Books Bites & Banter

This evening I went to the Buffalo & Erie County Public Library Happy Hour at Big Ditch Brewing. The cost of attending the event included two beers and some food. I already had dinner but I did enjoy a couple of their brews. First a Natural Blonde Belgium-Style Blonde Ale and then an Excavator Rye Brown Ale. Both were delicious.

I met several librarians I had worked with thirty some years ago. We had a great time talking about old times and also about the current conditions at the library.  One of the strangest and funniest moments happened when I first arrived there and was checking in and buying my ticket. The person at the desk, a current BECPL librarian, asked if I was a retired BECPL librarian. I replied no and that I was a retired librarian from Canisius College but had worked at the BECPL in the early to mid 90's. I had found some of my BECPL work cards recently while going through some old boxes upstairs and pulled one out of my pocket. She read my name and exclaimed that she knew who I was and that I was a legend. I was the person who started technology in the library for the librarians and the patrons. 

I spend an hour and a half with these folks and had a wonderful time. There is another 60th building anniversary at the library on Friday at 3 pm and several people asked if I was going to be there. They all wanted me to come. There were also a couple of people who were running the event that took my picture. I wonder where they will turn up. 

Shopping for Spiced Wafers

Becky and I went down to the Acme Market on Germantown Avenue on Monday to get some Spiced Wafers to bring home. We were getting a few other things too but the main thing was those cookies which we can't get in Buffalo.

We had a few things in our cart but couldn't find the spiced wafers ginger snaps anywhere in the cookie aisle. I had to ask a couple of people working there before I got pointed in the right direction. The only place in the store they were located at was in the very front hallway display. I grabbed two boxes.

Katie knows how much I love ginger snaps in the Fall which is really the only time they are usually available and she had a box of Sweetzils Spiced Wafers which I ate half of them over the weekend. 

I'm going to be enjoying these two boxes of Ivins Spiced Wafers for the next couple of months.

Clara's Leaves

Clara is so sweet. While on a walk she collected some leaves that she liked. Then when she got home she went to the dining room table and got out some art supplies. She then wrote a message on the leaves for Becky and me. Clara loves Grammie and Poppa.

Here is mine. I took a picture of the leaf sitting on my pant leg while sitting in the living room. We each have one.

10/14  6:08 pm

Dinner @ Toska Restaurant & Brewery

Becky and I walked down to Germantown Avenue with Dan for a nice dinner at Toska Restaurant & Brewery on a Sunday evening.

This was our first time in this restaurant since the new owners took over from the previous restaurant that we loved... Earth, Bread & Brewery which sadly closed towards the end of the pandemic. 

The new restaurant is Armenian but is also a brewery, sandwich and pizza place. They do have a lot of food with Armenian sausage. 

Over the years since Katie and Todd moved to Mt. Airy we had made several visits to the original incarnation of this restaurant. We had heard that it was still good and we looked forward to going down there again. The food was delicious and the service was very good. We had dinner up on the second floor as we had so many times before. Me and Dan both had the Blackened Chicken Caesar Sandwich and Becky had a Grilled Chicken Sandwich. The sandwiches were served with some very good fries. I had a Toska Hazy IPA and Dan had a Toska Roaring Flames Stout. Becky had an NA. I followed that with a Toska Lager and Dan had another stout.

It was not very crowded but it was a Sunday evening. We would definitely go there again. 

Sunday Pancakes

Todd made some Sunday Pancakes this morning. He does this every Sunday. They are small and he makes a lot of different kinds including apple, blueberry, strawberry, plain and whatever is around. He makes lots of them and they get eaten by the kids throughout the week.

I enjoyed a few of them on Sunday morning.

These Sunday morning pancakes reminded me of growing up in our house on Greene Street and having my father make us kids pancakes every Sunday morning. Of course this was after everyone had gone to mass at St. Francis of Assissi Church down the street from our home a half block from the church. We would all always be hungry because of course we fasted before going to church. We would go to either the nine o'clock or ten fifteen mass. Tom and I were choir boys so we sometimes had to sing at the later high mass.  Well, whenever we got home Dad made us pancakes. They were always regular pancakes and not anything special with different ingredients like Todd's. They were also big with lots of butter and syrup. We loved them.

I sometimes can't think about growing up with Dad without tasting those Sunday pancakes.

Scarecrows at the Morris Arboretum

We spent some time with the kids at the Morris Arboretum today. Katie and Todd are members and they regularly visit the gardens. We've been with them over the years and really enjoy it too.

This visit was special because it was Halloween season and they had their annual ArBooretum 17th annual scarecrow walk. So on Sunday we all drove over the the Arboretum with Becky and I squeezed into the back seat that we jokingly refer to as squish the fish. Henry especially loves when we bring that joke up. The regular parking lot was full so we had to park at the lower level and take the shuttle cart up the hill to the main area. The kids liked being in the cart.  

