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 :)