The biggest day of the year in Glibs Gulch is not Christmas or Thanksgiving or July 4th. Nope, it's Hot Dog Day, a celebration that has caught on elsewhere. Typically, we piss off the organizers by going our own way on branding, merch, and not paying them a fee for...
Well, the State of New York finally disgorged a temporary permit for us to sell the Demon rum in lower alcohol forms. So beer and wine incoming. It also means that my small amount of remaining free time is now accounted for, so my personal drinking will soon slow to...
Our Gulchers held a meeting this week of the "downtown" business owners to discuss a variety of issues, mostly about "what can the village/town/county/state do for us?" a fair and useful question. For once, I was not the only one in the room who thought, "Hey, how...
St. Hallmark is the patron saint of useless synthetic holidays. I will spend this one babysitting Sweet Baby James, then making some pizza for Prime and me, with accompanying adult beverages. Unlike Spud, I did not get married this week, so I'm still allowed to be...
Putting aside the good news about Sweet Baby James taking his first steps and Prime and I having our first alcohol-free date (we went to a cult restaurant specializing in buckwheat pancakes and maple syrup, open only two months a year), I have more amusing local...
Exciting days here in the Gulch. Every little village needs a crazy guy wandering the streets. In our case, it's the son of a professor, the latter notorious for her rather eccentric behavior (like hitting on me). He was trespassed from our little business a year or...
Sunday without football seems... empty. I look at the four walls around me and wonder, "Why? What's it all about? Our existence is but a brief crack of light between two eternities of darkness." But eventually, there will be again 22 physically large multimillionaires...
Isn't it nice to have the most cliché possible picture? Holy shit, January is almost over. Maybe it's an age thing, maybe it's me being busy and time flying, but it doesn't feel like we could already be a month in. This weekend will drag, of course, because no...
Here in the Gulch, we had our Team Red and Team Blue caucuses (cauci?) this week to nominate candidates for the village Board of Trustees. Now me, I always think of trustees as some position for squealers in a prison, but here it applies to the elite set of...
One effect of the frigid weather is that it's driven some of the local rodent population indoors. Couple that with the closure of the pharmacy next door who kept a semi-feral cat and we suddenly have mice paying us a visit. In our attempt to be a muroid Auschwitz, we...
It's fucking cold out. Like -5 degrees with lost of wind for a wind chill low enough that it doesn't matter whether you specify it in Fahrenheit or Celsius. A couple feet of residual snow on the ground and another couple feet arriving tonight and tomorrow. Where the...
Well, the pressure is off, I no longer have to pretend to root for the Bills. And TBH, if I could pick a Super Bowl from the remaining teams, I'd want to see the Bears vs Texans. It likely won't happen, but a boy can dream. Anyway, Prime loaded me up with pizza, beer,...
When SP and I bought this Little House In The Gulch, the idea was to fix things up and redo it in our image of a home we wanted to share. She was exceptionally handy with painting, electrical, and carpentry and could guide me through assisting her. Obviously, that...
Sometimes, I outwit my dogs. Sometimes they outwit me. A couple months back, I spent a PILE of money putting up a 6 foot wooden fence to confine them. They're good jumpers but not quite that good; five feet seemed to be about their limit. Day One free in the yard,...
So after last weekend's debacle, Prime said, "You're a Bills fan now." It was not stated as a question. Fun happenings at Glibs Gulch: in addition to the weekly Tuesday noon protest ("What are you protesting?" "Whaddaya got?"), we had a special Friday protest at The...
OK, I was expecting that the Browns would be the Browns last week. But somehow, they weren't. So there's actually an important game for the Ravens today. CAW CAW!! I'm spending the run-up to it stone sober, for a change- I have a technology article to finish (about a...
"I've been framed, I tells ya! Lemme outta here!" It was a fine New Years Eve with the family- and I'm including Prime in that category these days. WebDom, 10b0t, Sweet Baby James, 10b0t's other two kids, Prime, and I gathered around the table, gorged ourselves on a...
Sorry, my fan hat is on. On the one hand, the Ravens are still alive. On the other, it may be for just hours since their life depends on the Browns today. Nobody should ever be in a position of needing the Browns to win. Nobody. After the playoffs slip away in a game...
To be fair, I *am* actually busy with tasks. Getting ready for New Year's dinner with Prime and my local family, doing a ton of loudspeaker measurements for a soon-to-be-overdue article, preparing some lectures on photoacoustics for a course the university asked me to...
All the little goy kids are running downstairs to see what that white-bearded Hebe brought them. But it wasn't me, I have an alibi. Anyway, this year the phony pseudo-pagan holiday (Christmas) and the celebration of the Jewish Taliban (Chanukkah) almost aligned; we...
For us football fans, December means actual meaningful games as the teams sort out who's going to the playoffs and at which seed. Mojeaux's beloved Mahomeses are, of course, going to be sitting this one out, much to the distress of the Swifties. But the Ravens are...
The Old Guy is just returned from a week-long road trip. Back in the days when I was in the wine biz, my trips were to Burgundy, Piedmont, Tuscany, Wachau, Champagne, Loire, Capetown, Santiago, Madrid... now my business trips are to Cleveland, Akron, Pittsburgh,...
Tonight is the night! Channukah begins with a candle lighting ceremony, some obligatory wine, and potato latkes (one of the few Ashkenazi dishes that rises above the level of barely edible). I will celebrate the victory of the Jewish Taliban over the...
I'm going to a dinner party tonight, a yearly event with all of Prime's long-time friends. To be fair, she's done the same for me, and managed to actually enjoy her time with SugarFree and Warty and JW and db and Mexican Sharpshooter and Swiss and Neph and... so I'll...
Global warming has not taken effect here- it's been single digit (F) temperatures all week with unceasing snowfall. Much snow (we've had about two feet in aggregate so far this month) and ice (a perfect medium to keep under the snow to maximize hazards), much slipping...