Tricia's Musings

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



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One big city to another

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I’m back!

1127.28 miles (1 814.18 Kilometers), or in understandable terms – about 22 hours of driving from Toronto to Chicago and back again, and I sure glad I’m home.

We had a fantastic time. Chicago is a beautiful city, I really was blown away by all the fantastic looking buildings and beautiful sights. Maybe that’s what they really mean by “Windy City”? It’s not the wind that blows you away it’s the beauty.

The Bruce Cockburn concert was great too. I’m not a huge fan but I do appreciate seeing such a talented musician. Chris, my husband, was glued to the edge of his seat watching Bruce’s every move on the 6 different guitars that he played. Chris was trying to figure out if he plays Bruce’s music the same way, and except for a few chords here and there, yes he does.

The two people who came on our trip with us weren’t the greatest choice to have brought along. The one guy was someone that Chris works with and he’s supposed to be a musician too, but I think he’s more interested in producing than performing these days. Needless to say he didn’t bring any instruments. He brought along a girl that we hadn’t met before … a different person than who he’d told us he was bringing. We learned in the car that the girl was only 19 years old. That meant no going out to the Blues and Jazz clubs ’cause she wouldn’t be able to get in. Wish we’d known that before we started out.

I guess Chris and I must have “Mr. and Mrs. Doormat” stamped on our foreheads lately, because these two people really stiffed us on the cost of the trip. They only put in $40 for gas (Total cost of gas was close to $200), didn’t pay for the concert tickets, and didn’t really hang out with us in Chris’ brothers home or when we went downtown sight seeing. Every time we asked them for money they kept saying oh we have to go to the ATM, oh we’ll stop at an ATM on the way home and pay you, Oh we don’t have any money in our bank accounts- sorry. GEEEEEEEZZZZZZ

Anyway, I wasn’t going to let them ruin my trip. I had a great time.

We arrived at about 9:30 pm Chicago time (10:30 pm Toronto time) and a friend of Chris’ brother showed up and took us to his office to show us around. Not really what I wanted to do right after driving for 12 hours (we hit a lot of construction on the way so the trip was longer). He’s an architect and his whole office building was a beautifully restored old house. I wish I took pictures of that. It was worth the visit, and it was a short outing.

Chris’ brother cooked us up a fantastic meal of steak and grilled veggies when we got back. Mmmm that steak was so good. Then we all went outside onto the deck and Chris pulled out his guitar and entertained us for a few hours. He was so tired after doing a good portion of the driving, plus he was trying to match his brother drink for drink – which is an impossible task, so his playing stayed good, but the singing faltered after a while … he could only stumble through the songs if he had to sing along, but he did fine when we all sang. I eventually herded him towards the bedroom and we got some much needed sleep.

We didn’t get up all that early on Saturday – maybe 10:30, and by the time everyone had had the wonderful breakfast that they made for us (two types of sausages, pancakes and lots of fruit) and we all got ready to go it was getting close to 1 pm.

We drove downtown, driving by the lake shore as we went. Their beach area reminded me very much of Toronto’s beach area. We spent the afternoon walking around the downtown core. Well, Chris and I and his brother did. The two kids we brought along went shopping.

Millenium park is beautiful. What Chris’ brother was calling the Bean, I’ve since found out is called the Cloud Gate. It’s a huge metallic elliptical object that reflects everything around it. It’s quite the experience to walk up to and view yourself and the crowds surrounding you on the face of the sculpture. When you walk under it everything gets distorted and the shiny mirror like sides almost disappear to the point that you can easily walk into the walls. Which I did of course, klutz that I am! I took a lot of pictures of this sculpture and I’ll put some up over the next few days. We must have spent an hour and a half to two hours just in that park alone.

When we left the park we headed over the House of Blues. Unfortunately the bar was closed for a private party. The inside of the building was amazing to look at though, as was the outside. As I said Chicago has some wonderful architecture and you could go there and just walk around looking at all the fantastic building shapes and art work for hours. Which I guess, is pretty much what we did.

We ended up in the Harry Carey bar for a few drinks and some appetizers. We saw the baseball that was blown up last year. It’s just shreds. I love the outside of the bar, it’s really interesting looking. Pictures coming soon. Then we met up with the people that came with us on our trip and frantically drove around trying to find North Lincoln where the concert was taking place in the Old School house. We made it just on time and had a great time watching Bruce Cockburn entertain us for 3 hours or so.

