I have been waiting for two weeks now to get my next restaurant review set up. At this point, I have to do it today. It's due tomorrow.

Apparently the person at the restaurant who would approve such a thing is on an indefinite vacation. These people are so disinterested in whether they get a review that they've just kept putting us off until: you guessed it. I can't write a review this week.

Which means that a) the paper has a blank space, b) I'm off my schedule and now no longer will be published in the same issues as Z's biweekly column, and c) I'm sitting around on my ass having blocked out the time to go to the damn place today and now have a space of my own to fill.

Am I really feeling like writing them a good review?

"N, while a great place to eat, are inconsiderate and disinterested fucks who don't care about publicity and can't take care of a simple business matter in a reasonable fashion."

Rrgh. I know I'll get over it, and write a positive review, because I have no choice really, but come the fuck on. Free publicity isn't even worth being courteous and professional about?

It makes me wish I had even the slightest say in where I get to review.

I'm blogging the trip to the Finger Lakes on Livejournal but only briefly (mostly, as is my specialty, I'm rambling about other things)-- (e:zobar) wrote about it thoroughly enough here. (e:zobar,50)
But I'm posting the photos here, because I am determined to learn how to do so. Here we go!

Crap, 100k limit? That's tiny! Well, I'll try again.
Captions below images.


Bully Hill vineyards, with Z in foreground, a bit windswept.

A decorative railing at Bully Hill, made of railroad ties and other metal.

The entrance to Watkins Glen's hike of the waterfalls.

Inside the Glen, a view of the walkway along the waterfalls.

Along the glen, a staircase on the trail, leading back down to the glen.

At the suspension bridge over the glen, Z helpfully alters the sign.

I took this picture for my baby sister, who is fascinated by mosses. (She is studying natural resources but really wants to specialize in plants, specifically mosses. I am not making this up.)

A red eft. My friend Abbie and I used to hunt these all summer, and she kept some in a terrarium. They are cute and very dumb.

A view along the glen.

The trail crosses under the cascade here. It freaked me right out.

Scenery, from the moving car: I think this is Keuka Lake. It's goddamned gorgeous.

Two things in this post.

1) A question. Z and I have not had a day off together in many moons. We have not left Buffalo in as many moons. So this week, to celebrate (not happily) the end of my part-time schedule, I got (e:zobar) to take Friday off, so we can go somewhere Thurs. night and stay over and do something cool all day and then get me home in time for work Saturday morning (at 11 am).

So where should we go? Toronto? Stratford Festival? The Finger Lakes? Southern Ontario? Ohio? Pennsylvania? I'm looking for suggestions. It can't be anything that would require a lot of planning and reservations, because we're going there THIS Friday.


2) The Best of Buffalo party. How cool was that? It was free food, brought to you by the best restaurants in Buffalo.
It was free music, brought to you by the best jazz band and the best choir in Buffalo.
It was free etertainment, brought to you by one of the best djs in Buffalo (actually I'm not sure who he was; someone one of the video guys knew). I felt very chic because I owned at least two of the CDs he had in heavy rotation (Portishead's Dummy, which my new journal music is from, and Sublime's self-titled album), and he was scratching like a mofo-- he had a really neat rig but I won't go into the details here.
And they had the game on in the background, of course! Z and the video guys were in the back room, and they had the projector set up with a switcher-thing so that they could easily transfer among three different feeds at varying levels of transparency. The slide show displaying the results of the voting (in case you missed the announcements) had squares chroma-keyed into the background so that they could put live video feeds into those corners-- for a while they had the game going on in those corners, with the slides made slightly transparent over the top so that you could follow the action all the way across the screen.
But throughout the game they had the thing set up so that when it went to commercials, they'd put the slideshow or a live video feed on instead of the commercials.

Babik was playing during much of the game, and they get super-extra-awesome bonus points for being such good sports about it. They didn't care that everyone was watching the game-- they were watching it too! And after one of the goals they stopped, and the violinist played the "charge!" thing. How awesome is that?

The fact that the Sabres won only made it that much more awesome.

I just spent like $140 on food, but that's good, as I hadn't been grocery shopping in ages and now I'm caught up. Wegman's, Spar's, and Jim's mean that now I have Everything.

So by the way, I'm this food columnist, right? Right. Ostensibly. I gotta harass the editor to, you know, set up my next review so I have something to write about, and I've been trying to set this up for almost two weeks now, so, I'm getting a little tired of that, but someday it will fall into place. Right? Pff. Anyhow.

I want to do more than restaurant reviews. I want to write about all the great food Buffalo has. I was discussing this with the Spar's girl (whose name I am sorry to say I don't know)-- I said, there should be a Sausage Festival or something, and y'all should go head to head to demonstrate whose are best. She agreed, and rattled off without pausing about six places that always said they had the best Italian sausages.

