Friday five of sorts.

I'm still a little off from the recent news about my aunt. It's upsetting for sure, but it's doubly upsetting to know that one day, probably in the next 5-10 years, I'll be the one getting the call my cousin got. And I also can't imagine waking up one day to find that the person you've spent 40+ years of your life with has passed away. I had a hard enough time when Riley died. I can't imagine dealing with a real person situation like that. (Why I'm still single, exhibit #497?)

Anyway. Five things you might not know about Maryland, my home state, in no particular order:

• It's north of Virginia and next to/north of DC. Not next to North Carolina, not west of Virginia (that would be West Virginia), not underneath Georgia.
  
• It shares latitude with Northern California (somewhere around Redding from the looks of the map) whereas Portland shares latitude with Maine. This explains why it's still light at 9:30pm in the summer evenings here versus 8pm in those other spots. It doesn't make it OK that it's still light at 9:30pm here, but that's another story altogether.
• Baltimore is the most populated city in Maryland but it is not the only city in Maryland. There's the state capitol, Annapolis. Fans of The Wire might have also noticed several other Maryland cities McNulty ticked off along I-95 in season 3 (Laurel was one - I've spent lots of time in Laurel). And there are even more cities than those! Hard to imagine, I know.
  
• According to August 2007 census data, Maryland is now the wealthiest state in the United States. (I did not know that!)
• In 1790 Maryland rounded up all the lawyers in the state and threw them into a fetid swamp near the southern border of the state, now known as Washington, D.C. (I stole that from someone's blog which contains other sentiments I don't agree with - so I won't take credit for it, but I won't give him credit for it either.)
  

This week's boring Friday five brought to you by... oh, I don't know, the person earlier this week who said "oh, you're from Maryland? you should talk to so-and-so! He's from Baltimore!" but upon further inquiry with so-and-so it turns out he's not from anywhere near Baltimore, and seemed just as dismayed as I was that everyone assumes everyone from Maryland is from Baltimore. And by everyone who's ever asked me why I don't have a southern accent.

Next week's geography lesson: why Portland and Seattle are actually not the same place, despite the fact that they're both in the Pacific Northwest. Brought to you by everyone who's asked me, "so, how's Seattle?"