Hate to see Borders go. Back in the day, when I worked for a book publisher, our CEO envisioned news like this. It was a little hard to imagine because in the early to mid 90s, the race to build bigger better bookstores was fast and furious. We had to gear a lot of efforts towards things that would be pleasing to Borders, Brentanos, Waldenbooks and Barnes and Noble.

Less places for actual books is like neighborhood record stores going away, the material is still out there, but it is kind of sad to see it come to that. Given expense, my awareness of my neighborhood library has returned, because I guess I’m old school, something about the experience of having actual pages to turn.

I don’t have any issues with Kindles or Nooks. A colleague even successfully stripped a nook of its software and replaced it with Android software and it runs like a champ.

One of the greater parenting cons of all time was my dad suckering my siblings and me when we were kids. We would hit a branch library pretty regularly, but special occasions meant “DOWNTOWN!” Hidden treasures could be found on various shelves that rarely met the racks in Clarence. I know you can arrange that now, but when you’re a kid, finding something cool on your own is a joy that can’t be adequately described here.

That was the cool thing about the big stores like Borders. Sure, Amazon has everything under the sun and then some, but places like Borders would have something right there. I wasn’t there a lot, but appreciated what their efforts. It was never terribly important that “Seattle’s best” was brewing in the corner, but after getting my son all hyped up to help me find the latest Tom Robbins book, to the point of chanting “B is for Beer” as we entered the store and finding it was pretty cool.

One less venue for that, so that is a little sad.

Remember when you were learning to drive, and more importantly, learning to parallel park? Yeah, me too. More importantly, remember waiting while somebody finished parallel parking, since you know there might be traffic coming the other way. Yeah, me too. I’m not sure when it happened, but apparently you are supposed to just go around the poor devil who is trying to park. This is troubling to me. If you take that chance, what if the parker messes up and needs to come out? What if you are the parker and the guy in the Humvee can’t wait and comes close to hitting you because he HAS to beat the traffic….into submission?

I see this on Elmwood all the time and watched as the folks at the marina over the weekend were routinely breathing down each other’s necks seeking parking. Relax, ya’all, we’ll get there.

Great slate of music in the area for the summer at next to no money. It’s funny since Western New York is such a sun starved people, there is a high population of folks who take in a show, not to see the show per se, but being seen at the show or saying they caught it. I was struck while mostly enjoying Pat Benatar by the sheer amount of people, just there, not particularly for the show, just to be there. I had a crappy vantage point of one of the tv screens for much of the night and dumbstruck when a sloshed woman came up to ask if I would be move because she couldn’t see the screen from her chair even further back. It’s a concert not a movie, fool.

Social Media can be a funny thing. A guy who decided sight unseen that an untested intern would be better at my job than I would some years ago, now wants to be LinkedIn. That makes me chuckle as only one of us is working in this market.

Not going to weigh in on the Casey Anthony case, as I’ve come down with a bad case of disinterest.

Okay, you say it without looking at it and it sounds like a bar on Main Street with a two drink minimum between City Lights and the Jam Club, but it is the Water Taxi, that I admit from a distance to me looked like the Mini-Me the Miss Buffalo never needed. But before I’m branded a neigh-sayer or anything bad buffalonian-esque, I shoved my semi-willing young son on for a lap around the waterfront. I thought we’d a two hour ride to inner and outer harbor, but it is one of the other. We happened to hop for the inner harbor jaunt, but it was still a groovy ride. Got out onto a bit of the open water for a bit. along with some different perspective of the city, so I said the heck with it and played tourist and took a few pictures.









There are a few more over at mikespub.wordpress.com, but you get the idea.

Yes, dear readers, both of you, a few shots for the historical recreated village from last week's Quebec trip. This is the estrip equivalent of sitting through my vacation pics....but I had a decent camera.

I have a pretty cool job. Despite having every travel clinche possible happen while traveling this week, this week’s sojourn to Granby, Quebec had some cool moments. For both of you who regularly read this, I hinted at Zoo pics and the good folks at Zoo de Granby were happy to oblige with two trips over to their great space for some fun, and a sneak peek at their latest exhibit. Those who hate animal pictures, should probably avert their eyes at this point, but this is how we were greeted last monday evening:



And now the fun stuff