Baba Sushi: Overloud, Overpriced and Overrated (a Worcester Restaurant Review)

After LL's talk last night, we decided to go out for some sushi and sake and unwind for a bit. Knowing that Baba Sushi (309 Park Ave., Worcester) had been voted the best sushi restaurant for 2008 by the readers of Worcester Magazine, it seemed like the place to go. Having now experienced it, I can only wonder why this place would top the list.

There was nothing wrong with the food. The fish was fresh and the presentation was nice. The place was packed, particularly considering that it was a Monday night. Then again, it doesn't take much to pack a place as small as Baba. There are six small tables shoehorned into an area about as large as a typical living room along with a sushi bar and another for drinks. We were seated at the last available table, and there was no more than a foot of space between ourselves and the diner at the next table.

The first thing we noticed was the noise level. Whether or not Baba Sushi is really the best sushi restaurant in town may be entirely subjective, but I have no doubt at all that it's the loudest. Much of the clientele appeared to be students from local campuses and those at the bar certainly had a few in them. The bartender was joining in with their revelry, and in such a small space the sound seemed to bounce off the walls and become amplified. Add to that the conversations of the diners and the nearly-constant ringing of cell phones, not to mention the more-than-adequate volume of the flamenco guitar music played over the speakers, and the sum is a cacophony so loud that carrying on a normal conversation was quite impossible. Everyone was shouting, it seemed. At times, the situation bordered on painful.

We were a bit taken aback by the pricing on Baba's menu. Sushi is often a bit pricey, but Baba's prices track toward the shameless in comparison to the many other restaurants of the same genre that I've been to, both in Worcester and in San Francisco. I never order the most expensive thing on the menu the first time that I go to a new restaurant. It's a practical thing; I get a less-expensive dish the first time rather than blow a bigger chunk of change on an expensive failure. LL and I decided to try the sushi and sashimi combination from the set menu, a chef's choice entree of 8 sushi and 12 sashimi ($36.00) and a carafe of sake ($15.00). Our waiter seemed disappointed by our choice. No, let me rephrase that. Our waiter disapproved of our choice and didn't mind questioning our judgment. Our impression was that we were being told that we simply weren't spending enough money; LL and I both were surprised by the pointed manner in which we were asked, "Is that all you're having?" I can't say that I recall ever being asked that question before.

At other sushi restaurants to which I've gone, a fixed menu entree is usually accompanied by miso soup and a small salad, so when our waiter asked if we wanted those items, we assented. At Baba, though, there is an extra charge for these things, so if you don't want to spend the extra money for them keep this in mind. The salad, a combination of seaweed and shredded daikon, was presented nicely in a blue martini glass but was nothing different from what I've had at any number of sushi restaurants previously and the miso soup was, well, miso soup. The small carafe of sake was, similarly, just like the hot sake one gets at sushi restaurants that don't have extensive wine lists. The difference is that it cost almost twice as much as it does at those other places.

When our entree arrived at our table, we were a little disappointed to find that the chef's choice in this case was to give us the most pedestrian of combinations. Both the sashimi and the sushi consisted entirely of maguro tuna, salmon and a white fish that I suspect was mackerel even though the last is not on the menu. There was no variety here, and while the fish was fresh, it was nothing particularly interesting. The presentation of the entree wasn't bad, but it wasn't brilliant, either. It was, in short, like any other sit-down sushi restaurant I've ever been to.

After the main course, I ordered 2 pieces of tobiko sushi, a favorite of mine. The small portions of flying fish roe were served in a thick seaweed wrapper which, in turn, was warmed up a bit. This was a nice touch, perhaps the only one we witnessed during our visit. There was nothing about our meal, certainly, that made up for the terrifically noisy, crowded conditions nor the slightly grungy physical environment.

All in all, LL and I agreed that we won't be going back to Baba. It's not our kind of place and, to our thinking, not at all worth the prices charged. We can get the same food for less at Sakura Tokyo, which is far more spacious, cleaner, and quieter than Baba, not to mention lacking the general attitude from a snooty waiter with which our order was taken.

I don't know the mechanics of Baba's winning accolades from WoMag's readers worked, but I can't say that I found any reason to agree with their award.

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Loss and Consolation: The End of Binh Duong

I am sorry to report that LL and I have suffered a loss. We were stunned to learn yesterday that our favorite Vietnamese restaurant, Binh Duong, is no more.

We'd found Binh Duong just over a year ago and it rapidly became our default restaurant. They had the best Vietnamese of anyplace we'd tried in town. Their seafood clay pot and their soups were uniquely spiced and reasonably priced. I lost count of how many times we'd eaten there. The last time my sister and her family were in town we took them there and they agreed, too, that it was the best Vietnamese that they'd ever had. The service was exceptional, too.

Sadly, LL and I decided to have lunch there yesterday before I dropped her off for her class. We were greeted by a "closed" sign. Gone. Instead, a new Vietnamese restaurant, called Diem Ha, is moving in "soon." No more Binh Duong. Truly, the good die young.

Our consolation prize was a cluster of shaggy mane mushrooms (Coprinus comatus) that I spotted from the car as we pulled out of the parking lot. It was growing in a planted area. I'd never collected shaggy manes before and am looking forward to trying them for the first time. Still, it's a small consolation for the loss of our favorite restaurant.

We stopped off at Pho Dakao instead, and the food there is good... but it's no Binh Duong. Diem Ha has some very big shoes to fill as far as we're concerned.

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A Last Excellent Day at MSA

Today was my last day at the MSA conference. There's still one more day left, but for a variety of reasons I have to get up early tomorrow and make the long drive back to Worcester. Not the least of these is the fact that a petty, bureaucratic,politically-motivated dean at Florida State University has taken it upon himself to put up a massive and ridiculous roadblock in the way of LL's quest for a PhD. I won't get into the details; she'll write about it when and if she's ready. All I'll say is that I've never heard of such a moronic, pig-headed thing being done to someone who has been one of the few bright lights for a department that is now being dissolved largely because of the incompetence of another pig-headed bureaucrat in academic clothing. With people like these deans at the helm, I would have to advise anyone considering a PhD program at Florida State to put it as low on their list of possibilities as they can possibly can. If it were a boat, it would have the word "Titanic" painted at the prow.

Other than learning of LL being screwed over yet again, though, today was the kind of day that makes me regret having to leave a day early. Two lablings gave excellent presentations on their research as did my advisor. I take a good deal of pride in being part of this group even if I haven't begun contributing as much as I hope to... soon.

I had lunch today with Joey Spatafora and my advisor and so had the chance to listen in and/or talk about everything from plans for AFTOL2 to Wall-E and The Fantastic Planet. I learned that Joey reads this blog when he recognized me upon our introduction as Mike O'Risal. So did one of the postdocs from his lab. In fact, no fewer than four people I met today already knew me by my nom d'blog. I had best be careful not to mention my rampant crack addiction and penchant for devouring live kittens here. Someone might be looking.

