The Daughter nursed a minor head cold last week. I thought I had dodged that particular bullet. Today…not so much. Ugh! And I really meant to get some writing done today, too….
2011: The year of the doldrums
This quiz is my traditional sign-off to a calendar year. 2011 was not a bad year, nor was it a great one. I didn’t make any great strides, but nothing cataclysmic happened either. This isn’t a complaint; I get the feeling that 2011 was a giant bowl of suck for a whole lot of people, and I am grateful that I wasn’t one of them. I hope that this year was more of a “just keep stacking the bricks one by one” kind of year, and that when I’m finished with all that brick-stacking, hey look, I’ve built the Great Wall of China. (That metaphor worked a lot better in my head, it must be admitted.)
So anyway, here are the questions that run down the year!
Did you keep your New Years’ resolutions, and will you make more for next year?
As always, some yes, some no. I haven’t made any great professional strides, either writing or at The Store, but I’ve gotten better at each, and I have a project (Princesses in SPACE!!!, not the actual title) that’s humming along nicely. And I did get healthier. So yay, me!
As for next year, the usual: write more, read more, exercise more, watch more movies. On the reading front, I’ll be participating in a Classics Challenge in 2012. If anyone wants to join, info is there!
Did anyone close to you give birth?
My sister-in-law had Child Unit Number Two. Other than that…nope. Just a few online friends and acquaintances.
Did anyone close to you die?
No.
What countries did you visit?
Never left the USA. We hope to go to Canada again next year sometime, but we haven’t left the USA in years. In my mind, though, I visited the Shire, Rohan, Gondor, and so on. As well as a whole bunch of planets. I spent a lot of time on a planet called Xonareth, but I can’t say more about that just yet.
What would you like to have in 2012 that you lacked in 2011?
A book with my name on it. I don’t know if that’ll be feasible, though…I’m still working on the first draft and am maybe two-thirds of the way through it. Then it’s time to edit it, generate the second draft, and proceed from there.
What was your biggest achievement of the year?
Moderate weight loss; getting started on Princesses In SPACE!!! (not the actual title).
What was your biggest failure?
I’m not sure if I’m ever going to return to The Promised King. The story still stays in my head, though, so…maybe.
What was the best thing you bought?
The Wife’s Kindle Fire; she is utterly entranced by the thing. Quite a few books. Two pairs of Carhartt overalls (a painter’s pair and a black “duck” pair).
Whose behavior merited celebration?
The Wife and Daughter, as always!
The “Occupy” folks. I question the efficacy of continued camping out in city squares, but I do not question the ideals of the movement, and I deeply hope that our country may finally, at long long long long last, be turning away from its decades-long unquestioned commitment to allowing money to flow straight to the top of society in the hopes that, when they finally fall down to our level, those table scraps are just awesome, man.
Whose behavior made you appalled and depressed?
The Republican presidential candidates. Seriously, watching these people desperately try to outclaw each other in an effort to prove to the Tea Partiers which one is the stupidest is one of the most depressing things I’ve ever seen. Just watching all of these people deny evolution, global warming, and other things, all the while continuing to insist that if we just cut all the taxes on rich people prosperity will return and the streets will flow with milk and honey makes me sick to my stomach.
Where did most of your money go?
Food, bills, books.
What did you get really excited about?
We took a trip to Pittsburgh as a family in the spring, and a trip to the Jersey Shore in the summer. The Wife and I had our annual fall getaway. Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows part 2 and The Muppets came out. I resumed exercise and weight training (fallen off the wagon a little bit during the holidays). I turned 40 (less excited about that one, maybe…although the pies were nice).
What song will always remind you of 2011?
In honor of the Occupy movement, the song that I believe should be our National Anthem (all due respect to “The Star Spangled Banner”):
(The fact that George Lucas shows up in the middle of the crowd in this video is just gravy.)
Compared to this time last year, are you happier or sadder?
Happier. But it’s touchy, so don’t piss me off, people!
(I kid, folks. I kid because I love.)
Thinner or fatter?
Thinner! Not by a whole lot, but thinner. A little bit at a time, folks. If you’re gonna build the Wall of China one brick at a time, you’re gonna take it apart one brick at a time, too.
Richer or poorer?
About the same…but on better grounding.
What do you wish you’d done more of?
Writing! And reading. And listening to music. And watching movies.
