Red cardinal singing his heart out

We have a cardinal that lives behind us. At least one cardinal, almost certainly more. I've seen the females before as well.

This guys starts singing around 4:20 am in the morning, and goes until about 9:00 pm at night. I wonder if he ever gets tired? Apparently not.

Usually we can hear him, but not see him. Yesterday I caught him with with my camera. He's a noisy little shaving cream. You can tell, since I had to zoom in on him to the max and still you can hear him well.

Here's his picture:

And his song

Does Tim Hortons care about the nutritional value of their food?

I have been corresponding with Tim Hortons on the nutritional value, or lack thereof, of their baked goods. Also about the sodium content of their food. I originally sent them a cook book I self published. This prompted them calling me, and I now have spoken to them twice. I recently sent them another email, which they responded with another request to talk to me by phone. Here is my reply to them.

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Dear Tims,

I'm not sure what another phone call can accomplish. I have spoken to you twice now, and both times I have felt that my concerns have not been adequately addressed.

I get the feeling that although you receive my concerns in writing, that Tims is loathe to respond to my concerns in writing. I am guessing it is because it is easier to placate people with platitudes over the phone, since platitudes don't work as well when written down. Maybe I'm wrong.

I am still of the opinion that there is way too much sodium content in your products, and your muffins are full of sugar and fat, with little if any nutritional value.

I went to dinner last night with a good friend. Her husband had a severe heart attack in January. She was telling me that sometimes after her numerous doctor appointments she must drive her husband to because of his severe heart damage, she occasionally would like to just pick up some take out food since she is too exhausted to cook. There isn't one single take out place where she can go and purchase this that isn't laden with salt. I realize that Tim's is just one of many such places, but it is the one I am most familiar with considering that over the years we have spent literally thousands of dollars at your restaurants.

I sent you my cook book which has numerous healthy nutritional muffin ideas and a granola bar recipe that are extremely tasty, low fat and high fibre. These are examples of what can be done with baked goods if one tries. I came up with these recipes in a tiny kitchen because I cared. Surely Tim's with hundreds of staff, and your many nutritionists, dietitians, cooks, with the benefit of large industrial sized kitchens, can come up with some nutritional recipes for its billions of customers? Instead I see donuts with sugary sprinkles, coloured gobs of icing in fancy shapes, and muffins with next to zero nutritional value.

I use all kinds of real wholesome ingredients in my baking like bananas, pineapple, apple sauce, raisins, oat bran, whole wheat, spelt, and lots of rolled oats. Recently I've been experimenting with using soy flour and gluten free flour. I do all this in my tiny kitchen with no staff. Is Tims experimenting in this way in their large kitchens? I see no sign of it.

I would love to see some concrete changes made to Tims nutritional values of its baked goods, or at the very least, alternatives to your existing baked products. I understand Tim's need to sell product, but when all the new baked goods I see are all very pretty, colourful, sugar and fat laden donuts and muffins devoid of any nutrition, I don't see how you and I talking about this will do anything to further real change at your restaurants. You are well aware of my thoughts on the subject.

I would be happy to know if and when Tims decides to do something about providing its customers with some real nutritional alternatives.

Is your telephone company gouging you?

At the best of times, I don't trust telephone companies.

Recently we said bye bye to Ma Bell after finally being able to get rid of our cottage line now that cell service works. And we got rid of our home Bell service last year which made me extraordinarily happy I must confess. Especially after Bell lied to me about how much they would charge me for a bundled phone, internet and fibe, then wouldn't stand by their promise. (By the way, have you heard those really annoying Bell ads on CFRA lately? I think they run at least 4 times an hour. Sure helps that CFRA is now owned by Bell and therefore probably doesn't pay for the ads. they even have "news" items on CFRA that promote Bell products. Can you say conflict of interest?)

Anyway, the other day I went to use my cell phone which is with Telus. Lo and behold, I had no time on my phone. Which was odd since I had a one year pay as you go plan with Telus. Which I paid $10 a month for; which includes free incoming texts and 2500 outgoing texts. I pay 15 cents a minute for every phone call, but I have hardly used a couple of minutes of talk time. The plan started on March 29, 2014, so that should be less than $40 used on my original $100.00.

So I looked at my usage online (no bills anymore so more difficult to check which sucks but sure good for the tel co) and discovered that I was being docked every single day for data usage. Data usage I don't use. In fact when I originally signed up with Telus on a contract over three years ago, I specifically told them to block the ability to use data on my phone. Seems when I switched to a pay as you go plan, that guarantee went away. Or maybe it was when I returned from out of country, and all of a sudden I saw "3G" appear on my phone, which hadn't appeared before I left. Who knows?

And all that's not the point anyway. (Of course I also called Telus and obviously they reversed the charges of $64.50).

But my point is, what if I had been using data? Would those charges be over and above what I was using/paying? Do people pay for their data PLUS some kind of "convenience" charge or something?

