it's the little things

Here's my favorite thing about Canada so far. Every time I turn on the TV, "Kids In The Hall" is on!

I'm really not watching TV outside of baseball, but sometimes in the afternoon, feeling spacey and in need of a break, I flip it on. And there's Mark McKinney and Dave Foley and Scott Thompson to the rescue! You can sometimes find KITH re-runs on American TV, but not as often.

We also saw "Royal Canadian Air Farce" for the first time. Air Farce is a sketch comedy show, in the Saturday Night Live or MAD TV vein. I've been hearing about it for about as long as I've been blogging. It was pretty funny, not hilarious, but it spent a lot of time making fun of the W & Co, and we loved that. It's very political, with a definite anti-war, anti-empire, anti-big money point of view.

The first episode we saw was kind of flat, but sketch comedy is often uneven, and you can't judge it properly on one take. The second episode was definitely funnier, and I'll continue to watch if I run into it.

Here's something else I really like: the two-dollar coin. There are one-dollar and two-dollar coins here, as in many countries. The two-dollar coin has a different kind of metal in the center, so it's very recognizable.

toonie

It's so convenient - although it took a while to lose that feeling that I was being shorted when given change. If you've spent $17.25 and you pay with a $20 bill, your change is all coin. I would think, where's the bills, then look down in my hand, and take a few seconds to realize it was all there. I'm just losing that feeling now.

I haven't been able to call it a toonie yet. The dollar coin is called a loonie, because there's a picture of a loon (the bird) on one side.

loonie

And from there we get toonie, a two-dollar loonie. I hear people use these silly names all the time. Maybe when I can finally bring myself to say them, I'll be officially Canadian.

I'm kidding, you know. Kids In The Hall is only my second favorite thing about Canada. Sex toys in Shoppers Drug Mart is better.

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