if he needs to stay over for a night every once in a while I won’t be so apprehensive about his visit. Perhaps he’s starting to mature and change. He is 21 years old now after all.





Filed Under: Family, Home and Lifestyle, Items to Try, Toronto Tagged With: brat, dinner, early morning, husbands sister, movie extra, Nephew, over night, say hello, son, spoiled, stayed over, talked, visit, working

Ready to study business

July 1, 2010 by Tricia

We heard from our niece in Chicago earlier today. She was calling to say “Happy Canada Day”.

It was nice to hear from her. We had a nice long talk – something we don’t get to do very often.

I don’t know if I mentioned it on this blog, but sometime in the winter my niece had called me asking me about Gmat prep courses. Now I must admit that at the time I didn’t really even know what a Gmat was, but I did some research on the internet and suggested a few places where she could enroll for a gmat prep course online.

She took the course at Knewton. Actually she just finished her course and she wanted to let us know that she did really well and that she was really happy with the company. She took advantage of the live teaching hours and said she was quite happy with the abundance of practice tests that she was able to do. Now she feels ready to continue her business studies.

I think we might get to see our niece in a couple of weeks. She and her dad and her two brothers might be coming to the Toronto area for a visit. It’ll be nice to see them.

Filed Under: Canada, Education, Family, Home and Lifestyle, Items to Try, Toronto Tagged With: business, Canada Day, chicago, GMAT, hello, long talk, Niece, prep course, telephone call, visit

5.5 Earthquake on Ontario Quebec border – felt in Toronto

June 23, 2010 by Tricia

This is going to be an interesting day here in Toronto and Ontario I think.

At approximately 1:41 pm there was a 5.5 earthquake on the Ontario Quebec border – about 60 km north of Ottawa. It was apparently felt in Ohio, New York State and most of Southern Ontario and in Montreal.

Just to give you an idea of how strong it was I’m in Toronto – a five hour drive from Ottawa and I felt the earthquake at approximately 1:43 pm. Everything in my house was shaking. Something was making a flapping noise during the tremors – maybe my plasma TV on it’s stand? or our air conditioners in their windows? I’m not sure.

I hate to admit this, but I was in the washroom, sitting on the toilet, when the tremors occurred. My knees started hitting the cabinet in front of me. The shaking lasted for about 30 seconds. I ran downstairs just as the shaking was calming down to see if everything was ok.

My husband called me from work approximately 1 minute after the shaking stopped here in Toronto. I just answered the phone with “Yep, it was a quake”. He said everything was shaking in the hospital as well.

Why did I say it was going to be an interesting day here in Toronto and maybe a good part of Ontario? Well … it’s quite hot and humid and sometime late this afternoon those of us here in Southern Ontario through to Ottawa are expecting severe thunderstorms, damaging winds, hail and possibly tornadoes.

So depending upon what happens today, weather wise, it’s only just getting started.

I sure hope we don’t have any Tornadoes. Last year, in August, we had a tornado that actually came through part of downtown Toronto. Now that was scary!

Stay safe!

Filed Under: Canada, Home and Lifestyle, Toronto Tagged With: big earthquake, border, damage, damaging winds, earthquake, hail, Ottawa, Quebec, severe weather, shaking, storms, thunder storms, tornadoes, Toronto, tremors, weather

Lots to do this weekend

June 18, 2010 by Tricia

The weekend is just starting and I’m already tired.

I spent a good part of the afternoon cleaning the house – sweeping, vacuuming, mopping, windexing and so on. The house needed a good cleaning!

The rest of the weekend will be busy as well, but mostly outdoors. We have some gardening to do – mostly tidying the garden as in dead heading our many many roses and putting in some stakes because the roses are flopping over.

This weekend the Beach Rib Fest and Taste of Little Italy is on, and Luminato is still going on as well. We plan to try hitting all three events. Of course there’s also the Much Music awards on Sunday. I doubt we’ll go to that, but it would be kind of interesting to see it. I went a few years ago, but not recently.

Ok time to go watch a movie and put some cream on my eczema. I’m not sure why it’s flaring up but I want it gone.

What are you doing this weekend? Does your city or town have any interesting events going on this weekend?

Filed Under: Canada, Entertainment, Home and Lifestyle, Items to Try, Music, Recreation, Toronto Tagged With: beach rib fest, busy, garden, Gardening, lots to do, luminato, much music awards, roses, taste of little italy, Toronto, weekend

The new neighbors are busy pounding and painting

June 17, 2010 by Tricia

Our new neighbors haven’t moved in yet but they’re sure making a lot of noise!

I guess we first saw them about two weeks ago or so and since that time they’ve been to their new house only four or five times. It seems like they’re cleaning up the interior of the house and doing some painting before they move in.

I still have no idea when they might move in or what the heck they are doing in the virtually empty house that makes so much noise. We keep hearing hammering and pounding noises from the basement. The odd thing is that unless we missed it they haven’t brought in any supplies other than a few items that could easily be carried by hand … so we don’t know what they are up to basement wise … maybe they’re getting ready to make the basement into a spare room or a rec room. Yet .. no drywall or anything else like that has come in. Odd.

They’re here this evening doing something. It seems they found the little storage area that our old neighbor had under the front porch. A friend or relative of theirs was busy pulling everything out of the small storage area and piled it on their front lawn.

He then drove by the house three times with a van – once attempting to back in to the driveway. Finally on his last round he drove into the driveway front first. I was getting a little worried about his driving if he had to drive around so much to aim the van at the driveway. LOL

He’s piling all the stuff that they found in the small storage area into the van. I guess they’re going to throw most of it out, Hmmm maybe I should hall out some of my old fitness equipment and ask him to take it away for me?

We’ve tried to talk to the new neighbors a few times when we’ve seen them. So far they seem to be friendly enough – but not overly friendly. My husband is very friendly and talkative … I wonder if that’s put them off a bit?

The last time we saw them we brought up the idea of sharing the driveway. As in they’d get to use it for a month and then we’d use it the next month and so on. The guy said “you guys don’t drive you car very much do you?” and we said “no .. it parked most of the time”, Then he suggested that we just pull our car up as far as we could into the driveway and that way we both could use the driveway.

Uh … the driveway is only 9 or 10 feet wide. I’m not even sure we could pull our car into the driveway between the two houses without losing at least one side mirror … let alone, how would we get out of the car once it was parked between the houses? And if we could get out of the car the lane way would be totally blocked. It would make it really hard to water the front lawn and garden as we’d have to throw the hose over the car – probably scratching the cars finish.

I guess he thought that since our car isn’t that big and we don’t use it all that much that his idea might work, but I don’t think he thought it through. As I said I if we could get the car in the driveway between the houses I don’t think we’d be able to get out of the car or if we could we’d only be able to open the car door a few inches … I imagine one of the doors would be all scraped after a while.

Oh well, I guess we’ll work something out with them at some point.

Do you share a driveway with your neighbors? If so, how do you work out who gets to use it and when?

Filed Under: Home and Lifestyle, Items to Try, The Neighborhood, Toronto Tagged With: car, cleaning, driveway, friendly, hammering, junk, new neighbors, nice, painting, pounding, shared driveway, storage, talk

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