Some may ask why I’m throwing away two days of my
Teacher’s Convention break to spend time in a less than exciting town of 3000 people.
The simple answer is that I have no
social life, so I’m not throwing anything away. Reminding you all that this is only partly true, I’ll move on.
Since I got here, I have received no
emails. I’ve done no
instant messaging, and no boring teenage girls have
random chatted me. I haven’t updated my
web site, my
opennap server isn’t running, nor have I checked
Slashdot yet. In fact, I haven’t even talked on the
phone.
All of these facts are probably blatantly obvious, but a point is being made. All the things I just messaged are all parts of my daily life. In fact, it’s almost become repetitive. For just a couple days, I’m escaping the routine. To give myself time to think. Time to write. Time to play guitar. Time to play pool. To live a simpler life in a town where most everyone knows most everyone, and
everything is within distance of a brisk walk.
Of course, this hasn’t stopped my from bringing my
technology with me. I still have this
Powerbook (which, by the way, is on the verge of dying beyond death), along with
CD player and tape player. Of course,
AC adaptors are needed to power the aforementioned devices, and an
extension cord never hurts.
This house never changes. My grandparents’ house, that is. I mean, yes, they got new flooring in the kitchen, and that Pentium 100 wasn’t there before, but relatively very little has changed. Except that everything has
shrunk. The furniture, the ceiling, the fridge. It’s all smaller than it was a couple years ago. Even my grandparents have shrunk.
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I could get used to this
small town life.
Rarely do car doors get locked. Ditto with house doors.
There’s a fair number of
pickup trucks.
Even doing the smallest, most obscure thing will guarantee you a spot in the town
newspaper.
I think that if I lived here, I wouldn’t ever want a
car. You can
circumnavigate the entire city on
bike in very little time.
Unfortunately, I still think I’d still rely on
Edmonton for a few things. For instance, there’s only one computer store in the area, and I imagine it’s
Mac/
Linux sections leave something to be desired. Also, in terms of clothing for someone my age, there’s like, two stores that cater as such.
And yeah, you can forget about getting
cable internet or
DSL out here.
Indeed, a much simpler life. Maybe the kind of simple life that I need.