More exploring, more eating, and the obligatory photo from Riverdale Park.
Exploring the city and binging on books.
The Elwins and Tokyo Police Club, Richmond Hill Centre for the Performing Arts.
Lunch with my dear and longtime friend Sarah followed by an uneventful border crossing.
I present this photo of me as a 17-year-old premature smoker (though smoking at 17 was legal in North Carolina at the time) in observance of the fact that I quit smoking thirteen years ago today.
I don’t miss it. That’s interesting, because a lot of people do.I guess I’m just one of the lucky ones; the thought of smoking a cigarette now is actually pretty repulsive to me, and I can’t even stand to be around other people when they smoke.
My strategy was as follows:
- Stop smoking inside the house. This cut down my consumption pretty drastically and forced me to think about every cigarette I smoked.
- Choose a specific “quit date” and observe it.
- Use a little of the nicotine gum (though I only remember buying two or three boxes).
After a few months of unpleasantness, everything was fine. I lived through it.
You can too. It may be harder for you. It may be easier. Either way, it will be worth it.
My hotel in Pittsburgh. Actually, it’s a priory, but I’m not nearly Catholic enough to know the difference
This makes me a little sad. Winston-Salem seems finally to be abandoning its never-much-used quadrant system. As street signs age, they are being replaced with new ones that lack the “NW/SW/NE/SE” indicators.
The quadrant system for identifying streets seems to have been introduced in the 1950s. Several North Carolina cities (Hickory and Concord for starters) implemented some version of the system over the years, and it was not a big success in most of them. In fact, it seems to have been largely ignored in Winston-Salem by the 1980s, no longer being used in published addresses even though the designations continued to be included on the street signs.
When the ex and I moved to Winston in 2006, we added the “SW” to the end of our address from day one, just because that’s the sort of geeks we were. I liked the the whole anachronistic nature of using this convention most people no longer observed, even though the city apparently still did. I believe the quadrants may even have still been part of the tax map database as recently as a few years ago.
I haven’t seen any official notice of the change anywhere (though I haven’t looked very much) but it’s pretty obvious that the signs they are a-changin’.
Stromae
Carmen (2015)
With my passport fail now in the process of being corrected, I have decided that I will indeed make my autumn excursion to Canada, even though it will be later in the season than I prefer, resulting in a cooler and darker journey than usual.
It will also mean I will be outside the country on Election Day, which seems like a really safe and sane option.
Of course I will vote before I leave. But I will avoid the whole American scene the day and night of the election, and that makes me really happy. I can hear about the winner on the CBC, which makes things seem much more civilized. (You can rest assured that the Canadian media will cover the U.S. election far more completely than the U.S. media have ever covered a Canadian one.) And if the fires start, I’ll sit them out at a shawarma joint on Bloor Street somewhere.
Better still, if I’m in Canada and the unthinkable occurs, I will be better positioned to decide whether or not to come home.
So look for me in a Canada near you come early November.