I probably wouldn’t have found out about the Taste of Troy if not for my cousin. Last weekend at the Lowry reunion, she came along, but her little sister didn’t. When asked where the little one was, her response was that they (her sis, mom, mom’s sis, etc) were planning for the Taste of Troy. Having attended Taste of Chicago for a number of years, I immediately understood the gist of the concept, which my cousin confirmed. Basically, you buy tickets, wander the downtown area (which is closed off to traffic) and get samples from local restaurants.

I, of course, talked the parental units into going. After all, Troy will soon by their home town. (They recently were part of a huge group of folks taking part in a TV advertisement who claimed that Troy is “where I live!” Alas, I’ve not gotten to see the ad. Neither has mom, though dad did.) Upon the advice of my ticket taker (not my cousin’s mom, though I soon saw her & her sister) I bought 10 tickets (for this taste, each ticket was $1).

The first booth I went to was for the Tin Roof, a restaurant I’d not been to yet. (They replaced Arang, which was Miami County’s oldest – and for the longest time only – Japanese restaurant. I hadn’t gone yet due to solidarity for the loss of Arang.) I went with three 1-ticket tastes from them – reuben, pair of sides (cole slaw, cheesy potatoes), and peach cobbler. All three were quite yummy. I shall have to head there one of these days.

A further three tickets was spent at La Piazza’s booth. They had fried calamari (with a nice marinara sauce) and a spicy ravioli. It was practically a meal itself. And very yummy. I hadn’t had calamari from La Piazza before, but I shall have to get it again. I munched on it while waiting in line for a 1-ticket chicken flauta from La Fiesta. This, too, was very tasty. It was topped in melted cheese and a red sauce. Another ticket was spent on a pair of chocolate chip cookies from a place whose name escapes me for the time being. (Bummer – the point was to get names of places to try.) I also spun a wheel at The Caroline’s booth and won a $5 gift card to their restaurant. Nice!

Taste of Troy – not as big as Taste of Chicago

The Taste of Troy is sponsored by the downtown Troy association and the Troy arts association, so unlike Taste of Chicago, there were quite a few arts & crafts booths around the “square.” (Although it’s always called the square, in the dead center is a roundabout or rotary. Rather circular for a square, if you ask me.) While we were grazing and/or shopping, we met up with quite a few folks. Former students, former classmates, neighbors, the aforementioned family members, etc. It was rather fun.

The center of the round square – closest I’ve ever been. It is usually surrounded by cars in the roundabout.

Mom and dad decided to try a flight of wines inside La Piazza. They had 3 wines for 3 tickets. They all smelled like wine to me, and tasted like wine, so I didn’t care much for them. One of ’em dad found especially nasty, but thankfully the pinot noir was good enough to take the taste away. While we were sitting outside on the patio at La Piazza, we listened to Rick Fannin singing and playing guitar. He’s a friend of one of my co-workers and we’d seen him perform before. It was quite pleasant.

Rick Fannin plays at Taste of Troy

We still had some tickets left, so we headed to Sakai’s booth. This is the newer Japanese restaurant in Troy. I got shrimp shumai (yum) for my last 2 tickets. Dad got the katsu curry and mom got the sushi sampler. We then sat at the stage to listen to Rick finish his gig. (It was fun to see two of my former students running the sound for the event.)

Mom still had 1 ticket left, so she let me have it to get a strawberry smoothie from the Boston Stoker booth. Really good deal for a buck – it was a nice large (and tasty) smoothie. By the time I finally got mine (they were backed up), mom and dad were just about to be seated on the patio of The Caroline for the beer flight. They got to try 5 beers for $5. Alas, they only cared for 2 of the 5, and one of those he liked, dad had tried before. But the other liked one, dad wrote down in his notebook (well, calendar) to try again.

We were pretty much done, but there were still two tickets of dad’s to be spent. Mother and I decided he should spend them on cookies from The Bakehouse. I picked out peanut butter w/ chocolate chunks and mom got raisin oatmeal. The lady running the booth felt sorry for dad (they were his tickets, remember) so she gave him a raisin oatmeal cookie too. 🙂

I drove us to Lowes so mom could buy the rest of the tile that’s needed for their new bathroom (in their new house) and she ordered the blinds for the windows. By the time we were done there, she figured she was good to drive and so took me home. They then headed back to the Lake.

I pottered about in the house for awhile, but then when it got closer to 7:30, I headed off to O’Brian’s pub to hang out with my coworkers and listen to Rick Fannin perform again. I ordered the fish & chips, which I’d gotten the last time I was there. Very nice fish & chips (though the chips are potato “coins” that are fried, rather than fry-shaped things). I started with an amaretto sour, too, but finished with water. During Rick’s first break, I ordered the Bailey’s Irish Cream cheesecake. The pub’s cook bakes them herself and I got to tell her just how yummy it was. Rick finished a bit before midnight, so it was after midnight that I returned home.

Rick Fannin plays at O’Brian’s Pub in Troy.

