On a trip to Michigan over the July 4 weekend, I decided to finally go visit a place that I’ve known about for over 15 years. For that length of time, I’ve been cooking using recipes in various cookbooks published by The Moosewood Restaurant (or rather, by members of the collective that runs the restaurant).
The restaurant is located in Ithaca, NY, which is just far enough from expressways in the state that it isn’t a convenient stop if one is crossing through. I figured I should finally take the extra time required to go have a meal there, and see just what the place is like.
It’s located in an old building that’s been made into a little mall. This is the building:
And here are exterior and interior entrances to the restaurant:
They have a very large repertoire of recipes, as they’ve put out more than a dozen different books over the years. As a result, they don’t have a set menu - they offer small lunch and dinner menus that change daily.
I had a bean burrito with onions, peppers and hot sauce, served on a bed of brown rice. Also had a bottle of local ginger beer, and a blueberry-apple cobbler for dessert. The food was good, but ultimately no better than I’ve had at other vegetarian restaurants, and somewhat pricier. I’m glad I made the trip once, and I’ll certainly eat there again if I find myself in Ithaca, but I won’t go out of my way to return to the place.
A few weeks ago we discovered, quite by accident, that a robin had a nest in a bush by our front porch. The baby birds were pretty old at that point, though still being fed by their mother. I took some pictures, trying to intimidate them as little as possible.
There were 3 of them in the nest, though you can only see 2 of them in these pictures:
The mama was watching me from a safe distance:
I discovered that we could see them through a living room window, and they didn’t see us, so they’d be more lively (and the mother would come to feed them). Unfortunately, taking pictures through the window didn’t work so well.
About a week after the photos were taken, I found the nest empty. I’m guessing they all learned to fly and went about growing up.
Earlier this month I headed down to NYC for the MOCCA Art Fest. MOCCA is the Museum of Comic and Cartoon Art, and it’s located in Manhattan. The Art Fest is a small press convention they put on each year. I call it the “other” convention because there was another, larger con going on in New York the same weekend - the Big Apple Comicon. That one held no interest for me, though, as it would have been dominated by the big companies and superhero comics (plus probably a lot of non-comics stuff).
The trip to the city began with me driving down to Norwalk, CT, where I got on a train into Manhattan. That let me off at Grand Central Station, where I got onto the subway. Before going to the subway, though, I had to be a typical tourist, and take some pictures of the station’s famous main concourse (hey, I’d never been to Grand Central before). I took some pix from the topof the steps, showing other tourists taking pictures:
and then I went down to the railing on the landing to get a less obstructed view of the floor:
The con was held at the Puck building in Soho (it’s located just South of Houston St.), which is a couple of blocks from the actual museum.
I got to see a number of comic artists I like, and have photos of some of them. First off, one of the first people I saw was Andy Runton, who does the cute all-ages comic Owly.
I had him sign a book that I’d brought, and I picked up a copy of the first book and got it signed for my nephew, who will have his 4th birthday this Fall (don’t tell him!). The person who had been in line right before me had given Andy a present - a little crocheted Owly:
Most of the convention took place on the first floor of the building, but there was also some space being used on the seventh floor. For some reason, while there was air conditioning in the former space, the latter didn’t have any. The temperature in NYC that day was in the upper 90’s. When I got up to floor 7, I felt extremely sorry for the artists up there. I’m glad I went up there, though, as I got to meet Spike, creator of Templar, Arizona (which I reviewed here not so long ago).
She was doing sketches for free of her characters, so I asked for one, and she spent quite a while working on it. I was amazed she went to that much work for free. Of course, I have pre-ordered both book collections so far of the strip, and mentioned that. The money from those pre-orders is what allows her to pay for the print runs of the books. Still, since she had gone to the effort, and it was so stifling up there, I bought her a soda (what are fans for if not to do favors for artists, after all?).
One of the guests of honor at the con, and someone whose presence made me feel I had to be there, was Lynda Barry. If you don’t know who she is, you obviously weren’t reading alternative weekly newspapers in the ’80’s or ’90’s. She drew the very long running Ernie Pook’s Comeek, as well as writing a couple of novels and some other comics. As her contemporary Matt Groening has said, she is the funk queen of the universe! I happened to go to the table where she would be signing just before her scheduled signing time. I ended up being 4th in line when she started. She was very friendly and enthusiastic, grasping my hand in both of hers when I greeted her. I bought her new book, What It Is, which is sort of a treatise on writing, and had her sign a couple of strip collections. I pointed out that one of the books was my favorite, because of the dialogue on the cover. She said she didn’t think she’d read that dialogue since the book was published in the early ’90’s.
Some pics of her:
Toward the end of the day, Shaenon Garrity was signing at the Friends of Lulu table. I had found out only a few days earlier that she was going to be there, making a rare East Coast appearance. I took advantage of the opportunity to have her sign a couple of Narbonic books.
