Man, my beloved homestreet of Quinpool Road sure has been going through some minor but frequent changes of late. Not all of them for the best. Example: At the Royal Bank up the road there was a security camera that I used to talk to when I was making ATM transactions (I offer no explanation as for why I did this), but recently they re-designed their ATMs and the camera on the ceiling next to it has been removed. I assume there is a camera in the new ATM somewhere, but I don’t know where. How am I to know which direction to ham it up? Egads, what a predicament.
Up the road: The Iranian restaurant with really awesome rice is gone, replaced by a Sushi place. And I only got to eat there twice! Granted, for all I know the sushi place has excellent rice as well, but I’m not a big sushi fan, so why exactly would I go in to find out, huh? I wouldn’t.
The travel agency I have used in my too infrequent trips around the world has moved to a street about twenty minutes away (on foot). And I never got in to thank them for how hard they worked to help me get to China. I didn’t want to go in unless I actually had a travel-related reason. Of course, with that attitude I would have to come back and thank them for the trip I set up when I thank them for the China trip and it would continue forever. Perhaps when I use them again I will, upon my return, bring them muffins as a thanks and then hopefully I won’t feel so bad about thanking them without immediately booking another trip. I’ll have to keep that in mind.
Over the Summer, three businesses directly across from me (I can see them from my window Right Now) got big fancy murals painted on them. Not bad, I admit, but one of them Vogue Optical no longer has a sign on front that identifies it as Vogue Optical. Sure it has a mural of Halifax on the side of the building which, if you pay attention, you can find some glasses painted in there. Also, I don’t know why I care if the sign is there or not. I might be getting old.
And perhaps the most confounding is a change that I noticed in my very own building just yesterday. The door in the lobby which leads to the stairwell has been replaced. Replaced by a door which looks way, way worse. I find it strange that a building which has made so much effort in making itself more presentable in the years I have lived here would purposefully replace a good door with a bad one. I figure the reasons must be one of these: The old door was damaged somehow, which I wish I had seen for my own entertainment’s sake, or they sold the old door to keep our rent down. I’m pulling for that to be the true one.
One thing, though, the store connected to the Irving is now branded as a Circle K. I don’t even remember what it used to be called, for sure. I want to say Blue Canoe, but that might have been a hallucination I had. But anyway I assume the Canadian store that was there was bought out by the American Circle K in some Corporation-Style Shenanigans. I approve of this because now I can say “Strange things are afoot at the Circle K” any time I want! Any time. And that is one of the best things I can think of.
