Les Bonnes Choses

We're in the US Midwest, which comes with a number of subtle differences from Southwestern Ontario. For one, they're in the Central timezone. This timezone sucks. Why? Because, as a market, it doesn't merit its own broadcast schedule. The Eastern timezone, containing the entire Eastern seaboard gets the network news at 6:30, filler crap like Wheel of Fortune and Entertainment Tonight at 7:00 with primetime running from 8:00 to 11:00 for the late night news. The Central timezone gets the same programming, but one hour earlier. I suppose for those holiday cartoon specials that I remember from my childhood, that could be a good thing because the kiddies don't have Charlie Brown as an excuse to stay up late. Not that I watch much primetime television, but if I did, I'd find it irritating to have to rush through dinner and cleanup in order to catch the opening scenes of my favourite series.

Yes, favourite. Not favorite. Another subtle difference -- one that I relish when I send out memos or leave notes. I'll spend an extra minute or two trying to think of synonyms just so that I can use words that use a 'u' in the British/Canadian spelling that does not appear in the American spelling.

Finally, we have the midwest accent. Or 'eayccent'. It's not quite as pronounced (to my ear, at least) nor come with the same dim stereotype as a 'Sathern' drawl, but it's apparently noticable enough that, while visiting a store today, Rebecca was mortified when Jude asked why "the lady asked if she could open theyat for us?" Yes, 'that' has two syllables here.