Today was a semi-productive day. Finished my laundry, got some needed supplies from Kroger and Meijer, had lunch at Tokyo Peking. Tomorrow, back to work! 🙂

My timing couldn’t be more perfect – I have a nice 3 day weekend ahead of me and… I think I’m coming down with a cold.

Still, I’ve done what I can thus far to knock it out. I have had Mrs. Grass’ Noodle Soup and a fizzy pop (Jones cream soda, if you want to know) for supper. I watched “The Pied Piper” on DVD (it was the next episode cued up – I swear!) I have just taken a Nyquil (well, a clone thereof). And I’m gonna lay down for a bit and nap (AKA, sleep). I gotta be well by Sunday cuz I’m going with the parental units to the Heritage Festival. Or to Ikea. Whatever the current plan is. (Then we go the other place on Monday.)

So, cold, go away. I don’t want you this weekend.

Today marks the birthday of the Internet Friend I’ve had for the longest time, Miss elsaf! Hope you have a lovely day today!

Since I’ve become a Linux user, I’ve become more appreciative of software and hardware that “just works.” And I really appreciate companies that realize there are more OSes than Winders or MacOS. So here’s a big cheer for Brother for being one of those companies.

When my mom got her Winders Vista laptop, dad gave me their Minolta QMS 1250W since it didn’t work with Vista. (Oddly enough, the “W” stands for Winders.) When I upgraded from XP to Ubuntu 9.04, I was pleased to note that the Minolta worked just fine with Linux. Hilarious that a machine with a “W” for Winders couldn’t work with Winders Vista but could work with Linux.

However, when I was printing something off about a month ago, I had forgotten that there was a little plastic package of stand-offs sitting on my printer. And sure enough, the plastic package was pulled into my printer. I managed to get 3 of the 4 stand-offs out of it, and most of the (now melted) plastic bag. But it was still sticking during print. When ol’ Doc Short took a look at it (he fixed more of those suckers than a Minolta repair man, I’m sure) he declared it dead. (Well, the drum was dead, but the cost to replace it was more than a typical laser printer.)

It was nice while it lasted, but now I needed a new printer. So a couple nights ago, I scouted out the ideal replacement. First and foremost, it had to be networkable. With my laptops oot & aboot, an IP addy on this sucker would be ideal. The Brother HL-2170W (with the “W” meaning Wireless this time, I believe) seemed to fit the bill. But would it work with Linux? Linux users said “yes!”

It arrived, to my great surprise, today. Hell, I feel like I ordered the sucker last night, but it must have been a few nights ago. I imagine the high yield toner cartridge, which I ordered the same night, will arrive Monday.

Although the CD didn’t have the Linux drivers, they were easy enough to find on Brother’s website. And though the directions for install eventually went cryptic, I found that when I added the printer via Ubuntu’s Printers program, it showed up on the network and installed like a dream. Sweet! Plus I can navigate to its IP address and see all kinds of fun stuff about the printer.

So now I’ve got a laser printer again. Now if I just had something I needed to print… (Oh, and an extra bonus? The paper tray is concealed, so I probably won’t be pulling plastic bags o’ shit through it like with the Minolta.)

Today was the first day of school for kids. (We teachers were back to work last Wednesday). We’re going in early this year in order to finish up early so we can be out of the building in time for them to tear it down.

It was a good day, albeit hot. I wasn’t at all surprised to see our cool summer turn back to normal as soon as the kids started back. I also wasn’t surprised that the air conditioner in my room died. But thanks to our wonderful maintenance guy, it’s working again and hopefully can get us through August (and part of September). Next year, new building and air conditioning for all. Yay!

Should be a fun year. While I’ll be teaching, I’ll also be working on my Master’s Thesis. I’ve sent an updated idea off to my advisor and here’s hoping I’m on the right track now. If so, my goal is to have the proposal done before October and a goodly portion of the thesis itself done by the new year. Then I can spend the first couple of months of 2010 cleaning it up and getting ready to finish. Here’s hoping!

Looks like it’s gonna be a good year. Let’s hear it for school – yay! 🙂

We had another lovely day today. We didn’t stay up quite as late last night, so I got up a bit earlier today. After I’d had breakfast and was sitting reading stuff online, judiang came in fully dressed and said, to my great surprise, “I need you to take me to the store.” (Now to fully appreciate this, the only “store” I’d be taking her to is Wagner’s grocery. If you know Judi’s phobia of groceries as elsaf and I do, you’ll understand my surprise.) Turns out her ear wax was working overtime and we needed a solution (pun intended). That matter solved, we could continue our morning veg.

When lunch time arrived, I started up a fire and we burned some hot dogs. (Judi’s burned so much it fell in with the coals. I think I found the right thing cuz she says it didn’t taste woody at all.) Chex mix (homemade, of course) and baked beans complemented our burned eats.

We went for a little walk around this end of the Lake and Judi took a few photos. (She twitpic’d one, for those of you who follow her on Twitter – a nice shot of the channel near us.) But when we arrived back at the cottage, it was time to head to Piqua. We had some movie-watching to do.

