Blog Your Blessings Sunday - Home From Vacation

We spend a considerable amount of time between September and the end of December at our vacation home in sunny Florida.  We flew out to Florida on October 2 and returned home on October 23.  It was wonderful to get away!  Family joined us for the first week followed by friends the second week then we spent two days at Disney World with our oldest and spouse before finishing up our vacation by ourselves.   We arrived home in the early morning hours of October 24, happy but beyond exhausted.  It had been a funny vacation in that we were on the go almost non-stop plus we had to deal with a couple of problems there but that is to be expected any time you own property.  It didn't help that I was physically under the weather most of the three weeks.

At any rate we had a wonderful time.  We spent time with family and friends, ate a lot of great food and just all around enjoyed ourselves.  We are very much looking forward to our return to our vacation home shortly.  For now, we are enjoying the peace and quiet of being home.  Both of us are exhausted but we have a couple of weeks to recoup before heading back to our vacation home.

Bell Canada Frustrations

The other day I got a call from Bell Canada.  The person on the other end said 'I'm so and so from Bell.  I need your account password to discuss your account with you.'  Now, our account is not nor has been in arrears and Bell does have internet service so you would think asking for an account password.  I told the person I am not comfortable giving my password over the phone.  She was a tad upset but what the heck.  The next day, Bell Canada called again asking for my password.  We have caller ID but this number was not identified as being from Bell.  Again, I declined to give my password.  About 10 minutes later they called again so I asked them for a call back number.

We had been at our vacation home for the past 3 weeks. I am not happy with Bell because we have fought with them all summer over our PVR and believe me that was beyond nasty EVEN though it was their mistake.  This is the same PVR we have been fighting with Bell for almost 2 years.  See, we bought the Vbut the installer gave us a rental  according to the box.  I called Bell and they sent out a different PVR that quit about 2 months later.  We called Bell who sent out another PVR.  When we moved here an incentive for keeping our services with Bell was a free PVR so we said yes.  It never arrived and meanwhile the old PVR quit so we called them again.  They actually gave us a free PVR as part of their loyalty program then sent out another PVR under the replacement program.  We called them to tell them of their mistake and the rep said the PVR under the replacement program was ours to keep.  The following month we get a bill for the PVR under the replacement program that was still in the original packaging.  We called them back.  Despite what the first customer service representative said, we had to send back the PVR sent under the replacement program.  So basically we spent a good portion of our time in August and September dealing with Bell Canada who for whatever reason cannot get things straight!

I checked our call record when we arrived home from our fall vacation.  I saw where this number supposedly from Bell had called us on average of 4 times a day since we were left. They called twice the morning we returned so I called them back to ask what the heck the problem was figuring it was related to the PVR issue.  First I get Emily, Bell's friendly automated answering, click until you  die to find a live person, answering system.  After spending about 10 minutes on the phone with Emily with my temper rising, I finally got through to a customer service agent who  obviously was not in Canada and English was not his first language.  He says which account are you calling about to which I said this one but according to him we have two accounts registered to our house phone.  I told him we only have one account so he had to do this troubleshooting, finally deleting the redundant account.  Come on Bell, how can you be this stupid?  By now my temper was rising.

We don't need Bell Canada.  I think they really don't realize that  even though we have been loyal
Bell customers for over 35 years.  Currently, we have telephone, internet and  television through Bell Canada but that could easily change with one phone call.  I calmly told the rep that I had had enough of dealing with their incompetence for the past three months and if I got one more call from them, I would be taking our services elsewhere.  The ball is in their court but as it stands right now Bell Canada is definitely on notice.  I have had enough of dealing with their nonsense.

Canadian Geese

Canadian Geese
January 2, 2008

The new year has started peacefully surrounded by family, friends and nature. It hold all the promise of a great year ready to unfold all of its wonderment. The Canadian geese have been visiting us lately. They make a lot of noise but it is rather interesting watching their interactions. It is a rather large flock with only about a quarter of it being shown in the photo. Yesterday they were visiting while it was snowing. Such a pretty picture!

Get in the History Books

One of our local radio stations has a cute little jingle they play before announcing their tamed down version of the daily Darwin awards.

History is made by stupid people
So if you want to get in the history books
Do something stupid before you die!