What do you wish you’d done less of?
Eating, I suppose. And I should probably stop throwing rocks at libertarians, Ayn Rand ideologues, and Ron Paul supporters. I just can’t help myself sometimes.
How did you spend Christmas?
Eating, opening gifts, going to church, driving around to look at lights, visiting Little Quinn at his grave, all the usual stuff.
Did you fall in love in 2010?
As always: I fall in love on a daily basis!
How many one-night stands?
Zero. I’m off the market, folks.
What was your favorite TV program?
Castle, The Big Bang Theory, Person of Interest (really liking this one so far), Pawn Stars (discovered on Netflix, post forthcoming), and all the old ones…Firefly, Star Trek, The X-Files. I want to watch Farscape and maybe Battlestar Galactica in the new year.
Do you hate anyone now that you didn’t hate this time last year?
I don’t do hate. And Osama Bin Laden is dead as old Marley, which I think is a Good Thing.
What was the best book you read?
A Tale of Two Cities. That book just made me a-quiver.
What was your greatest musical discovery?
Not a major year for musical discoveries, I’m sorry to say. Maybe I should try and discover some more music one of these years.
What did you want and get?
Books, movies, pizza, trying the new Japanese steakhouse, larger pans for Chicago deep-dish pizza, tickets to Wicked, tickets to Les Miz (it plays here in March 2012, but I’ve got the tickets already), new hand tools, a laminate trimmer, a new (to me) car, time with The Wife, new overalls, and pies in my face.
What did you want and not get?
A Dewalt compact router; an oscillating tool; an impact driver. A new laptop (although the old one’s not dead yet, and I’m loath to replace things like laptops before they die completely or become virtually unusable).
What were your favorite films of this year?
This is always tough, since I rarely see movies in the year they come out anymore. Harry Potter and The Muppets are probably tops. I haven’t blogged them yet, but I loved Space Battleship Yamato and Inglourious Basterds.
What did you do on your birthday?
Our annual trip to Ithaca, NY for the Apple Harvest Festival, which is always a wonderful time. More on the birthday celebration here.
How would you describe your personal fashion concept in 2011?
Huh…I haven’t changed my personal fashion concept in years. Maybe I should…but nah. It’s workwear-chic for the long haul!
What kept you sane?
Same reply as last year: Laughing; reading; writing; discovering that even though we’ve been together in one way or another for almost twenty twenty-one years, I still have ways of getting to know The Wife; singing loudly in the car when I’m by myself; torturing The Daughter with awful puns (something my father did to me, coincidentally enough!); geeking out to Star Wars and Lord of the Rings. And take it from me: if you ever feel that maybe you’re taking yourself too seriously, have your spouse or significant other hit you with a pie. It’s awfully hard to take yourself seriously when your face is dripping whipped cream and coconut custard.
Which celebrity/public figure did you fancy the most?
Stana Katic. Melissa Rauch. Lisa Edelstein. Hugh Laurie. Jeff Probst. Nathan Fillion. Barack Obama. Jon Stewart. And my newest love…Kat Dennings! Welcome aboard, Kat! (Hmmm…that sounded creepier than intended….)
What political issue stirred you the most?
The arrival on the scene of the Occupy movement thrilled me deeply. I hope now that it can move beyond protests and find a way to actually start to influence policy. This country needs to move to the left.
Who did you miss?
Most of the people who used to read this blog! Where’d you all go?
Who was the best new person you met?
The “Saturday Centus” folks are a wonderful bunch of eccentrics, weirdos, and scoundrels. I love ’em all, every one!
Tell us a valuable life lesson you learned in 2010:
In a way it’s deeply liberating to realize just how little people actually think of you. And not “how little they think” as in, they think poorly of you, but rather how little they think, as in, “Oh, I forgot all about that guy!”
And keeping the ones from years past: We learn by screwing up, so embrace your inner FAIL! The Internet is made of people. Punting is for losers. Democracy works, eventually. Not all tears are an evil. Whipped cream is a miracle substance. So is ice cream. Use your library; limiting your reading to only those books you can afford to buy is madness. OpenOffice rules. Buy good tools, take care of them, don’t lend them out, and they’ll last forever. Pie is wonderful stuff, whether on your plate or in your face. Screw fashion; if it’s comfy, wear it. We’re not meant to be alone. No object fits in your hand so perfectly as your wife’s hand, and no object fits so perfectly on your shoulder as your child’s head. Let it be, and all you need is love.
