The (small) Town

While sitting at home, on my last day of vacation, I was having feelings of unfairness, inequity, favouritism and injustice. This morning I wrote about Inception but failed to mention another great film that I watched only two nights ago: The Town...OMG!!! The Town was so awesome!!! Yes, I sound like a 16 year old girl but that’s what Ben Affleck does to me. I first fell in love with him in Good Will Hunting (one of my favourite movies!) where he brilliantly demonstrated his writing (screenplay) and acting skills (and he`s not bad to look at it either!). In The Town, he shows us his splendid acting, writing and directing skills (oh Jennifer Garner, you`re a lucky lady!). It's nice to watch a movie that almost feels like you’re reading a book...great plot, nice progression, interesting, deep and relatable characters, great setting and that irresistible feeling of wanting more after the movie ends. For those of you who have seen the movie, didn't you want the movie to continue? Don't you want to know what happened to Doug (Ben Affleck) and Claire (Rebecca Hall) or FBI agent Adam (Jon Hamm) or even Krista (Blake Lively)? It's not often that you see a movie of this calibre (i.e: Breakin`and Breakin` 2: Electric Boogaloo!) so I highly recommend that you see The Town (and Inception)! If you're in an Oscar pool, I`d recommend putting your money on The Town and Ben Affleck (not that I promote gambling!). How lucky am I that I got to watch two great films back-to-back?!? I should also mention that the third movie we rented was The Back-Up Plan but I’m not sure where that fits in this blog post. Oh wait...I just realized that there is a link...Bennifer!!!

So watching The Town made me realize how much I love living in my (small) town! Last night, I went for a walk hoping to see the stunning Christmas lights in our park (the committee responsible for the lights in the park has won national awards!) but the lights were already off (sniff, sniff!). Since I’m still on vacation, I forgot that the holiday season was already over (I guess that means it’s time for me to take down my Christmas tree, lights and decorations...double sniff,sniff!). Walking in the park last night made me realize how lucky I am...I have the best of both worlds because I live in a small town but work in a big city. In my small town, I can walk to all of my destinations, experience peace and quiet, see the stars at night (no light pollution!) and have green spaces all around me. While at work in the big city, I have access to stores and services that aren't available in a small town, can visit museums and art galleries, go to the movie theatre or see a play, a musical or a concert, and most importantly, I can buy a Starbucks Chai latte :)

Have you thought about what makes your city, town or village a great place to live?

Although I didn’t take any photos of this year’s lights in the park, here are photos (taken with my iPhone so not the best quality) from last year (there wasn’t any snow when I took the photos but it’s quite spectacular when there’s snow!):