I don't know and I didn't ask, because I was talking to some guy at Telus' support desk who was obviously talking on a super annoying cell phone, and I couldn't understand him anyway, and we kept speaking over each other. Now he was very polite, I'll give him that.

So back to my point: you may want to check your cell data usage people. And make sure that what your tel co is charging you is right. And that they're aren't adding little itty bitty charges that you don't realize. And the thing to note is that the charge each day was always different, so there was no pattern. (see pictures below for my data usage).

Sounds like a great way to squeeze out some more dollars from poor unsuspecting customers. I don't put anything past a tel co.

My letter to Mayor Jim Watson of Ottawa regarding pedestrian unfriendly traffic circles

Mayor Jim Watson,

 

After trying to cross the road at the intersection of St. Joseph Blvd.  and Jeanne D’Arc  Blvd. in Orleans  last evening with our granddaughter (  South East corner near Dairy Queen  to the North East side near Cora’s )  I have come to the conclusion that our city doesn’t give a hoot about pedestrians anymore.  I have never seen such insanity in my life, as car after car, at breakneck speed whizzed through without any regard whatsoever to anyone trying to cross the road at that point. 

 

I found this on the city of Ottawa website http://ottawa.ca/en/residents/transportation-and-parking/traffic/how-use-roundabout#pedestrians  and this is an outright lie that “Roundabouts are often safer for pedestrians than intersections that use traffic signals. At a roundabout, a pedestrian only has to cross two sections of one-way traffic, which is moving at slow speeds.” Well, the traffic last night was moving extremely fast; there was nothing slow about it.  When there seemed to be a break and I thought it was safe to cross, in a split second a car whizzed by from Jeanne D’Arc and pulled onto Saint Joseph Blvd going east right in front of me. The city’s website suggests waiting for a break in the traffic to cross. Well, there was no way one could even begin to cross even if you didn’t see any approaching vehicles because in no time at all a vehicle would come out of nowhere, from different directions, even if there seemed to be a break.

 

Just when I had given up and was ready to walk down to the traffic lights,  which were quite a distance away, a couple of cars stopped and my granddaughter and I were able to cross.  I certainly will never attempt to cross at that intersection again though. The city has seen to that.

 

What I experienced last night was a real eye opener to me about how we really feel in Ottawa about many of our citizens.

 

This traffic circle in Orleans is very, very dangerous to pedestrians and a disgrace. It’s only a matter of time before someone is killed at that intersection

 

Could you please explain to me why this is happening; the trend lately to disregard pedestrians.

 

Thank you

 

Maureen Ward,

Ottawa

 

Use LICKBO to Retire Hydro's Debt Retirement charges

Ottawa's hydro rates are ridiculous. My bill yesterday was for 76.12 for one month.

Hydro used to bill every two months. Now they changed the billing period, so maybe we wouldn't notice the difference in the bills. I guess they think we're morons.

As you can see below, more than half my hydro charges are for Delivery, Regulatory charges, Debt Retirement Charges and Tax.

Then today in my newspaper, I received the brand new LICKBO (LCBO) 36 page glossy "Magazine". A "Magazine" devoted to taking pictures of laughing smiling beautiful people (ugly people need not apply) because apparently we need to be told to drink more booze.

Not like LICKBO has a monopoly or anything in Ontario, and that the only place you can buy booze in Ontario is at this monopoly. How much did they pay for this "Magazine" anyway? A ton I imagine. And it is circulated through the newspapers. What a farce.

The money that Ontario uses for to tell us to drink more, should be put directly on the Delivery, Regulatory charges, Debt Retirement Charges and Tax of Ontario residents' hydro bills. That would make sense.

And stop producing these obnoxious "Magazines".

 

Moe Moe Has a Brand New Hat!!!

 

 

How to make a Bowel Buddy substitute

We ran out of bowel buddies. These are high fibre biscuits that we buy. Each one has 5 grams of fibre.

I thought, hey I could probably make something similar at a fraction of the price. So I did. I just looked at the ingredients on the package and made up a recipe that included what was in the package.

Here it is:

Mix dry ingredients in small bowl
2 cups of all bran type cereal
1 cup whole wheat flour
1/4 tsp salt
1/2 tsp baking powder

Mix wet ingredients in medium bowl
2 eggs
1/2 cup skim milk
1/4 cup molasses
1/4 cup canola oil
1/8 cup brown sugar

Add dry ingredients to wet ingredients. Stir and put into greased 11 X 7 inch pan. Bake at 350 until toothpick comes out clean. Cut into 16 squares. You could probably also use an 8 X 8 inch pan.

My recipe has 4.25 grams of fibre per square. If you increase the bran cereal to 2 1/2 cups of all bran cereal, you would get the 5 grams equivalent fibre that Bowel Buddies give you. You would probably need to increase the milk by maybe 1/4 cup.

Easy peasy.