Kristen Wins Halloween

I guess this is a follow up from a 2016 post when I was super excited by Teri's costume for R.O.M. that made him a tiny baby sushi.

Basically I love sushi!!

Kristen's costume for work this year is amazing and the next time I need a costume I am totally going to borrow it of make my own.

The little hat with the plastic grass, wasabi, and ginger is perfect. Though I gather Noah didn't recognize what it was supposed to be so she was worried that it wasn't working.

(Also, this was her testing it out this evening before wearing it tomorrow, so she is wearing pajama bottoms, I believe she plans on actually doing dress pants to work with it.)

That Shih Tzu Smile

What is he smiling at? Well, if you notice the pale fur in the foreground that is Clancy, his parent's Golden Doodle, but it is actually for the black floof which is Biscuit, their new little Shih Tzu puppy.

I don't know if I have ever mentioned on Always Standing that Jason has a "Shih Tzu Smile." You can see it in the photos from when we visited Jessie as a puppy. Almost any time Jason sees a Shih Tzu, even sometimes when he is talking about them, he gets the biggest/sweetest smile. This smile is only seen in this specific context, nothing makes him smile this way but Shih Tzus. They are his favourite, obviously, look at that smile.

I like bigger dogs, and consider Shih Tzus part of what Eddie Izzard calls, "small yappy type dogs." However, Jason insists that they look like little Ewoks, which for certain colours and markings kinda true. Look at her little nose:

Jason and Biscuit

October 2019

Photo by Me, on a phone

We Found The Apple!

When we visited the Finger Lakes area of New York State in 2016, Jason and I did an Apple Tasting Tour, during which we both fell in love with a new apple variety called The Snap Dragon. Couldn't find it during our Salem trip last year because according to one farmer we were a couple weeks early. So, this year, after exploring the waterfront on Sunday morning, Jason looked them up online and we drove into the countryside to try to find them again. And we did!!

JBR - Trainwreck Amber Ale

Beer: Trainwreck Amber Ale
Details: Flagship beer for The Pearl Street Brewery, an amber ale made using German-stye malts & hops. Its complex malt aroma evoke sweet bread, chocolate and dry-roasted nuts all balanced by a slight spiciness from the hops
Fancy Numbers: 4.7% ABV, 19 IBU, 16 SRM, FG 1.016
General thoughts from Jason, when asked for his review: "I had it last night, remember?"
Editor's note: Having visited a gin distillery first and tasted quite a few different types of gin and enjoyed a cocktail or two, I had not remembered that this was the beer he liked from the 5 tasted at the brewery we went to after the distillery.
Date Tried: Sunday October 13, 2019 (but first on Saturday October 12 apparently)
Location: Buffalo RiverWorks, Buffalo, New York (and the Pearl Street Grill and Brewery also in Buffalo, New York)

Why Not Buffalo?

Jason and I have a tradition of visiting The States during Canadian Thanksgiving, also in 2017 we stayed in Toronto because we had gone to San Francisco at the end of September that year.

Last year, Kristen and Noah joined us for a road trip to Salem, Massachusetts and a little visit to Boston. Since this year we decided to go to Buffalo, New York, and Kristen's mom lives in St. Catherine's we invited them to join us again for a night it if worked out with their Thanksgiving plans. They came out for the Saturday night and we had a blast doing a self-guided walking tour together through Allentown, getting tastings at a gin distillery and beer brewery, eating 'buffalo' chicken wings and exploring the waterfront. The photo is from our walk through downtown on Sunday morning, lots of cool architecture!

An awesome highlight was getting to take Jason to The Buffalo Zoo! This has always been my favoruite zoo, we used to visit it a lot when I was younger and my grandparents first lived in Fort Erie. The last time I had been was during a high-school road trip with Teri. A lot of things had changed, less animals and larger enclosures mainly, but I still loved it and could have stayed all day!!

Dumbo

Lots of travelling! I keep saying that with the shop closed now, "All I have is time and debt." So I am trying to figure out if it makes sense to visit Mom in Palm Springs in November and I have two trips planned this month.

First I am heading to Buffalo for Thanksgiving weekend with Jason. Then a couple of weeks later, I am going to New York City with ERin. This was planned way back, before I decided to close the shop. Since she had already booked her trip, and it is from Sunday to Wednesday, I thought it would work well with my cafe schedule. We are staying in Dumbo, Brooklyn.

The neighbourhood name is an acronym:
Dumbo - Down Under the Manhattan Bridge Overpass.

Lots of names in New York are funny short forms or acronyms:
SoHo - South of Houston
Tribeca - Triangle Below Canal

They make fun of this in the show How I Met Your Mother when two of the characters are looking to buy an apartment in Dowisetrepla which turns out to mean Downwind of the Sewage Treatment Plant.