After the concert Chris’ brother wanted to take us for some Chicago Deep dish pizza at a restaurant near his house- in the burbs. Unfortunately when we got there the restaurant was closed and we ended up going to a TGI Fridays. The food was NOT good there, but the bartender was entertaining. Did you know that if you fill up a beer glass or mug with draft, making sure it’s got a good head of foam that reaches the top of the glass, that if you put a napkin over it (to create a seal), you can then throw the glass about ten feet? I didn’t know that, but I saw it three times. It works.

When we told the bartender we were from Canada and asked him if he’d ever visited he said “no, it’s too cold up there I think”. LOL Hate to tell you buddy but it’s about the same temperature in Toronto as it is in Chicago and we’re in the same gardening zones (Toronto’s might be higher actually, hard to find accurate info). I always find it funny when people just seem to automatically assume that Canada is cold. Yeah, our winters are, but winter in most of the US states are fairly cool too.

After our restaurant adventure we went back to Chris’ brothers home. The kids we brought disappeared without a word and the rest of us went outside for more music al la Chris.

Sunday was a bit weird. When I got up Chris’ brother and his wife were leaving to go visit their daughter at University. They hadn’t mentioned that they would be doing that so we had a fast good-bye, then off they went. In the meantime one of Chris brothers friends had come over for a visit and he sat with us for a while talking. We’d met him before as Chris brother had brought him to the Toronto area for visits a few times. The friend is also a Canadian. Chris’ brother seems to know all of the Canadians in the area.

Leaving took a long time as people kept stopping by. Chris’ brothers father in law came to pick up one of my nephews for Hockey practice. I love the way they say Hockey, it’s more like Hawckey, and cops are caps etc. Interesting accent Chicago.

Our trip back only took about 10 hours. We skipped some construction and a few tolls by taking a slightly different route. We didn’t get home until close to 2 a.m. Monday morning.

I’ve got to work on my photos and put some up for my visitors to see. I’m very happy with most of them and I hope that you’ll enjoy them when I start sharing them with you.

I titled this post “One big city to another” because I was traveling from the fifth largest city in North America – Toronto – to the fourth largest city in North America- Chicago. The city of Chicago only has us beat population wise by about three hundred thousand people. Their urban area has perhaps 5 million more people than ours does though, but they don’t count that when they count populations for cities. Now I need to visit Los Angeles (3rd largest), New York (2nd largest) and Mexico city (1st) and I’ll be able to say that I’ve visited the five largest cities in N.A..

I didn’t see or do as much as I would have liked to have during my visit. Our trip was too short and was mostly travel back and forth. The next time I visit Chicago I’ll have to go for a week or more so that I can really come back saying that I’ve got a good sense of the city.

Funny thing, when we first got to Chris’ brothers home in the suburbs of Chicago the girl that came along with us turned to me and asked if I thought I could live there. I looked at her a little puzzled and said “Well, we just got here, all I’ve seen is the highway and this little suburb, so I have no idea if I’d like living here or not.” Now, after a day of walking around downtown and seeing some of the sites I think I could answer her question with a Yes, I think I could live here. It’s a big city, I like big cities because there’s so much to do. Yeah, I could live there.





Pain Pain go AWAY!

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I feel like crap.

Fever, Chills, abdominal pain, bad, bad abdominal pain.

I’ve been feeling really off since the two Weddings a week and a half ago. I guess four long days of activities were just too much for me. However, on Tuesday I felt the worst that I’ve felt in a several months and I still feel that bad.

Have you ever had a pain so bad that you just wish that you could cut off the part that’s hurting? Say your leg, your knee, your wrist? Well, I’ve got a pain in my stomach right now that feels like a hand reaching just below my right ribs, as if it’s trying to rip and organ out. The pain in my lower right side feels like someones kicking me and stabbing me at the same time.

When the pain gets this bad I sometimes wish I could cut out the painful parts. Yeah, that would help for oh, about a minute, until I either bled to death or until the pain from the wounds set in. So, no, I wouldn’t do that, but I sometimes wish it were that easy to make it go away.