And keep smiling, because you never know what life will throw in your face next!
Quote a song lyric that sums up your year:
In a year which saw the pop-cultural return of the Muppets, and for a person like me who tries to spend as much time as possible in a dream state because the dreams are so much better than the reality, this song is the perfect summation of this year.
Why are there so many songs about rainbows
And what’s on the other side?
Rainbows are visions, but only illusions,
And rainbows have nothing to hide.
So we’ve been told and some choose to believe it
I know they’re wrong, wait and see.
Someday we’ll find it, the rainbow connection,
The Lovers, the Dreamers, and Me.
Who said that every wish would be heard and answered
when wished on the morning star?
Somebody thought of that and someone believed it,
and look what it’s done so far.
What’s so amazing that keeps us stargazing?
And what do we think we might see?
Someday we’ll find it, the rainbow connection,
the Lovers, the Dreamers, and Me.
All of us under its spell,
we know that it’s probably magic….
Have you been half asleep, and have you heard voices?
I’ve heard them calling my name.
Is this the sweet sound that calls the young sailors?
The voice might be one and the same.
I’ve heard it too many times to ignore it.
It’s something that I’m supposed to be.
Someday we’ll find it, the rainbow connection,
the Lovers, the Dreamers, and Me!
To all the Lover and Dreamers out there, may 2012 be well and truly blessed!
(Regular blogging will resume on Monday, January 2.)
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On That Day
On that day, it was bright and sunny. It was a Monday, the one just after Thanksgiving. I got up and got ready for work; I heard him breathing. I left.
On that day, I got to work and bought a bag of tiny Christmas bows, which I would use to decorate my nametag. I didn’t even get to open the bag, because I got paged about ten minutes into my shift to pick up a call on the outside line. It was too early for such a call.
On that day, I heard the words “He’s not breathing” uttered for the first time in real life, in reference to a human being. Somehow I had the presence of mind to ask if she’d called 911. A coworker drove me home. I remember two, and only two, things from that drive: passing the ambulance going the other way, and saying, “I’m not ready for this.”
On that day, I wasn’t ready. Part of me had known, since very shortly after his birth, that a day like this was almost certain to come. His life was too ephemeral; every day was too much a struggle for it to not come to a point when the struggle just had to end. But I wasn’t ready, on that day. How the hell could I have been?
On that day, The Daughter slept through it all. She missed a school field trip, but she slept through her mother’s panicked attempts at CPR, though paramedics, and through three police officers who stayed there to wait for me to get home. She slept while I let the cops leave, and while I sat in the armchair – the one where I’d often held him during feedings and naps – and waited for the phone to ring.
On that day, I discovered that when you know what the news is going to be, there is no more piercing, shattering, world-destroying sound as the phone ringing. I answered it before the ring had even finished. It was a nurse who nicely and professionally told me that she was going to hand the phone to my wife. I heard the words then, the words I’d known were coming – “He’s gone”.
On that day I learned that the words you know are coming can still blow everything in your life away.
On that day I called work and told them I wouldn’t be back in. I tried to tell them why without saying the goddamn words “He died”, but no amount of euphemism was getting through to the person I was talking to, so I had to fucking say it. That was the first time I was angry through it all. It would not be the last.
On that day I awoke The Daughter and told her that we had to go to the hospital. “Is he sick again?” she asked. “Yeah,” I said. We drove down there. We had to wait at the desk for the attendant to come back to show us to the room where The Wife was waiting. There were a few other people there, a Catholic chaplain among them, being so nice and supportive and there. I finally kicked them all out. I was damned if we were doing this in front of a bunch of damned strangers.
On that day, I was pretty rude to that Chaplain. Later she offered a prayer, to which I brusquely responded, “Our pastor’s coming. He can do it.” Not a fine moment, and looking back, I don’t think I had much of an excuse. Not even that was a good excuse for snapping at someone who was genuinely trying to be a source of comfort. I realize that that Chaplain has probably seen worse, and like as not, she has no recollection now of that day. But I remember it.
On that day, we had to talk to a county coroner’s office employee who was very professional and about as kind as he could have been as he explained to us that by County law (or maybe it was State law), an autopsy would be performed, because it had involved cerebral palsy. He said we could stop it with a court order. We didn’t have a lawyer, though, or much inclination to fight that particular battle.
