Canadian Thanksgiving; tricks of the border Nazis
News, Auto ·Tuesday October 15, 2013 @ 20:02 EDT (link)
We went up to my parents' in Canada for Canadian Thanksgiving, leaving Friday the 11th (had to run out on a demo that went overlong) and staying until the morning of Tuesday the 15th. (Since Canadian Thanksgiving isn't a recognized US holiday, understandably, I had to take a couple vacation days.) I drove the Acura up, since people wanted to see it. Very comfortable trip, and the XM radio is addictive: not having to find a new station every 100 miles or so is convenient.
Since (as my father-in-law reminded me) dealers tend to underfill tires for a smoother ride, and cold decreases pressure, my tire pressure alarms had been coming on as it got colder here in Indiana (rear passenger, which I filled) and in Canada (rear driver, filled while there). At this point I had figured out what was going on (I really hoped it wasn't a leak already) and wasn't surprised to see the two front tires report low pressure on a cold day after we got back home.
I'm rather annoyed with the OED, although not them specifically, but the general mechanism of words being used and moving to dictionaries. I'm not objecting to language being dynamic; dictionaries should follow use; but rather the somewhat random delay between usage and documentation, although I expect (hope) that the OED at least has and tries to follow a documented process (much like the Jargon File, or New Hacker's Dictionary, does).
The border was not closed, but it seemed (from a sample size of one, plus comparison to a few previous trips) that they were at least conducting a slowdown; crossing Windsor to Detroit midday Tuesday had everyone (including trucks) down to a single lane and they asked a lot more questions than usual (e.g., how I got my citizenship). Going both ways, they asked me to roll down the rear window of my car. I think that's meant to be a quick "check if it's stolen and the driver doesn't know how to do basic things" heuristic, but it's not that hard and a legitimate owner might not yet know how to do that after a few weeks. I was asked the same thing several years back, when I had a rental car from Buffalo, and I didn't know, so they pulled me over and conducted a (relatively quick) search (turns out the window controls were in the central console, which I have never seen since).
We had a nice visit. On Saturday dad and I went looking at laptops for him (the family had managed to persuade him toward a laptop rather than a desktop), and Honey went with mom to run errands. We went to Thorold South Sunday morning (since they didn't have an evening service due to the holiday) (as an aside, I wish they would keep their name and not call the new place Rolling Meadows or whatever is that state planners are forcing them to name it), and Brockview in the evening, where we lucked into a fellowship hour. Attendance seems to be down there (about 40 people, but they really rattled around the large auditorium; it might have looked like normal attendance in Thorold South's smaller room, say), although at least the youth were fairly well represented.
We had thanksgiving dinner Monday; the traditional turkey, stuffing, and home-made cranberry sauce; delicious as usual (well, as in the past, at least; it had been some years since we'd been there, and since all of my siblings and I had been together for the day), and apple pie for dessert. It was good to see everybody, and we also celebrated Michael's birthday and got an (extended) family photograph in the back yard among the leaves.
Books finished: The Amber Spyglass.
