Snow

Here in Canada, it is very snowy and very cold, as you can see. But ironically enough, in the last week Oklahoma City has been even more snowy and cold, as you can see here.

Looks like we got out just in time!

The Reverend Frankton Muncie and friends

On Monday we arrived in Canada, where we're spending Christmas and New Year. The drive up from Oklahoma took two and half days, much of it through very boring scenery, and I found myself passing the time by inventing characters based on the roadside direction signs. These signs typically have two place names on them, which are the towns you would get to if you got off at the next exit, turning either left or right. The following are all real examples, from the I69 north between Fort Wayne, Indiana and Lansing, Michigan:

Frankton Muncie - the vicar in Pride and Prejudice ('While you were out, Miss Bennet, we received a visit from the good and distinguished Reverend Frankton Muncie.')
Marion Montpelier - used to sing cabaret songs with Richard Rodney Bennett (no relation)
Quincy Coldwater - produced Michael Jackson's first album
Three Rivers Jackson - early delta blues singer
Okemos Mason - world heavyweight champion, 1956

Well, it amused me at the time.

Cheese

I like to think I'm pretty easy-going when it comes to food - I enjoy most things, but one thing I've never liked is cheese. I don't mind a bit of cheese flavour in things and I can manage pizza (though not the 'four cheese' variety), but anything stronger than that I just don't like. Cheese, to me, tastes and smells like milk which has gone off. Although I know this is a relatively unusual quirk, I've always managed fine in the past - at restaurants, for example, I will avoid any dishes which contain cheese and likewise for products at the supermarket.

But that doesn't work here, because Americans put cheese in everything, and they don't tell you. Your innocuous can of pasta in tomato sauce, which looks just like Heinz spaghetti, will taste of cheese, and when you check the ingredients, yes, there it is about half way down. The meal I have ordered in a restaurant precisely because it does not, according to the menu, have cheese in it will appear at the table covered with a liberal sprinkling of grated cheddar. The stuff is everywhere.

Today I was at the supermarket looking for a sandwich to take with me in the car for later. The choices were beef and cheese, ham and cheese, cheese, or tuna. Checking the ingredients on the tuna sandwich revealed it had - yes, cheese in it. They had slipped it in surruptitiously and tried to hide it from me, but I foiled their game. In the end I bought a ham and cheese sandwich and took the cheese out.

What is it with Americans and cheese?