Long weekend

Woo hoo, long weekend, three hot, sunny, beautiful days to enjoy hardly working. In my two month's here this is probably the 2nd or 3rd least work I've had to do over a weekend. Cold beer, hot weather, just missing that one last thing and life’d be perfect.

It looks like town is preparing for a disaster, residential streets lined with campers, people cutting work to load up, that warm fuzzy you get when a community comes together for a common purpose, to ward off floods or escape fires...or drink beer by a lake in Saskatchewan.

The video crew last weekend was impressed with the average middle-America look of this town and said they’d likely be back to shoot Chevy commercials. There is a certain mid-western Norman Rockwell eccentricity which, depending on your mood and perspective, can be comfortable or creepy.

I like how the mayor is just another main street shopkeeper and how all the most important people give you home numbers. As an old fashion guy I like that they sell tapes in the grocery store - for my younger friends that's what we listened to music on back in the day. It bums me out that the best selection of CD's (the only selection of CD's) is at the drug-slash-dollar store and the hippest thing they sell is Britney Spears and Tim McGraw.

It weirds me out that I live right in the middle of town and there's a trailer park between here and main street. It's also strange and annoying that half the town seems unpaved. That leads to a sense that it's unfinished, yet it doesn't feel new, it feels like they quit half way through fifty years ago and never got around to finishing.

On the other hand there is an amazing town spirit of the sort I am unfamiliar with. Not a corny contrived Saturday Night Live sketch cheerleader spirit, just a real sense of place and home and camaraderie. People actually come out to events and take part and volunteer for projects and live in this town intentionally.

Anyway I'm blathering, trying to get into the long weekend spirit, but I'm going to enjoy the sun. Merry Xmas.

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Frink: Here we have an ordinary square.
Wiggum: Woah! Slow down egghead!