You now live in the above posters province/state

[Torie]

Like I need to take the New York state bar exam, or something, and get the hell out ASAP. Texas is one of my least favorite states.

[Torie]

It might be OK. I wonder if Halifax is colder than Hudson. If so, my partner would be most unhappy. He's whimpering this morning, because we had our first snow last night. The word Samoa is coming up again, as in we need to go there for a couple of months. Maybe folks who have genes largely drawn from Teutonic tribes are more resistant to cold or something, just like they tend not to be lactose intolerant.

[Torie]

There's lots of areas in NY that are good.   Torie's HUDSON HUDSON HUDSON area is nice, as is Hyde Park.  Western NY, particularly Chautauqua County is pretty nice, up from Westfield to Fredonia and even up to some of Dunkirk's suburbs.  I haven't been to the Finger Lakes but I'd love to visit.

So, avoiding NYC and LI......yeah, not so bad.

LI is just horrific. Flat, loaded with traffic, ugly, and suck city totally. The LI accent is also butt ugly. NYC is great if you are a rich. Otherwise, it's horrible. Partner Dan makes some noises about NYC from time to time (like having a crash pad there at least). I tell him that that is an extravagance. I even resist staying the night there, absent some special arrangement. We need to catch the 10:45 pm train out - period.

The Finger Lakes are magnificent, and some of the towns on those lakes, while very bourgeoisie, some looking like Main Street in Disneyland, are just as cute as a button, and have lots of cultural events in the warmer months. But man, the snow dude. Snow, snow and more snow - except this year due to El Nino.

You have visited the Shining City on Hill, overlooking the river in the most magnificent river valley on this earth, Grumps?

Of course Angus feels stuffed! He lives in what is perhaps the most obese county in the nation. Fats here, fats there, fats, fats, everywhere.

Skip me, unless you find opining about the greatest state in the nation to be irresistible.

[Torie]

You have visited the Shining City on Hill, overlooking the river in the most magnificent river valley on this earth, Grumps?

Yeppers.  My daughter went to the Culinary Institute in Hyde Park, so we'd often drive and see what was around.  She was familiar with the area, we just took in all of it.  Needless to say I never went there in winter....hell it was a long 8 hours to Hyde Park in good weather.   But yeah, it's all good up there.

We spend nearly 6 months of weekending it in Western NY on the Lake and I've become fond of those areas....very similar to western PA.

You check out Chautauqua?  Dan and I spent a week there during the summer events season. Lots of left wing Christian theology - with an emphasis on saving the planet from humans, and some fascinating lectures, and a fantastic performance of the Opera Macbeth in English, directed by a friend of ours, so we got to meet the cast afterwards, where the lead male singer proposed to his boy friend as a surprise, getting on his knees to beg. Good stuff!

It's the Finger Lakes area that is deluged with snow, due to the Great Lakes effect. Buffalo too. What a miserable place that is. It's mostly a western and northern NY thing, with the Tug plateau adjacent to Rome, NY getting more snow in the US than any place that is east of the Rockies.

[Torie]

"Huh, since when was New Orleans a state? Did Louisiana want to get rid of it that badly?!"

I suspect New Orleans wanted to get rid of Louisiana.