Do or Do Not. There Is no Try.

Neither Brugger nor I feel any great affinity for Valentine's Day, but we do enjoy it as an annual opportunity for a night out that we probably wouldn't bother with otherwise. I know, really romantic, right? This isn't to say we haven't had some superb Valentine's outings in years past; we certainly have, such as at GIA and Imperial Koi in Greensboro, The Celtic Fringe in Reidsville, The Third Bay in Martinsville, and many others. (We've had our share of miserable ones as well, such as in 2020, when a seriously impaired young man—who has since died, evidently of a drug overdose—smashed into my car.) We opted to stay local last night, so we made reservations at TAD Tavern here, which has been around for a couple of years, and we've visited it on a few prior occasions.

 

I cannot tell you how much we want to love TAD Tavern. It's one of the few reasonably upscale restaurants in town, the atmosphere in the place is lovely, and we've had good food there. Unfortunately, on every one of our visits, we've had issues ranging from serious staffing shortages, unavailable menu and drink items, and an only sporadically manned bar. We pretty much expected not to have a zippy dinner last night because it was quite crowded, but sadly, all three of the above issues raised their ugly heads, which really took some of the zip out of our experience.

 

It took 30 minutes after being seated to get a couple of glasses of water, 45 minutes after ordering to receive our bar drinks (they did not even have the fixings—gin & vermouth—to make a martini), and 90 minutes to get food (we'd kept our order simple, realizing it might be a very long night—chicken tenders for both of us). I know the servers were trying hard, but they were hopelessly inadequate to handle the crowd. Since TAD Tavern promoted the hell out of their Valentine's night dinner, we'd really hoped that the place would finally come through with flying colors. Alas.

All that said, the food was very good, and this experience beat the hell out of having your car smashed for Valentine's Day. Still, given the fact that after a couple of years, the issues we've dealt with in the past have not improved (quite the contrary), I can't help but fear that TAD Tavern will be unable to fulfill their promise of becoming a top-notch restaurant. Trust me, I want to be proven wrong, and we may yet give them one more chance. I know they're trying, but as a certain Jedi knight once said, "Do or do not. There is no try."

 

Cmon, guys—let's DO. 

Happy, Horrific Valentine’s Day and Damned Rodan’s Madre de Dios Spiked Salsa

While St. Valentine's Day might be a real "thing" in certain religious circles, neither Ms. B. nor I see it as much more than a typical "Hallmark Holiday." Still, we love having a handy excuse to get a little fancy, go out for dinner, and drink wine, that kind of thing. So, every year, Brugger gives me one of her beautiful hand-made Valentine's Day cards, we get a little fancy, go out for dinner, and drink wine, that kind of thing. Last night, we treated ourselves to Rania's uptown, which is our go-to restaurant in Martinsville when we're looking for something that resembles upscale. Their food is usually excellent, and it definitely hit the spot last night. A bottle of Chateau Ste Michelle Cabernet Sauvignon (2018 vintage), which was decent; Veal Scallopini for me; and Baked Ziti with Meatballs for Ms. B. The place does have a lovely atmosphere as well.

This weekend, friends Joe and Suzy are hosting a gathering where folks bring their own homemade salsa, so I spent a portion of the afternoon conjuring up Damned Rodan's Madre de Dios Spiked Salsa, which gets its heat from a combination of cayenne, jalapeno, habanero, and ghost pepper in the ingredients. I'd post the recipe if I had one, but for this, I just gathered all the stuff that one puts into fresh salsa (Campari tomatoes, onion, green onions, cilantro, lime juice, garlic, cumin, chili powder, lemon pepper, and the various peppers; chopped everything up; and threw it together in what looked like reasonable proportions. I hit the mix with our immersion blender and... voilà! Damned Rodan's Madre de Dios Spiked Salsa. The heat is not trivial, but the stuff is fookin delicious. Needless to say, I'll probably never be able to duplicate it precisely.

Spent a portion of the afternoon on the Lovecraft eZine Podcast with host Mike Davis and author Jeff Thomas, which was a blast. I hope to be meeting them both face-to-face for the first time in August at Necronomicon in Providence, RI. And I managed a fair amount of forward progress on my current novel, The House at Black Tooth Pond.

Till whenever...

L: Brugger's homemade 2024 Valentine's Day card for the Old Dude; R: Damned Rodan's homemade
Madre de Dios Spiked Salsa

A Smashing Valentine's Day

After a mighty nice Valentine's Day dinner at The Third Bay in Martinsville, Ms. B. and I are stopped at a red light. Car comes from the left, makes a wide turn to the right, and — wham! Dumb-ass slams right into the front of my car. Crunches up the fender and headlight pretty good.