There are lots of garden areas and activities for the kids throughout the year but this time was special because of the scarecrow walk which we followed along the path throughout the arboretum. There were dozens of scarecrows throughout the gardens. I took several pictures but really thought that all of the scarecrows could be seen on their website as there was a contest for people to vote for their favorite scarecrow. I thought they would be here at the ArBooretum page. There's lots of info about the event but not a collection of all the scarecrows. 

Overall the kids really enjoyed the scarecrow walk.

Becky's Chicken Noodle Soup

Becky came home from running some errands with one of those cooked chickens from Wegmans. BBQ flavored. I cut up the chicken and she took some of it and made a chicken noodle soup. This was perfect food for a cool Fall day.

The soup was delicious and she had some flat bread in the freezer which was perfect with the soup. 

Then we had a lot of chicken that wasn't used for the soup that I placed in a container for future use. This would make some nice chicken sandwiches.

There was also plenty of the soup leftover for another meal. 

The soup cooking in the pot.

Veterans for Kamala Sign

I got my Veterans for Kamala sign from VoteVets and displayed on our front lawn. Right away we were getting many positive comments about it. People seemed to not have seen this veterans support sign around the neighborhood. I haven't seen it anywhere else either.

Mark next door told Becky he really liked the sign and wanted one. I went online to VoteVets and got one for him that would be shipped to him while we were in Philly. I texted Jody to let her know that it would be coming in the mail. She was excited about it.

Update 10/16

Mark got the sign and put it in front of his house on the hedge. While we were in Philly I looked around a lot at all the Kamala Harris for president signs but never saw any of the Veterans for Kamala signs like I have on my lawn. No wonder I got comments and had people come over close to see where the sign was published from... the VoteVets organization which I am a member of on FB. 

Dinner @ The Phoenix

Tonight Becky and I had a wonderful dinner tonight at the Phoenix restaurant on Amherst Street in Black Rock. We loved it. This was our first time having dinner there. It has been on our list for several years to try out. Should have gone there a long time ago.

The restaurant opens at 5 pm and we got there about 5:15 and were the first customers of the night. They have a very nice patio but we opted to sit in the dinning room as it was getting chilly. We had the room to ourselves for about a half hour and then it suddenly filled up. The service was very good and the food was spectacular. 

We started off with a couple of beers. Becky had an Athletic NA and I had a Niagara Lager draft pint from Woodcock Brewery, a local beer. Becky had Chicken Piccata and I had Chicken Masala. Both of our dinners had fabulous mashed potatoes and broccoli. The dinners were both traditional old school and amazing. 

Then we had dessert and Becky ordered an ice cream dish but OMG it was delicious. I couldn't believe how good it was.

On the walls of the restaurant was the artwork of our friend Sandy Ludwick whom we've known for over 40 years. She was a regular customer at the ArtTree back in the 80's and taught art in the Buffalo public schools. Later in the 90's when we moved on Crescent Ave we discovered she was a neighbor. We were at her art opening at the restaurant a couple of weeks ago and at that time we decided we really had to check out this place out. There was a very big crowd at the opening and the food that some folks were having at the tables looked good. We knew we had to come back. Next time we have to come with some friends.

MJM Electric

Last week I contacted MJM Electric, a local electrician company, to install our newly purchased kitchen light fixture and also to fix our backyard security light which stopped working last month. Joe from MJM came this morning and did the work.

He took down our old very large not working properly kitchen fixture and replaced it with the much smaller and round new fixture. It also had three different settings for

bulb brightness and color. Actually it's an LED light rather than a bulb. Now our kitchen is very bright. The kids will be happy. I also have some painting to do on the ceiling.

We were lucky it's trash day because I was able to put most of that kitchen light fixture including the four long fluorescent blubs out on the street for trash pickup which happened about then minutes later. I had already put out several large trash bags of leaves and nuts so I didn't want to put too much stuff out there on this regular trash day. So the heavy large part of the fixture I put in the shed for next week's trash.

He also took care of the security light problem which turned out to be two bad bulbs that may have burned out after the hail storm last month. The light stopped working after the storm. One bulb went completely out and the other just flickered. It really didn't look like it was an ordinary burned out bulb which I had considered. We have another security light fixture on the sunroom that worked fine when turned on and I thought about switching the bulbs with the lights on the back of the house but didn't really want to be climbing up that high on a ladder just to try it out. Called the electrician.

He went up on his ladder and took out the bad bulbs and asked if I had new bulbs. Instead I had him take the two bulbs from the other fixture and put them in the security fixture to see if they worked. They did. I then had him put the two bad bulbs in the sunroom fixture where they didn't work there either. So now at some point I will buy a couple of replacement bulbs for the light fixture in the back and I will also get a couple of new bulbs for that security light as we don't know how long those replacement bulbs will last. It was odd that both bulbs would go at the same time but the electrician said there may have been a little damage to the fixture due to the storm although there was nothing obvious and the replacement bulbs seemed to work fine. I'll be testing them out over the new few days.

The MJM Electric company will be sending us a bill for the work. It will be interesting to see how much they charge us for changing those light bulbs. The service was good and I would use them again.