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.  

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...

Saturday morning Lakeshore walk

In a (vain) effort to tire Jax out, we took him on a 2.5 hour walk to the Lakeshore this morning.

We went through the High Park Zoo on the way to the lake.  Jax met the local emus, who apparently don't mind the snow.  He kept trying to stick his nose through the cage to sniff the emu, and the emu kept trying to peck his nose - it was pretty funny.  Someone really needs to teach Canadians about how nasty emus are though - there was a little kid next to us and her Dad was encouraging her to feed the emu snow.  I wouldn't be putting my fingers anywhere near an emu!  (If Jax gets his nose pecked, that's his own problem.)

 Welcome to Sunnyside Beach - covered in about 10cm of snow.  There's ice all the way to the breakwater, so you'd have to be crazy to go swimming.

I'm not quite sure why but the snow on the beach was covered in little pieces of ice like this - maybe it has something to do with the salt melting the snow.  

Stephen and Jax on the edge of the lake.  Big ice floes everywhere!

 Careful Jax, the ice is slippery!

This is the swimming pool on the edge of the lakeshore - currently filled with snow.  That would be a pretty cold swim.

Some snow dinosaurs hanging around on the boardwalk.

Stephen decided that he and Jax should go on the swing again.  As you can see, Stephen has a great time on the swing, and Jax just closes his eyes and waits for it to be over.  

Found in the park...

Snow lady and snow dog.  Looks a bit like Jax, eh?

Snowmageddon was snowverrated

There was a pretty big snowstorm headed for us the other day - 20-30cm of snow was predicted, schools were closed, and everyone was going on about snowmageddon.  In the end it was a bit of an overreaction - I think we got around 12-15cm of snow on top of what was already there.  There's about 25-30cm accumulation total now, which makes going offroad with Jax a little more difficult than it otherwise would be.

Jax was pretty insistent that he wanted to go out and see the snow.  "I'm the cutest dog you'll ever see - just ignore the fluff where I tore my toy to shreds again... take me outside!"  Once outside, he proceeded to tear around like a puppy, sniffing and bounding over the snow.  He loves the snow.

White white everywhere.

Hmm... how are we going to open this gate?  

Inside the baseball diamond (Jax's private off-leash area) - pristine snow!  Not for long!

There's actually more snow than this here - the bottom layer is frozen solid and the top layer is what fell last night, so you stand on some snow and sink into the rest.

The Canadian geese don't seem to mind the snow.  I thought they were supposed to fly south for the winter, but there seem to be a lot of them around, honking wildly and flying around in V-formations.  

"My bag of food is bigger than I am!"  Guess who had to carry all 13kg of it back from the shops... my shoulder hurts.

We're doing pretty well at the moment - Stephen started his new job the other day, and he's enjoying it.  I'm finishing off the last few weeks of uni before looking for a job myself.  I received some good grades back for my assignments, so I'm on track for some good marks for this trimester.   We know a few more people now, so we have people to chat to and go out with, which is nice.  Jax is getting better at staying at home on his own, and we found a daycare centre that can look after him despite his aggression problems (separated exercise areas for the dogs), so that frees us up to go on holidays again - watch this space, we'll be going somewhere more fun soon :)  

Dog-sledding!

For Stephen's Christmas present I bought us a half-day dog sledding tour, and the big day was Wednesday.  The dog sledding place was about 250km north, so we hired a car through our car sharing service and left at 9am from Toronto, aiming to get there well ahead of our 1:30pm booking.  Unfortunately for us, it snowed overnight...

... so we arrived to this.

Hooray, all fixed!  Unfortunately, the roads were covered in snow, and the ploughs hadn't been yet - it took us two hours to get to the freeway, which was around 6km away.  Ouch.  We eventually made it to the sled place at 1:45pm, and being as we were the only people booked that afternoon, all was good!  Lucky!

We had a quick tutorial in the basics of sledding - how to get them to move, how to get them to stop, the golden rule of sledding (never let go of your sled), and when to brake.  They harnessed up the dogs while we held the lead dogs in place - unfortunately for me, the lead dog of the other team decided that my leg resembled a tree, so my introduction to sledding involved being peed on.  Lovely.  (I imagine that Jax was really unhappy when we arrived home, smelling like other dogs and with dog pee on my leg.)

With that, we were away!  And it was incredibly cool!  We drove our own sled the entire time - one of us driving and one sitting on the sled as a passenger.

Here's a video of us sledding across a frozen lake:

Apparently they check for the ice to be 20cm thick, and then it's fine to drive a sled on.

Break time!  It was freezing cold out there - my fingers and toes were going numb - but every time we stopped, the dogs would roll around in the snow to cool down.

We had plenty of interaction with the dogs - they were absolutely beautiful :)

Here's the sled - it's basically just a couple of bits of wood with a thin mattress to sit on.  There's a brake at the back that you step on to slow the sled down, and it basically just digs into the ground.  The only problem was, sometimes we would put our entire weight on it and the sled would keep moving - those dogs have some serious pulling power.

Posing for photos with our team :)

On the trail with our team, heading home.  The dogs seriously loved to run - like I said above, sometimes the brake didn't work to stop them.  When we stopped for breaks, and they'd finished rolling in the snow, they'd jump up into the air and throw themselves forward into their harnesses, trying to get us to move again.

Run over!  Time for some water :)

We had a much faster drive back to Toronto, making it back in 3 hours.  It was a fantastic day, and we had great fun :)

Snow Day!

This morning we had some real snow - the weather bureau was still calling it "light snow" though!  I'm wondering what "heavy snow" is, considering the results.

Jax loves the snow - he likes to bite it in midair.  

This is the average snow depth (and you can see, still snowing) - it's nearly up to Jax's stomach in places, and it's over the top of Stephen's shoes.  It was AWESOME.

Winter trees :)

The cars are all covered in snow - check out the buildup on the side mirrors :)

The view down our streets.  You can't see the footpath :)

The main road near our place - the snowplows haven't been yet, and it's a bit of a mess.

Winter trees with snow - the snow falling from the sky plus the snow falling from the trees when they move makes it pretty hard to see! :)

Jax in the snow.  He looks like he's swimming when he walks in it!

Stephen tried to go tobogganing but the snow was too soft - it was pretty funny though :)  You can hardly see the toboggan, it has so much snow on it.

Stephen enjoying his seat on the park table and chairs - there's a lot of snow there :P

Stephen and Jax running in the snow.  We use the local fenced-in baseball diamond as an off-leash area because the official off-leash area has a) other dogs and b) no fences.  Jax loves to run - and when it's snowing he just bounds across the top of it :)

Catching-up

I haven't posted for a while - the Christmas/New Year period was lost under a deluge of assignments, which aren't quite over now (1 to go).  Here's a quick update though:

Christmas roast!  The roast beef is ready to go in the oven!

I tried to "fit in" by making cornbread muffins - unfortunately I used too much baking powder and they were disgusting.  Oh well!

The veggies, ready to go in the oven.  Yes, it was just for the two of us :P

Christmas dinner - roast beef with potato, sweet potato, carrot, pumpkin, corn (not pictured) and Yorkshire Pudding!  It was seriously delicious.

I bought Stephen a balaclava for Christmas - no, we're not planning any bank robberies, it's just very cold on our faces when we're running.  He hasn't been game to wear it outside yet.

Post-Christmas photos:

Jax having a bath - he hates baths.  Hilarity ensures.

Jax cuddling the couch - I don't know why he does this.

My boys, chilling out, working.  

 It's a hard life.