The fellow claimed his brakes locked up. However, he did appear impaired, and when the police arrived — happily, in short order — they arrested him immediately after running his credentials. He claimed he had insurance, but it appears to have expired. I expect he'll have a rough ride coming up, and it would seem deservedly so. Fortunately, Ms. B. and I are fine, but getting the car taken care of may take a while.

In any event, my takeaway from this is to never stop at a red light.

Happy Bloody Valentine's Day

Brugger and I once again devised a satisfying Valentine's Day experience: after work, we hauled ourselves over to GIA: Drink. Eat. Listen, which has long been one of our favorite wine & dine destinations. We don't frequent it as much as some others because the price tag runs a bit on the high side, but they do have half-price wine nights, which we have been known to enjoy on occasion. While they do have some mighty fine wines—and the chef and sommelier collaborate to present some excellent pairings—my favorite drink on the premises is a martini called the Tiny Cat (that's T-I-N-Y, mind you, not T-I-D-Y, as Ms. B. prefers to call it). It's Tiny Cat Vodka, Death’s Door Gin, Lillet Blanc, House Pimento Bitters, and Olives. I shouldn't have this concoction very often because it's so good it would way too easy to overdo it. Way. Too. Easy.

For dinner, we indulged in a couple of excellent small plates—spicy sausage, pepperoni, and yellow pepper schiachiatte for Ms. B. and Chicken Liver-Foie Gras Paté with daikon radish, prosciutto, honey, and toast for the old man. Heavenly from top to bottom, it was.

For afters, we viewed William Castle's original 13 Ghosts (1960), which I was due a viewing, since I will be playing Dr. Zorba in filmmaker Myron Smith's upcoming parody 39 Ghosts. We followed this with 1999's House on Haunted Hill, which didn't impress viewers in its day, but I've always rather enjoyed it. Geoffrey Rush is superb, as is Famke Janssen, and the supporting cast all seem to have a good time. The climax features an impressive otherworldly thingummy, and I like the ending. So I'm gonna stand out from the crowd and give this one overall high marks.

And that is how one celebrates a most romantic Valentine's Day. No shit.

Black Wings

Some high-flying horror here — my contributor copy of the paperback edition of S.T. Joshi's Black Wings of Cthulhu 4, which features "Contact," a slightly horrific SF tale I co-wrote with John Pelan some time back. And yes, that's a happy little cast-iron bat, which I got (along with some high-grade chocolate) from Ms. Brugger on Valentine's Day. He'll be going up on my living room wall somewhere; I just need to find a suitable spot for him. I think I'll name him Brumby.

Be My Frozen Valentine

Kimberly and I had our celebratory Valentine's dinner on Friday night, which was fortunate, since, at the moment, the weather has taken a rather icy turn. This was my weekend to go to Martinsville to help Mum, so Friday, on our way up, we had a fine, fine dinner at The Celtic Fringe in Reidsville, one of our favorite bistros in the area. Why, of course there was a cache to grab on the way; in fact, there we ran into our local caching legend, Mr. Tom "Night-hawk" Kidd himself. For Valentine's Day, Ms. B. presented me with one of her custom, handmade cards, which she enjoys creating (see above), along with a very cool cast iron bat — the critter, not the club — to hang on my wall. (Apparently, her dad picked it out and told her, "This is Mark." Nice one, Delmar.) After dinner, we headed on to Mom's, and after taking care of some business affairs, Kimberly and I settled in to enjoy a bit more wine and a few episodes of The Walking Dead.

"It's a trap!"

And since then, it's been a busy weekend. Yesterday, I spent the morning dealing with Mum's affairs, and then Kimberly and I headed out for Stonefield Cellars Winery in Stokesdale, where we met up with some friends to sample a few particularly enjoyable wines. Why, yes... funny you should ask... yes, I did stop for a cache, at Belews Lake. Then there were more friends, more refreshment, and, finally, the journey home, where I narrowly escaped being mauled (see accompanying photo).

This morning, I woke early to a telltale buzz from my phone, and in a sleepy haze I thought, "Well, that might be a new cache notification." For the next half eon, I lay there in the twilight zone, unwilling to reach beyond that two feet of void for the phone. Some passage of time later, I finally did this thing, and — sure enough — it's a new cache, practically right up the street. I struggled into my shoes, started down the stairs, and realized my attire was inadequate for stepping out of my front door. With some effort, I remedied the situation, and off I went, stopping along the way to grab some coffee at the nearest convenience store.

I arrived at the specified parking coordinates and noticed the temperature on my car dash read 15 freakin' degrees. Now I'm thinking this is one of those times when I might not be quite right in my head. Then, just as I start making my way to the trail head, a vehicle pulls up, and — looky — it's Mr. Feathered Friends. With some grumbles about the temperature, we headed for ground zero, about a quarter mile down this very nice, very frozen trail. Once there, a particular spot caught my eye, and I gave it a cursory examination, only to find nothing. I checked a couple of other places, but the GPS kept bringing me back to my original search site. I looked again and — ah, but yes! — the cache is there after all, very well-concealed. Opened the container and, with near-frozen fingers, fumbled my way into the log. Blank! So, Feathered Friends and I dirtied it up, snagging a nice co-first-to-find at 8:15 AM. A nice, if frigid way to start the day.

