Merry Christmas from Canada, eh!

Here's our little Christmas tree - I managed to kill it by not watering it!

Christmas Day is more than half over in Australia and still 11pm Christmas Eve here.  It's very strange - Christmas to me involves a BBQ, some cold ham and salad and a couple of beers, followed by a dip in the pool.  The cold and the snow - plus the lack of people we know - makes it feel like it's not really Christmas.  The Canadians all seem very happy that the forecast is for a clear, cold Christmas Day - no snow!  We, on the other hand, are disappointed - I was hoping for a big snowfall so that we could go tobogganing in the park again (the snow's starting to get a bit patchy with so many people walking on it).  So I guess Christmas will be white, but sort of a mushy sludgy white :)

Our Christmas plans are for roast beef and roast vegetables - roast potatoes, sweet potato, pumpkin, carrots and corn, with cornbread and Yorkshire pudding.  And apple pie with ice cream for dessert.  Should be good!

Merry Christmas everyone!  Hope you have (or had) a great day, full of whatever traditions you enjoy!

Cold weather running

So after 4 months off running due to stress fractures in my legs, I'm finally allowed to run again.  Unfortunately, there's no way of checking that the stress fractures have healed, so it's just "hope you've stayed off it for long enough".  Right now it's feeling fine, so my new running orthotics and heel-wedged running shoes are hitting the streets to try to get back into training for our goal of a marathon this year.

The streets are a little colder here than they were in Sydney, so we've had to learn about what to wear in the cold weather.  Here's my cold weather running outfit:

That's a thin running shirt under a thick running jumper (both made of that weird wicking material).  The front of the pants has a windproof layer and the back doesn't - fleece-lined on the inside and also made of that wicking material.  Socks made of the same stuff - apparently anything cotton is bad in this sort of weather because it soaks in the sweat which then freezes in the wind, so everything has to be about getting the water away from your skin.  The jumper even has holes for your thumbs so that it stays over the glove-shirt divide :)  I'm also wearing gloves and a toque (beanie).

Check out how awful my beanie is:

Yes, it has a hole it for my ponytail.  It looks ridiculous, but it keeps my head warm.  I think I have a big head though because the "one size fits all" womens' beanie doesn't cover my ears fully - maybe I need to stretch it a bit more.  We do need to solve the "cold face" problem, because your face gets seriously cold in when it's -11 windchill.  Perhaps we need to invest in some balaclavas!

The actual running part is easier than I thought it would be in terms of the terrain - they're amazing here at clearing roads and footpaths.  They put salt down on the footpaths, which lowers the freezing temperature of the water and keeps the footpaths completely clear - pretty smart.  So there's no issue of slipping and sliding all over the place like I thought there would be.

The bigger problem is that after 4 months off running, I can barely run 2km - ouch.  Hopefully I can get myself back to a decent level fast.

Tobogganing!

(Yes, that is how you spell it, I checked.)

Stephen and I saw some kids with a toboggan the other day, so we decided to buy one ourselves and give it a shot.  High Park (next to our place) has some big hills and everything is covered in a few cm of snow at the moment, so it was awesome fun!  You actually go much faster than you'd think :)

We went to Zellers (Big W) and bought this one for $5 - it's basically just a sheet of thin bendable plastic with two handles at the front.  One side is totally slick and the other side is corrugated for sitting on.

I managed to go straight... for a bit.

We picked a different hill (much steeper).  All I seem to do is freak out and end up going backwards down the hill, but Stephen seems to have perfected the art of tobogganing already.

Stephen and Jax share some quality time on the swing before heading home.  We've been trying to make him do all sorts of silly things to demonstrate leadership (he has to do whatever we say as we're the pack leaders) - we took him on the slides a couple of times which he hated, but he actually seemed to enjoy swinging with Stephen.  Awww :)

When Jax Attacks

I thought I'd try something new today and see if I could do anything with the video capabilities of my new HTC Desire.  Jax seems to go crazy at times - yesterday, his big thing was dragging the bedding (towels) out of his crate and death rolling them like a crocodile.  He spent about half an hour doing this, and every time I'd put them back in his crate he'd drag them out and start all over again.  

