Immigration JournalThe story of two people who emigrated from the UK to Ontario, Canada July 2006.Home | Profile | Archives | Friends
 More wildlife coming out of the darkYesterday morning we woke up to find four deer in the garden, we hadn't seen them for a while, so glad they are still around. When we went to bed there were four raccoons in the tree, it has been a long time since we saw four together.Today we saw chipmunks and red winged blackbirds and more robins, so we are definitely starting to see a difference since the weather got a little warmer. Mind you they are saying we are going to the minuses again this weekend! Last night we watched Life on Mars on BBC Canada. If anyone hasn't seen this it is brilliant. We watched the first series in the UK and this is the second. It is about a copper who goes into a coma after a car accident and goes back in time to 1973 - no idea how Canadians understand it though! We also watched American Idol - what is is going to take to get Sanjaya out of the comp. He just cannot sing, but people keep voting him in it is mindboggling. As far as I am concerned there are only two possible winners - Melinda and Lakisha, they are great, especially Melinda. Spring arrived todayWell it was positively scorching today. We were out an about and according to our car temp gauge it reached 13C. The sun was shining and the snow was melting. This has been the warmest day of the year so far. The last few days have also been warmer at about 7C and we have seen the racoons back at night and yesterday spotted a chipmunk in the garden, but only for a few minutes. I have also seen a couple of robins about, the first since before Christmas, so it must be spring! We have also seen our Southern Flying Squirrel about more often and even saw two together the other night which we had never seen before. Unfortunately we also saw the first fatalities of the spring – two dead racoons within a few feet of each other on one of our local roads. Perhaps they are still drowsy after their sleep and forgot to look both ways! We are on he look out for a new sofa, but modern ones are few and far between. To get a nice modern one they call them designer and you end up paying designer prices, which we cannot afford to do, so we are still looking. I have no idea why Canada seems to be so far behind the times when it comes to furniture. You can get them in Toronto, but you pay a premium and also get hit with extortionate delivery costs. We have seen a couple that look like contenders, but we will have to look some more to make a final decision. Canadian ice and taxesLast week we experienced our first freezing rain in Canada. The weather forecast has said we would be getting a storm and we certainly did, although again not as bad as many other places in Ontario.It started off in the evening with snow and winds and then during the night changed to freezing rain. Both of us were kept awake during the night by the constant pounding of ice on the bedroom windows. It was really loud and in the morning when we got up all the windows on one side of the house looked like frosted glass you have in bathrooms. It was really quite amazing, although I’m not sure we want to experience it too often. The following day we had a combination of snow and ice rain and it was generally pretty horrible. Since then the snow in the garden has been polished by the winds and is like a sheet of ice and it shines beautifully in the sunlight, although it is like a skating rink, so very slippery. They are saying we are going to get temps of +6C next week, so maybe some of the snow will vanish. It will be nice to see grass again instead of sheets of ice and snow! The squirrels in our garden seem to be multiplying and getting frisky. We have twelve individuals now and they are constantly chasing each other around the garden and up and down the trees. Hopefully we will have lots of squirrel babies in the spring. The other night we actually had a raccoon in the garden up the tree. We had accepted that they were hibernating, but this one obviously got hungry and decided to come out for the night. The deer on the other had have not been in the garden for several days. But hopefully they will come back soon. Yesterday I did all our Canadian tax returns, which was a bit daunting. I had always done my husband’s business tax when in the UK, but here in Canada you have to submit tax returns for personal as well as business tax. I studied all the literature and managed to get my head round it eventually. Once I understood the terminology, it wasn’t too bad. The trouble is they say “use info from form XYZ”, but they don’t tell you how you get this form or if it applies to you. Got there eventually though and posted it all off today, hopefully we won’t get a knock on the door later in the year!!! Desk stressOn Monday the car went into Ford to see what was making it vibrate so much and after a test drive it was established that a block of ice had formed inside one of the wheel rims and was causing it to be unbalanced. This was pretty much what we thought it might be.Ford took off all the wheels and jet washed them for us. In all it was in the garage for about an hour and they charged $30, so not too bad. And most importantly, it no longer vibrates. We decided last week to change our office around. It was in the fourth bedroom downstairs in the basement, but we felt that one of the rooms we had renovated was not being used, so we decided to use it as an office area. We ordered new desks for the office as we only had cheap ones that we got when we first landed and they weren’t very good. We decided to treat ourselves to some really nice dark wood desks. We were going to get a couple of desks that were cheaper then these, but they weren’t quite as nice and we decided to go mad. We ordered them off the Office Depot website and were given a delivery date of Wed 21st Feb. We waited in for the delivery, but at 3pm ish a guy from office Depot called to say that he did not have them in stock and would have to get them from another store. I was not happy as we had waited all day for them and no one had called before to let us know the problem. They waited until the last hour of the delivery window to let us know. After lots of moaning and negotiating, he said that he could get them delivered for the following Wednesday (28th). I asked for compensation for the inconvenience etc and he surprised me by giving me a $100 reduction off each desk. I was happy with that as this made them the same price as the alternative desks we nearly bought because they were cheaper. So, on Wednesday once again we waited for the desks to arrive. I phoned in the morning to check the progress and was assured they would be delivered before 5pm. At 3.15pm the delivery guy phoned to ask for directions and said he was just leaving the shop. We are about 20 mins from the shop so expected him by 3.45 ish. He eventually arrived at 5.45pm, better late than never I suppose. He turned up in a Dodge Caravan and the guy was huge, I mean really huge. He could barely walk, let alone pick up the boxed desks. He had another guy with him and they really struggled to get the two desks in the house. After they left we had dinner then set about putting the desks together. As I said, we had decided to buy good desks, but they had so many parts and they were so heavy, it took us two hours to put one together. After one we decided to stop and do the other the following day. We now have two really nice desks and our new office space looks really great, we are really pleased with it. Also because these desks had drawers (how posh is that!!!) we can put everything away. Our other desks didn’t, so everything was on top and on shelves etc. I know it is really sad to get so excited over a couple of desks, but what the heck. Bad VibrationsOur truck is poorly sick and it has to go to the Ford hospital tomorrow morning!On Thursday on our way back from Belleville we noticed that the truck was starting to vibrate. We guessed that maybe some ice had gotten on the wheel and was taking it out of balance, so we didn’t think too much of it. However on Friday we went to Kingston and it was really vibrating badly. It didn’t seem to matter what speed we were doing it still shook and if you went really fast all the back seats started to jump about. You can feel it going through your whole body – and no ladies it isn’t as fun as it sounds! We managed to get back from Kingston without throwing up, but had to pop into Ford to ask them to look at it. So, it is in tomorrow morning to see if they know what it is and can fix it - quickly hopefully. And it was performing so well up to now! Perhaps it got wind of our visit to the Toronto car show and decided to have a tantrum. <- Last Page :: Next Page -> |