Today was also the day of the Karling Lecture, delivered by Nick Talbot of the University of Exeter. The topic was "Investigating the biology of plant infection by the rice blast fungus Magnaporthe grisea using functional genomics." The rice blast fungus is a problem right up there with the potential of Puccinia graminis Ug99, wiping out up to 30% of the world's rice crops in any given year. Dr. Talbot's work on the mechanisms by which the fungus initiates and spreads infection seems to hold tremendous promise in addressing the problem. Some of the proteomics involved are well beyond the scope of my understanding; I'm not a proteins person by any stretch. Still, even I can grasp that if one can come to an understanding of how the subcellular mechanics of infection work, there's real hope of coming up with a solution.

After the Karling lecture, I met up with Meredith Blackwell and handed her three dead beetles. That might be perceived as an insult in some circles, but not in this one. I'll be sending some live specimens her way in the near future, too, and hopefully we'll be able to exchange some data and materials. I'm particularly looking forward to continued contact with the people I've met from her lab. Even though I don't think I'll be part of the next round of AFTOL research, others in my lab will be and her lab will also be involved, and we're all working on bugs and fungus in one way or another.

I had dinner at a little Indian place called Kaarma just around the corner from my hotel. I was joined by labling RiGa, Dan Durall from the University of British Columbia Okanagan, and Kentaro Hosaka from the National Museum of Nature and Science of Japan. It was a very nice cap to what has been an inspiring few days for me. If you should find yourself in State College, PA, I recommend checking out Kaarma.

I have indeed come away from this conference feeling inspired. I've got some new ideas and am itching to try them out, particularly when I get back from Florida laden with new specimens. Stephanie Gross and I talked today about there being a coleoptera/fungi symbiosis session at next year's MSA meeting. There are a bunch of us out there, and all we need to do is be in the same place at the same time with material to present. The place next year will be Snowbird in Utah and the time will be July 25-30, 2009. Now all I need is the material.

I'll get back to work on that on Thursday.

For now, my priorities are sleep and then the long drive back to Worcester. Sequences await.

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A Splendid Day, a Not So Splendid Movie

It's a rare day that LL and I get to spend entirely together, and today was just such a day. We didn't do anything too unusual; that we did a lot of not much together was the important bit.

Much to my surprise, LL decided that she did want to go out for dinner after all. Seafood was the cuisine of choice, so we went to Coral Seafood Restaurant on Shrewsbury in Worcester. I had the shrimp and scallops with tortellini and she had baked scallops. All of it was terrific. Since her surgery, LL can only eat about 2 to 4 ounces of food every two hours or so. Most of her order came home with us; mine did not. She really does eat like a bird these days, but because she has to chew each mouthful very carefully it takes as long for her to eat a small amount as it does for me to eat... well... probably a little too much. The tortellini really was excellent, like a book I couldn't put down. We talked over dinner about things we hadn't talked about in a long time, from back when we first met, the little apartment she lived in while an intern in Forest Knoll and the Two Birds Restaurant and the first road trip we took together. We talked about how the people who knew us then didn't think we'd last three months, and here we are twelve years later about as happy together as any two people could be.

Because we went to dinner, it was too late by the time we were done to catch the beginning of the ballgame, so we decided to just see a movie instead. LL has a thing about clowns, so The Dark Knight was out. I find Abba about as enjoyable as a honey-dipped roll on a fire ant nest, so Mamma Mia wasn't going to happen. We've both enjoyed Guillermo del Toro's previous work, though (The Devil's Spine and Pan's Labyrinth are high on both of our lists), so we decided to see Hellboy II: The Golden Army.

It was alright for what it was. There wasn't much to it; a typical superhero action flick augmented by visuals similar to those in Pan's Labyrinth. Aside from the imagery, though, there was nothing particularly memorable about Hellboy. Being close in a darkened theater for two hours was the best part of the flick. What was on the screen was largely inconsequential.

It was a splendid day. One must grab those while one can; they don't come around nearly often enough.

Thanks to Jeff, Claudia, Steve and anyone who took the time to wish us a happy anniversary, whether they wrote that wish down or not. It was a happy anniversary, indeed.

LL tells me I'll be seeing certain local bloggers soon, too. I look forward to meeting you in person if we haven't already.

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Absinthe in America

Last night's celebration of LL's newly-minted American citizenship at Nick's was great fun. The rumors of Nick's serving absinthe are true; it's not on the menu yet, but they have Kübler. It's a Swiss brand and not too bad, though perhaps a bit on the sweet side as it was served. Nevertheless, this was the first time LL and I (and probably everyone else at our table) has drunk absinthe legally in the USA. And so, at long last, one of the burning questions of our times can be answered. What happens when biologists and anthropologists get together and drink a bunch of absinthe? Well, it looks something like this:


Around the table, from left to right, are Karen, Margit, Manfred, LL, myself, Andy and Ingo. A motlier crew of scientists and academics has never gathered at a Worcester tavern, I'm sure.

There's a joke in here somewhere that starts out with "Three Germans, an Arab, a Pakistani, a Californian and a Jew walk into a bar..." I haven't come up with the punchline yet, but it will have to include something about sauerbraten.


Here, Ingo is making an important point about... something... as Andy ponders the meaning of... something. Who knows what. Probably something about alignments and laccase genes and gastromycetization (yeah, right).

Nick's is a great hang-out. Last night, live music was provided by local musician Dan Burke. The wait staff is friendly and Nick himself is a nice guy who tends a mean bar. Three thumbs up (have I mentioned that mutation yet?)

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Worcester Readers: Come Celebrate With Us!

If you're a reader of this blog in Worcester and looking for something to do at 8:00 PM tonight, LL and I and assorted friends and colleagues will be at Nick's Bar and Restaurant (124 Millbury Street) celebrating LL's new American citizenship. Come join us for absinthe, German food, beer, and conversation that will range from the profane to the truly geeky.

Why we're celebrating a Lebanese-born new American citizen by going out for German food I don't know. It doesn't have to make sense. Let's oompa and ululate in Wormtown tonight!

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Bamboo Hut: Vietnamese with a Big Scoop of MSG in Worcester

Having had a long, busy week with a bummer or two thrown in toward the end, LL and I decided to go out for dinner last night. We stopped off at State Liquors on Park first. It's my favorite package store wherein almost anything can be found, and on this expedition I came up with a bottle of Momokawa Pearl saké. It's the first time I've found an unfiltered (nigori) saké for sale since we left California. Things were looking up! We decided to continue the Asian theme by trying out a restaurant that has been recommended to me by a university colleague and has had generally good reviews in the past, Bamboo Hut Vietnamese (1394 Main Street, Worcester). The place seems to have become something of an institution since it opened eight years ago. After our visit, I'm not sure why this should be.

Bamboo Hut is a BYOB restaurant, so we took our saké with us. The restaurant itself is on the first floor of a converted home; we were seated in an area that used to be the porch. The atmosphere is very homey and familial, though the choice of avocado-green paint over stucco is a bit questionable. It's not the most appetizing decor to look at.

I attempted to order a crispy squid appetizer and stir-fried duck in tamarind sauce as an entrée, only to be informed by the waiter that they were out of both. He told me to choose back-ups while he went to the kitchen to double check. When he returned fifteen minutes later, he informed me regretfully that the supply of both squid and duck were indeed gone, so I instead ordered garden rolls and stir-fried venison with potatoes and peppers. LL ordered a papaya salad and triple crown, a spicy dish of shrimp, scallops and salmon. I can't think of the last time that I've had it happen that two of the house specials were unavailable, but I like venison anyhow.