On that day I learned that if you die with a breathing tube in your throat, it stays in there until the body is released. I’m sure there’s a logical reason for this. I’m not sure there’s a good reason for this.
On that day, we had to tell The Daughter that her little brother had died. I can think back on nearly every minute of his life that I remember and not cry, but this moment…I can’t think of it without tears. I was worried if she even understood death all that much, but she immediately began to cry and said, “I didn’t get to say goodbye.” She understood it just fine.
On that day, The Daughter was robbed of being a sister. We left her later on with a friend so we could do some things…or maybe this was the next day…the friend later told us that, referring to his g-tube, The Daughter asked, “Will the angels know how to feed him?” We got her a necklace a short time later, with a pendant on it that read, “Special Sister”, because she was. But as far as I know, she has never worn it. I wonder often how the scar of that day and the ones that followed will affect her the rest of her days.
On that day, I realized that I have questions that will never be answered. I came to a deep anger at a God who may not even be there. I came to questions like, “What, our prayers weren’t good enough?” and “What about your plan is so important that this was essential?” and “If this was your plan all along, then what was the point of the praying?”. I began to feel a deep contempt for platitudes such as “He works in mysterious ways.” Someone told me that maybe God put him with us, knowing that we could take care of him, with his cerebral palsy, and my immediate thought (which I had the good sense not to speak out loud) was, “Or, God could, you know, just not have him born with CP in the first goddamned place.” I still struggle with this. I don’t expect this struggle to ever end.
On that day I lost any chance to redeem myself. In truth…I wasn’t the best father for him.
On that day, the sun shone bright and clear as I drove home with a family that was smaller than it had been the day before.
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Thankfulness
My annual grab-bag of stuff I’m thankful for. This is not an exhaustive list.
Cheddar cheese so sharp it makes you pucker
Sesame crackers
Our azalea plant
Our ivy plant
Cats
Get Fuzzy
My blog
Other peoples’ blogs
George Lucas
Star Wars
My dining room table
Klein screwdrivers
LED flashlights
William Shatner
Sela Ward
Mary Stewart’s Arthurian trilogy (on the roster for a re-read)
Stephen KingThe hardware store in my old hometown
Angle grinders
My new jigsaw
The glory years of the Buffalo Bills
Watching Star Trek: The Next Generation every night at college
Surprising The Daughter with a new Webkinz
Ms. Pac-Man
Sergei Rachmaninov
The Beatles
Van Halen
Baked pasta dishes
Pizza
Cookies
Harry Potter
Guy Gavriel Kay
Space opera
Planetary Romance
Chestnut Ridge ParkBig, thick poetry collections
Jerry Sullivan, Buffalo News sports columnist
Small, artfully illustrated poetry collections
My drill
Schopp and the Bulldog (Buffalo sports talk radio guys)
Fried chicken
Italian sausage
The music of Les Miserables
That in 2012 I will finally get to see Les Miserables
That in 2012 I plan to read Les Miserables
The Amazing Race
Canada and Canadians — you folks rock!
Pseudo-ethnic cuisine that I love because it tastes good, and which doesn’t bother me for its lack of authenticityBrian and Stewie on The Family Guy
Everyone who ever acted in a Harry Potter movie, at all, ever.
Elections
Aaron Sorkin when he’s on his game
Steak
Chess
Comics
Big breakfasts that leave me full until mid-afternoon
Light breakfasts that take the edge off until a nice lunch
Firefly
The Mentalist
Tasting something good at a restaurant and figuring out how to make it at homeIce cream at the roadside place down the road
The County Fair
Libraries
JRR Tolkien
Route 20-A in the fall
Sandals
Using the scissor jack at work
Blue denim bib overalls
Hickory-striped bib overalls
Pie with ice cream on the side
Seeing a pie in the face
Receiving a pie in the face
Monty Python
Aquariums and science museums
The Origin of Species
Complete collections of Shakespeare
Thick, fuzzy socks in the winter
Two thriving ivy plants, one grown from a cutting off the original, which we’ve had since The Daughter was bornEggs
Watching the Super Bowl
Watching figure skating
Discovering new authors
Liking books on the re-read that I didn’t like the first time
Daniel Craig as James Bond
George Lazenby as James Bond
The Y
My MP3 player
My cell phone
The Burchfield Nature and Art Center
The Daughter learning the string bass
John Williams
Hector Berlioz
Toronto
Pittsburgh
Dremel rotary tool
Having already purchased The Wife’s Christmas present
Castle and Beckett
Nathan Fillion
Stana KaticDr. Sheldon Cooper
“[knock knock knock] Penny? [knock knock knock] Penny? [knock knock knock] Penny?”