Now if this jingle were true, I should be in a lot of history books! Apparently the trend towards doing stupid things started quite young in life despite being intellectually gifted. From experience, a high IQ does not mean you will not do stupid things. With that in mind I would like to take my noble place in the history books. So I am going to share a few stupid things I've done since being born. Believe me from the looks on my family's faces sometimes to their total speechlessness, I know I am still the queen of doing stupid things! There is seriously nothing better than getting that "I can't believe you did that" look for one of my kids but getting it from my husband is just priceless! I'm sure there will be more stupid things I do in the future so if the authors of the history books are reading, please add me to your biographies.

1. flying - Yes I did attempt this off our back porch with a towel for a cape attached with a safety pin. The outcome was not as expected but did not deter me from trying again and again.
2. horseback riding - Bicycles do not make good substitutes for horses and after going ass over johnny cake trying to use a rope for reins to steer the handlebars, you would have thought I would have learned my lesson. Nope, I did it again with a wooden wagon aka wagon train attached to the bike only to repeat the outcome but with the wagon landing on my head.
   
3. Brussels sprouts - Sorry to inform those new mothers who do not know, Brussels sprouts are not good fodder for homemade baby food. The baby will turn into a giant green volcano! The spill-out will be everywhere for days. Thank goodness we had more than one kid as the first got a heavy dose of stupid things that I'm sure he kept on file to warn his unsuspecting sibs.
   

Blog Mainenance Due to New Blog Signature Image

A few days ago I decided to update my blogs with a new blog signature image to replace the old text based signature. What this meant was creating an image, adding it to the blog HTML then removing the existing signature. That is easier said than done as I know of no easy way to remove the existing signature other than manually. Now, consider I have 6 blogs I am making this change to which means six different images and manually opening each existing post to make the change. On this blog alone there are 1564 posts spanning 63 pages. That is a massive lot of work! At the same time I am adding labels, correcting spelling and adding alt tags where necessary so it is beyond a massive amount of behind the scenes blog tweaking. It is slow going and it is creating a considerable amount of eye strain because it is all coding that I'm going through. The end result will give a better reading experience but it is still a lot of work. So far, two of my blogs have been fully updated and I'm now working on this one. Three more to go and life will be good :)

Getting Posting Back on Track

Oh wow! I did not realize how much my posting here had dropped off. It wasn't intentional, it just sort of happened. Quite frankly, 2012 has been a bad blogging year for me all the way around. Part of that is due to moving here in September of 2011 then spending almost three months spanning three periods at our vacation home in the sunny south. Part of it is due to still unpacking and getting organized combined with necessary new house work. Part is due to do things like painting and dealing with woodworkers, plumbers and those type of things. Believe me they can eat up a week's worth of time in a blink of an eye. Part is due to significantly increasing my home canning to compensate for almost two years of reduced home canning. And part of it is due to sheer exhaustion from a serious injury, a husband hospitalized and life in general. The past year has really been a merry-go-round of chaos. Well, there you have it in a nutshell the reasons for the lack of posts.

It's not that I don't have blog fodder, it is I have too much blog fodder. I haven't even finished writing about our spring vacation to Florida and Aruba yet and here we are gearing up for our fall vacation to the sunny south.

Ok, time to get back into the blogging loop to have a strong finish for the third quarter of 2012. I have added a new signature image to replace the old text base one and am not working through manually removing the text based sig from older posts, correcting spelling and adding label. So there is a lot of behind the scene activity going on. Progress is being made!

Blog Your Blessings Sunday - Getting Back to Normal

This past week has been rather hectic between my husband being in the hospital, trips back and forth to the hospital, trying to work home canning around that and life in general.  I am beyond exhausted but so very pleased that my husband was discharged from the hospital earlier this week and is well on the way to a full recovery!  What a wonderful blessing! Oh, and I did manage to home can chili sauce and tomato stock while he was in the hospital.  The past couple of days, I canned salsa and seafood sauce with more tomato stock to be canned today.  It is a blessing to be able to stock our pantry with delicious, additive free, home canned foods!

Blog posts have been rather hit or miss on this blog lately.  I'm working on changing that so you should see more regular posts for the last quarter of 2012.  The biggest change is I have changed from a text based blog signature to an image based one.  It will take me a day or two to remove all the old text based signatures from older posts.  I think the image signature looks a bit classier.  Quite some time ago, I was going to eliminated the Blog Your Blessings Sunday posts.  Most of the original members of the meme have moved on and are no longer participating.  However, it is a good way to remind me to stop and count my blessings so I will likely continue those Sunday posts.  I'm working on a few other changes for this blog just to help get my blogging mojo back as well.  Here's to a strong blogging end for 2012!