Other artists I visited (but did not take pictures of) include Jim Ottaviani, Keith Knight, Pat Lewis, Jessica Abel, Jennifer Camper, Mo Willems, and Stan Yan. I recommend them all.
While on the sweltering seventh floor, I took some pictures of the view. This is looking West along Houston St.:
and this is looking North, sort of along Lafayette:
After the con floor closed for the day, I went for a walk to look for dinner. Before actually settling on a restaurant, I wandered over to the Hudson River area. There’s a bike path near the water, and I saw this memorial along the path:
Then I wandered out on a pier (I forget the number) to see the river proper. This shot looks downriver:
In the distance you can see the Statue of Liberty:
This is the view upriver:
A firefighting boat was parked at the pier:
and heading back to dry land, I saw this view of the city:
I had dinner at a nice Indian restaurant, in which I was the only diner. This was probably because they had no air conditioning. I didn’t care, as I just wanted t get off my feet and eat something. After dinner I walked around a bit more, then went to the Lulu Awards ceremony at MOCCA itself. Following that, I skedaddled out of town and headed for home.
Over Memorial Day weekend I went on my first decent hike of this year. I did another section of the Metacomet-Monadnock trail - namely Section 5.
This section is less mountainous than other sections I’ve done (like 6, 7, and 8), but still hillier than I thought it would be. There is a nice ridge that one climbs and hikes along for much of the path, and it has some good views.
This trail section starts in the Southwest part of Holyoke, and heads up to a point near the city’s border with the Town of Easthampton. Here are a couple of pics of the first good view I came across, looking off to the West at the Town of Southampton.
And a little further along the ridge I saw similar views:
Shortly after those vantage points, I ran across some small trees whose leaves looked as though they were a bit…infested. I don’t know what might have done this to the leaves, or whether it’s harmful to the tree. If anyone can tell me anything based on these pics, I’d love to hear it.
There were other views like the ones above - so much so that I didn’t take pictures. I did get to one point that looked out Eastward toward the river and the town of South Hadley, and here is a picture of that:
This section of the trail goes past an old radio beacon tower, long out of use at this point. I always think it’s cool to find abandoned human-made stuff in the middle of otherwise wilderness settings. It’s kind of like visiting ruins, only they’re relatively recent ones.
Here are pics of the tower:
Soon after this point I got a bit lost. The trail is marked with white blazes on trees and rocks, but part of the trail had been moved in the recent past, and they didn’t do a good job of marking the new path. I could only find blazes that had been painted over, marking the old path which one wasn’t supposed to use any more. This happened because a piece of the trail was on private land (many pieces are), and the owner had changed their mind about allowing hikers, or the land had been sold to someone who didn’t want to allow the use. I eventually followed something that turned out not to be much of a path, but took me quickly downhill (and I almost stepped on a snake). I knew there would be a road soon, and if I got to it quickly I could walk along it to find the correct path again. I did get to the road without incident, and found where the path actually comes out and enters the woods again. The rest of the trail section was pretty short at this point - only about a mile or so. This piece was not very hilly, so I made quicker progress.
When I was almost to the end of the section, I saw 3 odd, puffy flowers growing alone in the middle of the woods. I couldn’t identify them, but here are some pictures in case anyone else can:
That finished section 5, which is just over 5 miles.
My goodness. I saw this linked from Rich Watson’s blog, and I don’t know quite what to say. I’ll merely present the link: Mr. T Versus
Would one be foolish not to read the series?
There were 2 very tall trees in the front yard of the place we live. It’s a duplex, and our landlord lives in the other half. We were surprised when she let us know in December that those great trees were going to be taken down. I thought it unfortunate that we’d lose the shade of the trees, both on the house itself and on our car in the driveway, but the landlord said they were quite hollow and might drop large branches or worse in a heavy wind.
I decided to document the process of taking them down. At least, I took pictures of the stages of the removal - I was never around when the actual work was being done.
The crew began in mid-January, and did much of the work in a 2-week period. I don’t have a pic of the trees before they started, but here are pictures after the first day of work:
They mainly stripped branches off of one of the trees, and piled some of those branches on the curb for later pickup.
Here are the remaining branches on the other tree, which was mostly untouched at this time:
They came back 2 days after that, taking some branches from that tree, and removing a bunch of trunk from the other tree.
The pieces of trunk were piled on the curb, and you could see just how hollow it had been:
There also started to be a lot of sawdust covering the lawn and snow:
When they next came back, the cut off the upper trunks of the right-hand tree.
There had been fresh snow by that point.
