Comments | andpuff: January blog the second

andpuff

January blog the second

Jan 28, 2011 18:58

Someone asked about living in Toronto and someone asked about living in the country. For those of you without cats who hunt, the spleeny bits are what's leftover. When you step on them, they go pop-squish.

( City Mouse, Country Mouse, Spleeny Bits )

self

Comments 38

wiliqueen January 29 2011, 01:29:05 UTC

When you step on them, they go pop-squish.

Free-association reflexes + way too much music stored in my head = "Cellblock Tango" earworm. %-}

The enormous contrasts between how people can live just a (relatively) short distance away from one another never ceases to blow my mind. And it amazes me how many people have no idea what a genuinely small town is.

andpuff January 30 2011, 17:24:02 UTC

First episode of Smallville they showed a sign stating a population of 35,000 people and I thought, "No one in this writing room has ever lived in the country."

wiliqueen January 30 2011, 17:43:25 UTC

Twin Peaks allegedly has 51,201. I continue to find that HILARIOUS.

tibicina January 30 2011, 19:00:03 UTC

I believe, in part, that is because when it was originally written it was based on Lake Arrowhead, CA, which is a... weird, weird place. It has a lot more people than it looks like because they're all actually spread out into a bunch of little tiny communities which are all officially part of 'Lake Arrowhead'. And even in those communities the terrain and the trees and the way the roads twist and wind mean that the sight lines are all broken up. Also, at any given time about 1/3 of the population isn't actually there. There are people who live there year round, but there are a lot more people who use it as either a summer home (because they like boating or get summer's off or whatever) or a winter home (Ooooh skiing), and I'm not sure how they count transient population or things where a large family owns a cabin, but don't really /live/ there ( ... )

alitalf January 29 2011, 01:53:47 UTC

Hmm - when we lived in London ( ... )

andpuff January 30 2011, 17:25:52 UTC

One thing we have in Canada is lots of cheap land. Most of the time you wouldn't want to live on it, but it's there.

We used to have an outstand Chinese restaurant but it burned down and now our only Chinese restaurant serves what's pretty much bad mall food. ::is sad::

hilleviw January 29 2011, 02:13:46 UTC

You are so, so correct about knowing your neighbours, and how important it is. I lived in a town of about 7,000 in central Massachusetts for 8 years, on a lot of land, with a brook running through it. I was about 15 minutes from town in good weather, and every time there was a storm with any kind of precipitation I'd lose electricity for a couple of days. The weekend of my 40th birthday I planned a huge party and people were coming from all over: from Quebec and Toronto, Buffalo and Albany, Boston and New York, North Carolina and California. The night before the party there was an electrical storm and my well was struck by lightning. It was a holiday weekend (Memorial Day weekend), but I called Brian, the neighbour who did handy man jobs for me and I begged. He called a friend who owned a well drilling business who was willing to lend the tools for pulling up the pump (artesian well, 400 feet deep) and sell me a new pump. I panicked a lot, but finally went to bed comforted by the thought that I had beverages for my guests' ( ... )

andpuff January 30 2011, 17:26:18 UTC

That's a wonderful story!

damedini January 29 2011, 02:56:57 UTC

Calum got excited when I quoted you about chainsaws and the zombie apocolypse. He says "they're also useful if you become a serial killer".

I haven't seen Mr Pong in a few years. But there's construction all around Yonge and Elm, since Salad King collapsed.

damedini January 29 2011, 02:57:17 UTC

And when you want to visit, we have a bed and a spare cat.

andpuff January 30 2011, 17:26:56 UTC

The great thing about TO is that I'm still close enough to get in and out the same day. But thank you for the offer!

ashcomp January 29 2011, 04:18:37 UTC

Where we live was still country when we moved here, but is no more . Too close to Washington, DC. Still have a generator in the pumphouse, though.

Apropos of nothing in your post: I started watching "Bones" from Season 1 on forward recently. One of the early episodes in season three (2007) had a very familiar actress in it, but I couldn't place her. A little research found that it was Cristina Cox--playing the villain in a pretty kinky episode that I'm amazed was on broadcast TV, even for Fox. Pretty embarrassing not to recognize her, but then my memory is pretty much swiss cheese.

andpuff January 30 2011, 17:27:22 UTC

I remember that episode! She's on NCIS this Tuesday.