Culture — Page 44 — You are in My World Now

Reflections of Toronto

November 22, 2008 by Tricia

This weeks Photo Hunt theme is Reflection

I took these photos of the Toronto water front area while on a dinner boat cruise last year. There’s nothing like being on the water at sunset. What a beautiful view of an impressive city.

If you look closely at the pictures, above and below, you can see that the CN tower and other nearby buildings are reflected in the water. You can also see the reflection of the sunset in the water too.

I’m looking forward to seeing what other Photo Hunters have come up with for this weeks theme! You can see my other entry – Reflections of Midnight – on my main blog Tricia’s Musings if you’d like.

Visiting a very stressed out friend

November 20, 2008 by Tricia

Chris and I just came back from the hospital. One of our friends is going to have open heart surgery tomorrow afternoon.

Both our friend and her husband are totally freaked out and upset that everything they had to do in the hospital today took so long. They basically spent the whole day waiting to see the nurse practitioner, the anesthesiologist, the surgeon and so on. In fact she still hadn’t seen the surgeon by the time we left at 8:45 pm!

I’d be stressed to if I were having surgery on my heart tomorrow too, so I can understand, but still, being an ER nurse I can also understand how hospitals work, that’s why she had to go in a day early, right?

Her husband is really stressed too. Not only does he have to deal with his wife having open heart surgery, but his best friend (also our friend) is anther hospital dying of Pancreatic cancer. Major stress!

Not only that .. but amid all of these troubles he’s been looking for jobs in business management. Yes, all these things going on and he’s unemployed too!

I just hope our friend doesn’t have any complications from the surgery. She’s been told that she’ll be able to return home seven days after the surgery … so that’s good, as long as things go well.

I expect we’ll be spending a lot of time at the hospital over the weekend!

A park in the city

November 16, 2008 by Tricia

Join

I guess you could say I’m doing a series of posts across a few of my blogs about a recent trip to Taylor Creek Park in Toronto for all of my GTS posts today.

So instead of the usual garden related post I’ve chosen to go with a nature post instead.

It was the beginning of November and some of the trees were beginning to change color, flowers were developing seedheads, milkweed seeds were blowing in the wind and my dog was having a ball running through the forest trails and taking a dip in any water she managed to find.

The Sumacs had lost all of their leaves which turn a bright red in Autumn, but their lovely seedheads or fruit were still on the branches.

Actually, there were still some red leaves on the Sumacs, but they looked to be fading fast. These ones look like they are just about ready to drop, don’t they?

A tree that I’d found on an earlier trip still had most of it’s blue colored berries, but it had lost most of it’s leaves.

Isn’t it hard to believe that this park is deep within the city when you see a picture like the one below? I mean, it really does look like a country scene does it not?

A couple hundred feet to the left of this scene is a busy highway (the 404 or Don Valley), but you’d never know it by just looking at this photo!

That’s what I love about Toronto, there are so many great parks that you can easily get away from the hustle and bustle of the city … even though you are still in it!

Are you getting excited about Black Friday?

November 14, 2008 by Tricia

Now that the US election is over I’m seeing tons of television commercials on TV for 2008 Black Friday sales. With only a week or so until Black Friday I’ve been seeing the commercials during just about every break in the TV shows that I’ve been watching.

Even one of the television shows that I like to watch “Life” did a whole episode where someone had been murdered in a mall that was just about to open for Black Friday! There will probably be a few other shows that make a reference to Black Friday in their stories over the next week or so too.

Here in Canada our big shopping day is Boxing Day which always falls on December 26th. It’s the closest thing we have to a “Black Friday”, and just like our US counterparts, people line up in the middle of the night waiting for the stores and malls doors to open so that they can get some crazy deals.

I wonder if any other countries have one day of the year that’s known as their big shopping day?

Are stores getting bigger or am I imagining things?

November 11, 2008 by Tricia

Chris had the day off today since it was Remembrance Day, so after going to a memorial down the street from us, we took advantage of his extra day off work and went out to do some shopping. Actually I made an appointment to get my haircut in the afternoon so I guess shopping was just an add on.

The mall where I get my haircut just had a new drug store put in. Well the drug store that was there moved to a different area of the mall and expanded in size.

The new store is huge! Why do drug stores need to be so big these days anyway? I mean, one area there was a wall with one diet supplement after another, two rows of just hair products and of course every drug store seems to have a grocery section these days!

Speaking of huge stores we also went to Costco (That’s like Sam’s Club in the US). I both love and hate going there. They have some great prices, but everything is in such large packages that if we buy something it lasts 6 to 12 months! That’s a good thing – unless we have too many supplies built up. We do have a small house with absolutely no closet space or rather almost no closets (we have two!). The joy of living in a 1920’s house.

Do you also think that stores are just getting bigger and bigger these days?