Maybe he just wanted to make sure that they were dead before sleeping on them :S

Flash Freeze

The last couple of days have been positively balmy in the greater scheme of Toronto weather - temperatures of +2 or +3 degrees, and all of the snow was melted away.

Not the ice though - the edge of the lake is a maze of ice chunks and the smaller ponds are all hard frozen and don't seem to be melting.

My phone sent me a warning yesterday afternoon about a coming "Flash Freeze", stating that a cold wind was on its way which would suddenly drop the temperatures right down and bring snow.  (The same weather system that caused the roof of the Minnesota Metrodome to collapse, apparently.)  Being used to the Australian Bureau of Meteorology warnings which are either too late or don't actually happen, I ignored this.

By the time Stephen took Jax out to pee at 11pm, it was -8 and everything had turned to ice, making the paths incredibly slippery.  And at 3am, the wind was at 50km/h, blowing snow against our windows and things around on neighbours' balconies.  They've had one of those moving platforms setup around the outside of the building to allow workers to clean the outside of the building, and we also discovered at 3am that the ropes for that are currently outside out bedroom window - the banging was so loud that we dragged our mattress into the second bedroom to see if that would improve things (it didn't).  So we didn't get much sleep.

So much for being a supposedly scaredy-dog, Jax slept fine.

I woke up this morning to this:

That's our bedroom window - condensation from our breathing has turned into a sheet of ice over it.

And this:

The top temperature is the actual temperature, and the bottom temperature is the "feels like" temperature including windchill.  -23?!  Argh!  There's snow on the ground too.

I guess the moose says it all.

Into the routine...

We've been unemployed for over 3 months now, and to be honest I'm not sure how I ever managed to get everything done while working 40+ hours a week.  Ah, the life of an unemployed bum.  I'm up to week 4 of my uni work, and getting into it slowly.  3 subjects is hard work when there are no time-locked sessions such as lectures to force you to keep up to date.  I'm trying to get it down to 1 subject a day, but that's proving difficult with the amount of reading that's required for each subject.

Jax hasn't really changed our routine all that much.  We take him for a long walk in the morning which takes about an hour - sometimes we walk to the gym where Stephen looks after him while I go to use the elliptical trainer, sometimes just around the park.

He's mostly well-behaved - extra well-behaved when he thinks someone is going to take him for a walk.  Overall he's a pretty good dog - he walks well on the leash most of the time, he is well trained in the basic commands, and he likes a good game of chase or fetch the ball or stick.  He's pretty smart as well - earlier today he wanted to play while we were working so he was bringing us the tennis ball and dropping it in our laps - we told him no and he went away and sat down.  An hour later Stephen said "come here Jax" and he looked at Stephen, walked over to the other side of the room, grabbed the tennis ball and dropped it on the ground at Stephen's feet, as if to say "now will you play?"  It was pretty funny.

Somewhat dishearteningly, the two behaviours we really didn't want in a dog are two of the behaviours that he's displaying at the moment - he's being a little aggressive towards other dogs, and he's barking and howling whenever someone walks past our door or when we leave the house, which is really not good in an apartment block.  We're doing our best to train him during daylight hours right now while most people should be at work, but how do you train a dog not to howl when you're not there?

After the walk, I study and Stephen codes, with intermittent breaks for WoW or Dollhouse.  There are sometimes trips to the shops, the laundry and the post office, and that's about it.  What an exciting life!

Monday night was the midnight launch of the World of Warcraft Cataclysm expansion, and our new guild was headed out to the official Canadian launch party (which was one of only two in North America).  We took Jax with us as we were worried about leaving him at home after only one day with us (he even managed the subway with only a few whimpers).  Despite it supposedly being an official Blizzard launch party, we arrived at 8:30pm to find a bunch of people standing around on a footpath in the snow, and that was about it - no crowds, nothing official.  The temperature was -8 and windchill brought it down to -12, and they were queuing outside for 4 hours?!  We were wearing everything we owned - I was wearing two t-shirts, a jumper and a ski jacket, plus stockings, jeans, socks, winter boots, gloves, a scarf and a toque (the Canadian name for a beanie).  The lack of organisation and the weather meant that we lasted around an hour before heading home.  I don't know how people waited around until midnight in that sort of weather.

