Old it is, but made of metal and therefore still serviceable. Our Presto 6 quart pressure cooker model 126002 is over 20 years old and works well for cutting cooking time down for tough cuts of meat. We needed a new gasket, or what they call a “sealing ring”. Tried as I might, no stores in Toronto, Canada carry it that I could find, so I had to order online at…Home Hardware, a store I rarely even consider.
Presto pressure cooker, model 126002, still good after 20+ years. Photo by Don Tai
Unforseen circumstances forced us to get a Chinese visa in a rush, here in Toronto. The experience left us a bit shell shocked, bewildered and traumatized. So that others do not experience the same, I’ll blog our travails.
Google “China visa Toronto” and you’ll get a couple of companies that claim they can do your Chinese visa. They are correct, but might charge you over double the cost. There is really only one way to get a visa for China, through VisaForChina.org and if you have sufficient lead time and follow certain steps you can reduce the amount of trauma you experience.
Little Weed has been in the Toronto District School Board (TDSB) Gifted Program for elementary school for a couple of years now. Overall it has been a great experience, though not without the occasional bumps on the road. I thought I’d write down some of my impressions, from one who is in the middle of the journey, to those who may be thinking about starting the journey.
Difficult as it may be, hard decisions often need to be made. The Toronto District School Board, Toronto, Canada, has seen an average of 4% falling enrollment for their students for a good decade or more. This is a well known problem, but has been highlighted recently because of funding shortfalls and possible scandal at the school board. The under utilization problem is very well known. There was even a Queen’s University study on the subject.Yet there is no political will to close schools, even in the face of an obvious decline in students and therefore, government funding. Elected school trustees seem to not be able to do their jobs.
How did the world here in Toronto become so rude once people have a mobile phone in their hands? There was once a time when people walked around and acted with much more manners. These times seem to have passed as people gab on their phones, oblivious of the inconvenience they cause others. You think you can multitask, like talk on the phone and walk. Well, no, you cannot.
Sometimes you just want to shop in person for certain items. For me, recently, it was for a down duvet for the Big Weed. I did recall seeing down duvets at Sears Canada, here in Toronto, Canada, so we made the trip to our local Sears at Scarborough Town Centre. Not only did they not have down duvets, but they did not even have any staff on the floor to help us out. Yes, there was much more help online at Sears.ca, but this is true for a lot of other bricks and mortar and online stores as well. I called around the local Sears, asking for duvets made of down, and there were none to even be displayed. Their solution: order online. What a total failure of a retail experience. Why set up and maintain a retail bricks and mortar chain, and then tell your customers to shop online? Overall I can see why Sears Canada has had trouble in the recent past, and why they will continue to struggle in the future. Will the chain still be around in 5 years, I am unsure.
We are looking for witnesses who saw a car crash in Toronto, Ontario, Canada, on Saturday August 16 2014 at around 2:30pm. The crash occurred on Sheppard Avenue East, eastbound between Birchmount Avenue and Kennedy Road, right in front of the Walmart.
A lady in a dark coloured Honda ran a red light and hit another car.
The way we choose to live goes a long way to determining how long and how well we will eventually live. More troubling is that our choices are observed and learned by our kids, who then take on very similar choices and lifestyle. While kids theoretically have a choice, in reality they follow their parents, for better or for worse. This study from Active Healthy Kids Canada is really troubling, in that it points to what I call “Rich Country” disease, where here in Canada we have lots of organized sport activities, lots of proper environment and equipment, but not a lot of actual physical exercise. It would be more appropriate to have the best of organized sport, with great facilities, that results in the fittest, most healthy kids on the planet. This is certainly not the case.
If someone was to point a camera straight into your living room, most people would be horrified, and rightly so. This is a clear breach of our personal space and privacy. Yet surprisingly this is Ok in the online world. I am unsure why we accept this double standard, other than, “This is how it is and it should be Ok”? It is not Ok. At the very least we should acknowledge the level of risk to our privacy. I will try to assess our risk, here in Toronto, Ontario, Canada.
