Unbelievable ...

This is a letter I wrote to my house-sitter which I did not send. It was simply an exercise designed to help lower my blood pressure, which is already down a couple points this morning! I decided not to send it to her but still want it out there, in cyber space, so Karma can get a whiff of it and make her own decision on how she wants to handle it. I leave it up to her ...

*NOTICE* ~ This is not a nice letter but I needed to say it and I feel better now. :)

I still can’t believe what you did. Every time I turn around here, I find something else missing, broken or soiled. We entrusted you with our HOME and yet you found it necessary to treat us like this? I guess I will never understand people like you. I thought we were friends and relied on you to be an honest, caring and competent person. I still can’t believe that (1) I misjudged you so completely (2) you think you did nothing wrong.

Your attitude throughout this entire ordeal (and believe me, it was an ordeal for us being thousands of miles away, wondering what the hell was going on here) has been condescending and evasive. Frankly, when you cancelled the housekeeper the first time, I had the fleeting instant of fear that you were hiding something. It seems I was right. We paid over $2,000 for the piece of furniture that you broke.

If you had been honest with us when it happened, we would have told you to call the manufacturer (their showroom is a mere two blocks away) and arrange for them to come in to look at it at our expense. If it needs to be taken away for repair, wouldn’t it have made more sense to do it while we were still away? As it is now, I will probably have to live with clothing all over my beautiful bedroom due to your artifice.

Thank you so much for your note. It was such a wonderful surprise to read it upon our return close to midnight after a long arduous day of travel. I was up until 3AM, trying to put my house back together. Frankly, it was smart of you to leave before we got here. I would not have hesitated to put you out on the street for what you did to our home.

Oh and thank you for totally RAPING the fridge before your departure. Unfortunately, I wasn’t quite sure how to make a breakfast the next morning using only mustard and capers. Was it really necessary to take almost everything and not even have the common decency to leave us a crust of bread? Please don’t try to tell me that you went through an entire 1 kg jar of garlic in 12 weeks. Open your fridge. See it there? Jesus Christ.

Given the way you run your life, it really should not be such a surprise to me that you did all this but I still can’t believe it. And since you obviously go to great lengths to avoid confrontations of any kind -- refusing my phone calls, not answering my emails and removing me as a friend on Facebook (what are we, in high school for fuck’s sake?) -- I advise you VERY strongly to avoid me at all costs for the foreseeable future.

Need to Blog

I don't know why but I feel the need to blog again. Not that anything exciting is happening in my life at the moment other than tornado warnings. Fortunately, the storm has passed and the sun is setting beautifully judging from the view from my window in JAMland. Something is taking photos with a flash from the tall apartment building on J Avenue (two blocks north of us) and I keep seeing it out of the corner of my eye, thinking that the lightning has returned. We were worried somewhat about the large maple tree in our neighbours' front yard. It's big, old and gnarly, with large branches reaching out over top of our house. But it has survived another storm and we are extremely thankful for that.

I'm hot and I'm full of spaghetti with homemade meat sauce so I'm going to hit the shower to rinse off. Keep watching this space for more updates, coming soon. I don't know what I'll write about but I'm sure I'll find something. Life in Toronto has a way of pissing you off or delighting you -- it all depends on the day!

The Wisdom of Pooh

Recession? Bah Humbug!

I am so sick of hearing about "the recession". Frankly, my life hasn't changed one iota in the last three months. It is actually cheaper to buy gas and the stuff in stores is marked down before the end of the year instead of after. Another good thing that has happened is all the obnoxious Xmas ads have been somewhat diminished so I am not as annoyed as I usually am at this time of year. So YAY for that!

The media is blowing this all out of proportion and it's becoming a self-fulfilling prophecy. People are going into full panic mode and I just don't understand it. Sure the automotive industry for American-made cars is in trouble but they needed self-correction after innundating the roads with below-standard products for years. Don't punish the employees. They were just following orders and doing their job. MAKE A BETTER PRODUCT!!!

I suppose the people who are carrying a heavy debt load must be suffering but really, if you live beyond your means, you have to expect the bottom to fall out sometime. Today is the day. If you bought a big expensive house that you couldn't really afford, you deserve to go down with everyone else who runs their life like a business always in the red.

There are a lot of people out there who have no debt, live within their means, save 20% or more of their income every year. We are all doing just fine, thank you very much. We are not living a champagne lifestyle on a beer budget. We don't drive our cars to work every day and we don't eat out in fancy restaurants every night. And we use the crockpot every once in a while ...

Tis The Season To Kill Trees

We saw several stores advertising “live” trees for sale over this past weekend and when I saw them cut, bound and ready to be transported to someone’s Christmas tree stand for a short stint of celebrity covered in energy-sucking lights and tinsel that would clog landfills for years to come, I felt a little sick. Once the blade hits the trunk of any tree, it is d.e.a.d. :(

How do we get the balls to keep doing this, year after year? I have a great respect for trees and the positive contribution they make to this pollution-filled world we live in. What part of “An Inconvenient Truth” didn’t y’all understand? *sigh*

Anyway, at the very least, couldn’t they call them “real” trees? (Although even that would be stretching the truth in my opinion.). LEAVE THE TREES IN THE GROUND PLEASE! That is where they do the best work of their long, productive lives.