A Tale of Two Cities
Thin-mint Girl Scout Cookies
Roast turkey
Chicken wings
Coke Zero
Princesses In SPACE!!! (not the actual title.)
Anthony Bourdain
Rachel Maddow
George Carlin
Hayao Miyazaki
On balance, President Obama
Zooey Deschanel
Using my wok more this past year than all the years prior, combined
Anyone who reads this blog
Baby Fiona
Little Quinn
The Daughter
The Wife
I’m sure I’ve missed a veritable ton of stuff…but hey, I’ll add some more next year. Happy Thanksgiving, faithful and constant readers!
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A random observation
We’re watching a UK-edition episode of Kitchen Nightmares on Netflix right now. It’s amusing that the swear words aren’t bleeped. It’s even more amusing that I often don’t even recognize the swear words as swear words, owing to pronunciations and accents. I hear these folks say things like “Give me the fookin thing”, where ‘fook’ rhymes with ‘book’, and I wonder, “What is a ‘fookin’ thing”?
Anyway….
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Pearls explains it all to you
Pie Society
My friend Lynda, a constant source of wisdom and amusement, has resurrected her once long-standing tradition of celebrating her birthday with a pie in the face (which is a fine tradition indeed, even if it’s not technically a ‘tradition’ for me yet). A teacher by trade, she offered her students an incentive: the highest-scoring student on a recent exam got to do the deed. Although she apparently didn’t factor in the possibility of a tie, so she ended up on the receiving end of two pies. Lucky her!
As she says:
Between landing my new job and making some excellent connections with people I care about, it just felt like everything in my life is swimming with blessings right now. I was so grateful and giddy with how things unfolded, what can I say…it just made me want to do another pie. Only this time I did it with a twist.
…
Life is sweet – and if you don’t believe me – honestly, there’s nothing to kick start your sense of humor like a nice gooey pie in the face.
I couldn’t agree more! Lynda and I have a long-standing agreement that if and when we ever actually meet in “real” space (as opposed to “cyber” space), we’ll mark the occasion with a hearty exchange of pies. What a blast!
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You learn something every day!
Whilst on break at The Store today, we observed our coffee bar employee making a smoothie that looked particularly tasty. When we asked her what flavor it was, she told us, “Peach and raspberry. It’s a Peach melba”. This got us on the topic of the word “melba”. What does that mean? Is there a flavor called “melba” that pairs particularly well with peach? And is this flavor any relation at all to those little slices of dried bread, called “melba toast”?
So in a moment of downtime later on, we did some Googling and found out that in the late 1800s, there was an opera singer — a soprano — named Dame Nellie Melba. Apparently Dame Melba had quite the career, and she was especially beloved in her native Australia, as she was that country’s first international music superstar. A French chef invented four foods in her honor, including a dessert called “Peach Melba”, and, believe it or not, Melba toast (which he created for her during a time of illness, when her diet was restricted).
Here is what Dame Nellie Melba looked like:
And there you have it. There really was a person named Melba, much beloved in the musical realm in her time, but whose name lives down to us today in culinary terms.
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Random Stuff from the Week that Was
So, last week was my 40th birthday, as I noted at the time. Because of work schedules, we rarely celebrate birthdays on the dates on which they fall; instead we schedule some time off as near as we can, and celebrate then. It was a great week, though, it really was. Of course, it got off to the perfect start, with this happening:
And the week really did stay about that good! I worked a short work week before taking a five-day weekend (which includes today, so I’m back to work tomorrow), and I wasn’t unproductive during that work week, either. Then The Wife and I had a nice couple of days off together, during which we took a little trip, and as several people asked me on Facebook and in e-mail, there were pies.
But more on those in a bit…random thoughts and stuff first.
:: Autumnal weather has at last taken hold in Western New York…which, for me, means “time for overalls”. That’s just one of many reasons why this time of year is my favorite. Cool weather means overalls, and time off means naps!
