No one locks car doors or wears seatbelts around here??

I'm house-sitting, and therefore have a temporary vehicle. It's been great! I can finally take my car-less friends for "drives"! (Apparently this is a cool thing to do around here when you have time to kill... never mind that there aren't a whole lot of options in terms of roads to explore) The following options are those that I am aware of at this point:

• The road to the dump and the place everyone launches boats / snowmobiles / dog teams from (which I discovered by accident while trying to find Sylvia Grinell)
• The road network around Sylvia Grinell recreation area and river - a great spot for fishing
  
• The road up to the old US army base... incredibly they dismantled EVERYTHING up there when they packed up and left and all you can see is concrete bases where buildings used to be and the bottom halves of telephone polls.
  
• The road to Apex, a short drive to a little community just out of town (where the locals were re-located to be on the other side of the hill so that they wouldn't become involved with the army men at the base - did someone really think a short drive was going to keep a whole group of men away from the only women around?!)
• The "road to nowhere", which gets you.... you guessed it! Nowhere! It randomly ends about 3 miles out. It's quite a nice run! Very pretty.
  

Anyway, so not being quite in tune to the make and model of my temporary vehicle, I tend to look for "red SUV". That's exactly what I did when I came out from the gym one day, and to my surprise, found that I had hopped into the WRONG red SUV! How embarrassing! I hopped right out, laughing at my mistake. I got into the right vehicle, and then realized that whoever's car that was had left it unlocked. I looked to the car to my left, and sure enough, all the doors were also unlocked. hmmm...... Is it not cool to lock your doors or is there really no concern that anything in them will disappear? (In which case I think this is fantastic!)

Other funny experiences I have had in vehicles involve my continued attempts to try to buckle myself in, despite the fact that often seatbelts are either broken ("you might not want to do that... it probably won't let you out after!") or not present or permanently buckled, so that you can slip the chest strap over you and make it look like you're buckled up even though you're clearly not and the belt is in no way protecting you! I tried to explain to my room mate that it was habit, I couldn't forget to buckle up, I did it automatically, kind of like how you automatically wipe your bum... you just don't forget some things!

I am not all too optimistic that I'm going to start any kind of seatbelt wearing trend around here based on the reaction I get just from struggling to wear my own!

Opera & Musicals in the Store Foyer?

Yes, that's right. I was quite surprised to find that one of the stores here, Arctic Ventures, blasts opera / musical soundtracks in the entranceway. At first I thought it might have been some kind of promotion on the CD... or someone playing a joke... or a mistake... but no! Every time I visit, I am greeted with opera! Last time brought me right back to elementary school with Pirates of Penzance!

I was quite surprised and amused to learn that this is an attempt by the store to deter the drug dealers / others who loiter in the foyer and outside! Apparently it worked quite well initially, however, some seem to have adapted to it and have come back. I will have to look for these characters! I had been wondering why the foyer of Northmart, another grocery store seemed to be the "local loitering post" and what fun it could possibly be for young guys to hang about there. I initially suspected they'd be asking for food or panhandling, but it seems these are the instead the town's suppliers of illicit substances.

My room mate seemed surprised that I had never been asked if I was interested... however I have experienced being "discriminated against" in this manner in other countries as well... I seem not to have the right "look" or something... (??) I am simply never offered! At the very least they could give me the opportunity to say "no thank you", no? (I say this jokingly, however I really am perplexed!)

In other news, I no longer have to worry about my food disappearing and can go grocery shopping agin... for a number of reasons (this being one of them) that room mate (aka temporary squatter) was asked to leave. It seems this was a case of taking advantage of my other room mate's generosity and enough was enough. So it wasn't a strange food sharing custom I didn't understand!