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Weekend plans totally changed – grrrr

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It looks like I’m going to be on my own this weekend and possibly for a few days next week too.

That’s not the way the weekend was planned originally though …

A friend of my husbands older brother is having this big party on Saturday for his 30th wedding anniversary. He rented a boat to hold the party on in the Muskoka region. Even though the main party is Saturday night it’s pretty much a whole weekend thing since several old friends will be getting together for the first time in several years. I guess it’s kind of like a reunion.

Anyway … Chris brother is driving up today from Chicago and he rented hotel rooms for Chris and I and himself and his son. Unfortunately the hotel isn’t dog friendly so we can’t bring our Lab with us. We also can’t find anyone willing to look after her this weekend since it’s a long weekend here in Canada.

On top of that we were supposed to go to my husband sisters “cottage” (really a trailer in a trailer park in the middle of nowhere) on Sunday through to Tuesday or Wednesday. However, now she’s saying we can’t bring our dog because her husband is allergic to dogs.

She did suggest that we keep our dog outside all the time, but our dog is a “house’ dog and she’s never stayed outside all night so I’m sure she’d be barking her head off. Plus she’s in heat and being up in the middle of nowhere I’d also be worried about coyotes and other wild animals.

So … that means one of us has to stay home to take care of our dog. Of course it’s me …

I was really looking forward to getting out of town for a few days and of course going to the party on Saturday night. I guess Midnight and I will have to have our own Party.

Chris is going to take off early tomorrow morning so I’m going to help him pack tonight. Yeah, he could pack on his own, but I’ve been on trips with him where he forgot t-shirts and once he even forgot to pack underwear .. so uhm .. I think I’ll help him make sure he’s got everything he needs. LOL

The party tomorrow night is formal so I’ll have to pack up a suit and one or two of Chris’ designer ties. Geez … I even had a dress already to go for this party.

If we didn’t have a dog or if we had a reliable pet sitter our plans wouldn’t have been thrown such a curve ball.

Do you have pets? Do you ever have to change your plans because of pet related complications?





It’s too hot for outdoor activities

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It’s been so hot here in Toronto lately that I haven’t been getting outside as much as usual and I think it’s starting to show.

Usually I step up my activity level in the summer, but as I said, it’s really hot here so I’ve been staying inside my house where it’s nice and cool. So I’m not getting outside to garden for hours on end, or taking long walks with my dog, biking or any other activities that I’d normally do.

Of course it’s also BBQ season so we’ve been grilling a lot of food outdoors – everything from delicious steaks to grilled veggies. Oh and drinking cool drinks like iced coffee and iced tea.

If this keeps up I think I’ll be looking for a way to start losing abdominal fat! LOL Lack of activity and tasty foods do absolutely nothing for maintaining a good weight and a trim body.

Other than the heat, one reason that I haven’t been getting outside much to take the dog our for long walks is because my dog, a Labrador Retriever, is black and she seems to just soak up the heat whenever we go outside in the sun. She just can’t do a long walk in this heat.

My husband tries to take her for a long walk each morning – usually at about 7:30 a.m. when it’s cooler. Maybe I’ll take a turn taking her for a long walk later at night. Even if it’s still really warm at night it won’t be too bad because the sun won’t be beating down on us.

If you live in an area that’s very warm right now, how are you managing to stay active and hopefully stay fit in the heat?

Busy Busy Canada Day

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Well Canada Day is almost over.

We had a busy day! As usual we spent a lot of time in the garden. I don’t know why, but whenever there’s a holiday we tend to use it to get things done in our yard.

Today we spent quite a bit of time in the front yard. Weeding the planted front boulevard, trimming a tidying up the plants (roses) in the flower beds in our front yard and so on. Then we moved on to the backyard to dead head some of the rose and other flowers.

At least we didn’t have too much work to do in the backyard. Two weeks ago we spent 8 hours working in the backyard tidying up the flower beds. Lucky for us – it still looks pretty good.

Once we were done tidying up the garden, we opened up two garbage containers in our driveway. The containers were full of something called Alfalfa tea. It’s a home made organic compost. It smells a bit like manure on a farm!

Yuck!

