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The largest city in Québec’s Eastern Townships, about 60 mi/100km east of Montréal and 30 mi/50 km northwest of Québec’s border with Vermont and New Hampshire.
Sherbrooke is known among many New Englanders as the closest city where one can legally buy codeine at the pharmacy without a prescription (Google “Tylenol 1” and “AC&C” for more information). Also, since Québec’s drinking age is 18, many northern New England youth frequent Sherbrooke’s pubs and clubs.
The Eastern Townships are similar in topography to nearby New Hampshire and Vermont and, by Québec standards, a fairly large Anglophone (English-speaking) community, many of whom trace their ancestry to New England loyalists who fled north after the American Revolution.
Sherbrooke resembles a large, northern New England city, albeit with a French flair.
Sherbrooke is also the name of a major street in Montréal.
Boston area drivers are known for acting as if they are the only ones on the road, but there is a phenomenon in Wellesley (a very affluent suburb) which I have dubbed the "Wellesley Wait."
Drivers from other parts of Massachusetts and especially from out-of-state should pay heed to the example if they have the chance to drive through this beautiful town.
You are driving along one of Wellesley's major streets, notably Route 135 (Great Plain Ave) and Route 16 (Washington St). A driver (sorry to say, it is almost always a female) of an expensive SUV or European Station Wagon comes to a complete stop at the end of a side street or long driveway (many of Wellesley's "driveways" are longer than actual streets) and common sense/consensus would indicate this means the driver will wait for you to pass and then pull on to the state highway.
But nooooooo. You are driving along at 30-40 mph; there is nobody behind you nor in front of you. Just as you approach the intersection/driveway, the Wellesley driver will obliviously pull out right in front of you and proceed at a cement mixer's pace.
I don't condone jack rabbit starts, but if you are going to cut somebody off in your "Limited edition" Jeep, Lexus, Mercedes, or BMW SUV, inevitably equipped with the optional V8 engine, or turbocharged Volvo or Audi station wagon, please try to get up to at least 25 mph within 30 seconds after causing a driver minding his/her own business to nearly rear-end your yuppiemobile due to a mixture of selfishness and sense of oblivion.
The offending "Wellesley Wait" driver is almost always yacking away on her cell phone, impervious to the world around her.
The worst intersection for this infraction is where Benvenue Street intersects with Route 135/Great Plain Ave.
If you come to this intersection and one of these drivers abruptly cuts you off at the last minute, don't waste your energy honking your horn or otherwise getting angry. Just be prepared to poke behind that BMW X5 or Volvo Cross Country at 20 mph until you reach Olin College; most of the time, the driver will FINALLY reach speeds of 35-40 mph.
A "town that's technically a city" of approximately 55,000 residents in Norfolk County, Massachusetts, about 13 miles south-east of downtown Boston.
The town's length is about 7 miles north-to-south; the width is about 3.5 miles east-to-west.
Weymouth is on the South Shore, fondly nicknamed the Irish Riviera.
IMO, one of the town's true gems is Grape Island, located in the southern part of Boston Harbor and within Weymouth's jurisdiction.
A couple of years ago, a Boston Globe columnist who grew up in Weymouth stated that "Weymouth ain't Wellesley, it's not Weston, and it sure isn't Hingham. And that's a really good thing." That quote is on the Weymouth government web site, BTW.
However, Weymouth, MA is quickly becoming a gentrified town. While it will never vie with nearby Cohasset, Hingham, Milton, or Norwell in overall demographics, the town is rapidly shedding its blue collar reputation.
I wouldn't be surprised if, in five-years time, many people talking about the "old neighborhood" will be referring to Brookline or Cambridge, not necessarily Dorchester, South Boston, or Quincy.
I am seeing more Subaru Outback, Audi Quattro, and Volvo Cross Country cars parked in even the most modest of Weymouth establishments.
Weymouth has traditionally been a "Chevy and Toyota" kind of town.
Although I am happy to see Weymouth progressing economically, I fear that many longtime residents, and first-time home buyers who traditionally consider Weymouth a "step-up" to more affluent communties, will be priced out of this town altogether.