After that, they picked up those logs, and didn’t come back until early March. For a while, we thought they might leave the bare trunks standing, but they finished the job over 2 days. Here’s how the place looks now:
The sawdust got partially cleaned up, but also used to help fill and cover over the holes where the stumps were removed:
Let me mention another online comic. Dicebox is a comic I’ve been reading for just over 5 years now, and it is a planned long-format story (it’s just about 25% of the way finished currently); you could call it an online graphic novel. As to genre, it might best be called anthropological science fiction. It follows 2 main characters, Molly and Griffen, who move from planet to planet in search of work but with seemingly no overarching plan for their lives. There are certainly interesting aspects to the worlds they find themselves on, as well as interesting technologies, but this comic is all about character development and interactions. 5+ year in the reader is still finding out stuff about the characters all the time, and the creator, Jenn Manley-Lee, is great at writing her characters, dialogue, and situations.
What I really love about Dicebox, though, is the art. It’s beautifully toned, as though it were painted. In fact, while she pencils the comic by hand, the coloring is all done in Photoshop.
This past December, she announced that she wouldn’t be updating for a few weeks, but offered that the first dozen or so people who e-mailed her could get custom watercolor
images of characters from the comic for a mere $15. I jumped at the chance, and actually got in under the wire.
I asked simply for Griffen wearing the long coat that can be seen on the comic’s front page and in the first chapter. The painting I got is below (click image for a high-res version):
I particularly like the flower petals.
This is a quiz I found via Kevin’s blog. The result is interesting, since I’ve never read the book.
You’re The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe!
by C.S. Lewis
You were just looking for some decent clothes when everything changed
quite dramatically. For the better or for the worse, it is still hard to tell. Now it
seems like winter will never end and you feel cursed. Soon there will be an epic
struggle between two forces in your life and you are very concerned about a betrayal
that could turn the balance. If this makes it sound like you’re re-enacting Christian
theological events, that may or may not be coincidence. When in doubt, put your trust
in zoo animals.
Take the Book Quiz
at the Blue Pyramid.
One of the more fun presents I got for Xmas was a package of Giant Pocky. For those not familiar with the Japanese confection known as Pocky, it is crunchy sticks coated in chocolate (or other flavors not shown on the page I linked to - of which there are many). I’m a big fan of Pocky, though don’t eat it all the time because it tends not to be cheap. I’ve tried several flavors, but never the Giant ones, though I believe they were probably reviewed by Ms. Boo (though I can’t find a review in her snack review archives). The Giant version are quite a bit bigger than the normal kind; I photographed them here next to an ice-cream truck for comparison:
As you can see, the scale is well above that of a human vehicle. Giant, indeed.
Regular-sized Pocky has the sticks grouped in bags within the box - at least 4 sticks to a bag. These are individually wrapped:
When unwrapped, they look like the usual chocolate kind, only bigger:
And they taste about the same, except that the biscuity stick taste (kind of like a barely-sweet cracker) dominates the chocolate more, perhaps because the chocolate layer is not as thick in proportion. They’re still tasty, as they use a slightly bitter chocolate on these (as opposed to Men’s Pocky, which is even more bitter). They’re still good, and I’ll definitely eat the whole box (though it will take a while to go through).
I’ve updated several pages on my website over the last few days, which included adding links to some webcomics that I hadn’t linked to before. I’ve also added links to these in the blog sidebar (over there on the left and scroll down a bit), but I thought it would be good to give them some explicit recommendations in an entry.
First up, I’ve had Shaenon Garrity’s comic Narbonic listed on my comics recommendation page for quite a while, but haven’t had her in the sidebar. She has several strips that she’s done online, som in collaboration with others. This seems like a good time to list her, as she has a new strip that started 2 weeks ago, called Skin Horse. I’d give a description of the strip here, but it’s a bit hard to categorize as yet. There’s certainly a sci-fi element, and it’s humorous like all her work, and this one is rather surreal so far as well.
Next, I had heard about Questionable Content for a while, but just started reading it about 4 months ago. It took about a month to get through the 1000 strips. Jeph Jacques (pronounced ‘jacks’) is the writer/artist, and he lives in Easthampton, an adjacent town to me. The strip is sort of romantic-comedy-slice-of-life-indie-music-fan type stuff, if that makes any sense. It also seems to take place in a world just a little different from our own, as there exist little sentient robots known as AnthroPCs. The strip has well-written characters and is often really funny. The strip also spawns various T-shirt designs, which Jeph sells on the site.
Last, but not least, is Templar, Arizona. Spike is the name of the artist, and she is wildly hilarious. This strips cracks me up to no end much of the time. The setting of the strip is a fictional city in a sort of alternate history Arizona. The rest of that world might resemble ours, but not so much Templar. This is another comic with excellent characters, whose personalities contrast with each other greatly, but where details of the city and backgrounds are very important as well (so don’t just pay attention to the people). I actually discovered Spike a few years ago when she had a different strip running on Girlamatic, and have been following Templar almost since it began. Besides her wonderful writing, I love her art style - lots of heavy lines and subtle sepia tones over grayscale.
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