She then admitted that she sometimes does covert ops-- they'll send her down the street to Wegman's to look at what prices they have on various items, and she always has to put her ponytail over the Spar's logo on her shirt, and make sure she doesn't look suspicious, because apparently Wegman's is on the lookout for that sort of thing. So she can't write anything down. She also admitted that the "guys" had gone to check out Budwey's-- "They have a pretty good selection," she said, and then went on to caution me about the chicken sausages there. "Chicken sausages have to be precooked," she said, "or they go off right away." Budwey's has raw chicken sausages, which can be dangerous. Spar's offers two chicken sausages (hot and mild), pre-cooked, and they'll be bringing out a third (spinach and cheese) in response to demand. "These, you don't have to eat or freeze right away," she said. I asked why chicken was suddenly so popular, and she had an answer I hadn't expected: "Moslems," she said. "One of our employees is one, a Bosnian refugee." Apparently the Black Rock neighborhood they service is home to a large number of displaced persons from the former Yugoslavia, many of whom are Moslem. "They come here for our beef, and turkey," and she pointed out their cold cuts selection. The store's logo is a cheerful pig, and many of their sausages are the traditional pork, but they also carry a wide range of European grocery items, and she said that the Yugoslavians like those as well, "to make them feel like home."

I bought my usuals-- their spicy pepperettes [dried sausages, good for snacking], their landjager / jagerwurst "hunter sausages" [smoked, non-refrigerated, excellent for taking on trips], a dozen slices of their incredibly-good bacon, three of their German bratwurst with beer, and three of their chorizos. I admitted that I'd had a Budwey's chorizo last night. "It was okay," I said, "but yours are better. In fact, the best in Buffalo!"
She grinned, and pointed at the plaque. "I can't wait to show this to all our regulars," she said. Thursday and Friday are Spar's busiest days-- in the winter, those are the days to buy food there. I hadn't expected to get more than the dried sausages today, but she said during the "grillin' season" they tend to stock the store more often, because business volume goes up.

Spar's European Sausages, voted the Best in Buffalo, is located on Amherst St. right near the intersection with Grant " >(MAP TO: ). It's right down the street from the Amherst St. Wegman's, and we've been going there for longer than we've lived in Buffalo. They also offer, on a limited basis, some really good German potato salad, and other rotating specialties. Nothing beats their sausages on the grill. And if you can't get there often, stock up-- their sausages freeze well, and you can just pull them out and throw them on the grill while it warms up to defrost them. The ultimate convenience dinner-- i don't get why people buy fast food.



In other news entirely, it looks like (e:zobar) and I will be at the Century again tonight to watch the Sabres game, because we don't have a TV and want to see the game. So if anybody is interested... the Century's right down on Pearl St., just off Chippewa. " >(MAP TO: )

(e:zobar) has a pair of these travel coffee mugs that he got at his first job. They've got the company logo emblazoned on them, and are the oldskool sort of travel mugs you don't see nowadays: wide base, narrow top, all ceramic. The brand name, on the bottom, is "Hotjo", with a long-mark over the "o" which I don't know how to write in code.
I brewed a whole pot of coffee just now, and it all fit into the Hotjo, so I'm drinking the whole thing. Undoubtedly, merriment will ensue.

Our coffee pot is another funny story, for another time. Meanwhile, I am preoccupied.

1) Best of Buffalo party is tonight. Everyone should come. Babik will be performing, as will the Buffalo Gay Men's Chorus. There will be free food. There will be all kinds of wacky video shit going on, if all goes well. And you know, Artvoice is cool, and stuff.
If you have not picked up an issue of Best of Buffalo you should, and you should turn to page 14, and you should read my review, and you should write to editorial@artvoice.com and say "dang that's a great food review", and you should go to Tru-Teas and have a cup of tea and say "that review in Artvoice was so good".
Not that I'm, like, shamelessly self-promoting or anything. But for serious, the mooncake is to die for.

2) Tax refunds just arrived. I am using mine to pay off one of my student loans. I just think that would be a good idea. Z has no concrete plans for his. Now, I've never been the mercenary-bitch type (would I have supported him last year while he was finishing his degree and looking for a job if I were?) but I think he really ought to buy me something, something shiny maybe, just because, you know, boys should buy their girlfriends shiny things from time to time, and also in the coming-up-on-four-years we've been together, he's never bought me flowers or jewelry. So it's just a thought. He remains unconvinced.
So this is a poll of sorts.
Buying your girlfriend shiny things:
1) Worth your trouble?
2) Not worth your trouble?

All I'm saying is, it's usually worth your trouble, I'd say. One way or another.

Last year he used his tax refund to buy himself a scooter, and I used mine to, well, pay bills. (I'm not very good at buying myself presents either.)


3) I think I'll change my journal music again. *ponders* Now that I know how it's fun! But I sort of have a lot of music and am not sure what "goes" best. I think... hmm... For the moment, I'll leave it at this one. This is "The Beauty Spot / The Maid Behind The Barrel", a medley of reels by the incomparable Danu, a traditional Irish band that played Rockwell Hall last month.

(*grumble* the U in Danu is supposed to have an acute mark over it and apparently that sort of markup isn't allowed in this text field. Pardon my innaccuracies.)