Acronym for “friend of a cousin,” (pronounced to rhyme with folk, as in the first syllable of folklore, for good reason), used to justify and/or rationalize a politically incorrect stereotype or urban legend.
Also used when asking a potentially embarrassing question about you. One uses a nonexistent “friend of a cousin” as a scapegoat to make the question more appropriate and/or to diffuse suspicion that the questioner is involved in such behavior.
Can also be rearranged to mean a “cousin of a friend,” “friend of a coworker,” “neighbor of an uncle,” etc. The “source” of the anecdote or person you are trying to “help” must be a vaguely-defined person at least two degrees of separation away from you.
A FOAC (friend of a cousin) or similar variants are described as follows:
A friend of a cousin has a neighbor who collects welfare and food stamps, yet drives a late-model Cadillac (Audi, Volvo, Lexus, etc.), has “deluxe package” Cable TV, and supposedly owns a cottage down at the shore. The cousin works 60 hours a week and drives a twelve-year old Volkswagen (Subaru, Chevrolet, Honda, etc.), can only afford basic cable (and doesn’t have the time to watch, anyway), and only takes a long-weekend vacation every two to three years.
A cousin of a friend is applying for a job requiring urine testing. Problem is, he has been smoking marijuana and illegally obtained pills containing Xanax and Codeine for years. How long will it take for him to get the drugs out of his system? And, by the way, are there any side effects of withdrawal I should have my friend tell his cousin about?
A coworker’s uncle got a flat front-tire while he was driving through Newark. A couple of minutes after he got out of the car to change the tire, he saw somebody trying to rip off the rear wheels of his car. “What the hell are you doing?,” asked this uncle, at the same time shocked, angry, and possibly fearing for his life. “Take it easy, man,” said the guy who’s removing the wheel from the back of the car. “You can have everything at the front of the car and I’ll strip the back.”
My neighbor has a nephew who works as a cashier at the A&P. He says many of his customers using food stamps buy prime rib, lobster, and other expensive food and, by the way, a few always try to buy beer and cigarettes with the stamps, which is illegal. Some of the customers use the stamps to buy their groceries and, after loading up their BMWs and Acuras with the food, come back into the store to buy their beer and cigarettes, with a “wad of twenties” in their hand.
My sister's brother-in-law is friends with a guy who owns an apartment building. One of the tenants is a 35 year old woman, on welfare and Section 8, who is not only a mother but also a grandmother! The woman has five kids from three men. A 17 year old daughter, two sons, 15 and 10, and two other daughters, 7 and 4. The 17 year old has followed her mother's lead in becoming a teenage mother and, like her mother, will probably not work a day in her life, yet get enough money to live a fairly decent lifestyle.
The scientific term for Aspirin. In many countries, notably Canada and Germany, "Aspirin" is a patented trademark of the local Bayer subsidiaries. Any non-Bayer products are labelled with the abbreviation ASA (Canadian English), AAS (Canadian French), and ASS (German). I am not making the last one up!
The term Acetylsalicylic Acid, in its entirety, is rarely used in layman's conversations.
Just as many people refer to any tissue as "Kleenex," Canadians often refer to non-Bayer ASA as "generic Aspirin" or, simply, "Aspirin."
A popular term for Acetylsalicylic Acid. In Canada and Germany, among other countries, Aspirin is a patented trademark of the local Bayer subsidiaries. Therefore, any non-Bayer products are labelled as ASA (Canadian English), AAS (Canadian French), and ASS (German). I am not making the last one up!
Take two aspirin and call me in the morning!
The way many people in areas as geographically disparate as Newfoundland, Canada and the white (whoite) population of western Alabama pronounce the world "white." It is said to be of Scottish-Irish origin.
People in Toronto think we Newfies are the whoite trash of Canada, but we really don't care.
Starving, poor white kid in western Alabama swatting flies off his arms and belly: "I'm hungry and them flies are everywhere!" "Shut up, son, at least you are whoite!"
Ol Alabama diddy from the 1940s: "Oh I may have a tumuh on me belly, at least I am whoite, I'm proud to be whoite!" (Saying "me belly" for "my belly" as recently as the 1940s leads credence to the belief that the 'whoite accent' of western Alabama is definitely British influenced (say, from 4-6 generations earlier).