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That's it?<\/p><\/div>\n
In the meantime, I usually walk on the non-retirement side of the street. \u00a0I counted 40 storefronts between my house and the one coffee shop<\/a> that makes me feel like people live here. \u00a0Out of the 40 storefronts, eight of them are empty. For effect, I’ll repeat this fact in a different, generalized, and therefore slightly inaccurate form that highlights the economic downturn: twenty percent of the stores in downtown Holland, Michigan are empty. \u00a0The feel of a barren corridor of previously Papyrus font-laden establishments is particularly enhanced on Sunday, the day when nothing is allowed. \u00a0I went out to breakfast this morning and found myself excited as we pulled up, simply because the place was open.<\/p>\n My norms might be shifting and I will be the first to tell you I’m a bit delirious, but I still know a winner when I hear one. \u00a0On the radio station that used to wake me up with sub-par humor but has switched to all Christmas music, all the time as of November 1, I heard a radio contest this week where the winner was to be awarded one dozen frozen pigs in a blanket. \u00a0One dozen, frozen, pigs in a blanket – might as well throw in a whole chicken and can of hairspray<\/a>.<\/p>\n The potential joy of the arbitrary will keep me listening to the Christmas music for another 40 days. \u00a0Pigs in a blanket can overcome pa-rum-pa-pum-pum. \u00a0Why is the unexpected refreshing? \u00a0Why does it take the unexpected to show us the obvious? \u00a0What is the most unexpected item I could put in a brown paper bag?<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" As I walked to my local coffee shop today, I counted. I’m partial to one side of the street in downtown Holland, MI. \u00a0I’ve tried the other side, but really, I have no interest in it other than looking in at the seniors eating bagged lunches at the downtown retirement home. \u00a0Brown paper lunch bags […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[3,4,5,6,7],"tags":[12,15,159,18,27,60],"class_list":["post-143","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-awkwardness","category-design","category-experiences","category-midwest-letdowns","category-midwest-surprises","tag-arbitrary","tag-delirious","tag-design","tag-economy","tag-food","tag-senior-citizens"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.snowflyzone.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/143","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.snowflyzone.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.snowflyzone.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.snowflyzone.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.snowflyzone.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=143"}],"version-history":[{"count":5,"href":"https:\/\/www.snowflyzone.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/143\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":156,"href":"https:\/\/www.snowflyzone.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/143\/revisions\/156"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.snowflyzone.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=143"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.snowflyzone.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=143"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.snowflyzone.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=143"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}