I have pain medication, and I’ve been taking it, but when the pain gets this bad it just doesn’t help. It doesn’t even knock me out so that I can try to sleep through it.

What really sucks about this is that I’m supposed to be going out of town on Friday for the weekend. We’re supposed to go to Chicago to see Bruce Cockburn play in a small venue on Saturday night. We’ve got some friends going with us so I guess if I end up not going Chris will be ok with the drive, but I wanna go. I’ve never been to Chicago. I know I won’t be there for long, but I want to see whatever I can see while I’m there.

I’ve also been meaning to write a number of posts for all of my blogs so that things will keep moving along here while I’m away (see positive thoughts – I’m writing as If I’m going right?). Unfortunately, I just haven’t felt up to writing.

I do have a nice series of photos on Breath of Life right now that I’ve set up to automatically post each day for the next two weeks. This weeks series is photos of Toronto’s Kensington Market. It’s a very interesting place to visit, and I managed to get some great shots while I was there the Saturday before last. I’d love it if you would check out the daily photos and let me know what you think of them.

I’ve also been busy over the last few days working on a new theme for Odd Planet and creating a new home for it too. Krome, formerly of Kromes Obsession, and now from Sugar Vamp and I’ll Dream, had offered to create a new WordPress site for me some time ago. I had been thinking of taking her up on her offer in order to create a collaborative site that I’d been discussing with a few interested parties, but over the weekend when I got it in my head to move Odd Planet, I decided to contact Krome and ask her to do a theme for Odd Planet. She said she would, but she wanted me to hunt for photos or pictures that I would want to use in the theme myself so that I’d be happy with the results.

Well, I went hunting for pictures to use in the theme and the next thing I knew I was designing Odd Planets new home myself. Now I’m in the process of moving all the posts from the original site to the new site. I hope to have it done before the weekend, as I’d like to be able to set up some posts to automatically post while I’m playing in Chicago. Playing – yeah right, that’s hard to believe with the way I’m feeling now. Anyway, if you’d like to check out what I’ve been up to visit Odd Planets new home and let me know what you think. The sidebar isn’t sitting right if you look at it in Internet Explorer, but it’s working for all the rest of the browsers.

I’m off to take another pain pill in the hopes that this one works. Wish me luck!

Short Notice Visit

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It seems that I’m having another busy week. Last week was the two weddings and activities with the in-out-laws, and this week has been a surprise visit by my brother.

My brother came into town late Tuesday night. He lives in beautiful Vancouver, B.C. Whenever he comes into Toronto it always seems to be a last minute thing and he rarely lets us know even a day ahead of time. We just get a call “I’m in town for some meetings (or a conference), wanna get together for dinner?”.

He’s a geologist who happens to be the president of a mining company based in British Columbia. He’s here this week trying to get some businesses to invest in the old mine that his company is re-opening.

I didn’t know he was in town until late Wednesday afternoon when he called. Naturally I wanted to get together with him. I rarely see him and he’s such a great guy. He came over to our house and we went to the Danforth for Greek food. Terry, my brother, was having trouble deciding what to eat because everything on the menu looked so good to him, so we ended up ordering several appetizers. Saganaki (Greek goat cheese – flamed), Dolmades (rice and meat rolled in grape leaves), Spinach Dip, and Kalamari. We had a very nice Merot from Chile to accompany our meal. All the food and drink were great. Our neighbor is a waiter at the restaurant and he ended up serving us. We happened to still be at the restaurant when our neighbors shift ended so we drove him home and he invited us in for some Ozo.

I haven’t been feeling very well this week at all. I think last weeks four days of wedding preparation, weddings and then family outings were too much for me. I spent Sunday feeling terrible and trying to recover. By Wednesday when we went out with my brother I was feeling somewhat better. But I woke up feeling absolutely terrible on Thursday morning and didn’t get much better over the course of the day.

