Birthdays, Broken Ribs, and Broken Teeth

Kimberly's birthday and mine are (a few years) and one week apart, so after celebrating mine last week, it was her turn. Sadly, after the festivities last Saturday night, she tried to wrestle with me and fell off the bed, striking the corner of her nightstand and breaking three ribs in the process. So, she's had a rather painful week of it, though she's definitely improving.

On her birthday eve, we ventured to our regular Friday afternoon hangout, Hamlet Kitchen, where our friend Yvonne popped in to visit with us. Then we went for an excellent sushi dinner at Yamato Japanese Restaurant, which really hit the spot since it's been a long while since either of us have had sushi.

 

Yesterday, to begin her birthday festivities, we went up the street to visit briefly with friends Joe & Callie, who had helped celebrate my birthday last week. They have this thing called "Meat Day," for which they open their doors to just about anyone who dares enter, and Joe grills a variety of meats all day long. Brugger is not much of a Meatosaurus, but I am, so we sampled a few of the treats, which were awesome, and even Ms. B. approved.

 

From there, we headed to Greensboro, first to our regular hangout from our days in North Carolina, State Street Wine Company, and then for dinner at Pangaea Bistro, which we'd never tried before. Here, we met friends Terry & Beth, Joe & Suzy, and the "other" Mark & Kim. Yep! We definitely enjoyed the dining experience here...except, right at the end of the meal, I took a bite of very soft potato and broke a fucking tooth. Lower molar, busted right in two. So a trip to the dentist will be on the menu very shortly. Uggh.

 

To finish off the evening, we decided to return to State Street, where we hung out long enough to have another drink. We mellowed there for a good while so we'd have no worries about heading back home.

So, apart from unexpected body parts breaking, Brugger and I had damn nice celebrations this year. After all these years of birthdays, I think she's finally older than I am. Cheers!

Another Crossroad

Dave and Trish, lurking in the dark, as usual!

I met author/editor/publisher David Niall Wilson for the first time in the late 1980s—most likely 1989—at Necon in Bristol, RI. At the time, Dave was in the U.S. Navy, and in addition to writing his own fiction, he had recently started editing and publishing The Tome magazine. My first exposure to his work was a vampire story that had appeared in After Hours magazine, and I was so taken with it, I actually wrote him a fan letter—not something I have been known to do with any frequency. When we did get together face-to-face, we had such a blast that it became a regular thing. Our respective families would gather either at Chez Wilson—in Norfolk, VA, in the early days; later in Hertford, NC—or here in Greensboro.

But that was a long time ago. While we've remained close with each other online, until last night, it had been far too many years since we actually got together. Since our first meeting, we've shared too many life experiences to count, some together, some roughly paralleling. Both of us have divorced and found the life partners we were meant to be with (a special shout-out here to author/editor Patricia Lee Macomber, a.k.a. Mrs. Wilson, who has been the one to put Dave right where he needs to be—take that however you wish!). We've both gone all kinds of places with our respective writing careers, some fantastic, some bloody awful. Perhaps most noteworthy, Dave is founder and CEO of Crossroad Press, which has gone from its relatively meager beginning as a specialty e-book publisher to an influential publishing house boasting thousands of titles and many bestselling authors, publishing not only e-books but paperbacks, hardbacks, and audio books (not to mention being publisher of my novels The Lebo Coven, The Nightmare Frontier, Blue Devil Island, and The Monarchs).

A spot of delicious not-terribly-dead fish
(and tamago) at Sushi Republic

This weekend, Dave and Trish's daughter is taking part in a First Lego League competition here in Greensboro, so it was preordained that our wayward souls should, at long last, meet face-to-face again. With this week's major snowfall, things were starting to look a bit dicey, but in the end, it happened: after setting daughter Katie loose at the competition, Dave and Trish found themselves being abducted by Ms. Brugger and me for a night of Japanese food, wine, and general debauchery*. Dinner was at the always excellent Sushi Republic on Tate Street. I believe Dave can thank me for setting him on the sushi road back in the day, and in fact, for this service, the man should be paying me royally for perpetuity; Trish and Brugger, on the other hand, have never been bitten by the raw fish bug, poor souls. We followed up dinner with some top-notch spirits at Rioja! A Wine Bar, one of our favorite local establishments. As with many true friends, even after quite a few years apart, the four of us can fall right into our comfortable, familiar roles (Dave and Trish bowing to our superior character and moral fiber) and enjoy ourselves as if virtually no time had passed.

