Let’s Go Buffalo!

Last night, the Sabres won game six of the Eastern Division Finals, forcing the series into game seven. The collective relief of the citizenry resulted in a two hour chorus of horn honking. The war cry of the Buffalo sports fan is "Let’s Go Buffalo". Quarter quarter eighth-eighth quarter (for my music homies). After the game concluded we headed to Merlin’s where we watched everyone, from the Soccer Moms to the Buffalo Fire Department, honk "Let’s Go Buffalo" as they drove past. Please pray that Buffalo wins game seven. I’m fairly sure that either way, the Sabres fans are going to burn Buffalo to the ground tomorrow night. If we win, at least the fire will be in celebration, rather than explosive group angst.

I really wanted to include a cute little video clip in this post but either Typepad (my blog service) is a total asshole, or I am a total moron- it’s pretty much a coin toss.

Ellie’s Day!

Today is my sister Ellie’s  28th birthday.  Happy birthday lil’ sistah!  Ellie is a free-spirited, creative, kind, talented, and beautiful gal.  Let’s all toast to Ellie’s Day!

I love you Ellie!

Memorial Day Googlys

Part 1

 

Part 2

Chili Nøtter

I found the mini bar in my Norwegian hotel room irresistible.  While in the United States, I have no urge to eat the three dollar Snickers bars and the six dollar Heineken’s that the typical hotel chain stocks for the weary traveler.  When I was in Norway however, the junk food was foreign and tempting.  When I looked inside my mini fridge I saw a half dozen entirely unfamiliar candy bars.  One night, I broke down and took two items out of the mini bar.  The first thing I ate was a dark chocolate candy bar that contained marzipan and raspberry jelly.  Kind of good, but also kind of gross.  But then, oh but then!  THEN I ate some Chili Nøtters.   A chili nøtter is a peanut wrapped in a sort of cracker-like shell and then dusted with a salty chili flavor.  YUM!  I love me some chili nøtters.  Every day I was in Norway I ate a handful of nøtters, and in the airport on the way home I picked up a small package to eat later.  I was so enraptured with the chili nøtter, that once I was back in Buffalo I took some pictures with googly eyes. 

Googly eyes + food = true love.

About a week after I returned from Norway I opened the package of chili nøtters I had purchased in the Norwegian airport.  After licking the last granules of chili dust off my fingers, I figured I had seen the end of my beloved nøtters.

Well, look at what I just found at Wegman’s (my local grocery store).

Chili Nøtters!  Only now they are called Cajun Peanuts!

This has me thinking-  What other delights have gone unnoticed in Buffalo until now?  Are there some fjords around here that I have somehow never found?   Do Western New Yorkers, unbeknownst to me, actually speak three languages?   Is there a socialized health care system that I have managed to miss?

If the chili nøtter is actually just a readily available snack food item, perhaps I shouldn’t be so desperate to leave Buffalo.  If I can just walk into Wegman’s and buy nøtters, what else can I do around here that simply never occurred to me before?  Maybe, I shouldn’t be trying so hard to escape this seemingly mundane and nøtterless land. Maybe, I have everything I need right here.

Snarky

I just re-read my last post and I am tempted to delete it due to unnecessary snarkiness.   I don’t want to be a snarkinator.  Truthfully, I find muffin top quite endearing.  The thing I love about muffin top is that even the very skinniest woman can get it.  Muffin top is not about belly fat, it is about tight pants and a misguided decision to expose the midriff.   Every woman has muffin top potential underneath her properly fitting attire.

The guy with the big belly and the too small shirt- that is just the male equivalent of muffin top.

So, after careful consideration, here is my offical stance on muffin top: Pro.  I am pro muffin top.  We should all strut our muffin tops- but we should do so underneath a properly fitting outfit.

This is far far too much blog time devoted to the muffin top. 

Thursday at the Square

The City of Buffalo hosts a free concert on Lafayette Square every Thursday afternoon during the summer.  "Thursday at the Square" (or TATS as I will henceforth call it) is a weekly celebration of affordable musical acts, Labatt’s Blue Light, and muffin top.  This is not the sort of event I naturally gravitate towards, but now that I have a bike, I’m willing to expand my horizons.  Activities involving large crowds are so much less annoying when you can easily coast in and (more importantly) out, without dealing with parking or public transportation.   I heart my bike.

Let’s explore the strange, and wonderful world of TATS, shall we?  The following is a step-by-step guide to your Thursday at the Square experience.

Step 1:  Acquire beer.  This can be accomplished at one of the fifty thousand beer stands. 