The food was adequate but nothing special. My garden rolls were quite good, though it would have been a nice touch to ice down the thawed shrimp that they contained so that they would be cold like the rest of the roll. The papaya salad was very spicy and neither LL nor I could find or taste the papaya in it. There was plenty of cabbage and a sweet sauce but no papaya as far as we could tell. The triple crown was good, with nice presentation and a bit of spiciness. We've had similar dishes in many Asian restaurants and this was certainly the same thing as we've had elsewhere. My venison stir-fry was all right, though again nothing special. The meat was cooked just well enough so as not to toughen it and there was plenty of it, too. The sauce in which it was served was brown and nondescript, bland and really not adding anything to the flavor of the dish. The potatoes had a texture that I found slightly disagreeable, simultaneously chewy and mushy. Still, I do like venison and that part was done well, although overall it would have been nice if the dish had been a bit more creative in the use of spices. As it was, it was just meat and peppers with nothing distinctive about it.

The owners of the restaurant have two young daughters, one of whom latched onto us and was our companion for the entire meal. She was a cute kid and very friendly, and this would have been fine in a small dose. After awhile, though, it became obvious that we were going to be a party of three instead of two. The little girl got very familiar after awhile; it's not even the slightest exaggeration to say that she was climbing on us as well as on other customers nearby. As entertaining as her stories about Christmas presents and constant refrain of "chin up, chin up" were at first, twenty or so minutes of this were quite enough. I began to feel a bit like a surrogate daycare provider, although who could tell such a cute kid to go away? Even after two glasses of saké I couldn't be that heartless. Still, the owners of Bamboo Hut ought to realize that having their daughters playing hide-and-seek under the tables of paying customers who are trying to eat dinner isn't a dining experience that most people are going to seek out repeatedly. Instead of having a nice, intimate, quite conversation over dinner, LL and I found ourselves literally cornered by a very energetic five year old. No offense, but if we wanted one of those we'd adopt one! That's not what we're looking for when we go to a restaurant, though.

After we'd paid our relatively reasonable tab (dinner for two, including the tip and $4 corking fee was just under $60; I think we should have gotten a discount for babysitting), we headed home. I woke up at about midnight with a terrible headache and loud ringing in my ears. I only get these symptoms when I've been overdosed on MSG, and while I can't prove it I feel certain that my stir-fried venison must have been loaded with the stuff. It's 9:15 AM as I write these words and only in the last hour have I begun feeling better. LL has an even worse reaction to the stuff, so it's a good thing I was the one who ordered the venison. I won't be doing that again.

Now, it's entirely possible that we simply caught Bamboo Hut on a bad night. Plenty of people seem to like the place, but from my experience with it last night I can't say that I'm a fan nor that I plan on going back again. The best things about dinner were no better than any number of other places and Vietnamese restaurants dot the map of Worcester so there are lots of other choices. The worst things about Bamboo Hut fall into the category of "this is no way to run a restaurant," and they were enough to entirely put us off to the place. Based solely on last night, I can't fathom why I've heard good things about it. LL and I will definitely be going elsewhere next time we're in the mood for Vietnamese food and not in the mood to keep someone's kids entertained.

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Supporting the Homosexual Business Lobby at a McDonald's in Worcester

This is me supporting the "gay agenda" for lunch at a McDonald's in Worcester, MA.

I normally avoid eating at McDonald's, but Don Wildmon and the American Family Association convinced me to eat there today. I might eat there again tomorrow, too.

This Quarter Pounder is for you, AFA. If it meant that gay people could have every single right, privilege and responsibility that straight people do, I'd eat this crap every single day for the rest of my life.

Burgers over bigotry, baby.

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AFA Has a Beef with McDonald's: Another "Dear Manmeat" Letter

I received another "Dear Manmeat" letter from Don Wildmon in this morning's email. I suppose he's accepted that I'm never going to make his dreams come true, but now he wants me to send email to my local McDonald's or something and ask them why they're supporting something called the "gay business agenda."

I'm not exactly sure how the "gay business agenda" differs from the "straight business agenda," though. Maybe something about a place where teenagers spend much of their day slipping meat between buns is making him uncomfortably tingly in his naughty bits. I'm sure it's a personal thing judging by the tone of the email I received:

McDonald's CEO: Company will put full resources behind gay agenda
McDonald's has signed on to a nationwide effort to promote "gay" and "lesbian" business ventures.

Dear Manmeat,

According to McDonald’s CEO Jim Skinner, McDonald’s will aggressively promote the homosexual agenda. In remarks on McDonald's Web site concerning the company becoming a member of the National Gay & Lesbian Chamber of Commerce (NGLCC), Skinner wrote: "Being a socially responsible organization is a fundamental part of who we are. We have an obligation to use our size and resources to make a difference in the world … and we do."

The company gave an undisclosed amount of money to the NGLCC in return for being recognized as a major promoter of the homosexual agenda. In return, NGLCC placed Richard Ellis, vice president of communications of McDonald’s USA, on the NGLCC Board of Directors.

Ellis was quoted as saying: "I'm thrilled to join the National Gay & Lesbian Chamber of Commerce team and ready to get to work. I share the NGLCC's passion for business growth and development within the LGBT community, and I look forward to playing a role in moving these important initiatives forward."

McDonald's refused to comment to World Net Daily on the placement of its executive on the board of the "gay" advocacy organization but did send an e-mail confirming the corporation's support for the agenda of the homosexual business lobby.

"McDonald's is indeed a Corporate Partner and Organizational Ally of NGLCC. Our vice president of U.S. communications, Richard Ellis, was recently elected to its board of directors," said Heidi M. Barker, senior director of media relations for McDonald’s. NGLCC describes itself as promoting the LGBT community first and always, including same sex marriage.

NGLCC gives credit to sponsors such as McDonald's for its financial and other support that helps in its work. "Through the commitment of our corporate partners, the NGLCC has been able to advance the ideas and causes of the LGBT business community," the Chamber said.

Take Action
Send an e-mail to McDonald's

I've never been a big fan of McDonald's myself. I find their food to be bland, mushy, awful stuff that I'll only eat in a pinch. For the next couple of weeks, though, I'm going to make it a point to have lunch there a few times. Promoting equal opportunity for all people is something I can and will support, even if it means lowering my standards for a few days. I would encourage readers of this blog to do the same.

The email link at the end of Wildmon's letter will take you to a form on the AFA's website that has a pre-written email to be sent to the CEO of McDonald's. I clicked through and changed that text to one supporting McDonald's decision not only to stand up for equal rights, but against the fundamentalist nuttery of the AFA and their homoerotically-aroused chairman, Don "Make My Dreams Come True on Saturday Night" Wildmon. Again, please take a moment to do the same. I don't know if the AFA pre-screens the emails coming from that page somehow, but even if they do, having a few thousand extra emails to screen will make their lives harder. In fact, please pass the word around and encourage others to send supportive emails to McDonald's through that link.