Blog Your Blessings Sunday - The Hospital

Despite living in the most populated region of Canada, many communities in southwestern Ontario are under serviced for doctors and many are having their small community hospitals dealing with severe cutbacks combined with threats of closure.  Yes, Dalton McGuinty's government has not been very kind.  Ours is one such community.  Many here including my husband do not have a doctor.  There is no walk-in clinic so our small local hospital's emergency room fills in the void.  It's not ideal and wait times can be long, but it is better than nothing.  Our hospital is facing the chopping block even though we are under serviced.  Many services that were once performed at the hospital (eg. obstetrics, overnight and extended sick care) have been moved to the next largest hospital in the system.  Our hospital has now become a 2 bed overnight and extended sick care, palliative care, emergency care and ambulatory care facility.  The cafeteria offers a meal on Thursdays only but you can get a sandwich, salad or small entré from the vending machine as well as beverages.  It now costs $4 per day to park there.

We try very hard not to abuse the emergency room services.  I have used them for serious injuries requiring x-rays and my husband last used the ER for severe unexplained leg swelling later followed by an unexplained gastrointestinal infection though to have been contracted at one of the airports while traveling.  Last Wednesday, we rushed him to the ER in severe and I do mean severe abdominal pain.  After a blood work, a quick ultra sound, IV (morphine, anti-spasmotic, antibiotics, saline) they admitted him where he remains today.  He has had amazing care!  I have been able to be with him most of the time, driving only a rather short distance (less than 10 minutes) home for a short break and at night to sleep.  They aren't sticklers about visiting hours which is really nice.

We are so very blessed to have such a wonderful hospital that was built by the community, for the community and that is a real asset to the community.  It is too bad that Dalton McGuinty and his cronies want to take it away from us.  Our hospital is a huge part of our community.  It keeps our loved ones in the community, keeps members of our community employed, and strengthens our community by attracting industry.   It provides medical care to an under serviced area that would easily see folks going without medical care if the hospital were closed.   Our community needs our hospital!

Garden Gnome
©2006-2012

Blog Your Blessings Sunday - Home Canning

We have had a beyond go of it with the weather ranging from extremely high temperatures in March for two weeks (think barefoot and shorts in Ontario, Canada) to drought conditions, high heat and rather nasty, violent storms.  Well, I'm in the midst of restocking our pantry with home canned goodies that were de-pleated with our move last September.  So, I really don't have time for adverse weather conditions that are sending produce prices sky high.  Last week, I focused on yellow corn.  I was very fortunate to find it for $3 a doz about a mile out of town in comparison to the bi-colour corn in town that was going for $6 a dozen, and bi-colour corn just doesn't work well for preserving. 

So I'm in high gear home canning.  It started with cucumbers a couple of weeks ago, now into corn and peaches with a few berries mixed in.  Next will be tomatoes so that will be a very busy time for me.  I am very blessed to have the knowledge and equipment to do this kind of food preservation.  My pantry is filling up.  I'm busy, every bone in my body hurts and yet I am beyond happy!  What an amazing blessing...

Garden Gnome
©2006-2012

Wordless Wednesday - I Love Aruba

I Love Auba

(Oranjestad, Aruba)

May 14, 2012

Garden Gnome
©2006-2012

Blog Your Blessings Sunday - An Amazing Opportunity

A couple of weeks ago I was contacted by the PR manager for Hidden Valley® Ranch® dressing and dip.  Of all the Canadian cooking blogs out there I was chosen as one of the top influential Canadian bloggers to compete in the Hidden Valley Ranch™ Recipe Challenge to be judged by Chef Ned Bell and if successful, my recipe with full bragging rights would be live demonstrated by Chef Bell at the 100th Calgary Stampede (July 6 to July 15, 2012) on July 12 or 13.  As a food blogger with no formal culinary training, just blogging about the food we like and how I make it, this was a huge and amazing opportunity.  I would be competing against 15 Canadian bloggers for one of four prizes.  Of course I said yes!

Despite being sick and battling two stifling heat waves, not being able to find a couple of ingredients I wanted to use and several failed attempts, I managed to get two entries submitted by the deadline.  I am now sitting on pins and needles awaiting the verdict.    What a week it has been!

Garden Gnome
©2006-2012

Eagle Beach, Aruba

Eagle Beach, Aruba

May 12, 2012

We stayed at the beautiful Costa Linda Beach Resort on the northwest side of Aruba.  It is on Eagle Beach, one of the most beautiful beaches on Aruba.  It is a safe, sheltered beach with cool white sands, shallow waters and plenty of shade.  The resort provides shade huts, sun loungers, and beach chairs on a first come first serve basis.  However, it is a public beach with no lifeguards so swimming is at your own risk and you should pay attention to the water conditions caution flags.

