June 21st, 2005

We went for a walk last night. I sort of felt that a preponderance of the reasons for walking made it impossible to sit around and stare at the TV or a computer screen:

So we went around our neighborhood in a direction we'd never been before. There are a lot of condos in our corner of the world, and a few houses as well. So we went and looked at the houses.

Well ... yikes!

The neighborhood a few blocks from where we live has a completely different feel. Somehow unsettling, evil even! There was at least one house that looked to my eyes as if it could easily be featured in a movie about a haunted house. There were a lot of lawns where the owners seemed to be losing a battle against the encroaching shrubs and other foliage—including creepers on the walls. Some lawns were just abandoned and overgrown enough that light did not get through from the sun. Some people had very meticulously manicured their lawns and gardens, but everything was crooked pathways and sidewalks that led around trees to dark ominous-looking gaping mouths of entrance-ways into the houses. I thought of gingerbread houses occupied by evil witches more than once.

The houses themselves were at strange angles to the street sometimes, and other times were square to the street and huddled close together—almost as though for protection. Sometimes there were large stands of overgrown trees where there might be a house or yard behind them, or there might be just more trees (or an unmowed patch of grass where a house used to be!) Because this whole little nightmaresque neighborhood was at a 45-degree angle to the main road that runs through the area, all the streets were not quite square themselves. This lent an air of layout insanity to the already ominous feeling. And the streets were not laid out in a grid, but in a staggered pattern that was just irregular enough to confuse you about which direction was North, etc.

Well, when we got home, I was personally very relieved. It turns out that the neighborhood just a few blocks away is not even a nice place to visit. And God forbid we should ever have to live there.

1 But this "longest day of the year" = "first day of Summer" thing really used to get under the skin of someone I knew a long time ago. She really took it personally when people stated this, even though 99% of the population holds this belief. Her idea was that the first day of Summer was the first nice day of the Summer Season—whenever that happened. But this year that would have meant that Summer in Vancouver happened between March and April this year, and we already had Fall, and it is now Summer again. Clearly, her system was less than linear (why, some lucky people could have three or four Summers a year, and only one Winter!)

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