Today, the Wilsons are supporting their daughter in her competition, and will soon enough be returning to Hertford. We shall have to ensure that, next time, so many years do not pass between our gatherings. Frankly, I don't know how they've stood it this long.

Visit David Niall Wilson's website. Visit Crossroad Press. Visit Patricia Lee Macomber at Fantastic Fiction.

*Sitting around bitching about the creaking and moaning of our respective aging bodies.

Nice Hat

It is a nice hat, isn't it? It's new, as I've worn out three of them already.

It's usually entertaining to meet other geocachers out in the field, mainly because most of them are far more entertaining people than I am. Today, it happened in a kind of roundabout way, and until later, I didn't even know I had encountered another cacher. This morning, I decided to head up to Danville, since a crapload of new caches have been published there in the past month or so, several of them in Angler's Park, which is one of my favorite places in the world to hike. One of the new caches was hidden in a small shelter next to the parking lot, and when I pulled up, someone was in the shelter, apparently using her phone. A bleepin' muggle, I'm thinking. Thus, I get my gear together and head out to the trail to snag the other caches I need, figuring on hunting the one in the shelter upon my return. I did this thing, but when I arrived back at my car, I found a note expressing admiration for my geocaching hat, along with a pathtag belonging to one Turtle & Hawg. Well, what do you know! The lady I'd seen was indeed a geocacher from a far off land — evidently, the "Turtle" half of the Turtle & Hawg couple. Once aware of each other's identities, we swapped pleasantries via email, and resolved to at least say "hey" should we run into each other again.

Thunderstorms threatened the entire time I was out on the trail, but they never broke, and so I managed to remain dry — other than sweating off half my body mass and losing some blood to a tick. Out on the trail, I thought I saw a sad-eyed little Chihuahua dog gallivanting my way; turns out, it was the smallest, youngest fawn I think I've ever seen. Tiny, and a little wobbly on its feet. It steered clear of me, and I attempted to get a few photos of it, but I wasn't able to get a decent shot before it disappeared in the woods.

Lunch was sushi from The Tokyo Grill. A couple of more caches, and then the rain began to pour. All in all, fine day of it, bringing my cache total to 4,823.

Click on the images to enlarge.

Can you see the fawn? It's dead center of the photo.

A nice little stair-step waterfall along the Riverside Trail.

The guardian at one of the caches along the trail. Careful... it bites! Twice.

Manhattan Mayhem

An early morning moon over Lake Anna, VA, viewed from 25,000 ft.

It's been a long while since I've spent some quality time with the young 'un, so early Friday morning, long before dawn reared its sleepy head, it was off to the Greensboro airport to catch a plane for New York City (via Washington-Dulles). A couple of relatively brief hops later, I was on the ground at La Guardia, where I soon met Allison, though not without a wee bit of confusion. Note to kid: passengers on United Airlines usually disembark at the United Terminal. We cabbed it back to her Manhattan apartment, where she introduced me to my grandcat, Sutton, and promptly put on some episodes of Dexter, a show I've never seen, and made me watch them. Sometime later, I discovered I was completely hooked. For the rest of the long weekend, Dexter was playing constantly anytime we were not out and about. Then the nefarious child got me playing Angry Birds on her iPad, and it was at that point we began to fear there would be no leaving the apartment for several days.