During our stay, the flags remained yellow meaning that conditions exist so caution should be used.  We enjoyed walking along the beach and we did a bit of swimming in the Caribbean Sea as well.  It was very pleasant sitting on the beach listening to the waves while the sun set.  We were able to enjoy this gorgeous view for seven nights!

Garden Gnome
©2006-2012

Preparation for Landing in Aruba

Government of Aruba

International embarkation/disembarkation Card

May 12, 2012

Midway through our flight, the flight attendants handed out the Government of Aruba international embarkation/disembarkation card.  On one side there is a place for the card to be stamped when going through customs at the Aruba airport.  On the other side, you have to fill out your personal information, passport number, flight number, duration of stay, home address and signature.  Next to that, you have to fill out occupation, main purpose of visiting Aruba, number of visits, type of accommodation, how you booked your visit, main source for choosing Aruba and your email address.  The card is perforated down the center.   When separated the half with occupation et al and the written notice is kept by customs.  The side with the stamp and personal information is returned to you.  It is taken when going through the initial screening at the Aruba airport when departing the island.

I had never seen this type of information collection before as we usually fly interstate.  It is an interesting way to collect personal information as well as information pertaining to their tourism industry.  Tourism is Aruba's largest industry!  The official island languages are Dutch and Papiamento (a blend of Spanish, Portuguese, African, Dutch, French, English and Amerindian) but most people on Aruba speak English and/or Spanish.  What is interesting is both the US Immigration Office and the US Customs Office is present at the Queen Beatrix International Airport.  When departing the island by air, you go through an initial screening process then through the Aruba airport security.  Those traveling to US destinations proceed to an area where they pick up their checked baggage, go through customs with their declaration and then go through US security before proceeding to their gate.  Once you have cleared customs you are considered to be on US soil so there is now customs to go through when you land in the US.  It is best to allow plenty of time to get through all these check points when departing Aruba.  The lines are quite long and while they do move fairly quickly it can take well over an hour to clear the checkpoints.

Garden Gnome
©2006-2012

Beach Rescue Vehicle

Beach Rescue

(Cocoa Beach, Florida)

May 10, 2012  

The beach is perfect for people watching!  As I was walking back to the restaurant, I spotted a beach rescue 4 x 4.  Florida's beaches are heavily used which means from time to time rescue response is needed.  Folks don't always heed beach warnings or behave in a unsafe manner and sometimes they just simply get into trouble in the water.  Of course, there are always unforeseen medical emergencies as well.  It's quite impressive to see how well these beach rescue vehicles are equipped!

Garden Gnome
©2006-2012

Cocoa Beach, Florida

Cocoa Beach, Florida

May 10, 2012 

We arrived at our vacation home in the late evening of May 8.   The couple that came with us would be vacationing with us in Aruba then returning home on May 20 while we would be staying at our vacation home until May 29, returning home in the early morning hours of May 30.  We weren't flying out to Aruba until May 12 so took a little time to do some sight seeing.

One of our friends' kids works on the cruise ships and was docked at Port Canaveral so we met up with him in Cocoa Beach for lunch at Captain J's.  Cocoa Beach is well known for it's beautiful beach.  I took a quick walk down the pathway from Captain J's to take a few pictures then headed back up to enjoy a lovely lunch on the outdoor deck overlooking the beach.  It was a wonderful way to spend a couple of hours with good friends!

Garden Gnome
©2006-2012

Blog Your Blessings Sunday - Settling In

My gosh, we arrived home from our spring vacation in the early morning hours of May 30^th and have been going full tilt ever since.  My husband is back at the office, in meetings and has already played golf.  I'm back at the breakfast club, working on my new community garden project, trying to get my own gardens going and dealing with various service personnel working on the house while canning.  My medical tests came back surprisingly better than expected which has been a huge relief even though I ended up dealing with a very nasty reaction to a newly prescribed drug.  We opened the pool and while there was a lot of running between the pool shop and back for parts and chemicals, it cost less than expected and went fairly well.  This weekend we held the last of the season games night with eighteen in attendance.  I feel a bit overwhelmed yet surprisingly calm.  So we are settling in after being away for three weeks.  The sun is warm just perfect for getting a bit of outdoor work done and my husband surprised me with  a Jacquemonti birch!  Life is good :)

Garden Gnome
©2006-2012

A Nice Ending to a Problem - Thanks Alamo!

