Sushiesque

How I know that I am in Connecticut

I went to see Juno with my parents at the Showcase Cinemas Buckland Hills in Manchester, Connecticut. No one laughed at jokes about the following:

• Girls who wear vegan shoes and read McSweeney's
• Suburban architecture
• Sonic Youth

And then we went to an outdoor mall with an unwieldy name—The Promenade Shops at Evergreen Walk—where Williams-Sonoma, Brooks Brothers, Anthropologie, Jasmine Sola, Jos. A. Bank, and other upscale storefronts were arranged around strips of parking lot into a one-story faux-downtown, like Newbury Street without all that architecture or all that walking.

SEA: Alaskan Amber & Alaskan Winter Ale

Airport beers are huge. At Sea-Tac's Alaskan Lounge, pints are the "small" size. (Back in Windsor Locks, those tall, curvy Blue Moon glasses are "small".)

The Amber is pretty standard, and nice. We had bottled Winter Ale at a party the other night—at 6.4% ABV, it was the sturdiest thing in the house. It's sweet, but hoppy, and abnormally, pleasantly under-spiced for a so-called winter warmer and, on tap, it shows off a slight somethingness—fruitiness? Pine-y-ness?

It should be noted that while most of the stock photography that graces the Lounge's menu were plausibly Alaskan, the image on the cover is definitely Wizard Island, in Oregon's Crater Lake.

Don't go back to

Back in dear old Connecticut, the ongoing controversy is the Connecticut Valley Atheists exercising their constitutional rights next to the traditional nativity scene in the middle of Rockville. Their un-holiday display—quoting John Lennon and depicting intact Twin Towers—was later semi-obscured by the placement of a beribboned Christmas tree, and led to the inevitable discussion of whether Hitler was an atheist.

BDL: Ten Penny Ale

Olde Burnside Brewing Co.'s Ten Penny Ale was the only microbrew on tap at Bradley on our way out to Seattle. It's a Scottish ale (emphasis on the ish). Crisp, refreshing, reasonably hoppy, and it paired well with the cheez whizzed nachos at the bar in Terminal A.

I was wearing new pajamas in a room that was not mine

And now I'm at Sea-Tac. Merry day-after-Christmas, and I'll be back in Boston by New Year's Eve.

The Party of Cookies

A.C.-M. & her household of awesome threw another delightful cookie-decorating social function this past Saturday. Behold, Ethan's magnum opus:

Ms. C.-M. recreated the most charming of all Mario 3 powerups, Kuribo's boot:

(It lets you step on spikes and carnivorous plants and whatnot.)

Of my own contributions, I am fond of this rather inaccurate big dipper:

More examples here. See also: The cookies of yesteryear.