The "homosexual business agenda?" What exactly is that? It's code; anything a gay person does, in the tiny minds of Wildmon and his followers, is automatically different from what a non-gay person does. Somehow, being gay imparts some weird essential quality to everything one touches, apparently. This is code, of course, for "exterminate gay people." Wildmon and his bunch simply want them to disappear, to go away quietly somewhere and drop dead. In fact, here's the verbiage from the e-mail that the AFA wants people to send to McDonald's:

I am surprised to learn that McDonald's has decided to put their entire corporate strength behind the promotion of the homosexual agenda. I'm asking McDonald's to remain neutral in the culture war. Your efforts should be in providing the finest fast food products possible, not in a political battle - especially helping promote an aberrant and destructive behavior.

This is, of course, almost entirely Orwellian. The AFA doesn't see anyone as "neutral in the culture war." You're either with them or against them, and what they're demanding McDonald's do in this very e-mail is to stand with them. After all, as the e-mail points out, this is war.

For lunch today, I'm getting a quarter pounder. I don't relish the thought, and I'm not generally a fan of McDonald's practices, but for a couple of weeks I'll make an exception. For today, since there's a "war" on, I'll shell out a couple of bucks to pay for some ammo. Right now, it's burgers vs. bigotry, and I'd rather eat a crappy hamburger than even for one moment play along — even unintentionally — with a fundamentalist would-be dictator.

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Great Things in Boston Part 1: Lala Rokh

Before Saturday night's Laurie Anderson concert, LL and I met up with DaHi and MaHi for dinner at Lala Rokh on Beacon Hill. We were there a bit early, so we had a couple of drinks at the small bar and got a tour of some of the copious prints and paintings that decorate the restaurant. The staff was very friendly and professional and the decor of Lala Rokh was simultaneously intimately homey and stylish. The restaurant was celebrating the Persian New Year and a Sofreh-e Haft Seen was set up in one hallway; we got an explanation if its meaning.

When everyone had arrived, we were seated and given an appetizer of some bread and baba ghanouj that was different from the Arab version I'm used to but still very good. The restaurant was offering a special menu for the New Year celebration and, since we were reluctant to leave off our conversation to read the menu, we decided to take the easy way out and just order that. It was so convenient that it even came with appropriate wine pairings, with a white wine to go with the appetizer and a merlot to go with the main course.

I started off with ash rehsteh, a lentil and beef soup garnished with a bit of yogurt and absolutely delicious. My main course was lamb in a sauce with plums and tomatoes and, while I can't remember its name now (Ghurmi sabzi, maybe?) it was so good that I wanted to lick the plate when I was done with it. I refrained, but it wasn't easy. For dessert, I had a custard with shredded bits of sweet squash that elicited a similar desire. Including the suggested wine, the tab for the New Year's dinners came to $33 per person.

Everything at Lala Rokh was perfect. The food was flawless and the service combined just the right amounts of friendly professionalism and invisibility to be thorough and helpful without being intrusive. The atmosphere of the place was conducive to lively conversation and despite the place being full to capacity we never felt crowded and the noise level was surprisingly low. We probably would have spent another hour here if we hadn't had a concert to attend.

I'd have no compunction about going back to Lala Rokh again and again. It's hard to imagine that there are any better Persian restaurants in Boston, even if there were twenty other Persian restaurants in the city.

Lala Rokh is at 97 Mount Vernon Street, near the corner of Charles. It's a couple of blocks from the nearest train station and parking in the neighborhood looks to be hard to find; the restaurant offers valet parking for $16 or you can do what LL and I did and just take a cab over. Reservations are a must here; they can be made online or by calling 617-720-5511. If you're going to visit Boston, don't miss this place!

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The Field Work Season and Weekend Are Coming

I was hoping to go on my first officially-sanctioned collecting trip to Wachusett today. The weather is not cooperating, however. Rain and sleet and ice pellets falling from the sky do not make for good conditions to clamber about in forests on the sides of mountains. It will have to wait.

On the other hand, I'm preparing for a productive season in the field. With the remainder of my research fund for the year, I've purchased two new geek-toys. First, there's a new dehydrator capable of accommodating large polypores. It's a beauty; by removing trays, I'll be able to dry even a large Fomitopsis in one piece. The dehydrator I've been using up until now is good for small fungi, but I'd need a band saw to slice up some of the woody polypores for them to fit. This way, I can preserve not only the fungi but the beetle galleries within them intact. Such things make me happy.

Second, I'm finally getting a new handheld GPS unit. I will always love my little Magellan, but I need something more accurate and reliable under heavy tree cover plus it needs to have basemaps of South America as well as North. I should be getting a shiny new Garmin GPSMap 76Cx delivered on Monday. It'll be useful to me not only for field collections in the US but also in Trinidad should I happen to find myself there this summer.

In the meanwhile, this weekend is looking to be a good one (aside from having to grade student assignments, which I'm going to try to get through today). Tomorrow, LL and I are heading to Boston where we'll meet up with my adviser and his wife for dinner at Lala Rokh after which we'll be going to see Laurie Anderson at the Boston Opera House on her Homeland tour.

Rather than attempting to drive, LL and I are going to take the train and check in at a hotel before dinner. We're going to spend the night in Boston and then come home on Sunday morning. That way, we won't have to worry about how long the show is going to run and whether we can make the last train back to Worcester at 11:00 PM. Besides, I hate driving in Boston.

It's going to be a great weekend, and I'll have new technological toys to play with when we get back. Who could ask for more?

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Green Fairy in Worcester: Absinthe Now Available Here

Who says Worcester isn't on the cutting edge? I've just learned this morning that absinthe, the fabled potion made from wormwood credited with inspiring everything from the genius of Picasso to the madness of Van Gogh, is available at two bars in the area. The Sole Proprietor right in town, as well as the Old Timer in Clinton, are selling it. It isn't cheap; $10 a glass at the Sole Proprietor and $9 at the Old Timer, but it's worth it just for the novelty. The stuff was illegal in the US until just last year.

Not that it stopped me from getting my hands on it. I knew two sources in the San Francisco Bay Area, so I've tried a couple of homemade versions in the past. In one case, I even tried uncut Artemisia extract, which was so bitter that I spent the next ten minutes making a noise something like a lovesick duck with a sore throat. Still, absinthe isn't bad when it's been properly prepared, and I'm sure the stuff they're selling here is better than the homebrews I've had.

The Green Fairy
Storied, once-banned absinthe catches on locally

Since last November, the drink list at the Sole Proprietor restaurant in Worcester has included a libation called “The Green Fairy.” If drinks could talk, what a tale the fairy would tell, providing she could remember the next morning.

Absinthe, the often emerald colored, highly potent spirit, banned for most of the 20th century in Europe and until 2007 in the United States for supposed madness-inducing properties, was called The Green Fairy by its devoted touts, whose number included so many artists and writers that absinthe’s nom de plume became the Green Muse...

"We don’t allow our customers to have more than two," said Nichols Quinn, night manager at the Sole on Highland Street.

"Absinthe is not a shot,” said Brian McNally, proprietor of the Old Timer in Clinton, which added the drink to its bar late last year. “No one is going to sit down and wax ’em back..."

Typically the alcohol content of consumer hard liquors ranges from 80 to 100 proof. The Swiss Kubler brand absinthe sold at the Sole is 106 proof. The Old Timer carries Kubler and a French brand, Lucid Superieure, which is 124 proof...

