Tricia's Musings

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



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Jazz in the Park – every Wednesday

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In keeping with our plan to attend at least one of Toronto’s many interesting events or festivals once a week throughout the summer, Chris and I went to an outdoor Jazz festival last night.

It was Chris’ birthday yesterday and he loves Jazz music so he suggested we go to the “Mosaic Does Jazz” Jazz in the park festival that’s being held every Wednesday evening from 5 pm until 8 pm at the Coxwell Parkette from July 1st to Sept. 2nd. It’s close to our home and man, was the music ever fantastic!

We saw the Terra Hazelton Quartet and as I said the music was great. The singer had a beautiful bluesy voice just made for singing Jazz songs. She was accompanied by a Jazz guitarist, a bassist and a drummer.

We had thought that the music was to start at 8 pm so we didn’t actually get there until about 7! Oops! We brought a friend from work, our dog and three folding chairs and parked ourselves about 15 feet from the center of the stage.

I didn’t realize that there would be other things going on in the small park, but when we got there we noticed that there were a couple of vendors selling food like hotdogs and hamburgers, a coffee shop, a person doing massage, someone doing therapeutic touch and a jewelry booth with lovely pearl jewelry. I’m sure there were a few other tent booths that I missed.

There was a good crowd. Probably people that lived in or who were shopping in the neighborhood. Lots of kids too. One little girl, maybe a year old, kept trying to climb onto the stage! Oh and our dog barked whenever anyone applauded and that warranted a “woof” from the singer. LOL

Oh and in response to the person that commented on my post “time to stop letting life pass me by” where I first talked about attending a Toronto event once a week …

He said “An event every weekend? Isn’t that kind of overdoing it? Doing nothing can feel like a waste of time, but doing too much can be too.”

My response … well I’ve been sick and on medical leave from work for the last few years. Believe me, I haven’t done too much and I’m sick of it. Toronto is a great city with tons of things to do in the summer (despite the garbage strike stinking up the place!). Believe me, I won’t overdo it as my body won’t let me. Going to a park to watch musicians play won’t overextend me nor will going out for a couple of hours to one of Toronto’s many food festivals. I just want to get out and do things when I’m feeling up to it and as I said summer in Toronto is the perfect time to attend events, try foods that you’ve never tried before and just get out and feel alive.





We finally fixed that dripping shower

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Ever since we moved into our house in 2001 and we’ve had problems with the shower in the basement. You see it drips – a lot!

My husband has changed the shower head and that didn’t stop the dripping. He also tried a few other things to fix the shower and still it dripped. So, since he’s the main one in the house that uses the shower he started turning off the water supply for the shower after he has a shower. For a long time that seemed to stop the constant dripping as the water supply to the shower was only on when the shower was being used. However, recently the shower started dripping again even when the water supply was shut off on the pipes outside the bathroom.

I rarely use the bathroom in the basement, but I was down there last Friday and I realized that the constant dripping of the shower head was making a very moist environment. In fact, the shower appeared to have some mold in it. So when my husband came home from work that evening I told him we had to try to do something about the shower’s constant drip.

So on Saturday my husband got busy trying to fix the shower. First he took care of the possible mold problem by washing down the shower walls with a bleach and water solution (several times). Then he tried to take the hot and cold water faucets off the shower. Maybe we just needed to put a washer inside?

Now I have to tell you that while I wanted him to fix the shower I wanted him to do so without having to spend any money on it. Our funds are very low these days and we just can’t afford to get new Moen faucets for the shower right now. Not if we can help it!

Of course things went wrong. He got one of the shower faucets if no problem, added a washer (as suggested by one of the guys at Home Depot) and that stopped the dripping for the cold water. However he had a lot of trouble getting the hot water faucet off and when he did he couldn’t get the two pieces apart to add a washer.

He decided to take the part to Home Depot to see if he could find an inexpensive replacement. I think they laughed at him! The part is apparently about 25 years old and not easy to replace. Even a specialty plumbing store didn’t help!

I started to think this was going to turn out like our kitchen tap story! Remember a few months ago I posted about how Chris was trying to take the Brita filter off our kitchen tap and ended up breaking the end … causing us to have to buy a whole new set of kitchen faucets? Yeah that was fun!

In the end we didn’t have to spend any money on new faucets or smaller replacement parts. Instead we took one of the plumbing specialists suggestions and soaked the faucet part in vinegar for several hours to remove some of the corrosion on the fixture. Then, yesterday evening, my husband used two wrenches to carefully pry to pieces apart. He added a washer, put the parts together again and installed the faucet in the shower where it had been before and ta da! It seems to have worked. No drip, drip, drip!

I really have to be careful when I ask my husband to do home repairs! It seems to always cost us more money and or frustration than we think it will!

At least the water bill should be a little bit lower now. I’m sure all that dripping was wasting a lot of water. Plus, now that the shower area won’t have a constant supply of moisture the room and shower stall should hopefully be mold and mildew free. I hope!

Have you ever tried to do what seems like it should be a small home repair only to end up spending way more time and money than you ever thought you would to fix the problem?

Time to stop letting life pass me by

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My poor poor blog. I’ve been neglecting it lately! I’ve been neglecting my regular readers as well.

It just seems that I got so busy over the last month or so that I haven’t managed to do much writing in any of my many blogs. Life got in the way, you might say!

IMG_5901 For some reason my garden has kept me busier this year than the last few! Maybe it’s just that I feel more like working in it? Anyway … over the last two weeks or so my husband and I managed to add about 30 big bags of mulch to the garden beds (after weeding of course)! No wonder my back has constantly been aching lately!

