After a freakishly warm thaw, this weekend it appears that the snow will be back in Toronto. But don't let the inclement weather and the economy get you down - tobogganing is winter weekend fun on the cheap.

Dust off that classic sled, purchase a shiny new KrazyKarpet, or just throw a garbage bag under your tushy and hit these eight select slopes in the city.

On the last full weekend in January, in a revitalized building at the corner of College and University, one hundred and forty self-described policy wonks and social innovators gathered for an all-day, web-enabled, face-to-face "unconference". They came from universities and social media consultancies and the Office of the Mayor and the federal NDP, to discuss that strange space where technology and democracy intersect.

If I were a gambling man, I'd say about a million things happened at #ChangeCamp that are worth writing about, and were written about. Organizer and frontman Mark Kuznicki foretold by tweet yesterday that the two weeks of madcap, post-camp activity are winding down. The press is sated, the project teams are in their huddles, notes have been lovingly entered on the changecamp wiki, bushy-tailed organizers in far away Vancouver, Ottawa, Sault Ste. Marie and Maryland are rallying for their own camps. And Mark's interview on CBC Radio One's Spark airs this morning at 11:30 am.

What follows is a sampling of some of the most insightful commentary and forward-thinking projects to come out of the last two weeks of ChangeCamp. Some selections are my own, other excerpts were suggested by participants. There's way more to mention than I have room for. Malcolm Gladwell, author of The Tipping Point, would call this the thinslice of a much larger, much more important movement.

At Free Speech I learned way more about Eden Hertzog's father's balls than I ever thought I'd know. That's not even a euphemism - I mean his scrotum, the sad bit of man-flesh that cradles the testes. Eden, who opened the monthly showcase of Parkdalian storytellers, was reading from her memoirs. ("I'm young, but I've had a good life.") She was one of four artists who girded their loins to brave the stage in the upstairs dining room at Tinto on Roncesvalles Monday night, to celebrate Free Speech's second birthday.

She even got a cake out of it. (But spoiler warning: she baked it herself)

Speaking of balls, I know very little about Terry Goldie's, this despite the York professor's latest tome's obvious and autobiographical content (it bears the germanically-mashed up title queersexlife). Disappointingly, entirely unlike something G.B. Trudeau would have portrayed Gay Talese as having written.

In 2001, after 78 days of picketing, York University ended the longest strike at a university in Canadian history. Today, 79 days after York TAs walked out on November 6th, the acclaimed university has broken its own, dubious, record.

The Globe and the National Post both blame the union. Even the liberal New Republic argued in an editorial yesterday that the province should legislate CUPE 3903 back to work (I'm kidding, that link is to the Star). With York announcing yesterday that students in four units have the option of returning to class on Monday, CUPE 3903 tabling what it calls a "comprehensive settlement offer"and Premier McGuinty calling in a top mediator, could this be the beginning of the end? What else is being said?

I wasn't entirely sure about what to expect from Marianne Dissard's much-hyped early show on Sunday at Dakota Tavern. Good things had been written. It helped that Bob Wiseman followed the French-born, Tuscon-based chanteuse and her colla-backup-orators (duo Calexico) from a show in Wakefield.

Bob is great, and seemingly everywhere these days. He brought a mean accordion solo to share Calexico's space. Marianne brought a fair presence, a true-to-form throaty alto, and her enchanting French lyrics (but we all know that the French cheat at lyrics).

If you haven't felt it you've probably heard about it by now - it's really cold in Toronto. With the windchill, colder than Yellowknife in fact. No surprise that Winnipeg and Regina still have us beat, but don't forget to bundle up today and tomorrow, when it's supposed to get worse. Toronto won't be seeing single digit negatives until Saturday, according to the CBC.

At 11 am, CBC reported the temperature in our fair city as -25 C. Exposed skin freezes in a matter of minutes, so be sure to don your hat and gloves when you're off to The Princess Bride tonight. Toronto EMS is advising us all to stay away from alcohol too.

If you can, do what I'm doing - stay inside, watch Tyra.