Musings on a Small Life

This morning I decided to head downtown for a quiet early Sunday morning stroll before catching the bus to Value Village in the west end.  At least, I expected a quiet 9 AM Sunday stroll along the waterfront! In actuality, the K-Town Triathalon was on, and there was nothing quiet about it.                       This already had been underway for some time, though I don't know the start time. It's an annual event, but I hadn't heard anything about it this time, otherwise I'd have steered clear of the area. While I was down there, the seniors and para-athletes were just hitting the water, with others coming in for the second part, the cycling. As you can see, there were lots of dogs with their humans! Of course they caught my eye far more than the athletes.  :-) Then I headed to V. V. where I hoped to find a medium-sized glass mixing bowl and a glass carafe. No go for either, thoug...

Day 1, Friday : Early AM run for groceries at a nearby No Frills. Huge order, taxi home. Unload, stow away, out to Costco, Best Buy (dropping off small electronics for recycling), PetSmart, Dollarama, PetValu, then home early afternoon. Food prep. Collapse for an hour, get up and wait on the cats, do chores. While waiting for the bus. How good could either a hair salon or tattoo parlour combo be? I'd be scared to have my body inked here. Or my hair cut, for that matter! Nicki has full possession of the remote. The eye is a bit freaky.  :-D Derry's typical outdoor pose. Day 2, Saturday : Walmart run. Where does $100+ go? Muffins and brownies--from mixes this time. I have to cut my grocery costs, am trying to make myself some treats to stop buying a cookie every day from Tim Horton's, or going to Starbucks. Honey garlic chicken in the crock pot, for supper. Plus my own lemon iced tea, cooling. Tiny, cluttered "kitchen," doesn't take long t...

Most of you probably remember that I give Derry a pinch of UTI-Free (from PetAlive.com ) in his canned food, twice a day, to prevent another flare-up of cystitis. One small bottle lasts a couple of months, and since I'm nearing the end of my supply, it's been in my mind to order more. However, I've been hesitating because of the currency exchange rate, not thrilled with the idea of spending over $100 in CDN funds for another few bottles. Anyway, in this morning's email "in box" was another promotion, to save 30% off a single order. So I logged in, added three bottles to my cart and wow! I got their "buy two, get one free" promo plus 30% off the entire order, and shipping to Canada was only $5! Total order: $42.73 USD! Now that's a great deal for the product, all things considered. Pic from last August...when we weren't in a drought and my "grass" was green. Thanks to all for the comments regarding the a/c. ...

Last evening, with a wonderful breeze blowing.   Comments are off.

Let's see... Friday evening we lost power (and for me, cable, phone and internet as well) around 7:30 PM or so. On the hottest day of the summer, with a humidex of 41C (106 F). So I scrambled around trying to find batteries for one my radios; nada. Then I dug out my cell phone and called out-of-town friends, asked if they could go to our city's utilities web site for info. Turned out that there had been a fire at a west end sub-station, and it caused a wide-spread outage (or at least disruption). The plus: My power was out for less than 90 minutes, it came on just a few minutes before 9 PM.  Saturday and Sunday I did as little as possible, and took a variety of over-the-counter pain meds for the massive heat-induced headache. Mmm, fun. The plus was that I didn't have much running around to do! The other plus: I wasn't one of the poor souls working at Walmart first thing Saturday morning.  When I got there around 8 AM, almost every cooler/shelf was e...

That Lovin Spoonful song sums it up, as we swelter through our second heat wave of the summer, with the humidex set to hit 41 - 42 C today (about 107 F). No need to tell you that my house feels like a sauna right now, and the day is only starting. Poor boys, with all that fur! Derry yesterday evening. Well, every evening this week. The work week has been uneventful, at least for me.  I did have a doctor's appointment on Tuesday morning, first thing, just for several minor issues. I go to a teaching clinic, and the resident (female this time, yay!) was just starting her residency. Oh, she was slow! I was in there for over an hour, she was in and out, the nurse was in twice to show her how to do a couple of things (vaccinations being one of them), the overseeing doctor was in, etc., etc.. Oy! With regard to the vaccinations: I needed my 10-year tetanus booster, and now it's piggy-backed with whooping cough and diphtheria. Well! I really don't remember any sid...

In this case, only two.  :-) (See http://www.pitt.edu/~dash/type0122e.html for three rather dark versions of the folk tale.) I had taken an early train to visit Robin for the day ( check her blog for awesome close-ups , far better than any pics I took), and our first stop was at Reid's Dairy, where they have a little "sanctuary." They have two resident goats, plus a miscellany of ducks, geese and turtles.       Robin noted that we actually spent 45 minutes there, snapping pics, but it seemed like only a few minutes to me. I'd love to have something like this, accessible, in our city, but I suppose if we did I'd constantly be there and would never get my errands done! There was a fresh "crop" of ducklings, so adorable!         And plenty of geese, too. Actually, there seemed to be two flocks, one on each side of the little bridge, and when the one group got too close to the other, lots of hissing ensued. ...

From "You are not stuck" via Facebook Friday I went for a lunch time walk with my former cubicle mate. We're making an effort to stay connected by meeting for lunch every 2 - 3 weeks, so that certainly was a (not so) small pleasure for the day. Also for Friday: We had stopped at Starbucks on the way back for a cool drink (it was hot out), my treat, only as I was trying to pay, the whole cash register went down. The young man behind the counter said they were having problems with it and to "run" before it came back online. In other words, we got our drinks for free. Terrific bonus! Lovely, cool, mostly cloudy weather on Saturday! Who knew overcast skies and 20C temps could be such a joy. LOL. Definitely a pleasure for me, given that there's no air conditioning or central air in the house. And also on Saturday: I had popped into HomeSense, just to browse, ended up splurging on a set of two small (12-inch) canvas floral prints, my colours of y...