the land of dunkin donuts and bold pedestrians

so we just went and saw "julie and julia." i'm now inspired to blog again. if you've seen the movie, you'll know why. if you haven't, then you should cause julia child is the essence of warmth and goodness and wonderful food. i've been rolling blogging again around in my mind for the last few weeks as a wonderful way to share some stuff about our new little life. i'm just scared of being dedicated to something again because i became rather un-dedicated to this blog not so long ago when i moved back to lincoln and most of the people i wanted to share stories with lived rather near to myself. since i just got married, i guess i've faced the challenge of a lifetime of dedication and grabbed hold of the opportunity so i shouldn't fear the slight challenge of randomly but consistently updating a little old blog. my real assurance is that aaron will do it for me if i neglect it...so here we go.

people really love dunkin donuts in massachusetts (maybe it's a new england thing not just MA? I haven't figured out how to distinguish that yet since i've just been in MA thus far). it's starbucks competitor out here. in nebraksa dunkin donuts are relegated to weird donut cases in quick marts. target's shelves are full of dunkin donuts coffee here. turns out that it is more about the dunkin than the donuts. who would've guessed?

also, pedestrians have collectively lost their mind in massachusetts. maybe it's just the five colleges area. (that's where we're at in the pioneer valley. go pioneers! (i mean the westward kind not any sort of sports team if there is one with that name.)). - that can't be the right punctuation there-

anyway... the law here is that you big time yield to pedestrians. there are signs everywhere. i realize that this is a common law, and one that i have abided by in many states. however, citizens in massachusetts have felt especially empowered by the enforcement of the law here and have taken to j walking in the streets en masse. they just walk into traffic, and everyone stops. it appears that the social norm for the area is that you are to stop your vehicle at the mere sight of a pedestrian in order to take the opportunity to let them cross the street in front of you even if they have not yet made it to the crosswalk. aaron and i saw a semi lay-down rubber for a student who was waiting to cross the street at a cross walk. he had made no move to attempt to cross the street yet (he was just waiting), but the truck felt it necessary to nearly cause an accident by braking so hard that it left over 10 ft of rubber on the road in order to strongly encourage the young man to cross the street in front of it. i fear for bold pedestrians in this strange new country like an older woman i saw today who stepped into oncoming traffic from both directions outside of a crosswalk and made them stop. an-out-of town driver could do so damage here. it frightens me.

well that's my update from massachusetts. stay tuned for more on how we use every part of the buffalo in our communist bloc. who knows when that will that be.

-e

(for a and e)