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You are here: Home / Archives for Home and Lifestyle / The Neighborhood

The mooch is now a creep

July 24, 2007 by Tricia

Earlier today as I was busy writing a post I had a knock on my door. I really don’t like answering the door when I’m not expecting someone because more often than not it’s someone selling something.

So I waited. When I heard the person leave I peeked outside and saw the person going down my driveway to the backyard.

Huh? Then I remembered that our Power company was going to change the electricity meter to a Smart Meter – I think this is one that can tell how you use electricity in your house (washer, dryer, computers). They had told us to put a sticker on our present meter if we wanted to be notified when they were going to make the change over. I do want to be notified as I might be working on my computer at the time and the power will be out for a short time.

Anyway, it wasn’t the power company. It was a guy that Chris and I both work with at the Hospital. I haven’t seen him in a long while because I’ve been off work, and well I haven’t wanted to see him either because he’s kind of creepy.

He’s the kind of guy that once you are nice to him he’ll come over every day, hang out for hours expecting to be fed, drinking your pop, beer or other alcohol etc all the while.

I opened the door and talked to him while he was on the porch steps. I didn’t even let him inside the enclosed porch let alone inside the house! Sorry, but this guy is a major mooch and he hasn’t been around for a while and I like it that way.

While I was talking to him he told me he’d visited at noon or so and knocked on the door. Here it was approximately 3 pm and all I could think of was “what, are you hanging around the house all day?” It just gave me the creeps.

When he finally left I had the shivers. The thought of this guy wandering around our house and maybe even sitting in our garden when I wasn’t aware that he was around just creeped me out.

There’s another guy that Chris used to work with that comes around too. He’s a nice guy in general, but in the three or four years that he’s been coming over on work time he’s never once brought anything over for us to replace what he uses while he’s here. Namely beer. He can sit and drink three beers in a half hour, then he goes back to work, checks out on his time card, and drives home.

I don’t like being mooched off of and I don’t like someone drinking like that (on work time or otherwise) and then driving home.

Our problem is that in general we are just plain too nice to people and we end up getting these hangers on who never do a thing for us except take take take all that we’ll give.

No more of that! I’m through with mooches … especially ones who’ve turned into major creeps.

You know anyone like that?





Filed Under: Entertainment, Home and Lifestyle, Life with Chris, Recreation, Socializing, The Neighborhood, Toronto Tagged With: backyard, beer, busy, Chris, company, computer, creep, creeped out, creepy guy, drinks our beer, driving, electric, friend, garden, hanging around house, Hospital, house, knock on door, mooch, off work, person, plants, sitting in yard, too nice, used, user

It is easy being green

July 20, 2007 by Tricia

I’m glad to see that some of you really liked the eco-handbags in my last post. I really like the company and what it stands for as well as their products.

I really do think that I’m going to get one of their handbags. I need a new purse. I do, I really do.

As for living green. Laane said in one of the comments “If you’re really eco-friendly you recycle at home. Because all the transport costs a lot of pollution too.”

Well you’ll be pleased to know that recycling is the law here in Toronto. Our recycled materials are picked up every two weeks. Garbage is picked up on alternate weeks.

Green garbage – kitchen peelings, used paper towels, coffee grounds and other biodegradable “garbage” is picked up weekly. We do have a composter though so a good portion of our green garbage goes into the compost as well.

I’ve written a few articles on As the Garden Grows lately about living green and how to save money by living green. Making a few changes now can save you a lot of money in the future and none of the things that we to make our life greener are all that hard.

Check out those articles if you want to be a little more eco-friendly and save some money too.

Filed Under: Canada, Home and Lifestyle, Living Green, The Neighborhood, Toronto Tagged With: article, articles, As the Garden grows, be green save cash, biodegradable, Canada, coffee grounds, compost, eco friendly, garbage, Green, green garbage, handbags, kitchen, Living Green, Products, recycle, recycling, save money, Toronto

Surrounded by Reflections

July 11, 2007 by Tricia

Wordless Wednesday

IMG_0294 copy

On Saturday Chris and I attended an outdoor art exhibition, then we went to Dundas and Yonge in Toronto to see part of the Toronto street festival where they had “green” exhibits.

