Tuesday, April 22, 2008

What is in the water here?

I have been known to mock our new town in the eight months we have lived here. Not that C-Bus was all that metropolitan, but in comparison to our new town, it was like New York City. The traffic was terrible. The restaurants were plentiful and good. Sprawl had taken over and we had to drive everywhere.

T-town seems to be a dying city right now. Heavily based in industry, many jobs have been lost over the past few years. The local government seems to have some issues. I think a lot of people are just burned on the turn the economy has taken. It's a bad situation. For example, Mr. H and I were at a local bar, and a couple asked us if it would be okay if we scooched down a bit so that they could pull up a second chair. Of course we would. But, the couple actually bought us a round of beers because, as he put it, "most people in this town just would have said no." Fistfights are a lot more plentiful here as well.

That is, until you step into our neighborhood. Here in the bubble, life is completely different. A primary example is our garbage service. You are not allowed to put your garbage cans out for pickup. Oh no, they come up to your driveway to pick them up. And you can even leave a key for them to enter into your garage for you if you do want to bother to put it out.

This morning, after waking up and remembering that today is trash day, Mr. H scrambled to get it out as our sanitation engineer was coming up the driveway. They stopped and chatted for a while. The guy kind of laughed and said that if we hadn't gotten it out in time, he probably would have swung by later just to check to see if we had forgotten (huh? seriously?). Oh, and what a great day he was having. He got to ride his bike to work today and it was a beautiful day. He and Mr. H probably talked for a good 5 to 10 minutes out there.

I'm not sure how much prozac is being peed out in this village, but it is seriously affecting some people...

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