At the Old Timer, absinthe goes for $9 per drink. At the Sole, the price is $9.99...

At $10 a pop, I don't think many customers — even at the Sole Proprietor — are likely to want more than two. Still, I'm going to have to get myself over there one of these days. I'm not fond enough of absinthe to make it a regular thing, especially not at that price, but it's worth it just to be able to say, "I've drunk absinthe in Worcester." I'd imagine very few people can say that, and somehow I don't think all that many ever will.

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Birthday Weekend in New York

I'm back from a wonderful weekend in New York City courtesy of LL. This birthday turned out to be perhaps the best ever, though I've had enough of them now that it's beginning to get hard to remember them all. Still, returning to the city of my birth and places I (mis)spent my youth for the first time in so long was the best anyone could ask for. I made it a point not to spend any time online, so those who left comments will understand the delay in getting them posted and regular readers will forgive the lack of updates since Friday. This one entry will make up for all of that, though.

I'll break it all down by day for ease of writing, because there's a lot to cover.

Friday, Feb. 29
We arrived at our hotel, the Diplomat Motor Inn in Rockville Centre, at about 1:30 PM. After checking in and dropping off our stuff, we headed straight back out the door and drove to All American Burger in Massapequa. Back in my days as a teenage burnout on Long Island, I spent a lot of inebriated hours hanging out in the parking lot of this place scarfing down ridiculous numbers of their so-bad-they're-amazing hamburgers. My poison-of-choice was the double-double, which is what a double cheeseburger is called by the locals, contrary to the menu on the website. LL and I each got one and they were exactly as I remembered. LL was somewhat less than impressed, and I guess it's an acquired taste. Imagine an oversized White Castle burger and you've got the idea. For me, anyhow, this was an absolutely necessary bit of nostalgia. For LL, it was an experience akin to a root canal, I think.

When we were done eating, we headed to the neighborhood in which I lived. First, we headed over to the high school from which I graduated. It hasn't changed much, at least not from the outside. The kids still look the same, right down to a sprinkling of those who seem reluctant to let go of the heavy metal look I remember from the 80's. Yes, the big hair is still there. We next cruised past my parents' house which is now covered by bright yellow aluminum siding and entirely devoid of trees. A large silver SUV was parked in the driveway; I've no idea who lives there now. Our last stop in Massapequa was Pine Street Park, where I was once knocked unconscious with a beer bottle to the back of my head by a well-meaning friend who was trying to help me meet a girl we who was hanging out with us in the park that night. The knocking-out part worked fine, but I never did get a date with her. Ah, memories and the blank bits between them.

We took a drive around town past the former homes of people I used to know and then were done with Massapequa. On the way out of town, we stopped off at the Sunrise Mall (now Westfield Sunrise) to pick up a few things we needed, including a new hat for me. The mall no longer contains a movie theater, though there is a full-sized Wal-Mart there. Wal-Mart is everywhere.

A side trip to Amityville was necessary, too, so that LL could say she's seen the house upon which The Amityville Horror is based. People still live there (without any voices telling them to get out, I might add), and they've had a lot of trouble with trespassers taking photos of the place in the past, so I didn't do it myself. We just drove by. The address of the house has been changed and the distinctive Dutch windows removed to help discourage tourists such as myself, but being a local I still know which house it is. No, I'm not going to tell.

A little more driving around ensued and then we headed back to the hotel to get ready for dinner. LL tried to find someplace using her laptop, but we discovered that our room didn't have a wireless connection. The only rooms that have wireless at the Diplomat, it turns out, are those right next to the lobby, so management offered us a deluxe room with a jacuzzi and we decided to take it. It was right above the lobby and came with a complimentary bottle of Sambuca di Amore and two shotglasses. How could we say no? We were completely exhausted by this point, so we decided to have dinner at the TGI Friday next to the hotel. I had a large and potent scotch and soda while we waited for our table. Needless to say I was ready for bed by the time we'd finished, and that was it for Friday night.

Saturday, March 1
We set out early for Brooklyn. The plan was to take the Long Island Railroad from Baldwin to Jamaica, then change to the subway and get to Flatbush and DeKalb for breakfast at Junior's. That didn't work; someone had either jumped or been pushed in front of a train at Jamaica. Either way, the train we needed wasn't going to be running for hours to come. We turned around and got the car and drove to Junior's instead. It was 11:30 by the time we got there, having been lucky enough to not only survive driving on the Belt Parkway but to find a parking spot right within a few yards of the door as well. If you've ever tried to find a parking spot near Junior's on a Saturday morning, you know how close to miraculous this was.

The last time I had breakfast at Junior's, I was with my long-deceased grandfather. I haven't been back since he died, but I still remember the place vividly. It was a tradition; whenever I was at my grandparents' place on a Saturday, we had breakfast a Junior's. It hasn't changed a bit, even though the place caught fire in 1991. I ordered Scotch kippers with eggs and onions and LL had corned beef hash with poached eggs. Someone told me a couple of years ago that breakfast no longer came with an assortment of mini-danishes and rolls. They were wrong; that still happens. I bit into a Junior's prune danish for the first time in a generation and it was every bit as good as I remembered it. That taste brought back so many memories of my grandfather that it was all I could do not to start crying right there in the middle of a busy restaurant. Who would have thought that a prune danish could do that? It did, though. All of breakfast was that good and that memory-laden. Junior's was also the last place, and still the only place, I'd ever had kippers.

I needed to pick up some mints after breakfast; few things make for horrible breath moreso than kippers and onions. I crossed the street to one of those literal hole-in-the-wall newsstands that dot New York while LL picked out souvenirs (I got a Junior's t-shirt and a sweatshirt, too!) It brings up a point; everyone knows the myth that New Yorkers aren't friendly, but it isn't true. I wound up in a conversation with the guy in line in front of me and then in a second one with the leathery-looking Korean woman who runs the stand. See, it isn't New Yorkers who aren't friendly... it's the people who commute into the city from Nassau County. It was true back when I lived in Brooklyn and then in Nassau County and it's still true now; New Yorkers have a tendency to be outgoing. They live with crowds and often in close quarters. Folks from Long Island bedroom communities, on the other hand, never have to develop the interpersonal skill set that makes life in the Big City not only possible but enjoyable. That's a generalization, of course, but it's a pretty good rule of thumb.

After Junior's, we drove out to Coney Island. This was one of the two big stops for me on this trip. I hadn't set foot in Coney Island for many years and I was dying to see the place again. They say that Coney Islanders get sand in their shoes and never get it out again, and that's true. Sooner or later, we all have to go back there and see what's become of the place. The Boardwalk (and let's face it, folks, there's only one true Boardwalk and lots of imitators) is our Mecca to which we must make a reverential pilgrimage at least once in our lives should we ever leave it. More than a few of us go through some life-changing experience on the Boardwalk. We might have our first funnel cake our ride our first roller coaster or even lose our virginity there (ahem), but there's always something that anchors us to that place, and so we're like spawning salmon that swim upstream to get back to the place of our birth.