A few days ago I wrote a little about our spring vacation.  While I still have a lot of pictures and stories to share with you from that three week period, I have to say we ended the vacation on a bit of a sour note.  We stopped at the casino on the way to the airport where my husband won $600.  Before going into the casino, we put the GPS, iPod, iPod Touch, SunPass and house keys in the console between the two front seats so we would not have to carry them in the casino.  After the plane landed and we were about an hour away from our home we realized all those items were still in the rental vehicle.  So my husband called Alamo who told him to fill out an online form.  The confirmation email said we would get a response within one to two business days.  We didn't hear anything back last week or yesterday so he emailed them with no response.  This morning he called them.  They had all our belongings and made arrangements to ship them to us via ground carrier!

We have dealt with Alamo for a number of years.  Until now we have never had a problem.  We are very, very pleased that they found our belongings and are getting them back to us as quick as they can.  It's nice to see a company that still actually cares about their customers.  Thanks Alamo!

Garden Gnome
©2006-2012

Blog Your Blessings Sunday - A Wonderful Vacation

We left on May 8 with another couple on our spring vacation.  We arrived at our vacation home in the sunny south late that night then did a bit of relaxing and sight seeing until May 12 when we flew out to Aruba.  After a wonderful week spent in Aruba we flew back to our vacation home.  Our friends left the following day so we had about ten days of togetherness.  All in all, it was a wonderful vacation filled with laughter, giggles, good food and amazing eye candy!  Over the three week period of being away, we took almost 1,500 pictures!  I'll share some of those pictures here over the next couple of weeks.

Garden Gnome
©2006-2012

Blog Your Blessings Sunday - Sleeping In

My husband's schedule for the past few months has been getting up at 4 AM and out the door a half hour later.  After a very full day, we had dinner together while watching Coronation Street then were usually in bed before 8:30 PM.   Needless to say, this has affected both of our sleep patterns.  The past couple of weeks we have been moving back towards our normal schedule.  This past week we adopted the rule of no alarm clock.  It's rude waking to an alarm clock at best so we simply decided we would get up when we woke naturally.  It has been a real blessing to indulge in a bit of extra sleep!

Garden Gnome
©2006-2012

Gathering Blog Fodder

I've been on a blog fodder gather mission and the results of that will be quite apparent shortly.  Yesterday I had a bit of free time on my hand so flicked through a few television stations.  Oh good gosh, there is no end to blog fodder on the good old boob tube!  Just in the news a babysitter's boyfriend put their little charge into a washer in a laundromat and turned on the washer.  Like what was he thinking?  Then a Florida doctor who was to sails to the wind proceeded to seriously abuse himself when taken into custody.  I'm thinking he might be seeing his patient list go down!  But nothing prepared me for the blog fodder you can find watching the tv judge shows.  These shows are seriously beyond belief!

So there is this young couple in their early 20's.  She is nice looking and conducts herself appropriately in court.  He is good looking but I swear none of his brain cells were working yet he had this good natured cockiness about him.  It was down right hilarious!  She said he had a drinking problem but when the judge asked him if he did, his answer was the drink had a problem with him.   Well apparently, he got himself arrested because the friendly guy on the bus didn't want to lend him his cell phone so he punched him.  That was after the young guy showed him one of the team tatoos under his arm.  He has two and the explanation was just too funny not to mention about how he is going to get a devil girl and angel girl on his large tatoo so they can battle over his heart.  So with the public disorderliness and intoxication he was arrested again and that judge gave him bail because he had had something like two similar charges in the past two months.  Obviously he had a bit of a problem and yet he was funny.  Then she started talking.  Clearly this couple was not meant to be but she put up $5,000 cash and guaranteed his bail of $50,000 then calmly proceeded to get him kicked out of him mandatory addiction rehab!  No reason was given as to why she caused enough of a scene to get him kicked out.  I did get the impression that she was very much an enabler so perhaps she didn't want him to get sober.  She sued for her $5,000 back because he was still partying, making no attempt to pay her back.  Meanwhile, he continued to play the charming class clown in court.  As funny as it was, and honestly you couldn't help laughing, yet it was sad.

Under ideal circumstances this couple might have been a perfect match.  They looked good together and it was clear that they still cared about each other.  For whatever reason, this young man full of good looks and who could easily become a very well paid comedian, somehow got side-tracked.  Unless there is some type of intervention he will continue along this pathway of addiction until he dies an early death either from the alcohol itself or through the violence it is causing.  What a sad prediction...

Garden Gnome
©2006-2012