Wednesday I was opening the front door to collect a parcel and I caught the door on my big toenail, ripping it most of the way off - ouch.  I haven't been able to walk very far since, and I didn't get much sleep the first night - it's amazing how painful a stupid toenail can be.  The only benefit is that when the temperature dropped to -13 (-18 with windchill) the next day, Stephen had to take Jax for his walk and I got to stay at home in the warmth :)

On one of our walks (pre-toenail) we took Jax to the zoo in High Park to see how he'd react.  Surprisingly he was ok with it, and we thought we'd take a couple of photos while we were there (only on my phone camera though).

This guy (highland cow) was standing in his feedtrough for some reason, blocking the other cows from getting to it.  Jerk!

The emu didn't seem to mind the snow.  Jax was a bit scared of him though.

The wallaby was scared of Jax and wouldn't come any closer - he didn't seem too perturbed by the snow either though, which was surprising.  I didn't think wallabies would like snow.  Poor guy.

With the drop in temperature, the local ice rinks are open!  Apparently this one is a tennis court in summer and an ice rink in winter, which is a pretty cool idea.  They're all managed by the City of Toronto and free to use, which is pretty cool as well.  We see the zamboni out every morning maintaining it too :)

Jax's first night, and real snow!

I think we should call him Jax, Harbinger of Snow, because this morning we woke up to this:

Wow!  I thought that noise was a bin truck going past, but I'm guessing it was the snow ploughs :)  Time to use my new boots!

Jax's first night was alright I think - he was a little whiny all evening and he likes to sit very close to people.  When it was time for us to go to sleep, we got ready for bed, got him to go into his crate, and then went into our room and closed the door.  Unfortunately he cried, whined, and occasionally howled and barked for an hour before going to sleep.  We didn't get up, but we were very close to it.  It's a bit worrying - we're in an apartment block and we don't want to cause problems with the neighbours.  He did the same thing at 6:30am when he woke up - we waited until he'd quieted down to go out to him.  Hopefully he's just nervous and needs to get into a routine.

Last night when we went to bed everything looked normal.  This morning, everything is covered in white.  It's amazing how fast the change was - the lake effect, I guess.

Just to prove that we won't lose him in the snow :)

The smaller pond in the park was frozen over.

So much snow!

It's still snowing, hours later.  I think winter has officially started! :)

Welcome to the family Jax/Knut!

We've just come back from a Toronto Shiba Inu Group meet-up where we adopted our new dog :)  He's a 4 year old cream Shiba Inu, which is a Japanese breed of dog.  He was given up to the local Shiba Inu Rescue organisation when his owners had kids and didn't have any time to spend with him anymore.  He's a bit overweight at the moment - a lot of sitting around and eating and no exercise - but we'll be fixing that quick smart!

His name is currently Jax, but we're hoping that we can change it to Knut (like the polar bear).  Apparently the name Jax came from a soap opera, so you can see why we're not too keen on it.

As you can see, his coat is mostly white with a bit of red in it.  

He's a bit nervous at the moment, but hopefully he'll get sorted pretty quickly.  Someone has put a lot of time and effort into training him - he's really good on the leash and the minute you correct something he learns fast, so hopefully we can take advantage of all of that hard work.  We're being pretty strict with him at the moment - we've been reading about how we make sure that he sees us as the pack leaders so that he behaves, so I'm making sure that he does what we say when we say it.  We can ease up a little once he realises who's boss :)

I think tomorrow will be a bit of a shock for him - he's coming to the gym with me, so that's a 5.2km round trip walk first thing in the morning after no walks in at least a year.  The rescue organiser said "an exhausted dog is a good dog", so here's to exhaustion :)