The Car That Would Not Die
I’m reminded of a scene from The Big Lebowski.
Recently a tree branch fell on my car smashing its windshield. The car isn’t insured. It’s old, and not worth much. And for $300 I got a brand new windshield. It’s pretty sweet.
Then yesterday, there was a fender bender with a piece of debris on the highway in Massachusetts. Everyone is okay. But the car still isn’t insured, and while no harm came to the new windshield, the front fender and grill are gone. My license plate is somewhere scattered across the Mass Pike.
Today, I’ve been dealing with all of that, plus the other realities of the move and the transition to Ann Arbor. You know, because moving isn’t already hard enough.
But because of who I am, and my dedication to driving this old car into the ground, it’s getting repaired. And I’ll have it back on Thursday! However, the blog will likely continue to be spotty this week.
Stay tuned, because I can’t wait to tell you more about the quick trip to Pennsylvania, and the amazingly epic Tour de Downtown Albany. But those stories are just going to be a bit delayed.
The Keystone State Strikes Back
Happy Friday! Today, I’m awake earlier than ever. Isn’t this supposed to be summer break? But there has been a member of the Fussy family absent for the past three weeks, and it’s time to pick him up from camp in Pennsylvania
No time for a full post today.
But I will return before Sunday’s Tour de Downtown Albany. Yesterday I confirmed that Cider Belly is open despite the construction. And let it be known that the kitchen at Lost & Found closes early on Sunday. So we’ll close out the tour with just drinks in the Warehouse District. Sometimes life throws you curveballs.
Fortunately, there will be more than enough food earlier in the day. I have a funny feeling that nobody is going home hungry. Hope to see you somewhere along the way. No need to RSVP. Just show up. It will be a wonderful surprise.
And those who come will get to hear all about the tales from the middle of Pennsylvania. I hope there will be more banh mi, some Old Forge white, and maybe even another stop at Brooks on the way home for yet another half chicken.
Dare to dream.
Dare to dream.
Insufferable
My friend Rachel did something badass, and I didn’t even see it until months after it happened. The only reason I found out was because of her recent interview in PR Week.
If you don’t want to read the story, she is the Chief Communications Officer at Impossible Foods. If you’ve heard of the Impossible Burger, that’s in part due to Rachel’s hard work. But that’s not the cool part.
What got me fired up was how she got into a war of words with a bunch of hostile moms.
Tour de Downtown Albany
Sunday is going to be ridiculous, and hopefully you can join me to get in on at least a little of the madness.
If you haven’t picked up on it by now, I move around a bit. Maybe more than your average guy. And I’ve got a little bit of a tradition. Whenever my sister comes to visit, I walk her around the city where I’m living, to give her a sense of the place. It’s not quite a death march, you know, since nobody dies. But it’s a full day of walking and exploring.
In just a couple of days, I’m going on The Profussor’s Last Stand. It’s not quite a Fussy Little Tour as we’ve come to know them over the years. There will be no scoresheet. There is no common thread to the stops beyond their proximity to each other. There will be no declared winner. However, there will be an important point to the outing as a whole. And that’s to demonstrate that Downtown Albany is one place, and not four. Pearl Street, Lark Street, Empire Plaza, and the Warehouse District are parts of the same whole.
How do I know this? Because walking between these parts of the city is no big deal. And I’m going to prove it to everyone who shows up on Sunday, but hoofing it through Uber-ville and stopping at several of my favorite places along the way.
It’s going to start early, and we’re going to run late. So even if you can’t commit to a full day on Sunday, hopefully you can meet up with the gang as we stumble through Albany. Here’s the plan.
Emily L Wants a Better Supermarket
Well, the tree is gone from the roof, which is now water tight. The car has a new windshield. Our insurance adjuster has inspected the damage, and I’m cautiously optimistic we’ll be approved for all the repairs needed to make it whole.
Now, it’s time to get back to our everyday business of packing and transporting our life from Albany to Ann Arbor. Of course, that’s got to go on hold for a couple of days, because on Friday and Saturday I’m headed down to Pennsylvania. Then on Sunday, we have the last of the Profussor led Fussy Little Tours.
