{"id":215,"date":"2015-05-22T06:00:39","date_gmt":"2015-05-22T11:00:39","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.hijenx.us\/?p=215"},"modified":"2015-05-25T10:58:35","modified_gmt":"2015-05-25T15:58:35","slug":"the-rules-of-the-road-and-social-security","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.hijenx.us\/?p=215","title":{"rendered":"The Rules of the Road"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>Yesterday afternoon\u00a0Chris and I did different things. He went out in the car with my dad to get used to driving on the right and to a different set of laws, while I did the first five levels of Norwegian on Duolingo and then got used to being a pedestrian in small town Wisconsin again. I found I couldn&#8217;t quite remember the rules since most of the times we&#8217;d been back recently were too cold to go walking far (Christmas). I realized after a few pedestrian crossings, that if there was no light, I did have right of way and cars were actually pretty polite about it. It&#8217;s funny the little things you can forget, or at least be unsure about, even if you did them for years and years if you\u00a0mostly give it a miss\u00a0for a good five or six years.<\/p>\n<p>After five years of some fairly nasty hills in Brighton, I very much enjoyed the flatness. There is hardly a small slope here, much less a proper hill in easy walking distance. But as in England, walking around in a Doctor Who backpack occasionally gets people wanting to talk to me. I met an older, slightly deaf man who was a big Tom Baker fan. I&#8217;m pretty sure he thought I was English since he told me he wasn&#8217;t surprised I like Doctor Who &#8220;because of my accent.&#8221;<\/p>\n<p>Besides driving on the right, Chris and Dad were busily looking into cars we might want to purchase in the next few days and weeks. We know what Dad&#8217;s preference is:<\/p>\n<p><a href=\"http:\/\/www.hijenx.us\/wp-content\/uploads\/2015\/05\/2015-05-21-20.14.35-e1432257467188.jpg\"><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"aligncenter size-medium wp-image-226\" src=\"http:\/\/www.hijenx.us\/wp-content\/uploads\/2015\/05\/2015-05-21-20.14.35-e1432257467188-225x300.jpg\" alt=\"2015-05-21 20.14.35\" width=\"225\" height=\"300\" srcset=\"https:\/\/www.hijenx.us\/wp-content\/uploads\/2015\/05\/2015-05-21-20.14.35-e1432257467188-225x300.jpg 225w, https:\/\/www.hijenx.us\/wp-content\/uploads\/2015\/05\/2015-05-21-20.14.35-e1432257467188-768x1024.jpg 768w, https:\/\/www.hijenx.us\/wp-content\/uploads\/2015\/05\/2015-05-21-20.14.35-e1432257467188-300x400.jpg 300w, https:\/\/www.hijenx.us\/wp-content\/uploads\/2015\/05\/2015-05-21-20.14.35-e1432257467188.jpg 1536w\" sizes=\"(max-width: 225px) 100vw, 225px\" \/><\/a><\/p>\n<p>&nbsp;<\/p>\n<p>We will see what we actually end up getting.<\/p>\n<p>After Chris got back from his driving practice, we went for a walk together and accidentally ended up looking at a house for sale a few streets away from my parents&#8217;. It was a good opportunity for Chris to chat to someone about the nature of American housing and ended up being fairly educational. She explained a lot of why houses here were how they were, in particular, how various features contributed to keeping it warm in the winter.<\/p>\n<p>For dinner, we went to\u00a0<a href=\"http:\/\/www.oldcountrybuffet.com\/\" target=\"_blank\">Old Country Buffet<\/a>, where Chris got to try a variety of American foods he&#8217;d never had before, like\u00a0<a href=\"https:\/\/www.google.com\/url?sa=t&amp;rct=j&amp;q=&amp;esrc=s&amp;source=web&amp;cd=7&amp;cad=rja&amp;uact=8&amp;ved=0CFcQFjAG&amp;url=http%3A%2F%2Fen.wikipedia.org%2Fwiki%2FMeatloaf&amp;ei=03xeVYiQCMPYoATgm4GwBg&amp;usg=AFQjCNH6RvdMWLbe-sXgZcmgU3TsUVgH8Q&amp;sig2=hLiSep8v9_g_y8qy3Y-tXg\" target=\"_blank\">meatloaf<\/a>\u00a0and\u00a0<a href=\"http:\/\/en.wikipedia.org\/wiki\/Tater_tot\" target=\"_blank\">tater tots<\/a>. We were all, once again, over full.<\/p>\n<p>Today we are off to do lots of socializing with a school friend of mine, and later, my sister.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Yesterday afternoon\u00a0Chris and I did different things. He went out in the car with my dad to get used to driving on the right and to a different set of laws, while I did the first five levels of Norwegian&hellip; <\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[13,23,12,17],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-215","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-accent-reactions","category-cars","category-onalaska","category-wisconsin"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.hijenx.us\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/215"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.hijenx.us\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.hijenx.us\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.hijenx.us\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.hijenx.us\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=215"}],"version-history":[{"count":13,"href":"https:\/\/www.hijenx.us\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/215\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":230,"href":"https:\/\/www.hijenx.us\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/215\/revisions\/230"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.hijenx.us\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=215"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.hijenx.us\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=215"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.hijenx.us\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=215"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}