The bully and the troublemaker: Allison "Shogunmouse" and Sutton Rainey

Leave we did, however—for some geocaching. There are a few not far from her place, so we went out around the neighborhood and did a little hunting (and finding) as well as grocery shopping. Since we're both operating on a fairly tight budget, we opted do most of our dining in. The kid is not a half-bad cook and, that evening, provided us with some fabulous beer-butt chicken. Last night, we had some of her homemade buffalo wings, which completely rocked (I kicked them up a notch with some habanero sauce, of course). We also discovered at her nearby grocery store these little individually packaged Table Talk pies, which we determined are delicious beyond the bounds of reason. The chocolate eclair and blueberry varieties are especially noteworthy.

Several times over the weekend, I discovered I could not shift from this position.

Saturday evening, we lit out for midtown Manhattan, met Allison's friend Andy, and paid a visit to New Hane Sushi in Midtown East, an unassuming, very small, and absolutely wonderful little joint that made us all holler a bit. I ordered the fusion sushi plate, which was a dozen different types of sushi, all served with different sauces—every one fabulous. From there, we grabbed a few caches and then headed to the Empire State Building, for a late-night visit to the observation decks. I've been to NYC a number of times, and I'd visited the top of the World Trade Center back in 1999, but this was my first Empire State Building experience. I really, really enjoyed it, particularly the 86th floor, where you can go outdoors...and claim a virtual geocache—"The Empire Strikes Back" (GC4D7F). Your ticket to the observation deck entitles you to a free drink at the ground-floor Empire Room bar, but it was closed for a private function. Thus, Shogunmouse, Andy, and I decided to discover some nearby watering holes. We tried one called The Mason Jar, which specializes in bourbon. I opted for a dirty martini; I probably should have sampled the bourbon. From there, we found a little restaurant called The Barking Dog (where a very friendly dog named Wilson actually did attempt to get service but was permitted to sit only in the outside seating area); I have no idea how good their food is, but the bartender— whose name was Sonia, I believe—treated us more than right, and we enjoyed a number of happy concoctions.

Afterward, Andy went his way, and the child and I caught a cab back to her place. Hard to recall for sure, but I think we watched some more Dexter.

New Hane Sushi restaurant on 3rd Ave.

View north from the 86th floor of the Empire State Building


L: Andy Callander and Damned Rodan at The Barking Dog;
R: There's no cache here, but there ought to be.

Last night, it was out to the Holiday Cocktail Lounge on St. Mark's Place, where Andy regularly plays guitar and sings at open-mic night. It's a decent little dive bar in the East Village, and it was here I discovered the Fugazy Fireball, a powerful little formula of jalapeno-infused tequila, lemon juice, and pama (pomegranate liqueur). A dynamite drink, to be sure. Spicy and tangy, with a lingering pepper burn. It was also here that I succumbed to irresistible pressure from my daughter, borrowed a guitar, and belted out a song ("Love My Way," by The Psychedelic Furs, or something akin to it). Most enjoyable. During a break, I went out for a walk through the Village and soothed my caching fever.

Today, the flights back home. All smooth, except for there being no air conditioning inside La Guardia, and the heat was bad enough to give me a case of the near swoons. Unhappy Rodan!

A couple of random New York moments. Seen from the bus while heading down to Midtown: some guy walking down 2nd Avenue carrying a car door. Today in a restroom at La Guardia: a dude farted so hard it shook the whole row of stalls. Potent wind!

Finally, a strange case of synchronicity—or cats texting each other. Sutton, Allison's special needs (and thoroughly sweet) cat, has a habit of sticking his feet in his water bowl and then jumping on people. I experienced this a couple of times, and yes, you get some kind of wet. Although Frazier has been known to dip his paw in the water bowl to test the temperature, Sutton's brand of gratuitous paw-soaking has never been among my cats' bad habits. It wasn't, I should say...until I came home. This evening, Chester and Frazier have both soaked their feet and gotten me—not to mention the floors and furniture—quite damp. Yes, I've already called Allison to air my grievances, but I'm not sure any felines were listening.

I leave now to dry off. G'night.