randvisit (part 2)

Randvisit photo. This waterfall was in a gorgeous park
within a short walk of his apartment.


Enjoyed my Buffalo visit on the weekend. As I mentioned on Friday, I hung out at Rand's library for a while, bugged him while he was working at the reference desk:





... and enjoyed snooping through his office:





...which had the following sign displayed:





We had lunch at Morning Glory with his friend Thomas Woods:





Much of the weekend focused on friends, books and food, three of my favorite things in life. :-)



Rust Belt Books, a great used book shop.
Everyone there knew Rand.


I had amazing beef on weck (Buffalo specialty) and pumpkin ice cream at Anderson's with Rand, John Kalisz, Rand's friend Adam (not his music partner Adam but a different Adam) and Adam's son, Ian. Ian was pretty darned adorable. The beef on weck and ice cream were to die for.



Adam and Ian. Ian is doing his tiger impression
(note the Spiderman hat).


Liked Rand's new place, which is in a great neighbourhood. A few minutes' walk away from a scenic park, for example, as well as a chocolate shop. Rand let me feed his turtle, Chunky Rice, but Chunky seemed to be more interested in trying to swim through the glass aquarium wall to get to Rand. I've never seen a turtle so attached to its owner before, but Chunky definitely is. He got especially excited when Rand started playing guitar and singing. :-)





Found out it was "Sweetest Day" on Saturday. Never heard of this, but it seems to be an American Thing. I assumed it had something to do with candy since it was being heavily pushed in candy/chocolate shops.

You'd think that this tradition was started by a commercial enterprise like Hallmark or maybe the American Dental Association, but when I got home, I did a little online research. According to this Web site, here's how the tradition started:

"During America's Great Depression, a man from Cleveland organized many people in an effort to provide a small token of friendship to the underprivileged, shut ins, orphans, and homeless.† Today the holiday has expanded to include small tokens of appreciation to friends and neighbors too.† These tokens of appreciation can be small gifts or small acts of kindness.† This event is repeated on the third Saturday in October."



Rand and his friend John Kalisz (who does work for Marvel and DC)
at Don's Atomic Comics, a great comics store
(6354 Transit Road, Cheektowaga 1-866-684-5981).
The guy behind the counter is Don.


In sum, it was a wonderfully laid-back weekend. Lots of walks, great food, book-browsing, chatting, movies (incl. Kill Bill and Free Enterprise ... I actually liked Kill Bill, and am seeing it again with my friend Michelle. And I must own Free Enterprise), more great food. I wish geography was such that we could do it more often.

News and links:

Allison, Jodi and I are pleased to announce that all three of us will be attending Confluence in Pittsburgh, PA (July 23-25) next year. We're pretty excited about this, especially since Chris Conway has been invited as the Filk Guest of Honor. Many thanks to Randy Hoffman and the rest of the concom for offering us a concert slot.

Jeff's astronomer friend Ivan was on the front page of The National Post on Friday.



"Head" of a dragon roll at a sushi restaurant.

October/2003 comments: Read | Post | LJ