Of course, when we get there we have to complain at least a little bit about how it's changed and how much it's decayed since we last saw it and why hasn't anyone fixed the place and saved our favorite landmark of youth. For me, that mostly came as the result of a trip to the "Original" Nathan's. Those quote marks are intentional, because the hot dogs served at the site where the real Nathan's once stood are now the same ones you can buy at any supermarket or food court. They're cooked in the same way they're cooked anywhere else; gone is the open grill where they once singed perfectly over fire. That grill is where the cash registers are lined up now. I got a hot dog there and you know what? It sucked. I could barely digest the thing and was sick that night because of it. There's not much point to going back there again for me, aside from maybe taking a picture of the outside of the place. It's just a fast food chain store now, no better than a McDonald's. Sad to say, Nathan's finally betrayed Coney Island.

Still, the Boardwalk itself was much as I remembered it, though Astroland has now closed down and is never to reopen. Soon, it will vanish and a casino will rise in its place. I'm of two minds about that. On the one hand, I wish that Coney Island could be what it used to be — amusement park, beach, low-brow grunge, burlesque shows, the Coney Island that started out sometime early last century and was still clinging to life when my parents lived there, and which was still at least on life support when I grew up there. On the other hand, maybe a casino is just a natural evolution. There's no way a Coney Island amusement park could ever hope to compete with a Six Flags, and would that be any better, anyhow? Who knows; maybe a casino can revitalize whatever else is left on the Boardwalk. As it stands right now, we could only find one gift shop there — and it didn't even have postcards.

Because it's still winter, everything was closed. It was still amazing to be back, though, and I took lots of photos:

1-3: Shots along the boardwalk showing LL and I and the parachute jump. I could see the jump from my bedroom window when I was a kid in Coney; it's in much better shape now than it was back then. The parachute jump is to Coney Island, and maybe to New York, what the Eiffel Tower is to Paris.

4-6: Some close-up shots of the parachute jump. The last one is taken from the base of the jump toward Astroland and the Wonder Wheel.

7-9: The Wonder Wheel itself; shot #9 is in the same park as the Wonder Wheel, Deno's Wonder Wheel Park (warning: the web page is kind of a pain in the neck). I don't know if it's going to stay open when the new casino comes in or not.

10-12: A shot from the Boardwalk toward the "Original" Nathan's, the Cyclone from the New York Aquarium parking lot, and another Boardwalk shot.

13-15: Three shots of the ruins of the old public bath. I think. I'm actually not sure what this old building is. It's a beautiful bit of decay there on the Boardwalk, though, and if anyone can tell me what it used to be with certainty I'd appreciate the info.

16-18: Two shots of a very friendly walrus and a not-so-friendly electric eel at the New York Aquarium. The aquarium is almost certainly the most successful thing still standing on the Boardwalk. I used to go there a lot as a kid; I think that electric eel might be the same one I remember from when I was about 10.

There are a few more Coney Island pictures in this album if you still haven't had enough.

After our visit to the Boardwalk, I took a shot at seeing the house I lived in as a kid in Seagate, just a bit more than a mile from the Boardwalk. Back when I lived there, the "gate" consisted of a security guard in a sort of toll booth. Now it's a major piece of wrought iron with razor wire at the top and high fences going all the way around the community. There was no way even to walk in, let alone drive, so I didn't get to see the old house. Considering what an armed compound the place looks like now, I probably never will, as much as I'd like to.

After a day in Brooklyn, we headed back to Long Island and got a bit of rest back at the hotel. We ventured out again for dinner at a Thai restaurant in Valley Stream called Seeda. I was in the mood for Thai and there aren't too many Thai places in Nassau, which is probably good for Seeda. The food was adequate and the service was bad — slow, curt and inattentive. The place was crowded and noisy and even though it was small, getting the attention of the wait staff was nearly impossible. I wouldn't bother with it again. Seeda bills itself as the best Thai food on Long Island, but I have a hunch that's as meaningful a title as being the smartest person at a Bush family reunion.

Sunday, March 2
At 9:25 AM, the precise time at which I turned 42, I was standing on a platform at Penn Station and waiting for the uptown A train to take LL and I to the American Museum of Natural History. The Museum is a pivotal place in my life; it's probably the single entity most responsible for getting me interested in science, particularly in biology. I wonder how many kids it has had that effect upon over the years. I couldn't wait to get back there again after all these years.

We met up with my sister and her family there; my niece even made me a birthday card on purple construction paper:

In case you find that writing hard to read, it says:

Moo Poop Moo Poop
Moo Poop Moo Poop
Moo Poop Moo
Poop Moo Poop
Moo Poop Moo!

I mean, you'd think a 15 year old could do better than that. Then again, she's only 4 now, and in fouryearoldese I'm pretty sure that means "Happy birthday." Either that or she thought the whole thing was a bunch of bullshit. Could be either one...

We didn't get to spend much time with my sister's family, though. My niece got overtired and overstimulated and completely crashed, so they had to take her to one of the quiet parts of the museum while LL and I forged on. The displays have changed a lot since I was a kid and the whole place has largely been modernized, but it's still that same old wonderfully dusty old museum I'll always love. We stuck mainly to the biology-oriented sections, but we'll do more of the anthropology-related parts next time we go which, now that we're within easy travel distance, certainly won't take another twenty years.

Again, there are lots of photos in this album. Here are some highlights. Readers can figure out for themselves what's being shown here or ask. It's pretty self-explanatory, really.

We spent the whole glorious day in the museum, almost from opening until closing. After that, we bid our goodbyes to my sister and family and headed back out to Long Island for dinner at the Nautilus Cafe in Freeport.

The Nautilus was terrific. The food was just excellent; we started with raw oysters on the half shell and Asian calamari. The latter was perfect; spicy and sweet and enough to make me want to dive face-first onto the plate which, come to think of it, I practically did. We both got seafood combination plates with lobster tails, scallops and shrimp stuffed with crab meat for an entrée and split an order of asparagus hollandaise for a side. For dessert, I had key lime dream and LL had an almond "cake" which, as far as I could tell, contained nothing like flour and was pure, sweet amaretto with almond frosting and several other almond-flavored things. The service was flawless and friendly. The wine list wasn't bad, either. I had a couple of glasses of Italian Pinot Grigio with dinner and LL had a tawny port with dessert. Everything was solid from start to finish, and Nautilus Café turned out to be the perfect place for my birthday dinner. I really couldn't have asked for more.

We lingered there until about 10:00, then headed back to the hotel to collapse into a very, very deep sleep.

Monday, March 3
Breakfast at Bagel Cafe III at the corner of Atlantic and Ocean in Freeport was OK; they have real bagels there. We didn't want to get caught in rush hour traffic, so we passed a couple of hours at Three Streams Preserve (officially, it's called the Massapequa Preserve, but nobody called it that when I lived in the area). There's not much to say about the place, really. It has always been a popular place for teenagers to drink beer and do other things of which their parents do not approve, so parts of it are littered with old beer cans and bottles and other places are in good shape. I know I did my share of partying in the place when I was a disaffected 16 year old, and the tradition continues.

We got on the road at about 10:30 AM and took our time getting back, so we didn't get home until about 3:30 PM, when we discovered that our cable and internet services had been accidentally disconnected when our upstairs neighbor moved out while we were away. It took until this afternoon to get that fixed, and now here I am writing the longest single blog update I will probably ever write.

Our most excellent weekend has ended now. LL is fighting a cold she probably contracted while riding the subway and my fingers are falling off. Tomorrow, it's back to the grind.