Of course, naps are always welcome, but there’s something about naps in fall and winter that makes them so much better than naps in spring and summer. Sometimes naps in summer feel like wasted time. Of course, that’s just humans, I suppose. Cats never feel like napping is a waste of time. In fact, I wonder sometimes what the evolutionary benefit is to cats of getting all that sleep!
I also wonder where cats slept before the invention of the cardboard box.
:: Car repair places irritate me. We had to take The Wife’s van in for some work, and wouldn’t you know it, they found other stuff wrong that really needs to be fixed soon soon soon! We’ll get those things fixed, but not at that place, which is almost certainly overpriced. The only reason we went there is that we needed to get the tires rotated, which is free since that’s where we got the tires. We also had them check the oil and find out what the “Check Engine” light was all about, which is where it all started. Luckily it’s not super-pressing, so we can save up money and then get the fix done. But ye Gods, I hate the “Hey, we found some stuff on your car!” stuff.
But hey, at least we’re not this guy:
Ye Gods, indeed! This, folks, is why I maintain a state of deep suspicion of other people when I’m driving.
:: The Wife and I made our annual excursion to the Ithaca Apple Harvest Festival this weekend. We discovered this festival quite by chance in 2007, when we planned a getaway sans destination. All we knew was that we were going away, but we had no idea where. I did some Googling and found out about this Festival, and aside from 2008 (when The Wife journeyed to see her ailing mother), we’ve gone every year since. But Ithaca’s quite a long drive from Buffalo (two-point-five to three hours), so we always stay someplace in Rochester overnight and then take the remaining drive the next day. This year we stayed near the Eastview Mall, and we had dinner at PF Chang’s, where we’d never eaten before.
We loved the meal we had there. They have a nice “dinner for two” menu which made the meal more reasonable than we’d even expected, and the food we had was really quite good. No, it wasn’t as good as the best Chinese I’ve ever had — that honor goes to a dim sum place in Toronto, and the Shanghai Restaurant, also in Rochester (Henrietta, specifically) — but it was certainly better than the local takeout joints we like to frequent at Casa Jaquandor. I took some photos of our food, and I put them on Flickr, but…they’re not very good photos. Too dark, really. I was taking them with my phone, and I had the flash off as the phone flash is an LED that makes everything look slightly unnatural. Sometimes I like that effect, but not with food. Anyway, we shared an appetizer of crab-filled wontons (pretty much the same idea as any “crab rangoon” you’ll get anyplace else, although much better prepared), cups of hot-and-sour soup (again, same idea, but terrifically prepared), and then we split Kung Pao Shrimp and Orange Peel Chicken. It was a wonderful meal.
And the place was packed when we arrived, so we put our name on the list and then went to wander the mall for a bit. It’s been several years since I’ve walked a mall. I remember the Eastview Mall from when I was ten years old — the place has been there for many moons — but it has more than doubled in size since then, and now it is positively massive, with several wings added since then that are actually larger than the one wing that used to comprise the entire mall. Lots of folks think that malls are dead, but they’re not; they seem to be accreting, though, so an area with a bunch of small malls eventually becomes an area with one big mall.
Oh, and for ten bucks I got a set of Star Wars cookie cutters at Williams-Sonoma. Score!
:: The next morning we departed Rochester (OK, Victor) for Ithaca. Someday I want to have more than just a single overnight trip for this journey, because really, I just love that part of New York State. It actually starts right in my own town, with the start of Route 20A, which is my favorite drive anywhere. It’s just a gorgeous drive, through the hill country that rests about ten to twenty miles south of the flat I-90 corridor. Sure, since we were going to Rochester I could have saved at least half an hour by taking the Thruway, but why do that? The Thruway has zero personality…and to drive it, you have to pay tolls. Ugh.
After spending the night in Victor (a southeastern suburb of Rochester), we drove the next day first through Pittsford and some of Rochester’s eastern suburbs and then farther east, through towns like Phelps, Palmyra, Waterloo, and Seneca Falls. I always love driving through these towns, with their central business districts lined with brick buildings, occasional crossings of the Erie Canal, and out in the country between towns, driving past farms and properties where the houses often look like they were built before the Civil War. Undoubtedly, some of them were. There’s a real sense of driving through history, I find, in those old towns. Waterloo bills itself as the birthplace of Memorial Day. Seneca Falls played a role in the women’s suffrage movement. And Joseph Smith originally hailed from Palmyra…which means that in the space of less than fifty miles, we drove through the birthplaces of Memorial Day, womens’ rights, and the Mormon church!
