Happy Canada Day!

[fajrdrako]

After feeling miserable for a good part of the day, I got better. Much better.

maaseru came home, and we (meaning maaboroshi and John) had pizza for supper, and we played a game of Scrabble - my suggestion. Part of the fun was making fun of the pseudo-words included in the Scrabble dictionary, words like 'jetlike', 'uniquest', and 'mm'. There are no linguistic depths to which players will not stoop to make points.

You know how, when you get a migraine, you lose your vision neurologically to a jagged-light visual effect? I got that during the Scrabble game, making it often difficult to see the tiles - but, surprisingly, it marked the end of my migraine, not the beginning. These things are so bizarre! It's so much easy to feel cheerful without pain. I won the game, being pretty much neck and neck with maaboroshi until the last turn, when I put SPRINTS on a triple- word square.

When the fireworks started on Parliament Hill, we went out on maaseru's balcony to watch. Beautiful! With many heart-shaped and spiral fireworks - I called them Pictish - I do love fireworks. At one point a bat flew by, looking confused by the lights and noise. But how can you really tell when a bat is confused?

It was uncharacteristically cold today. Usually Canada Day is hot; this was mostly jacket-wearing weather, and I watched the fireworks with a blanket wrapped around me.

Canada has existed for 140 years. It's been 150 years since Ottawa was founded. So far so good!

Comments

[mmegaera.livejournal.com]

What was it someone said recently on the Bujold list? In Europe 100 miles is a long way, in North America 100 years is a long time ago? OWTTE.

[fajrdrako.livejournal.com]

And it's so very true. It's an entirely different perspective, which everyone in each country simply takes for granted.

[mmegaera.livejournal.com]

There's a very large perspective difference even within North America. I grew up in the West (in California and Colorado), and then moved to Ohio for a few years before I came back out here to the Northwest, and people back East have what seemed to me to be a very skewed view of distance.

Then again, I'd never lived in a place that had been settled in the 1820s before, either [g].

And don't even get me started on the whole "Out West" "Back East" conundrum. In Ohio, anything west of the Mississippi was Out West. Here, anything east of the Rockies is Back East. Verra strange.

[fajrdrako.livejournal.com]

And don't even get me started on the whole "Out West" "Back East" conundrum.

LOL! I never even thought of that one! My confusion is always about what is south and what isn't. My friend from southern Pennsylvania has tried to educate me about what a Yankee really is, and where the north/south divides come, but I never remember because it never makes sense to me!

It's easier in Canada. "The West" or "The West Coast" is BC, "Down East" or "The Maritimes" is everything east of Quebec, "Central Canada" is Ontario and "The Prairies" is anything between Ontario and BC. Quebec is a world of its own. "The North" is anything past that ill-defined line of urbanized cities and towns that shadows the US border, with a blip in Alberta, where Edmonton is rather far north.

[mmegaera.livejournal.com]

I love it. Ontario, which is decidedly not in the center of Canada (at least not geographically) is "Central Canada."

I wouldn't have had (or still have) so much against the whole "Out West" "Back East" thing if the Easterners wouldn't keep automatically assuming that the only state west of the Mississippi is California. Our national television news shows are especially twitty about this, and it annoys me greatly.

[fajrdrako.livejournal.com]

Ontario, which is decidedly not in the center of Canada (at least not geographically) is "Central Canada."

So it goes. Someone must have misaligned the measuring tape.

if the Easterners wouldn't keep automatically assuming that the only state west of the Mississippi is California.

Do they? There's a heck of a lot of land out there. I've been to some of it. Would like to see more.

[mmegaera.livejournal.com]

They do. The merest bit of bad weather east of the Rockies merits the tv equivalent of front-page headlines, but last winter when we had storms bad enough to knock the power out for a week and to close Mt. Rainier National Park for several *months* (18" of rain in 36 hours is really hard on roads and trails -- one entire campground no longer exists because the ground it sat on literally isn't *there* anymore) it barely made a blip on their precious radar.

I think the last time Seattle made the lead story on the national news (or CNN and its cohorts) was the WTO riots. In 1999.

I don't particularly care if they all wash away if they don't care that we have.

[filkferengi]

Otoh, their ignorance is your bliss. Otherwise, you'd suddenly have lots of new, close friends--or neighbors, anyway.

[mmegaera.livejournal.com]

Good point. OTOH, *you've* seen how good our weather can be, and you're inexplicably still in Atlanta [g].

[fajrdrako.livejournal.com]

All I know about Atlanta is from movies and TV - I particularly associate it with "Vanished".

[mmegaera.livejournal.com]

I've been to Atlanta twice, once for an American Library Association conference many years ago, and again on my cross-country trip eight years ago. I like it, it's a nice town, but, like Beta Colony, the climate is lousy [g] (although not in the same way).

There's some nifty people who live there, though...

[fajrdrako.livejournal.com]

I think there are nifty people everywhere. And I do hope to visit Atlanta some day - though I don't know what the chances are.

[mmegaera.livejournal.com]

Well, yes, but I know a few of these personally [g].

I probably wouldn't go back to Atlanta if it weren't for the people I know there. But the chances are pretty good of me going since I do.

[fajrdrako.livejournal.com]

Seattle is one of my favourite US cities - maybe my very favourite, since New Orleans, it seems, isn't what it used to be. I have only visited there once, but I loved it.

[mmegaera.livejournal.com]

You'll have to come back again sometime [g]. I love Seattle as well. It's far enough away that when I go I generally make a day trip of it, but there's always so much to do up there that that's not a problem.

[fajrdrako.livejournal.com]

I do hope to visit there again some day! Maybe in tandem with a trip to Vancouver. Who knows.

[mmegaera.livejournal.com]

Well, if you do, let me know. I'd love to meet you in person.

[fajrdrako.livejournal.com]

It would be fun, wouldn't it? I have no money to travel these days but you never know what might happen.

[mmegaera.livejournal.com]

I know that feeling, alas...