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Big Pink Cow Followed Me Around

I dreamed last night of a pink life-sized cow plush toy that came to life and followed me everywhere. It was a very friendly animated plush cow toy.

Upon waking, I wondered... am I a man who dreamed that a pink life-sized cow plush toy came to life and followed someone about, or am I a pink life-sized cow plush toy that has come to life and is dreaming that it is a man?

No, not really.

I do wonder, though, if my having consumed an entire 14 oz. New York strip steak for dinner last night had something to do with this oddball dream. LL really wanted a steak, you see, and so we wound up at an Outback Steakhouse. I'm no vegetarian, but I almost never eat that much meat in one sitting and perhaps it has done something to my brain...

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Return to Morocco Restaurant (Worcester)

LL and I went to Morocco (at 172 Shrewsbury St., Worcester) for a second time last night in celebration of six months in Worcester. Details of our first time there a month and a half ago can be reviewed in this entry (November 19).

It's worth noting that word is clearly getting out about Morocco. We made a reservation last night and it's a good thing that we did because the place was packed. There wasn't an empty table available for almost the entire time we were there and customers without reservations had about a ten minute wait. That's not too bad considering it was a Saturday night, but calling ahead (508-459-9660) would be a very good idea if you're planning to have dinner on the weekend. Watching the wait staff try to keep up with demand was practically a floor show by itself. We watched our own waiter deliver an order and then literally sprint back to the kitchen to pick up another several times. The staff is working hard, so leave them a good tip!

We started off with a mezza (assorted appetizers) consisting of kibbi (cooked and rolled into balls), shanklish, ma'anik (lamb sausage) and stuffed cabbage leaves. The only one of these that was a bit of a let-down to us was the shanklish. Both of us tend to like the strong, sharply-flavored variety and Morocco uses a very mild version. It's prepared as part of what resembles a salad containing a lot of parsley, chopped tomatoes and green onions marinated in vinegar and a bit of olive oil, so the taste of the cheese gets lost. After two tries with that dish, I probably wouldn't order it again. The other three appetizers, however, were wonderful. The stuffed cabbage leaves were the best of the lot; I'm not sure what's in the stuffing that Morocco uses, but whatever it is practically made my eyes roll back into my head. The menu says that the small mezza ($25) serves two, but if that's the case then it's as a dinner. By the time we got through the appetizers, we were practically full. Morocco certainly isn't stingy with their servings — dieters beware!

For entrees, LL ordered lamb kabob ($20) and I had sheik el mishih ($15), a traditional dish of eggplant stuffed with ground meat and pine nuts, spiced to perfection and smothered in a practically addictive tomato-based sauce, served with rice. LL said that her kabobs were excellent though cooked slightly beyond medium as she'd requested — a minor detail considering that she didn't look like she exactly wanted to send her order back. My sheik el mishih was a little oily but otherwise fantastic. This is one of my favorite Middle Eastern dishes and I've had it at least once at every restaurant serving this cuisine at least once. Morocco's is the best I've had, easily beating out that served in the other local Lebanese restaurants and, in fact, any of those I ever went to in San Francisco as well. The only place that comes close in my experience was a place we went to near Buckingham Palace in London about ten years ago. When the menu at Morocco's says that sheik el mishih is a house special, they're not exaggerating. Special is a very good word to describe it.

We probably should have stopped eating, but we couldn't resist splitting a dessert. Based on our friend's reaction to it last time we were at Morocco, LL and I decided to try the knafe. It was quite good, though in this case we've had better. Again, in my experience, Morocco's knafe is still outstripped by that served at Aladdin's in Tallahassee. Nonetheless, if you're not planning on heading south and you still have enough room left in your stomach after everything else, give it a try. It's sweet and cheesy and topped with shredded coconut and well worth the price ($5).

Once again, the only downside at Morocco was the service, and considering how busy it was that was still pretty good. We were greeted at the door when we arrived by manager Sadi Sadi who remembered us from our last visit and, just as last time, Sadi spent a good deal of the time we were there being chummy with patrons. That personal touch sets Morocco apart not just as a Middle Eastern restaurant, I think, but generally. Judging by the crowd last night, not only does Morocco look to be turning into a local hit, but if they can keep up the quality and add the amenities they plan on adding, it may yet become a Worcester institution before long. It really is that good.

In my last entry about this restaurant, I had mentioned that they were planning to add a separate room in which to serve arguileh. They still don't have the facility; we were informed last night that state laws governing smoking in Massachusetts are causing some delays in getting it set up. The current plan is to make this available to patrons sometime in early summer. I hope Morocco can pull it off; it'd be a nice touch to have a hookah-room to which to retire after such an exceptional dinner.

All in all, our second visit to this restaurant was even better than our first. Morocco is improving, and since they started out as well as they did, I think there are great things ahead for this place. If you're within driving distance of Worcester and reading this because you've heard about Morocco and are wondering whether it's worth the trip — yes, it is. Middle Eastern cuisine is practically part of daily life for LL and I, and we're agreed that Morocco's is easily among the best you're likely to find anywhere in America.

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French Kissing a Cow at Weintraub's of Worcester

Last week, I posted a request for a place in Worcester that has knishes and some kindly anonymous (and presumably local) reader pointed me at a place called Weintraub's on Water Street. Thank you, anonymous reader.

LL and I headed over there for lunch and have just gotten back and I wasn't disappointed in the least. I had, for the first time since leaving California nearly six years ago, a tongue sandwich, and it was a very good sandwich. Tongue is one of my favorite Jewish delicacies, and the stuff in this sandwich was just greasy enough to provide that "what you're eating is bad for you, but damn it tastes good" experience. I wolfed that sucker down in about two minutes flat and now have the "see, I told you that was bad for you" case of heartburn, a small price to pay.

LL had a heavy pastrami sandwich. The pastrami was practically in slabs and the portion so large that she could only finish half of her sandwich, so I got to taste some of that as well. They're not kidding when they say heavy pastrami; that stuff could be used for the control rods in a nuclear reactor! That's some dense meat right there, and good, too.

We also brought home some knishes and a pound of kishka for dinner. I don't think I've had kishka since I left New York, so maybe since 1982. I remember loving the stuff, though, so I'm looking forward to trying Weintraub's tonight.

The restaurant itself is a little hole-in-the-wall kind of place that's been there since the 1920's. It doesn't look like anything special, but to a kid from Brooklyn who just spent five years living in places where there just weren't any decent Jewish delis it looked a lot like an oasis to me — an oasis full of kishka and tongue. Now that I know where Weintraub's is, I'll finally get around to getting that last bit of blood out of my cholesterol stream!

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Thanksgiving 2007

LL and I spent Thanksgiving with my family. We started out with Thanksgiving dinner in upstate New York and then moved on to another Thanksgiving in central Pennsylvania at the Nittany Mountain KOA camp, which is owned by my sister-in-law and her partner. Yes, two Thanksgiving dinners. I don't remember the last time I ate so much. My family is rather non-traditional; aside from my sister and brother-in-law, nobody is married to one another, so we're all partners, but still family. I'm not sure what that means, if anything, but I think we've all sort of come to the same conclusions about the institution of marriage in general. It's an unusually diverse group of people, too, in terms of ethnicity and education and everything else. We're certainly not the typical 2.2-kids middle class model. We can certainly eat, though.