The buildings surrounding Dundas and Yonge at Dundas Square have glass panes. I quite like the way they look so I decided to take some photos to show you.

You can click on the photo and visit my Flickr account to see everything I took photos of on Saturday. Warning – I took about 200 photos!

Want to Join Wordless Wednesday’s? Sign up here:

Filed Under: Canada, Home and Lifestyle, Photography, Recreation, The Neighborhood, Toronto, Wordless Wednesday Tagged With: Art, Canada, Chris, Glass building, photo, photos, picture, reflections, Saturday, surroundings, Toronto, Wordless Wednesday

I wonder what our house is worth

July 6, 2007 by Tricia

I’m starting to think that I should call our real estate broker and get our house appraised!

Every week we receive a few promo flyers from the various real estate agents or companies that work in our area and the prices of houses around here have just gone up and up since we purchased our home in June of 2001.

One of the real estate flyers we got today is for an open house for a detached home less than a block away from my house. I know exactly which house it is, and even though it’s detached (small walkway between houses – which means no driveway, no garage etc) there’s no way that this house is any bigger than my own. In fact it might even be smaller.

Plus, we have a shared driveway. This house doesn’t even have a driveway! We’d have to share our drive with our neighbor if she had a car with maybe one of us parking on the street every second week or something, but at least we have a driveway and space between our houses!

Take a wild guess how much the asking price is?

$499,000! Uh huh. Really.

We bought our house 6 years ago for less than 200,000 and at that time it was a steal because the rest of the houses in the neighborhood were going at $250,000 plus. The owners needed to sell the house to move into their new retirement home by a certain date. That’s why we got such a great deal on a solid house – new roof, new windows, new water pipes. There was nothing we had to do to fix up the house.

So I figure our semi-detached house would go for about $400,000 – perhaps even without or reno complete!

Not that we are planning on moving anytime soon. I mean, if we moved we’d more than likely end up purchasing a house about the same size in the $400,000 + range since the market is high right now. We’d gain, but the new house would be expensive.

Still it’d be nice to get our home appraised just to see what it would be worth on todays real estate market. Unless a prospective buyer hates yard work of any kind I’m sure our landscaped front and backyard gardens would help set the price a bit higher too.

Have you ever had your home appraised just for the heck of it to see what it would be worth if you decided to sell?

Filed Under: Home and Lifestyle, Real Estate, The Neighborhood, Toronto Tagged With: backyard, garden, high market, home, home for sale, house appraisal, moving, neighbor, open house, plants, prices, prices going up, Real Estate, The Neighborhood

If this heat keeps up I’ll be at the beach!

June 27, 2007 by Tricia

Wordless Wednesday

ballonbeach

We’re having a heat wave here in Toronto. Yesterday it got up to about 41 Celsius with the humidity … that’s about 105 F. Today is supposed to be just as hot, but we might get a thunder storm too.

When it’s this hot in Toronto, when we get thunder storms they are always severe! The last big one we had a week and a half ago knocked down trees all over my neighborhood. Actually my neighborhood was the worst hit in the city! You can read what I had to say about that if you’d like.

Anyway, I was thinking, if this heat keeps up I might just head to the beach. It’s usually several degrees cooler down by the water, and of course if I took a dip I’d cool off.

I posted this photo because I imagine that the beach will look like this later today as the storm starts coming in! I actually took this photo sometime last summer.

couplehundredvolleyballnets

If I don’t end up going to the beach today, perhaps I will later in the week when the temperature is supposed to be a little more comfortable. If I do I can always join in a volleyball game at one of the many volleyball nets that the city has set up for us to use.

How are you surviving the heat?

Want to Join Wordless Wednesday’s? Sign up here:

Filed Under: Home and Lifestyle, Photography, Recreation, The Neighborhood, Toronto, Wordless Wednesday Tagged With: beach, Canada, comfort, cool, cool off, cooler, dark clouds, hot, humidity, photo, photos, post, storm, Summer, thunder, thunder storm, Toronto, tree, volleyball, water, Wordless Wednesday

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