hey peeps -- long time no post.

happy holi-daze... i'm feeling a little dazed myself today.

let's see, what's new(s)...?

great christmas gifts from ami... grey ribbed Calvin Klein sweater and... wait for it...

...a new Islanders jersey!! SWEET. she gave it to me early so i could wear it to the isles-sabres game on 12/12/07. isles lost but it was fun getting hostile looks at Irish Times and at the arena, ha.

went to long island to see the 'rents and g'rents and spent down time with my sisters. my youngest sister Jessica and her bf Dan met me in NYC and we saw the tree. we also went to the east village, ate in a fantastic tiny little Mexican restaurant and drank Christmas ales at Hop Devil, a beer bar.

after a few days on LI i actually missed buffalo. bizarre.

anyway back now and ami and i are trying to pack in some good times before i head off to europe for a few days (strasbourg, paris, brussels). we've succeeded so far but today is kinda blah.

the only interesting thing that's happened today -- save for a nice catching up phone call from chica -- is that i got mildly gay-bashed on the metro. maybe my fashion sense is too allentown, but i got called a fag and a fruit-cup on the train this afternoon. nice.

stay classy, buffalo.

Yesterday Ami and I checked out 888 Main, the new restaurant/bar on Main between Allen and Virginia. It's just a few doors south of Hyatt's art supply store. It was a spur-of-the-moment kind of thing, stopped by for a beer after work and stayed for a pizza. Lo, and it was good, my peeps. I definitely recommend it. Dan, the bartender (and owner-operator?) told us about using premium-quality ingredients for the pizza, etc. I don't doubt it because it was the tastiest Buffalo-city-style pizza I've had in Buffalo. If you don't know what I mean, it's that not-quite-deep-dish, way-too-thick-for-New-York-City-style-thin-crust pizza that seems to dominate around here. If Buffalo itself is somewhere between New York and Chicago, so is its local pizza. Anyway, I digress. We had a hot-sausage white pizza and it was delicious -- a perfectly baked, crispy-edged pie with sliced sausage, peppers, and onions. It tasted fine with a cold PBR on tap. Other tap beers included Hefe Weissen, Anchor Steam, Southern Tier IPA, Otter Creek Stovepipe Porter, and a few others. The decor is stylish, tall ceilings and a big blood-red wall behind the bar, and the tables looked potentially cozy. Ami took a couple of camera-phone pix:

A little slice of 888 Main


The whole shebang (drooling...)

Tried to go back tonight with (e:chica) for after-work beers and snacks but to no avail. Doors were closed and locked at 5:50 p.m. Hmmm. But I'd guess this is an anomaly. I was disappointed because there are a bunch of other pizzas I want to try, and there are appetizers that sounded tempting, plus I think they do a couple of pasta dishes or something. I liked the stylish-but-not-over-the-top bar, low lighting, and good-noshes-at-good-prices vibe of the place. Plus Dan was playing some mix tape his gf made that had a pleasantly odd mix of tunes.

Only problem is that the facade does really identify the place very well, and there are no sidewalk signs or anything either. Look for the Southern Tier neon bar light in the window. For now it's dinner-only, but we were told that if it catches on with people at the medical campus that lunch was a possibility.

Oh, and apparently mine was the very first credit card transaction that the bartender processed (ever!), so that was kinda cool I guess. If you go, post and let us know how it was for you...

Just wanted to post a belated thank-you to (e:kookcity2000) for the free oldy-school stereo [see (e:kookcity2000,39165) ]. Here's a pic of the stereo with some goofy/fabulous speakers i picked up for six bucks at a garage sale on the West Side.


(Sorry for the poor photo quality, it was taken with an old cell phone.)


In other, more disturbing news, looks like (e:joshua,40409) 's post on Jim Cramer's freakout session a week ago was rather prescient.

chica and I went hiking at Letchworth State Park for the first time on Saturday. We hiked nearly half of the Gorge Trail, enough to see the three sets of waterfalls and some nice woods. The trail was very easy overall for being rated "moderate".

Here are some photos, mostly taken by chica. If you haven't been to Letchworth, go. It is a beautiful park.

trailhead






thanks random Asian tourist for taking this shot!









perched turkey buzzard that chica snuck up on


random trash i picked up--people are such savages...is it so hard to understand "pack in, pack out"?

• Fantastic* hamburgers and good draft beer at Sterling Place Tavern on Hertel Avenue.

Had heard the burgers were "best in the city" and beyond, and while I've had some fine burgers here in B-lo, I'm inclined to agree. The burgers are big, thick, juicy (well, mine was medium-rare, but even medium-well looked juicy to me) and utterly delicious. (sorry, no pic)

Service was a bit slow at times, since there was just one bartender to cope with a modest bar presence and probably 7-8 tables of people ordering drinks and/or food, but the bartender was nice and apologetic, and the owner, John, was very personable and pleasant.

Beers on tap included some of the Great Lakes Brews out of Cleveland ("Eliot Ness" and "Burning River"), Newcastle Brown Ale, Flying Bison's Oatmeal Stout, a fine wheat beer or two, Stella Artois, Pilsner Urquell, and two or three other brews I'm forgetting.

