I know what let’s do! For old times’ sake...

...let’s watch that video of Susan Boyle auditioning for Britain’s Got Talent (5:50) one more time....

It wasn’t all that long ago, actually. Her audition took place on April 11, 2009. So a little over four years ago, no one had ever heard of that little collection of villages in Scotland.

But since then, a lot of water has gone over the dam/under the bridge (pick one).

To take just one example, the phrase “Boston massacre” now has an entirely new meaning that has absolutely nothing to do with March 5, 1770.

To take another example, we have (and by “we have” I mean that David Letterman has) unearthed, finally, one of those dreaded Banjos of Mass Destruction (BMD) (4:24) and that starts with B and that rhymes with P and that stands for (let’s say it together, class):

POOL (4:58).

The common thread running through these videos should be obvious by now: Ways to make one’s parents proud.

Is the world in a downward spiral, or what?

To clear your head of that depressing prospect, why don’t you take advantage of this unprecedented opportunity and watch this video of a great deal of falling water that involves neither a dam nor a bridge, while (British, whilst) simultaneously brushing up on your French, listening to the strains of Richard Wagner’s Ride of the Valkyries (some of that classical music that Hilltophomesteader hates so much), and ending with a lovely orchestral rendition of “Over the Rainbow” that includes an actual rainbow (4:09)?

Putz would have loved this post. Blogland misses him.

I have “been to” Canada in the same sense that I have “been to” Mexico.

Poking around on Carolina's blog the other day, I discovered a blog called Skittles’ place, and poking around Skittles’ or Skittle’s or Skittles’s place (pick one) landed me on Bernie’s blog, which has led to the post you are now reading.

Let me interject here that the more I “poke around” in cyberspace, the more I find blogs that almost make me want to give up blogging altogether. Some of them are that good. Most of those people even own digital cameras.

It turns out that Bernie lives somewhere in British Columbia in Canada in a Mobile Home Park (capitals hers) with her 72-year-old husband, Dave. They moved there a couple of months ago from somewhere she keeps referring to as “up north.”

[rant on]
WHAT??? UP NORTH??? WHEN YOU’RE ALREADY IN BRITISH COLUMBIA??? I mean, COME ON!!!

[rant off]


But I looked at another map and learned that Bernie’s previous residence, Granisle, is at about the same latitude as the southern tip of Alaska, so maybe she has a point, after all. Way down in the southwestern corner of British Columbia, I spotted Vancouver Island.


It reminded me that I have “been to” Canada two times, but just barely (three times if you count the time I was in downtown Detroit, Michigan, and looked across the river and caught a glimpse of downtown Windsor, Ontario):

1. I was in downtown Detroit, Michigan, and looked across the river and caught a glimpse of downtown Windsor, Ontario.

2. In 1991 or 1992, while visiting our son, who was a graduate student at Eastman School of Music in Rochester, New York, the three of us drove along the edge of Lake Ontario all the way to Niagara Falls. We ate lunch on the American side, then crossed over into Canada and took in the much better view from the Canadian side. Then we drove south along the Niagara River and re-entered the U.S. at Buffalo. We spent all of about an hour in Canada.


3. In 1984, my other visit to Canada occurred clear on the other side of the continent. We drove up I-5 from Seattle, Washington, and crossed into Canada south of Vancouver. We never made it to Vancouver proper, though. We took a BC ferry from Tsawwassen to Sidney on Vancouver Island, and spent the night in the city of Victoria. Before returning to the States the following afternoon, we toured both the Provincial Museum and world-famous Butchart Gardens. It was a short but wonderful stay, as clicking on the words "Butchart Gardens" in the preceding sentence will prove.

So I have been to Canada, though just barely.

Other places I have been to, also just barely, include:

1. Matamoros, Mexico, across the Rio Grande from Brownsville, Texas. Note that I did not say the Rio Grande River, which would be redundant. I walked across the International Bridge, bought some souvenirs for the folks at home, and walked back into Texas. I spent all of about half an hour in Mexico.

2. Nassau, Bahamas. My plane landed there briefly on the way home from a month-long business trip to Sweden in 1969.

3. Hamilton, Bermuda. My plane landed there briefly on the way home from a month-long business trip to Sweden in 1969.

4. London, England. I spent one night there on the way home from a month-long business trip to Sweden in 1969.

5. Amsterdam, Netherlands, International Airport. My plane landed there briefly on the way home from a month-long business trip to Sweden in 1969.

6. Copenhagen, Denmark, International Airport (twice). My plane landed there briefly on the way home from Sweden. I also landed there briefly on the way to Sweden. Did I mention that it was a business trip? And that it was a month long? And that it happened in 1969?

So there you have it. I, rhymeswithplague, qualify as a world traveler. I have stepped foot in eight countries outside my own, my native land.

My travels pale, however, beside those of Lord Yorkshire Pudding of Yorkshire Towers, Sheffield, Yorkshire, England, in the United Kingdom (that’s the British Isles, for those of you who don’t get out much). Just in the year or so I have been reading his blog, he has visited Singapore (or was it Hong Kong?), Chile, Easter Island, and God only knows how many other places before that. Through it all, he has remained his irascible, jolly, imperturbable, curmudgeonly, and lots of other adjectives not allowed on family blogs self.

But I need to tell you that I am not, as he would have you to believe, the subject of his August 8, 2010 post. I haven’t been to the UK since, when was it? Oh, yes, I remember.

1969.