LL and I stayed in the cabin shown above. One of the first people we met at the camp was a nearby camper who goes by the name of Snooky. Snooky is obsessed with blowing leaves. He spends whole days, from sunrise to sunset, with his leaf blower. Things could be worse, I suppose... he could be obsessed with an axe. To say the guy is eccentric is probably an understatement. Meeting him made me wonder if Stephen King has ever written a story about a leaf blowing maniac.

Of course, there were other things to do beside blowing leaves. My niece, for instance, prefers playing miniature golf to just about anything else. She has her own rules for the game, the first of which is "I win!" When she got tired, she had the good fortune of free and unlimited access to the camp store, so she could always "sugar up" on candy and hot cocoa when she started getting tired. I've sat through hurricanes that packed less energy than that kid. For her, the long weekend consisted of miniature golf, Spongebob and sugar. Oh, and telling all the adults how to play whatever game she made up at the moment. It's too bad none of us had nearly the same energy she does.

There's a petting zoo at the camp. LL made friends with a couple of goats. My niece, for whatever reasons, wasn't generally too interested in the animals. Not all of the animals present were from the petting zoo; my brother-in-law's mother (my aunt-in-law? I still don't know the proper kinship term) brought along her pug, Zeus. Also present was a ridiculously friendly three-legged cat; he lost the fourth leg in a jaw trap some years ago and makes do with the remaining limbs as best he can. There was also a very hyperactive Maltese named CD and a few other critters lurking about.

What family gathering would be complete without at least one faux pas? Ours took the form of a social misstep by my sister-in-law's partner's daughter's boyfriend (I dare anyone to give me the kinship term for that relationship!) delivering a line about how mean Arabs are while LL was sitting at the table. This was made a bit funnier by the fact that the guy is half Italian and half Jamaican himself and was meeting the family for the first time. It was all taken in stride with good humor and a quick comeback from LL resulting in a blush and an embarrassed "Oh, are you Arab?" from Alfredo, the boyfriend in question. I don't think anyone will be letting him live that one down anytime soon.

We stayed at the camp and ate ridiculously well through Saturday night, then left early on Sunday morning to begin the trip home. I decided to take a detour through Binghamton on the way to check out a few places that were part of my life about 20 years ago when I lived up there. The first stop was at 160 Conklin Avenue, a house that I lived in during my first stint at university. I lived there with five other students, including one girlfriend, in a sort of commune that resulted in the place being called Helter Shelter. There were a lot of drugs and craziness. The place is essentially the spot where my life absolutely went to pieces and I felt a need to revisit the site of the most traumatic time in my existence. It hasn't changed at all. In fact, it looks as if it hasn't seen so much as a coat of paint since I left in 1988. To me, it seems a dark, brooding, decaying place, perhaps a bit Lovecraftian in its presence. It's like a combination of fossil and historic landmark in my life. Standing there at the corner of Conklin and John was surreal; I felt as if I were dreaming, especially because LL was there with me. My room in the house was the one with the windows just above the door in this photo. The door itself was the spot where, in 1987, a guy named Jimmy Puccio drank a votive candle full of hot wax thinking it was a shot of tequila and then passed out. He's probably long forgotten about the incident, wherever he is now. If there were such a thing as ghosts, this house would certainly be haunted by the spirits of many acid trips, not to mention some devastating heartbreaks. I wouldn't want to be the poor slobs living in it now in that case. In my mind, at least, this is a place with much mojo.

After my pilgrimage to Helter Shelter, I headed to the SUNY Binghamton campus. Everything was closed and parking was no problem. We visited College-in-the-Woods, dorms I'd been tossed out of years ago after my roommate and I accidentally set a fire in Oneida Hall that got the place evacuated at 4 AM in the middle of a winter night. You see, we wanted to find out whether Bacardi 151 was really flammable, so we filled the cap of a peanut butter jar with the stuff and lit it. It ignited, of course... and then my roommate jerked his hand away and knocked over the entire bottle onto my desk. That set off the alarms and destroyed a couple of my textbooks and all of my notebooks, too. The next day, we were told that we could no longer live on campus. We wound up finding a place in Johnson City, right on Main Street. That's what's shown in the image to the right; our apartment was the top floor of the building to the right of the one with the "1892" decoration on the top. I lived there for about a year with my roommate, Duncan, as well as the son of the Fijian ambassador to the United States. After that year, I took some time off from school. By the time I got back, Duncan had graduated and I wound up living at Helter Shelter. The store with the blue awning, now a clothing store, used to be a sub shop called The Pig Out. It had the best spiedies in all of Broome County, and I'd been hoping to take LL there, but it's gone. Actually, most of the storefronts on Main Street are empty these days. Downtown Johnson City is a very sad, desolate place. Even Fat Cat Books, an institution for Triple Cities comic book and RPG fans, moved out of downtown. The building it once occupied, just across the street from my old apartment, now sits empty.

We spent some time poking around the area and then got back on the road home. Along the way, we got hungry and stopped for lunch in Cobleskill. Not wanting to hit the usual fast food places, LL chose our lunch spot, a diner on route 9 attached to the Colonial Motel — the Diner Motel. Not the Motel Diner, mind you, but the Diner Motel. Seeing that they'd gotten the name wrong on the sign, we probably should have known better than to eat there... but we went ahead and did it anyhow. I ordered grilled chicken on a pita, expecting something like a gyro. What I got was a piece of grilled chicken on a pita and nothing else. This was easily the most literal lunch I've ever eaten. It was exactly one piece of chicken breast on half of a pita with no lettuce, no tomato, no onions, no nothing. LL ordered a proper gyro, but that was bland and useless, too. After lunch, we agreed that the best thing about the food we'd just had was that it probably wouldn't make us sick.

Because our own GPS unit is in the shop for repairs, we were traveling with a loaner. Quick qord of advice here; avoid the Mio GPS like the plague. We told the thing to avoid toll roads and, as if to punish us, it took us on the most backwards, time-wasting route home possible. At one point we even wound up on a dirt road (Tory Hill Road) somewhere near Central Brunswick, NY. We were trying to avoid taking the Mass Pike, but we finally gave in and took it and paid for that mistake by getting stuck in a traffic jam that easily added close to hours to our trip. We finally got off 90 and picked up 20... but that was backed up, too. The final insult came when we got off 20 and onto Stafford Road, just a couple of miles from home. I was pulled over by a cop because I had a license plate frame. No kidding; license plate frames are technically illegal in Massachusetts, and this particular cop decided to stop me because of it. Luckily, he gave me a warning instead of a ticket. By that time, though, we'd been on the road for more than twelve hours. Ugh. We left New Columbia, PA at 6:00 AM. By the time we got back to Worcester, it was 8:30 PM. It was an awful trip. Next year, we'll do things differently. I don't know how, but I'm not doing that haul on a holiday weekend ever again.

The weekend was great, the road trip sucked, and I'm now functioning on 3.5 hours of sleep, having awakened at 1:30 this morning for no good reason I can fathom. I have to teach lab until 9:00 tonight, too. It's going to be a looooooooooooong day.

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