I really shouldn’t say it’s the last tour, because there have been volunteers who have stood up and offered to lead readers out into the wilderness of these seasonal eating adventures.
It’s a little overwhelming. Actually, it’s a lot overwhelming. So I’m incredibly thankful to Emily L for submitting another guest post upon her return to the U.S. Today, she’s writing about a matter that’s near and dear to my heart. The sad situation surrounding our supermarkets. I think it might all be solved with the arrival of Wegmans. But that might be jumping the gun. Let’s first hear her out.
See Food Diet
This is an old joke. Perhaps I first encountered it in an animated Garfield short when I was a kid. That cat was always on some kind of weight loss regimen or another. Does anyone remember the one where he could only eat what could be sucked through a straw?
Of course the punchline was that he was still able to devour a whole roasted bird through it by tapping into the power of his sheer desire for delicious food.
Usually diets made Garfield grumpy. And for obvious reasons. Restrictive diets suck. So everyone was surprised when he was so happy on a new seafood diet. To which our hero explained, “It’s the best, I see food, and I eat it.”
Now, I have no idea if this was a Garfield episode or not. Maybe I happened upon it in an Archie comic with Jughead Jones playing the role of the voracious eater. While it’s not a recipe for weight loss, it is a condition from which I suffer. So today, I thought I would offer up a little confession.
The Profussor’s Last Stand
Time is getting short.
But I still have big plans.
If you’re interested in one last tour with the profussor, grab your calendar and block out Sunday, July 14. My hope is to prove that Downtown Albany is one place, not several. To bridge the gap between, Lark Street, Downtown, Pearl Street, and the Warehouse District. And I also want to show just how walkable the damn place is.
How? We’re going to spend the day walking around enjoying some of my favorite places. That means this tour is going to be significantly different from all the others. Although there is going to be one common thread that binds them all together.
A Friday Find
If there wasn’t enough pressure to pack up all of our things and put our affairs in order before leaving Albany, yesterday a piece of a tree fell through a part of our roof. Luckily everyone is fine. And fortunately the newly ventilated part of the roof is over the garage.
Less fortunately, our garage has been a storage area for our boxes, so the Fussymobile was parked in the driveway. The tree limbs did a number on its windshield. Right now it’s unclear how much other damage the car may have endured. But at least it was an old car.
Still, I loved that car. And now we’ve got to find someone who can remove some big ass tree limbs and install a tarp on the roof before our insurance adjuster arrives. Know anybody up to the task?
In happier news, tomorrow is Friday. That means it’s my mother’s birthday. Happy birthday Mom! Friday is also Shabbat, so despite all the madness of the week, we’ll be feasting on roast chicken, with challah, and a delightful natural wine from 22 2nd Street in Troy. But last week, Little Miss Fussy and I diverged from tradition, and I’m pleased to share a Friday Find.
On Straws and Tyranny
Why am I still writing? I should be packing. Or calling movers. Or selling Mrs. Fussy’s car. For years I have said this blog is more of an addiction than anything else, and I think that’s proving to be true. However, I can’t abandon the readers of the FLB yet. Especially since I’m hoping to do one last big thing before I leave.
But tomorrow is July 4, and I suspect everyone will be talking about the “top chefs” who are advising against grilling hamburgers. Not just for the holiday, but forever. There’s some tyranny for you.
As far as I’ve come to understand Independence Day, is that it’s a celebration of our deliverance from tyranny. And yet, if you look around, we are far from free. We’re enslaved by all kinds of things. Granted, many of them are of our own volition.
Little Miss Fussy challenged the family to see if we could stay off the internet for an entire week.
Seriously, I don’t think we could do it. Which effectively means, we’ve already become enslaved to our benevolent computer overlords. And then there’s the notion that none of us are truly free until the least one of us is free. But that gets awfully heavy, awfully quickly. Especially these days.
For the sake of finding some common ground, let’s talk about breaking free from the tyranny of straws.
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