Even though I wasn’t feeling well I wasn’t going to miss and opportunity to see my brother again on Thursday evening. You see, not only do I not see him very often, I also happen to be very lucky just to have him around. Back in 1992 he had non-hodgkins lymphoma. It was discovered only because he started to feel like he suddenly had a chest infection or pneumonia so he went to the hospital for an xray and they discovered a huge tumor in his chest. Shortly after they biopsied the tumor they found that a number of other smaller tumors had started up in his abdomen and spine. He was started immediately on one of the heaviest doses of chemo that can be given. We are all very happy that the treatment worked so well for him. He’s been cancer free since 1993. Unfortunately when you have a cancer that is that bad, and a treatment that is so heavy, there is a higher chance of it coming back or another cancer developing. So every visit, every moment I can spend with him has been a gift and I wouldn’t miss an opportunity to see him no matter how bad I’m feeling.

So on Thursday evening we went out with my brother to an Italian restaurant downtown. My other brother that lives just outside of Toronto joined us, and so did my sister who happens to live downtown. That’s another nice thing about Terry’s visits, it gives us all an opportunity to get together. I used to work with my sister when we were both in the Jewellery trade, and in fact lived with her for my first two years in Toronto, but these days we don’t see each other very often. It’s the same thing with my brother who lives just outside of town. (and I worked with him too when I first came to Toronto) We all just have busy lives and it’s hard to connect. Well my life isn’t so busy these days with my being home sick, but their lives are busy, and when I do get back to work again my shifts make it difficult too. So Terry’s visits are a great opportunity for all of us to catch up, because we all make time to see Vancouver brother.

My poor brother. He was supposed to have a vacation with his wife next week. They rented a house boat and they were going to tour around part of British Columbia in it. However, he’s is still in Toronto. He’s going home for the weekend but then he’s coming back on Monday for some more meetings and then he’s going to the United States – to five cities- for more meetings. He hopes to get back home to Vancouver some time late Tuesday. Maybe he’ll be able to salvage part of his holiday.

Road rage and eye humping?

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Chris and I went shopping again yesterday. No, no big spending this time. This was only a boring trip to the pharmacy and grocery store.

Outside of the drugstore we watched two idiots in their respective vehicles go through the throws of road rage.

It seems that a van trying to get out of the parking lot decided to do so by driving on the left side of the entrance. This meant that anyone wanting to drive into the drugstore parking lot would have to wait, or drive onto the right side of the entrance in order to get in. Considering that it was a van that was on the wrong side of the entrance, I think anyone trying to drive around it would probably be foolish since they wouldn’t have been able to see if another vehicle was trying to get out, and therefore might have ended up in an accident.

I don’t know if the van had stopped at the mouth of the entrance or if a car was trying to get in at the same time as the van was trying to get out on the wrong side. By the time we came along the two vehicles were head to head, or rather grill to grill. The car half on the street and half on the side walk. The van half in the parking lot, half on the sidewalk.

This would have been so much easier to write if I’d taken a picture! Duh! I didn’t though ’cause you never know what a person undergoing road rage will do.

Both drivers were screaming at the other to move. Chris and I stopped to watch the show as I got a coffee from the Tim Hortons window on the side of the drugstore. I was just waiting for some elderly or handicapped person to come along and find that they couldn’t use the sidewalk to get around the two idiots. Would the cars have finally moved for someone in need? Somehow I don’t think they would have.

After about five minutes we were bored. The idiots weren’t moving and we had other things to do. We got in our car and carefully pulled out of the lot. As we were driving out we saw three police officers walking towards the stand off. I guess someone that had walked by the idiots saw the cops as they pulled into a dinner up the street to get their coffee and or breakfast and asked them to intervene. Curious Chris decided to pull over to watch the action, however it wasn’t very interesting as both vehicles moved as soon as the police officers briefly spoke to each of them.

Are you a road rager? Or have you seen some interesting cases of Road rage? Leave me a comment about your experience.

On to the grocery store.

As I was deciding which kinds of fruit and veggies I wanted to purchase, my husband Chris went off to get some other items. He returned within minutes though and he looked uneasy. He said to me “Stay with me baby, that guy over there is giving me the creeps! He keeps eye humping me!” I’ll protect you babe, just stick with me.

I just about keeled over with laughter. Eye Humping? I’ve heard a lot of terms to describe being oogled, but eye humping is a new one to me. Did my husband just invent a new term? If he did I like it because it completely describes how it feels to be gazed upon by someone with lust in their eyes who you have absolutely no interest in. At least Chris knows what that feels like now.

