Did we really move that far?

This is our first December in our new place. It is 4 city blocks over and 5 city blocks down closer to the water than our old place. It doesn't seem that far, but yesterday - a day after the parade - we realized we missed the Santa Clause Parade noise completely for the first time in a decade! We only realized this when we saw a balloon caught in a tree outside our windows and remembered it was that time of year again.

As I mentioned in at least one previous blog entry we used to be awakened on the morning of the parade by 6 or 7 marching bands at a time warming up outside our building. Then when the parade started we heard many bands walking the parade route a couple of blocks from our home. This year we heard nothing. We saw no traffic jams, no crowds of people. We didn't even notice there was a parade.

Of course, in August we had a great view of the Pride Parade from our balcony in our new home, and that was noisy too, as I wrote in another blog entry, but it was so colourful and fun and warm, it wasn't nearly as annoying. (That may have something to do with the complete lack of tired old Christmas songs being played to death... could someone write something new, anything new, for Christmas?)

So have we really moved that far away? It seems like such a short distance, but it is like a completely different city just a few blocks away! What a difference a few city blocks makes!