Judi was somehow under the misapprehension that Elsa and I were saving up watching Harry Potter 6 until we reconvened later in the summer. I recall no such agreement and had seen the movie the day it came out. (Which I tweeted about and, I think, mentioned in LJ.) Elsa, of course, couldn’t join us and had seen it with her bro & s-i-l. But I was quite happy to go see it again. My folks hadn’t seen it yet either, so I invited them along. We met them at the theater and I bought us tickets. (Decided to treat everyone to “dinner and a movie” – the folks in thanks for letting us use the Lake, and Judi to congratulate her for her promotion at work.)

I really enjoyed the movie the first time around, and equally enjoyed it the second time. Since seeing it last, I’d reread books 6 and 7, so that was handy to have going in my mind. My mom’s only been following the series via the movies, so she was surprised by the SPOILER at the end. Both she and dad really liked it as well. Judi can speak for herself in her own LJ.

For dinner, I wanted to treat them all to Sakai, the local Japanese hibachi place. As with our time with Amy & Rachel in tow, we had Daniel san as our chef. He was excellent as always. Mom had scallops, dad had chicken, I had chicken & scallops, and Judi had steak & scallops. It was quite tasty. And very filling. We parted company with the parentals and headed back north. Now we’re vegging and geeking. (I had a bit of coconut ice cream awhile ago – just as good the second day!)

Tomorrow, alas, Judi heads back home. But it looks like we’ll have another fine morning to spend here at the Lake. Apart from a little rain last night (which happened while we were inside playing cards), the weather’s been perfect. Gonna be chilly tonight. (I like chilly nights!)

After staying up late last night, judiang and I slept in today. I woke up in a nest of inflatable bed, but wasn’t touching ground yet, so that was good. (It has a very slow leak. Thankfully slow enough to last me through to pee time.)

Since we’d gotten up so late and I had forgotten to buy cereal when I was at the grocery yesterday, I suggested we go to Haus der Eleganz, a little preppy coffee shop in Minster. We did and then asked for the breakfast menu (despite it being noon). We both ordered omlettes – mine was feta, spinach, and bacon. There was also toast and fruit (most of the fruit being various melons, but Judi let me have all of her non-melon fruit, so I had that instead). (I’d also ordered a vanilla Italian cream soda, but that was when we were looking at the lunch menu. I was finished with it by the time the food arrived.)

I popped across the street to the grocery to pick up cereal (Haus isn’t open on Sundays or Mondays) and ice. Oh, and rum. Judi stayed in the car (don’t worry, I opened the windows a crack).

Back at the cottage I did as much prep as I could for supper. Tossed the salad (spring mix, romaine, feta & Gorgonzola, Roma tomatoes, slivered almonds and craisins, blueberry pomegranate dressing). Made the pineapple topping for the coconut ice cream. Toasted some sliced almonds. Then sat and worked on my mini for a bit before reading and eventually napping. Judi was napping the entire time. 🙂

Mom and dad arrived around 4pm with the corn on the cob. So then I put the ears to soak in water for at least an hour before grilling. Aunt Becky arrived next, followed by Uncle Dean later. With everyone here, I started the fire (with issues, but we managed it).

The corn was grilled first since it takes the longest. I had them on rotation and got all but 4 ears (of the 16 mom brought) grilled. Then I put the t-bones on. They were HUGE and could only get 4 on the grill at a time. But I got ’em done and they were cooked just right, apparently. Folks were already eating the salad and then the corn by the time I had the steaks in. They said they liked it all. I really liked my stuff too. (The corn was perfectly sweet and still firm – Fulton’s corn at its peak. No butter or salt needed!

Becky had brought some fruit and cake along, so we had that as well. Very nice selection of fruit and she made an orange/lemon sauce to pour on top. Yummy. I had a piece of the blueberry snack cake that she’d made. A successful experiment, IMO.

We were all stuffed to the gills, so Dean headed back home and we ladies started a game of pinochle. After a test round to make sure we remembered the rules, we played in earnest. With just a couple rounds to go (with Judi and me in the lead) we paused for ice cream and pound cake.

The coconut ice cream was very soft and in the freezer here at the lake, became even softer. But with a scoop or two on pound cake and then the topping of your choice (pineapple, chocolate fudge, and/or toasted almonds), it was quite tasty. I opted for chocolate and almond slices. Yum! I think I’ll experiment some on that coconut ice cream recipe, but it was an excellent first attempt.

We finished the game and Judi and I managed to maintain our lead. Thankfully Becky and mom didn’t get any amazing double runs or anything to snatch victory away from us. 🙂 Becky then headed home, followed shortly by the parental units. Plans are made to meet them at the movie theater tomorrow to see Harry Potter 6.

So now we’re just vegging on our laptops. Judi’s roleplaying her dog Lance on IRC (he’s quite the entertaining fellow), I’m writing all this. Maybe we’ll get to bed at a reasonable hour tonight. *snerk*