We’ve also taken our dog to the beach for a swim in Lake Ontario a few times, plus we’ve attended a few events that have been going on in Toronto. Namely – the first annual Beach Ribfest and the Toronto Ribfest, the Mississauga Waterfront festival where we saw Bruce Cockburn play, Woofstock in early June and I think a few more things.

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Even though my Crohn’s is still flaring and makes me feel awful a good portion of the time I’ve decided to stop letting life pass me by. Toronto is a great city, with lots to do, especially in the summer. There’s something going on just about every weekend!

So, a few weeks ago I said to my husband lets try to attend one Toronto event every weekend. Provided the event is of interested to the two of us of course. So that’s what we’ve been doing. Hmmm maybe this weekend we’ll try to view the Molson Indy (we don’t have tickets). There’s also the Toronto Fringe Festival and the Outdoor Art Exhibition this weekend. Summerlicious is on too (gourmet meals for a deal of a price) – maybe we’ll eat out as well!

If you live in Toronto or within driving distance and you’re looking for interesting inexpensive things to do check out the Toronto Festivals and Events Calendar. I’m sure you’ll find something that suites your tastes.

We didn’t do anything special this past weekend, but last Wednesday was Canada day and we had a friend over. Actually it’s a guy that Chris works with at the hospital. So I was entertained by two talented guitar players (Chris and our friend) as they played guitar in our backyard for a few hours.

Unfortunately, due to the ongoing garbage and city workers strike here in Toronto Canada Day festivities were canceled. So no fireworks … but it seemed that many of our neighbors bought their own Fireworks and set them off on the street or the park just down the road from us, so we could see fireworks all around our house!

Odd that all the rest of the big Toronto events (Gay Pride parade, Molson Indy etc) can all go on with the garbage strike and city worker strike, but national festivities for Canada Day were canceled? Unfair!

It’s Chris’ birthday on Wednesday. I don’t know what we’re going to do yet, but I think Chris’ parents are planning on coming into town for a visit sometime on the weekend. When Chris was talking to his mom the other day she said they wanted to take us out to dinner, so i guess along with the other multitude of interesting activities that we might do this weekend, going out to dinner to celebrate my husbands birthday will be on the list.

Anyway … if Chris and I stick to the plan we’ll be doing something new and interesting every weekend so even though I might be a little busier than I have been in the recent past I’ll try to blog more often and I should have some interesting tales to tell about the things we’ve been up to – photo’s too!

Do you find that life gets busier in the summer? Do you try to attend various events or festivals going on in your city during the summer?

BTW A belated Happy Canada Day and 4th of July to my Canadian and American visitors!

Getting ready to finish our home renovation projects

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As most of my regular readers know my husband and I have been slowly (very slowly) renovating our home. In about a month we’re going to finally finish our living room dining room.

All that needs to be done in the living room dining room is to put up the tin ceiling tiles and then put molding up around the ceiling and at floor level. Then our long time living room/ dining room reno will finally be done.

Sometime after that I think we’ll start to work on renovating our kitchen. It’s a tiny kitchen, but I think if we rearrange the way the cupboards are set up and move the refrigerator from the area between the back door and basement door (unsightly!) we can modernize the kitchen and make it look quite nice.

Moving the fridge will make a huge difference in the look of the kitchen. I can’t wait to be able to do that. Of course as I said we have to rearrange the cupboards and probably move the sink over in order to do that.

Speaking of the sink. We currently have a double sink, but each sink is on the small side. I think I might look at a large undermount sink as a replacement for our small double sink. It will be nice to be able to soak a large roasting pan instead of only soaking half at a time!

As usual, if we do start renovating our kitchen sometime later this summer we’ll be doing most of the work on our own. We really don’t have much money to spare and we’re pretty handy Do it yourselfers. It will just take longer for us to do it on our own!

Have you ever done a kitchen reno on your own? Any advice?

I’m trying to use my Wii daily to get fit and active

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I’ve started using my Wii on a regular basis again. You might remember my posts when I purchased the Wii Fit and then the Wii Console (that I didn’t know I needed for Wii Fit) on Ebay? Well I used the Wii through January, but then my Crohn’s got worse and I just couldn’t use the game for a while.

I use the Wii mostly for exercising or playing games that get me moving. I haven’t used the Wii Fit all that much, but I’ve been trying out My Fitness Coach and the brand new EA Sports Active and I really like both programs. I like how they vary the exercise routines and I can use the Wii Fit board with some of the EA Sports Active workouts too.

Game wise I’ve been using Wii Sports to play tennis, boxing and bowling and I also have Wii Ski and a few other games that get you up off the couch and moving.

Last week I bought Mario kart as I thought it looked fun. My husband and I both played a few games one evening, but I didn’t really like it all that much. Maybe I should have rented it and tried it out first? Uh huh.

I’m glad I bought the Wii because with Crohn’s – when it’s bad, I can go through long periods where I’m not all that active due to the pain and other symptoms that I have so I’m trying to use it when I can just to up my activity level a little bit. Of course when I’m feeling semi-ok I also try to get outside and go for walks, work in my gardening (I have gardening marathons where I’m in the garden for 8 hours at a time) and do other things … but the Wii fits in when I’m not well enough to do a lot of outdoor activities.

I was wondering if any of you are also using PS3 players? And if you are, do you also have a Wii or have you tried playing any Wii games? I was wondering how the two game systems compare. Obviously my main goal with the Wii is to get a little more active and to use some of the great fitness programs that are available. However I was wondering – game wise – how do the two systems compare? It seems like there are a lot more true action games in PS3 so if you are a true gamer it might be more suitable to use PS3 over the Wii system.

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