T'ain't a fit night out for man nor beast!

And tonight, here comes the snow. It wasn't supposed to begin till after midnight, but about 7:15, I paused War of the Gargantuas, glanced outside, and saw white. Now, I gotta tell you, Greensboro has a lousy track record for keeping the power on in even mildly adverse weather. Since the forecast calls for some freezing rain tomorrow, I figured I might ought to run up to the store and grab some fire logs. So I drove to Harris Teeter, which was, quite naturally, very crowded; I grabbed some fire logs and a few other items, and came out to find the snow coming down in earnest, along with a rather significant amount of accumulation. I could tell right away this was going to be a slippery one, and — oh, lord — it came so close to being a repeat of that fateful storm almost exactly two years ago (see "The Great White Beast," February 12, 2014) that I damn near kissed the snowy ground when I got back into my driveway. And when I say I barely made it, I exaggerate not even a smidgen. There were cars sliding all over the hill down the road from my house, and at least one went into the adjacent ditch. The driver did manage to get out of there, but once I arrived safely home (fifty feet from my driveway, I still had doubts), I walked down the street and watched as one car after another narrowly escaped disaster. For all I know, there may be a disaster — or one brewing — down there right now.

Me, I'm just hoping the power stays on. I already went through several days of icy temperatures in my own house a couple of weeks back, and I'd like to not go through it again, thank you very much.

Do be safe.

Valentine's Day Eclection

I've never been particularly fond of Valentine's Day — in my book, it's just another irritating Hallmark Holiday whose less-than-romantic origins have become irrelevant — but in recent years, Ms. Brugger and I have had enough pleasant February 14 experiences to actually overcome my disdain for it. This year's celebratory outing was about as enjoyable as one could be. We ventured over to Kernersville, which, if you're not from around these parts, is a fairly small community between Greensboro and Winston-Salem, with a rather classic small-town central business district that offers a handful of shops, bars, and restaurants suitable for an evening's entertainment. We had an excellent dinner at Bistro B, which we have visited on numerous occasions, all highly satisfactory. Their wine list is impressive; the chef turns out some of the best and most varied small plate dishes I've had anywhere; and the service has always been impeccable, as it was again last night. For Valentine's Day, they had a special pre-fixe menu, which suited my tastes wonderfully, but as Ms. B.'s palate can be rather peculiar (he said from the safety of his keyboard while she is many miles away), the staff happily accommodated her in substituting a couple of items on the menu. In the end, it was as good a Valentine's Day dining experience as any we've had.

A couple of years back, after a dinner at Bistro B, we discovered a little shop down the way called Eclection, which quickly became one of Ms. B.'s favorite places, well, anywhere. Its name couldn't be any more appropriate — they offer a juice, coffee, beer, and wine bar, nicely stocked; sweets and small plates from various local establishments; live music on weekends; and innumerable aisles and corridors filled with antiques, crafts, artwork, jewelry, apparel, home furnishings, and more, all provided by local artisans and vendors. You can enjoy a drink at the bar; in one of several intimate alcoves; or in the main entertainment area up front, which is relatively new — the last time we were there, it was still under construction. Or you can carry your glass of wine with you while wandering among the booths and cubbies filled with handmade and one-of-a-kind items that even an old curmudgeonly dude such as ye writer with no general interest in such things does mightily approve. Indeed, I've come away from Eclection with a few nice items myself, such as the living room lamp you see pictured above right.

Last night, live music was provided by Joey Barnes, formerly a member of the band Daughtry. It was an enjoyable one-man show, and the house was full — the first time we've ever seen such a crowd there. Back before the shop began bringing in honest-to-god live acts, I made a little guitar noise there at one of the improvised jam sessions they used to host. The folks they bring in now are much better, yes. I quite hope the shop continues to pull in plenty of customers for the long haul because it really is a treasure, the likes of which I would love to see gracing the business districts of little towns everywhere. It's the consummate small business, and supporting it benefits both the establishment and the artisans who provide their eclectic wares. If you're in the area, I strongly encourage you to stop in — it's Eclection, 221 Main Street, Kernersville, NC 27284. You'd be hard-pressed not to find something you absolutely positively just gotta have, even if it's a good glass of wine, coffee, or craft beer.

Eclection, 221 N Main St, Kernersville, NC

Joey Barnes plays to a full, enthusiastic house

Ceramic Anne Boleyn, complete with axe, with a rather David Lynchian hounds-tooth pattern backdrop