This might appeal to some people: you can buy a home in Rivendell. Of course, it looks like you'll be needing to make a troll's hoard of a salary to afford it, but livin' large Elf-style don't come cheap. (Caveat: these homes don't really look anything like Elrond's digs, but instead seem to be the usual higher-end, vaguely "rustic" style suburban ranch-type home. Some of them even have those hideous, useless entry-archway things that are too big to to be called "stoops" and too small to be any type of porch. Via Dustbury.)
Posted by Andrea Harris at April 14, 2003 05:23 PMHey, thanks. :) Now I'm thinking of a header graphic.
Posted by: Andrea Harris at April 14, 2003 at 06:14 PMThe really exasperating aspect of the Rivendell subdivision (which now occupies nearly two quarter-sections, half a square mile) is Oklahoma City's insistence that east-west streets follow the city's numbering routine, lest the fire department, which has to cover 600 square miles total, find itself bewildered. It takes at least half of the fun out of giving directions when you have to tell someone, "It's on Rohan Road at S.W. 123rd Street."
Posted by: CGHill at April 14, 2003 at 10:08 PMHow funny. We have no such problems in Orlando. Here you can make the streets go in any direction you want, and call them whatever the hell. The map of Greater Orlando looks like a pile of dropped spaghetti. Streets here won't fit into the fields of most of the software I have to use at work: think of names like "12486 Top O'the Mornin' Green Circle Road" and (this one I swear to god is real) "Glacier National Park Boulevard." I swear I've seen subdivisions where all the street names are in a foreign language, like Finnish, or maybe Klingon.
Posted by: Andrea Harris at April 14, 2003 at 10:18 PMIn this area, we're all on one giant grid, major arteries following section lines, adjusting at Wilshire Blvd. to allow for the curvature of the earth (this is not a joke), and while residential streets can curve and swoop and dive, if they're deemed east-west streets, they will conform — at least, within OKC limits. (Other municipalities are less anal about it.)
Tulsa is worse. There are four (I think) sets of street names, arranged in alphabetical order; beyond them, you're stuck with map coordinates disguised as street addresses. My brother once traced an old high-school acquaintance to Tulsa and suggested they meet; she was amenable, and gave him directions of the general description of "Right off the intersection of 129th and 41st." This wouldn't perplex a Tulsan, or even a New Yorker, but it threw him; he called me for assistance, and I told him to take I-44, exit at 41st, and drive to 129th, which didn't help much. (Actual address was something like 3982 South 127th East Avenue; for a town that has four street names starting with X, this is incredibly blah.)
Posted by: CGHill at April 15, 2003 at 08:39 AM