And then there’s the drive south to Ithaca itself. Because of the presence of the Finger Lakes, each one running north-to-south, between Buffalo and Ithaca, there is no ‘straight line’ route available. You either drive south, and then east; or you go east, and then south. We always do the latter, so we can drive along the shores of Cayuga Lake. The Finger Lakes are just stunningly gorgeous, all year. I adore that whole region…and at last, it was into Ithaca for the Apple Harvest Festival, huzzah!
:: On our previous trips to the AppleFest, each time it’s been a gorgeous, bright, crisp, sunny Fall day. This time…not so much.
Yeah. Brrrr. Luckily I wisely dressed in layers.
Cold, rainy, and dingy.
As usual, there was a pilgrimage to Autumn Leaves Books, with their nice stock of F&SF. I could spend an hour here, easily. Autumn Leaves is not your “typical” used bookstore, with dim lights and stacks of books teetering everywhere; this store is bright, spacious, and organized. This time I wrote out a list of books that I wanted to look for — mostly space operas, of course — and I actually found one. I also bought an SF book by LE Modessit Jr — I’ve never read him before — and a fantasy trilogy by an author I’d never heard of before at all. Why not?
It wasn’t all bookstores for me, though…we looked up a knitting/crocheting store for The Wife, and she loved the place. She’s developed a real love of crocheting over the last couple of years, and she’s always on the lookout for good places to buy supplies. She liked the selection, the bright organization (some yarn stores can be dark and depressing, she says), and the pair of women who worked there were very gregarious and helpful. Of course, I know next to nothing about yarn, so while she was looking at stuff…
…I was taking photos of myself in the mirror and of cool-looking yarn.
Eventually we warmed up with some hot cider…
…and had a lunch of waffles and fried chicken. Now, I had expressed some skepticism of this food combo when I first encountered it, but I must admit…it’s a terrific match! Loved it. Next year we’re getting two of ’em. There’s this wonderful little restaurant in the middle of the Downtown Commons in Ithaca that features waffles in what must be dozens of permutations.
Finally, after touring all of the craft tents (where we bought The Daughter a bracelet and where I bought The Wife a necklace-and-earrings set), we decided that it was time to start heading home. And it was a good time for that, too, because this is what the weather turned out like an hour or so later:
On the way home we stopped for dinner at a joint in Avon, NY called Tom Wahl’s, which is a burgers-and-dogs drive in…but the burgers were really very good and their onion rings are fantastic. It’s a chain in the Rochester area, and their root beer is awesome.
:: And finally, there was my favorite part of the week: the coconut cream pies. Four of ’em, thick and gooey and creamy. Mmmmm, pie….
Then to blow out the candles…
…and, finally, splat!
Here’s the video I made of this pieing.
Yeah, I know, it’s weird. So what? It’s also fun. Life is just too short to take oneself seriously all the time. Maybe I’ll get five pies in my face when turn fifty! A pie in the face isn’t exactly a birthday tradition for me — we do it once or twice a year whenever, depending on opportunity — but maybe it will be now. Pies in the face rule.
So, to recap: the Bills beat the Patriots; I get to wear overalls again (which, I might add, are all fitting better since I’ve been losing weight!); an overnight trip with my wonderful wife through the finest parts of New York; used bookstores; yarn stores; new jewelry for the ladies in my life; dinner at PF Chang’s; Star Wars cookie-cutters; waffles and fried chicken; burgers and onion rings at Tom Wahl’s; and I get hit in the face with four coconut cream pies.
That’s a great week, folks.
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Slurm for Everyone!
Yup…I’m 40 today.
That’s a nice round number, and 40 is one of those nice round numbers, the ones that supposedly mark a milestone of some sort, which are supposed to prompt some kind of introspection. But…you know what? I’m not feeling all that introspective about turning 40. I’m doing OK in most respects, although I’m showing my age in others. One thing, though — I have always refused to believe that my future path is set, and I still believe that the main factor standing between me and the things I want to do is me.
So maybe I’ll be upset when I turn 50. But for now, onward and upward!