The City of Buffalo makes it nearly impossible to stay sober on Thursday afternoon.   I’m sure that the easy availability of refreshing Blue Light is a large part of TATS’s success, but come on.  Is it really a good idea to get everybody in Buffalo between the ages of 20-32 drunk, ON A SCHOOL NIGHT?  No.  No, it is not a good idea.  It is a fun idea, but still, not good.

Step 2:  Begin to observe and mock your fellow Buffalonians.   I am a Buffalonian.  These are my people.  And yet……I must make fun.   How am I supposed to resist the urge to mock when faced with cutoffs so short they require a bikini wax?  These girls are wearing MATCHING COWBOY BOOTS.  They are also wearing matching cowboy hats, but for the sake of decency I have chosen not to include their empty, vapid heads in this photograph.  Outfits like this make me glad I am thirty and not twenty.  TATS is filled to the brim with girls like this, and each one of these ladies baffles my old withered mind. 

But let’s not pick on the ladies, because the male Buffalonians have their own set of problems.  Sigh.  It’s not the belly that I mind, it’s the general disarray surrounding the belly.   As far as I can tell, TATS is a man’s world, but this man is carelessly squandering his advantage.  On behalf of all the girls in cowboy hats, I find this carelessness troubling.  It took those girls a long time to find the right pair of cowboy boots, why don’t you show them that you care by putting on a shirt you didn’t wear to bed last night. 

Step 3-5: Repeat Step 1

Step 6: Realize you actually love the cowgirls and the rumple shirt guy.  It takes all types to make the world go round- right? Suddenly you are just glad that there is a place for everyone to get together and be themselves.  Hell, your outfit isn’t so dynamite either.  We are all just doing the best that we can.  Buffalo is the BEST.   

Step 7: Discover the existence of The Stanley Cup Guy.

I am not the only person in town with hockey fever.  The Stanley Cup Guy has found a way to turn our hockey fever into gold.  He has taken a large picture of the Stanley Cup and made it into a big stiff poster, which he then sells for $10.   As you can see, his Stanley Cup looks pretty good in pictures.  There were many people wandering around carrying big fake Stanley Cups- and I pretty much loved these people.  Thank you Stanley Cup Guy!

Step 8:  Decide you have to pee.  This is a sad decision as it leads you to one of the fifty thousand Port-a-Pottys (one Port-a-Potty for every beer stand- it’s NY state law).  Eww.  Now you are so sorry you drank all that beer. 

Step 9: Wait in line for the privilege of using the disgusting Port-a-Potty.  This is a devastating step in the process.  This is where you begin to imagine peddling away from TATS.

Step 10:  Emerge from "toilet" disturbed and desperate to leave TATS.

Step 11:  Convince all necessary parties to leave TATS and bike to the trashiest bar in Buffalo,  which is conveniently located ten steps away from your apartment. 

Step 12:  Eat clams casino and drink more beer at trashy bar. 

Step 13:  Be at home knitting by ten o’clock.   

All in all, I would say that Thursday at the Square is a pretty fun afternoon, but I wouldn’t want to go every week.  The musical act yesterday was Big Bad Voodoo Daddy, but they were definitely secondary to the fantastic people watching.

A typical Buffalonian enjoying Thursday at the Square:

The following people need bikes: Amelie, Bradley.

Don’t Hate Me Because I’m Adorable

Still Alive

If I haven’t returned your call in the last two days, I apologize.  I have had very important business that demanded my attention.  This business could only be conducted on my ass, on the couch while knitting and watching entire seasons of "24" in one stretch.  Immediately after I returned from Norway I had a series of concerts that prevented me from fully unwinding.   First it was a quartet concert, then a tricky week at work, and then on Friday I performed Mozart’s Symphonia Concertante with a local ensemble.   None of these performances should have been all that stressful in and of themselves, but they did add up to a feeling of constant practice guilt.  For the last two months I’ve been feeling like I’m one step behind my workload.   Well, I limped to the finish line on Friday and celebrated by spending two straight days knitting and watching television.   aka, best weekend ever.  Sitting around doing nothing has been so soothing that I am considering granting myself a three day weekend.   

My main knitting project has been experimenting with variations to the Spherey pattern.   I’ve been knitting with tiny needles and skinny yarn, hoping to create the perfect mini-Spherey, to varying degrees of success. I am aware that many knitters are capable of performing fairly simple calculations that make re-sizing patterns very easy.  Unfortunately, I suspect that these calculations require access to the same part of the brain that reads maps, and knows right from left.  I was either born without this portion of my brain or I killed it in college with drugs and alcohol- either way, it is dead to me.   As a result, I knit by trial and error.   

Sometimes I line the Sphereys up, Von Trapp style. 

I realize that over the last week my posts have been ultra whimsical.  I can only ask for your patience during this time of complete mental shutdown.   

I’ll Get Sick of This Soon……I Think

Drama