White Christmas!!

Holy cow! It actually happened!

It has snowed before Christmas before... but always it has melted away into gross, dirty remnants of mushy ice. "Greyish Christmas" doesn't have such a great ring to it...

But this year the snow stuck around... and the iced trees didn't melt... and it was ACTUALLY SNOWING on Christmas Day!!!!! It was a legit White Christmas!!! "Walking in a winter wonderland" is so much cooler when you actually SEE it :)

Yeah... unfortunately the city isn't the most photogenic place... this is the view outside the back door of my apartment building...

And here is the friends house where we had Christmas brunch... the view of their backyard.

Trust me, it was way cooler in person... here's a pic from Dec 23rd (post ice storm, at another Salvation Army where I helped give away Christmas toys):

And here's the office parking lot covered in snow:

Ice storm

Today and last night we had an ice storm. I missed the "storm" part (whilst I slept), so just got the "ice". I think it was freezing rain or something. Basically you stepped outside, and everything looked like it had been coated in about a centimetre of glassy ice - ground included :)

The extra weight of the ice caused a bunch of branches to break off and fall - which took out a bunch of power lines. I think 300,000 people were without power today - but I wasn't one of them. I walked/"skated" my way to the thrift store. Most of the ground/footpath was coated in a slick, unbroken sheet of bumpy ice, except where people had thrown salt onto the sidewalk, or taken to it with a shovel/pickaxe.

If you look carefully, all of the metal/wire in the fence is enshrouded with ice - not just the top spiked and icicles...

My journey to the thrift store was made slightly longer thanks to a downed power line detour:

AND I figure out how to upload photos from my phone onto my computer :) Yay wifi!

Lacrosse final

On Sunday we had our lacrosse final. It was cool that we made the finals, but we ended up losing :(

But there were three noteworthy moments to the game...

1. Early in the first period a bumped into another player and was about to fall over... when I realised that I had enough time to arrange my landing and turn it into a dive-roll. Which turned out perfectly :) Go me :)
2. Later on, I was standing just by the line around the other teams goalie (the "crease"), when for some random reason the girl playing against me decided to shove me over. The ball wasn't anywhere near me, and I wasn't doing anything. And her team was winning 6-0. Ridiculous! I called her a meanie, and shoved her back later on. Apparently she got in trouble from the referees a fair bit because we weren't playing contact lacrosse, and she wasn't supposed to be doing that. Take THAT random shoving girl!!
3. TOTALLY GOT A PENALTY!!!!!!!! I honestly don't remember this happening AT ALL, but apparently I accidentally whacked some guy in the head with my lacrosse stick late in the game. The ref called me out, and everyone's looking at me, and I'm like ...whaaaaaa?????? COMPLETELY over my head - had no idea what they were talking about (or what a penalty entailed for that matter). FYI - it's when you go sit in the little box at the side. It was pretty funny.  (we wear helmets, so whoever I smacked was fine, lol)

This is kinda what stuff looks like, except with the fake grass covering the floor:

And here's the website for where I go: http://www.torontolightninglacrosse.com/

Persimmons

So last week, I was grocery shopping, and I saw some persimmons. I've always thought they looked like a tomato - like a savoury type fruit for cooking rather than something you'd eat on it's own. I googled it, and people were all saying yeah, they're totally sweet - kinda like a mango. So I thought I should try one and see.

... and they were totally right! Persimmons are really nice - and they ARE kinda like a mango. Apparently you have to wait till they're super soft, and you're not meant to eat the skin, but yeah. Nice and sweet.

So now I know. They're NOT cooking type tomato fruits, and they are pretty good :)