![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
Wicked cool
Brrr, what the hell happened? When I left today, I felt a little foolish throwing on an overshirt. I even wondered if I should wear shorts to work and change into slacks in the bathroom, as is my wont during the dog days. Good thing I didn't--I was just outside and regretting that I hadn't put more on. The sun has gone away, mist is moving in from the lake, and it feels about twenty degrees colder than it did three hours ago. If this is citywide rather than simply a special treat for us up here on the North Shore, it's going to scotch my plans for dining al fresco tonight.
Or I could doggedly push ahead with that to bookend the perversity of our dinner last night in the back room of an Irish pub--with a fireplace, no less! (Albeit unlit.) But when you've got a minyan, you take what you can get. Besides, I did have a bit of dining outside earlier when I ate the cheapest polish of my life: $1.27 (sold by weight at the meat counter of Gene's) plus 50¢ for the bun. The only downside was the lack of mustard. Oh, and I guess the lukewarmity, but that doesn't bother me when it's eighty degrees in the shade.
The pub was the Grafton, dálta an scéil, which has a good beer selection and a passable fish and chips. I was there with my Famous Author Friend and his posse, fresh from a "reading" at the local branch library which, perversely, didn't actually involve him reading a passage from his book (although he did read out a couple of the quotes he'd included). I was sitting between my buddy from Shreveport, craving distraction after a tough day at the knowledge mines, and FAF's high-school friend, who it turns out is from St Louis. He was absolutely incredulous that I not only recognised the name of his street, Tholozan, but knew right where it was and the history and etymology of the name.
I told him about my great-great-grandfather, who drowned in the Mississippi by Carondelet while trying to scavenge some driftwood. One of the more chilling facts I gleaned from FAF's talk on river as it was before the steamboat age is that the water is so cold, a man overboard was basically given up for lost. Actually, I should say "is", because he tells me that after giving a reading in St Louis, a man whose son works on a river barge came up and told him that that is still the case.
Or I could doggedly push ahead with that to bookend the perversity of our dinner last night in the back room of an Irish pub--with a fireplace, no less! (Albeit unlit.) But when you've got a minyan, you take what you can get. Besides, I did have a bit of dining outside earlier when I ate the cheapest polish of my life: $1.27 (sold by weight at the meat counter of Gene's) plus 50¢ for the bun. The only downside was the lack of mustard. Oh, and I guess the lukewarmity, but that doesn't bother me when it's eighty degrees in the shade.
The pub was the Grafton, dálta an scéil, which has a good beer selection and a passable fish and chips. I was there with my Famous Author Friend and his posse, fresh from a "reading" at the local branch library which, perversely, didn't actually involve him reading a passage from his book (although he did read out a couple of the quotes he'd included). I was sitting between my buddy from Shreveport, craving distraction after a tough day at the knowledge mines, and FAF's high-school friend, who it turns out is from St Louis. He was absolutely incredulous that I not only recognised the name of his street, Tholozan, but knew right where it was and the history and etymology of the name.
I told him about my great-great-grandfather, who drowned in the Mississippi by Carondelet while trying to scavenge some driftwood. One of the more chilling facts I gleaned from FAF's talk on river as it was before the steamboat age is that the water is so cold, a man overboard was basically given up for lost. Actually, I should say "is", because he tells me that after giving a reading in St Louis, a man whose son works on a river barge came up and told him that that is still the case.