Anyway, it's not much to look at from the outside, and the service may be slow, and (rumor has it) that the tavern is sometimes closed on non-obvious nights (Friday, Saturday) for seemingly no good reason, but if you're on Hertel Ave and have a ravenous appetite and a hankering for red meat and good beer, check out the Sterling Place Tavern. If it's open, get your butt in there and ask to order up a tasty burger.

Yum.


also, thanks to my partners in crime, Amy M and Ami... :-)

Check out this article from the New York Times about the $225,000 parking spot.


Yes, you read that correctly, $225,000 for a PARKING SPOT.

I know there are some days in early February in Buffalo, after driving around the neighborhood for 30 minutes looking for an open space, when we'd all consider paying through the nose for a spot.

But $225,000????

I know it's Manhattan and all, and you just can't beat New York City, it's an amazing city, yadda yadda yadda.

But $225,000? Really? Really??

Here's what $225,000 will get you in B-lo today:

293 Highland Avenue (near Norwood)

Victorian 4 bedroom house, 2 full baths, 2760 sq ft
w/deck, fully fenced yard, 7-person hot tub, shed, porch, fireplace, full attic and basement, driveway (aha! parking space included!), laundry room, inlaid hardwood floors, pocket doors.
(MLS# 287216)

New York City is fine, but you gotta love Buffalo!

Intriguing article about people in Britain hopping on the "no-plastic-grocery bags" bandwagon, in part because of the screening of a new documentary showing the consequences of discarded plastic bags on marine life in the Pacific Ocean:


I'm of two minds on this issue (yeah, I always have this problem, there are too many shades of grey in this world). On the one hand, the plastic bags are often strong and can provide multiple uses before having to be discarded, and are usable for trash bags, etc. When I go to Wegman's and am asked whether plastic is OK, I almost inevitably assent. The fact is, I'm used to using them and don't have a good substitute for them in terms of household re-use.

On the other hand, as the article notes, the environmental consequences of ubiquitous plastic-bag use are substantial and discouraging. Sea animals choke on them, ingest them and have potentially fatal reactions to the plastic in their system, the bags typically are not easily degradable and will clog landfills for generations, etc. And to boot, they are petroleum-based, so they only prolong and worsen our dependence on oil.

One thing is for sure -- I don't think government action is the key to a positive change. Apparently in Ireland they imposed a tax on the bags, and use of them has plummeted. Effective, perhaps, but I don't think the US and especially WNY needs yet another tax. Rather, it would be spendid if folks would just start using more permanent canvas totes or nylon backpacks to carry their groceries. Unfortunately, I'm skeptical about thie prospects of this. I know that there is a dedicated minority out there who already use permanent bags, and that almost certainly includes some enlightened (e:strip)pers. But I just doubt that the majority of folks want to lay out even a little cash to buy those non-disposable Wegman's mesh bags, the Co-op canvas totes, or other stores' equivalents. (Is Tops offering a more permanent alternative as well? Haven't been in a while.) And I think that folks (myself included) who do try to use a permanent bag will lapse and forget and probably laze their way back into using the ultra-convenient plastic ones.

Apart from resolving to do a better job of avoiding plastic bags myself, is there something I should be doing to reduce the negative impact of these little buggers?

Perhaps I should buy the women in my life this product?

Ugh. based on my own research and on a conversation with a close friend who is an ER doc, I think I have patellar tendinitis in my left knee. Pushing off for sprinting/jumping, going up stairs, kneeling/pushing off from the floor, etc. all cause quite lovely flashes of pain in my knee. This has been going on for about 10 days now. Fantastic!

Naturally , just when I was starting to feel good about distance running, I get a repetitive stress injury. So, running 15-18 miles per week was great for cardiovascular health, physical endurance, weight control, and my mental health, but now it seems it has also sowed the seeds of its own demise. That is, the primary treatment for patellar tendinits ("jumper's knee" -- sort of like tennis elbow only in the kneecap area) is rest -- so I have to avoid the running that brought on the annoying affliction in the first place. This is KILLING me because the good weather makes me want to go tool around Delaware Park, but I can't, because I'll aggravate the knee and worsen/prolong the injury. I'd love to run in a 5k or 10k race, but that's a bad idea for at least a few weeks. (aaarggh!) And, interestingly enough, this type of injury is resistant to typical anti-inflammatories, so drugs won't help all that much. Yay! I so love being injured.

I know this is really no big deal in the grand scheme of things, but I needed to vent. :-P

On the bright side, I'm going to see Social Distortion at Town Ballroom in July. :-)

Who will die and complete the deathtroika?

1. Boris Yeltsin, former president of Russia

2. David Halberstam, Vietnam-era journalist and author

3. ?????

I haven't watched Jeopardy! in a long time, but a friend from high school just become the new champ. Chris was the editor-in-chief of the school newspaper the year before I was. Maybe this means I'm in line to win $25,000 on Jeopardy! next year. ;-) If only.