Wednesday, March 16, 2011

Canadian Spring

People keep telling me that Spring is here, and that you can tell because the weather looks like this:
Rain, rain, rain, and some more rain to top it off.  I think I preferred the snow personally.

The temperatures are starting to go up at least, which is good - before, it would rain during the day which melted all of the snow, and then the temperature would drop below zero overnight and all of the rain and melted snow would freeze into huge ice sheets over everything.

A bit like this.  Yes, that's the path.

That was a couple of weeks ago... this week, it's looking more like this:
Most of the snow and ice is gone, only little bits left.  The grass somewhat amazingly hasn't died over winter, although it's looking fairly yellow in places.  We can actually utilise the full width of the path again, which is a nice change - in winter they only clear about 3/4 of a standard footpath width, so it gets a bit squashy when you're passing people and most of the time we end up walking in the calf-deep snow while some annoying women push a giant offroad baby stroller that's six times as big as it needs to be and say "like" a lot.  Hooray for spring!

The other night we invited some people over for a pie night.  It seemed like a fantastic idea at the time - everyone bring a pie to share, and we cook up and eat tasty pies and drink a few beers and chat.  After about the 4th pie, the issue became apparent - too many pies, too much sugar!  We managed to taste 6 pies, and the 7th is still sitting on my bench.  I can't look at another pie at the moment though :(
 The first two casualties - vegan apple pie and raspberry pie (which was my personal favourite of the evening).

An array of appropriate pie toppings - there's the standard vanilla ice cream, and then there's sorbet and soy ice cream for our vegan and lactose-intolerant friends, and then there's this weird thing called Cool Hwhi... I mean Cool Whip, which is apparently imitation cream - bizarre.

Finally, I had to include this picture.  I found this in the store the other day when I was looking for pinto beans, and I thought it had to be tried.  I told you Canadians put Maple Syrup on everything!
I can report that it is pretty gross - beans are not meant to be sugary sweet.

In other news, I start my new job tomorrow.  Apparently Toronto is having a bit of a shortage of UX professionals, so there was a lot out there.  I'm not sure how well I'll manage at getting up before 9am, but I guess I will have to relearn.  

Tuesday, March 1, 2011

R-r-r-roll up the rim

One of the best things about living in Canada is Tim Hortons.


Tim Hortons is basically a donut store chain, that also has hot drinks, sandwiches, bagels and soups, and it's a Canadian chain (Tim Horton was a hockey player).  Part of its awesomeness stems from the awesome hot chocolate and the tasty donuts.  The Canadian Maple donut is one of my favourites:

That's maple syrup on top, and it's filled with vanilla custard.  Delicious.

Another part of its awesomeness stems from its ubiquitousness - there are 3,040 stores in Canada and only 33M people, so there's one on nearly every corner. The final part of its awesomeness is the price - for a combo including a hot chocolate, some hot soup with a bread roll and butter and a donut (or muffin or tea biscuit or danish - anything you like in the store) it costs me $4.20. Considering that at Krispy Kreme or Donut King in Australia, a donut will set you back $2 and a hot chocolate will set you back $3, I am a big fan of their pricing.

Tim Hortons is having a competition at the moment - apparently it's an annual competition that they've been having for the past 25 years, and it's called "Roll up the Rim". The deal is, you buy a hot drink and you can roll up the paper rim on the side of the cup (which is actually really hard to do) to see if you've won anything (it's printed on the inside of the rim).  


Some Canadians have told me that the competition is run every year when it begins to get warmer again to keep people buying hot drinks - not a bad ploy.  

I thought it was a bit of a joke when I first heard about it, but I didn't count on the Canadian Tim Hortons-mania - not only have multiple different people told me about the competition and asked if I'd played yet, but stories of previous legal troubles resulting from the competition are being printed in the local newspaper.

Perhaps it's time to invest in some more hot chocolates.  And maybe a few Canadian Maple donuts while I'm there...