SciFi and Fantasy Book Club discussion

While we're adding food pr0n … this is very Maryland:


Newspaper covering the table and Old Bay at hand: Required. Natty Boh: Optional (but very "Bal'mer").

YouKneeK wrote: "I live in the Atlanta, GA area. We have amazing traffic, highly recommended if you like time to really soak in the scenery and accurately count the construction barrels! There are many areas with w..."

Only Chicago has worse traffic than Atlanta. But no city has more road construction than Cincinnati. Cincy never doesn’t have orange barrels. I recently went through my parents’ photos from their honeymoon trip and every single shot of Cincy featured roadwork. In 1964. I was there three weeks ago, and the exact same place still has construction.

Someone is on the take.

Back to Atlanta... when my mom went down there with her friend to take some big nursing exam I told her, “Remember, if you get separated, just meet at the Waffle House on the corner of Peachtree.” She thanked me for the hot tip. When she got home she said to me, “You little twerp!” 😂

(See, for people who don’t know, Atlanta is home to Waffle House, and the city has a couple dozen of the restaurants. Atlanta also has a huuuge number of streets named “Peachtree.” Seriously, there are something like 75 streets called that. It’s like saying to someone in Albuquerque, “Meet me by the cactus.”)

Haha, I tend to be oblivious to the Waffle House’s, but I have noticed the many Peachtree streets.

Atlanta was my first experience with driving in traffic at this level, so I was easily amazed by stuff I had never seen anywhere else. Shoulder lanes, police directing traffic at intersections with perfectly good traffic lights, and reversible lanes. The first two made sense to me pretty fast. The latter needs to go away.

Micah wrote: "While we're adding food pr0n … this is very Maryland:

Newspaper covering the table and Old Bay at hand: Required. Natty Boh: Optional (but very "Bal'mer")."

Woah! I'm not much of a seafood fan, but that photo looks amazing! Especially approve of the wooden mallet....which suggests you can eat like a caveperson.

crayfish in Louisiana are served dumped on the table covered with newspaper and a lot of places in Houston, TX when I lived there served them tat way. After all, we did get an increase in populations after Katrina.

Other Houston foods =

BBQ which was always smoked meat, never grilled meat
Blue Bell Ice cream
Shipleys Donuts which is way, way better than Krispy Creme and far more fattening. A glazed donut with chocolate icing like one of the branches made was to die for.

@Michel - I actually know Saint Catherine’s pretty well! And I do recall McGill too, but that’s fuzzier. I used to live in New Hampshire so it was like a 4/5 hour drive, and my mom works in hospitality so I could go up on weekends at pretty low cost. This was before you needed a passport to cross the border.

It’s probably my favorite city that I’ve ever been to. I always met the most interesting people.

CBRetriever wrote: "crayfish in Louisiana are served dumped on the table covered with newspaper and a lot of places in Houston, TX when I lived there served them tat way. After all, we did get an increase in populatio..."

And yet they wonder why they do poorly in schools. “Let’s wrap our food in toxic materials! It can’t possibly have any effect on our kids’ brains!” 😂

That reminds me of the old British habit of serving fish and chips in old newspapers. Not exactly a fan of that.

Michel wrote: "That reminds me of the old British habit of serving fish and chips in old newspapers. Not exactly a fan of that."

There’s a reason Parliament made the practice illegal. We apparently didn’t get the message.

Hello everyone. I live in Melton Mowbray, Leicestershire UK. The 'home' of Melton Mowbray Pork Pies, and Stilton Cheese. Both of which I love. It's good to see that we have people on this group from all over the world, who are happy to share with the rest of us their own local delicacies. Enjoy!

Trying to come up with things that aren't food. Well, we're in Rolla because our son is attending MST, known to locals as 'the engineering school.' On the edge of campus, near the main thoroughfare of town, is a replica of Stonehenge. It's kinda cool....
https://rockmech.mst.edu/history/ston...

My older sons live in OKC, a working-class city that does have some enclaves of urbanity, some innovative gov't programs to help the people, and a few special features. If you like Dale Chihuly, get down to okcmoa before the long-term loan finally ends. They'll keep the statement piece in the lobby, but the tunnel and the boats and everything else in one wing is worth seeing (I walk through there every visit).

Also there's a neat bridge which I haven't managed to see yet. Known as Skydance or Scissortail bridge, it honors the state bird: https://www.tripadvisor.com/Attractio...

I grew up in NW Wisconsin, known for glacial geological formations. Interstate State Park is awesome. The Wisconsin side is bigger, with more hiking trails, camping, boat dock. maybe still swimming? The Minnesota side had deeper potholes. Both (?) have examples of WPA (Works Progress Administration) architecture that is still in use. (WI for sure as of last year, MN I'm pretty sure.)

https://www.dnr.state.mn.us/state_par...

During the years that I lived in NW Nevada, Burning Man (the Burning Man festival in Black Rock Desert) grew from something fun that I almost attended to a big huge expensive thing. And no, it's not just ex-hippies and free spirits from the Bay Area that attend; plenty of 'ordinary' locals do, too.