Is Beige the New Black?

I saw three people wearing beige today and I can tell you, I was not impressed.

What is with these overweight businessmen who hang on to their ratty, beige trench coats for years? And they tie the belt around their waists instead of securing it property. Rob ties his belt but then, he's got a 32" waist so it looks OK. Fat men who do this look like a sausage, cut in half.

Then I saw one of our neighbours, enjoying his morning coffee at a local cafe. He was wearing a beige "mock" turtleneck sweater under a chocolate brown sports jacket. I will admit that this man is also rather large but he is tall and carries his weight well. He has white hair and is rather distinguished looking. However the beige sweater simply negated all those good attributes. And why is it called a "mock" turtleneck? Is it a turtleneck wannbe???

Finally, I saw a young, blonde woman on her way to work wearing a beige down-filled, knee-length winter coat with running shoes. *sigh* There was so much wrong with her outfit, I don't know where to start. Frankly, blondes should never wear beige. It wipes them out colour-wise. The bare legs and the running shoes are also a big no-no. And while we're on the topic, wearing running shoes anywhere except the gym is just stupid.

I have yet to meet anyone who looks good in beige. I don't even like the sound of the word: b.e.i.g.e. It sounds icky and it looks icky. I think it should be outlawed in the fashion world and kept strictly for use in hospital morgues.

Honeymoon Hijinks

The cruise was F.A.B.U.L.O.U.S. We were on the Norwegian Gem which is their newest ship -- only one year old. We had a mini-suite with a balcony and I was surprised at how big the bathroom was (we even had a tub!) and how much storage room we had. There were 10 restaurants and 11 bars on board and we only ate in the main diningroom once for dinner. We didn't like it. It was too big and the staff were too harried to make the evening pleasant. They were just moving people in and out of there as fast as they could.

As a result, we opted for the specialty restaurants: Mexican, French, Italian, Asian and Steakhouse. We ate at the Mexican restaurant twice we liked it so much! We ate at the Steakhouse for my birthday and it was really, really nice. They even had a cake for me (which we never ate). We also had brunch at the French restaurant (as well as dinner one night) and it was excellent. We had to pay an extra cover charge for the specialty restaurants ($10 to $15 per person) but it was worth it for the intimacy and the very attentive service.

We went to an art auction our only day at sea (the first day) and bought two prints which are being shipped to us in the next month or so. We didn't buy any jewellery or anything else on board except for booze and internet. I bought a few things for myself -- a silver filagreed Maltese cross in Malta, a Murano glass heart necklace in Nice (cheaper than in Italy!), a Barcelona ball cap, Herbes de Provence and Olive soap in Nice, pasta spices in Sorrento (Rob bought himself a new belt). We didn't go too crazy buying stuff because we were pretty close to our luggage allowance coming over and didn't want to go exceed the amount and pay extra baggage charges going back.

Our trips off the ship were great! We booked private tours in Malta and in Naples. The tour guide in Malta, Flora, was wonderful. The tour guide in Naples, Massimo, was a bit of a joke because neither of us could understand him -- his accent was so strong! LOL He took us to Positano and Sorrento, which were lovely and we skipped Naples altogether as we hadn't heard anything good about it at all.

Rome on our own was amazing! We took the train from the station which was about a 10 minute walk from the port. The trip took 50 minutes and then we grabbed a taxi to the Coliseum. The price of the train was €37 and the taxi was €15. The entrance fee to the Coliseum and Forum was €9 Euros each so we did the whole day for around $100 CDN. The cruise ship wanted almost $300US each for the same type of trip on a bus which would have been slower. We did the same thing in Villefranche and caught the local bus into Nice for €1 each way.

The hotel in Barcelona for our first night (Hotel 1898) was incredible and we loved it there! It was right on Las Ramblas which we walked a lot. The apartment in Barcelona was a little shabby but in a great location. We walked everywhere and saw a lot of sights: Palau de la Musica, La Sagrada Familia, Parc Guell, Barceloneta (the beach!) and Plaza Catalunya. We even went into a big department store called "El Cortes de Ingles". I would like to go back to Barcelona and stay closer to Las Ramblas. It is a beautiful city and the public transportation works very well.

By the time we got to Amsterdam, I was ready to come home. Living out of a suitcase is not my idea of fun and there were just too many flights for my liking but we had nice weather and the apartment was better than Barcelona so we walked around quite a bit and got a nice feeling from Amsterdam. I don't know if we will ever go back but maybe. We didn't go to any of the museums so that is something that I would like to do eventually. There are bicyclists EVERYWHERE there and I found that a bit of a pain in the ass, trying not to get run over by them all the time. On our last night, we had dinner in a really cheerful Tapas restaurant right around the corner from where we were staying so that was definitely a highlight.

CLICK HERE TO VIEW 350+ HONEYMOON PICS