This year marks the first time I haven’t been on American soil for the 4th of July. Granted, I’m only in Canada, and even then only a little over 130 miles or so from the border. Regardless, there’s nobody around me wearing the red, white, and blue, and it’s a little bit strange.

It seems like July is just the month of choice for places to separate themselves from Great Britain, though, as Canada celebrates their own holiday on July 1st. Since Canada didn’t exactly have a clear-cut separation from Britain, like America did with the whole dumping tea into a harbor and signing a big formal paper on the 4th, Canada doesn’t really call their holiday “Independence Day” or anything like that.

What do they call it? Canada Day. Just that. Nothing more. Continue reading “America Day”

There is a lot of talk in America about what should be done with our southern border. A lot of people think that America needs to strengthen the borders, making more of a push to stop people from illegally entering the country. Regardless of your opinion on this matter, the point it, Americans focus a LOT on our southern border.

Canada apparently jumped on this opportunity, silently and sneakily bolstering their own southern border while America had its back turned. It’s the only explanation I can think of, really, as to why an upstanding citizen such as myself would have such a hard time getting across the border that only started requiring passports some three years ago. Continue reading “Never A Dull Moment At The Border”

My car has this thing that goes into the center console. I guess it’s just a tray or something, but it has dividers, so it’s more like a cafeteria tray than a normal tray. Since it’s a little odd to refer to it as “the cafeteria tray that goes in my car’s center console,” I just refer to it as “this thing.” That’s all it is. Just some thing.

That thing spent the past year in the back of my car, far from where it belongs. It had to happen, because for the past year, I haven’t had a glove box. All my normal glove box stuff went into the center console, and there just wasn’t room for the thing in there anymore. I would feel sympathetic to that poor thing, but it’s just a tray, and there are far more important things going on in the world.

For example, I’m currently sitting in a Starbucks north of Cincinnati, Ohio. Now, there are many unpleasant truths to that sentence, not the least of which being that I am stranded in Ohio, some 11 hours away from home. But it’s all for good and kind of terrifying reason:

Taking advantage of an opportunity nearly six months in the making. Continue reading “Dressing Like Christmas”