I just asked Chris if he’d heard that term before and he told me that he got it from the Family guy’s Peter Griffin. Yeah, of course he did, that’s his favorite show.

So, when was the last time you got eye humped, and what did you do about it?

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Don’t forget about the new blogrolls that I started. You might be eligible to join one or more of them, and they will help you bring more traffic to your site. Read more about the new blogrolls in “Blogroll Mania“.

Why do guys always want to get into my bathing suit?

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It seems that men have always had some strange sort of fascination for my bathing suits, and a strong desire to get into them. Well some men anyway.

By in them, I literally mean IN them. Oh yes I do!

I remember back when I was dating this guy named Michael. We had an on again, off again kind of relationship. Actually he traveled around a lot because he was trying to start a music career so we sometimes went months without seeing each other, but he’d always show up again eventually.

I can’t remember what exactly I liked about him, but I do remember what I didn’t like. He was the kind of guy that would suggest going out to dinner or to a movie and never ended up having his wallet with him when it came time to pay the bill. Yeah, that kind.

One of the last times that I saw him he’d just come back into town, from God knows where, and ended up at my door sometime late in the evening. He had no place to stay and wanted to rekindle some of the old sparks I guess. I must have let him stay over and then went to work the next day, or else I went out for some reason and left him alone in my apartment, long enough for him to have started exploring and going through my drawers and closets.

Whatever the reason I was out, I did eventually come home. I found him in my bedroom. I walked in to say hello and to ask him what he was doing and I was greeted with the most unexpected display!

He was standing there dressed in one of my one piece bathing suits!

I was shocked!

He was fascinated, happy, and more than a little bit excited. I, however, wasn’t the least bit excited by the view of him prancing around in my bathing suit that was stretched to the limit on his muscular and hairy body.

Total turn off!

Then to top it off … he pulled out one of my skirts – a pink one, and put that on too while I stood in utter amazement unable to utter a word.

Needless to say the skirt didn’t do anything for me either. Perhaps another colour might have done the trick? … but no, a hot pink mini and a tight black bathing suit and hairy chest was just so not my thing.

As he was reaching for another one of my clothing items – another skirt, a dress, a piece of lingerie? I can’t remember now, I was attempting to get him out of my bedroom and out the door. I was successful in removing him from the premises.

To this day I have no idea if he was taking advantage of a secret indulgence to wear womens clothing while I was away, or if he had been planning to surprise me and hopefully get me turned on by the jaw dropping display of him in my swimwear.

The next time he showed up at my door, perhaps a year later, Chris answered. I believe Michael stayed for less than 5 minutes and has never been back since.

After that last meeting I was fairly certain that I would never encounter another man that wanted to get into my bathing suit again … well, at least in the wrong, the oh so very wrong, kind of way, that is.

That was not to be. I was the one who was wrong.

Saturday night, as I sat by the Hot tub tending my wounded knee and glaring at my husband frolicking around in the water in an alcohol induced euphoria, I decided to pull out my bikini to show the hot tubbers that I really had been prepared to join them this time round. The last time I ended up at a hot tub party was just under a month ago, only I didn’t know they had a hot tub, and coax as they might, nothing would induce me into getting into the tub that night and showing off my in need of a shave legs! See, If I’d known, I would have been ready … but no way was I baring my legs that night.

As I pulled out my purple bikini bottom and waved it in the air, my brother in law, who the hot tubbers had also been relentlessly trying to coax into the tub, declared that he’d be happy to borrow my bikini and get in.

I made that bikini disappear so fast you would have thought I’d waved a magic wand or did an “I dream of Jeanie” nod of my head. They were gone, never, never to be seen again by my brother-in-law!

Now, women in mens clothing? Sometimes that’s cute. However men in womens clothing is NOT cute, at least not if they are trying to turn on their girlfriend. Then again, they’ve come out with Manties now, so maybe I’m wrong about the whole guy wearing feminine clothing being a turn off for women?

What do the women say? Ever walked in and found your boyfriend or spouse trying on your more feminine clothing items? Turn on or turn off?

Men, don’t feel excluded, I’d love to hear your take on this topic too … any secret desires to wear your ladies bikini or lingerie? Speak up.

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