We got two watering containers and repeatedly dipped them into the large garbage containers full of alfalfa tea. We spent about an hour pouring the organic compost on our garden beds and even our lawn.

I think we stunk up the whole neighborhood! To bad we didn’t have some huge hand dryers or fans to blow the smell away! Man it was awful, but it two or three days my plants are going to start growing and showing us that they appreciate their smelly treat.

Once we finished applying the alfalfa tea to our garden and yard we did a light watering. I’ve found that if we water right away after putting the stinky liquid down the smell disperses fairly quickly. I’m sure our neighbors weren’t too happy with us when we started smelling up the area … but hey – we tried to get rid of the smell as fast as we could.

Before going outside to work in the garden I did some prep work on our dinner. I peeled some corn on the cob, cut up some green pepper for the grill, and cleaned some asparagus. I also had some steak marinating in the fridge. I new that if I didn’t get the things we were going to have for dinner ready before I went outside to garden I’d be too tired to do it later.

So needless to say, once we were finally done in the garden (about 8 pm) we quickly got ready to grill our steak and green peppers. I steamed the corn and asparagus in the microwave. It was a great dinner and it hit the spot after working hard outside for hours and hours.

Once we were done dinner we noticed that people were setting off fireworks in the park down the street. So we walked down to the park to watch some of the fireworks. There were at least two big firework shows going on in the city tonight, but since we didn’t finish our work outside early enough we were happy enough to just watch our neighbors with their fireworks.

It was nice!

All in all I’d say we had a good day and we sure got a lot done.

If you’re Canadian did you do anything special for Canada Day? Oh and if you’re one of my American readers , what ere you planning for the fourth of July?

Vintage Guitars and the Toronto Jazz Festival

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I think tomorrow will be a busy day for my husband and I.

He found out that there’s a vintage guitar festival being held here in Toronto so he wants to go to that. It’s at the Scarborough Community Center on Kingston Road if you happen to live in the Toronto area and you’d like to attend.

I’m not sure what we’re doing in the afternoon. Probably shopping since my husband has to go out of town on Sunday since his dad is having surgery on Monday. I know that I need to get out and look for a nice birthday gift for my husband since his birthday is next weekend. However it’s hard to look for the best buy and something that would be perfect for him with him along on the shopping trip … so that might have to wait.

I do know that in the late afternoon or early evening we’re going to head out to the Toronto Jazz Festival. There’s going to be a lot of very talented musicians and singers in town over the next week and I know that my husband and I will have a blast attending some of the events. Naturally we’ll be attending the free or mostly free events.

I guess my weekend plans are mostly music related. What are your plans for this weekend?

Looking forward to the Beach Rib Fest

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It looks like the summer event season has started here in in Toronto.

Last weekend we took our dog down to Woofstock – the largest festival for dogs in North America. We had a lot of fun – but of course our dog, Midnight, had a ball. We went on Saturday and walked around looking at all the booths and meeting other dogs and dog owners for several hours. Midnight was wiped by the time we got home and she slept a good part of Sunday as well. Nothing like a tired Lab every once in a while. Maybe we’ll take her to Winter Woofstock in November.

This weekend we have the Beach Rib Fest to attend. It starts tomorrow afternoon and runs through until Sunday 8 pm.

I love ribs. Mmmmmm. There are going to be several award winning rib vendors, a beer tent and live bands. It should be fun.

We went last year on the last day and they didn’t have any more ribs left. Sigh … so we tried pulled pork. I don’t think that I’ve ever had it before and I didn’t like it all that much … so this year we’d better get some ribs.

If it’s anything like the other ribfests that we went to last year the ribs will be tasty but kind of expensive. I’ve heard the best way to sample ribs at a ribfest is to only buy a half rack from a vendor and maybe get another half rack at another vendor. If my husband does the same thing at different rib vendors we can end up trying out four different rib places. Oh and have very full tummies. Hmm … maybe I’d better dust off my fitness equipment and do a round on the elliptical after coming home from the ribfest. LOL

Last weekend we drove buy one of the Luminato events, but didn’t attend. Perhaps we’ll go to Luminato this weekend as well. We can catch a performance or see some musicians.

I wonder what’s happening in Toronto next weekend … I’d better look it up. Going to local free or cheap events is a great way to have some summer fun.

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