Now bring back the mall

We are in a food hall era. There are many in the area and The Gatherall in Norwood seems to be hitting a sweet spot with a collection of mostly local options. Since my list visit they’ve added personal favorites like Melt Test Kitchen and Trophy Pizza.

It’s doing so well it’s getting dense with folks, nicer weather will help ease things up greatly as there’s lots of outdoor seating.

I wish this energy could be channeled into a mall resurgence. Let me put my name in at a barber for a haircut, kill some time at the arcade with a smoothie that tastes a lot like an Orange Julius before picking up a paperback at the bookstore.

One can dream.

Deceptive patterns and a pick up

Closed out the week making a relatively healthy kit for lunch. (Green Chef’s Maple Cauliflower Bowl with Seared Tofu, summer squash, cranberries and herb miso-tahini sauce.) I’m starting to catch on to their deceptive patterns with little up-charges that aren’t apparent unless you look really close at the menu cards when making selections. The meal? It was a’ight. I cut back on maple syrup and miso-tahini which is probably why it wasn’t stellar.

Later in the evening I went to pick up Casey at the airport and snapped the above photo in the cell phone lot. Weather was rainy but I gave myself plenty of time to go slow and easy along the highways.

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Today would have been my sister’s birthday. It is our first without her.

Death is hard to reconcile, perhaps more so when it happens unexpectedly.

I continue to wrestle, running a gamut of emotions without discernible pattern.

She’d scoff at lingering in sadness even though that’s easier to say than do.

So I ordered pizza for dinner (not her favorite, which would have been Imperial from Buffalo) but close enough.

I put on music she liked.

Lit a candle.

And celebrated with her spirit.

Nugget & Copper

Couch cushions are done! I hobbled up north (my foot’s been acting up again) to grab ’em over lunch and got to visit briefly with these two pups.

The cushions are better than new — just the right firmness with a little bounce. Couch shopping can now be shelved for the foreseeable future! I can highly recommend the services of Lines, Circles & Angles and revitalizing stuff that’s got more life left.

Now I’m eyeing other things to get repaired so I can go back and pet those dogs.

Dinner with Sophia

I’ve been methodically going through fridge and freezer trying to clear out stuff, whipping up hodgepodge meals. Sometime yesterday I hit a wall and decided going out to dinner proper would be a good idea. I poked around some restaurants didn’t allow reservations for single diners.

Seeing this as an opportunity I reached out to my friend Sophia and asked if she was free. We circled around options and ended up at Nolia for an early supper.

There was lots to catch up on as we hadn’t bent elbows since the beforetimes. It was made all the more special by the meal and service. Highly recommend! The restaurant and randomly reaching out to connect.

Garbage content

I’ve only tried scented garbage bags a few times, often by mistake. Each experience the same — whenever I’d open the trash can I’d scrunch my nose and wonder what the awful smell was. Oh, it’s the bag.

Now there are almost as many varieties as Oreos and Goldfish crackers, so maybe one of the variants is pleasing.

I won’t find out today. The plain old boring unscented bags were tucked away on the bottom shelf.

Mini cucumbers

Among the reasons we started back on meal kit deliveries was to learn new techniques, recipes and ingredients. A few early standouts have been squash and little cucumbers. We don’t normally keep either in stock but they’re both really versatile and add nice texture to oodles of dishes.

We had been sprucing up salads with mini croutons, but have now switched to diced mini cucumbers — they’re bright and add crunch.

On the horizon: trying this simple salad with four ingredients: Honeycrisp apples, cucumbers, serrano pepper and lime juice (As seen on: Instagram / Tiktok)

You have to look at the world [in] small pieces at a time

Staring blankly, fingers hovering over the home row on my keyboard, I put the computer to sleep and grabbed a mailer from a stack of things I’ve picked up over time — books, zines, cards, Kickstarter projects…

I don’t normally open packages right away, forming a totem of inspiration to relish when most needed.

I grabbed a mailer to open Scott Boms’ lovely zine featuring Sister Corita Kent’s 10 Rules for Teachers and Students. It turned out to be just the right burst of color, energy and notions for the moment. Inside the inside cover flap was a (view)finder — a piece of paper with a rectangle cut out in which to reframe the world.

I’d seen a clip about this very thing on Austin Kleon’s blog a while back.

And these windows swirl around the periphery. Local artist Jon Flannery has variations of finders as business cards. My friend Drew tucks one in his sketchbooks and draws a grid on each page to fill them up with zoomed in details.

I wandered the house to frame a few visual tidbits, felt refreshed and finished up work tasks to close out the week.

Unrelated: Today’s soundtrack is from a collaboration between Bruce Hornsby and yMusic. Some of the tracks are out there, but the lead song is a good amuse-bouche.

Never buy the frozen chili dip

Came home to an empty fridge. Made a trip to the grocery to restock and spotted the frozen Cincinnati-style chili (wiki) section that was discussed while in Florida.

Pro-tip: Never buy the frozen chili dip, it is revolting. All you need is chili, cream cheese and shredded cheddar to make it happen, which should probably not happen often, otherwise it wouldn’t be special.

Also? Avoid shelf stable cans of Cincinnati chili as they add a metallic note to the already… complex flavor.

Not pictured: Lots of produce in the cart.

I just dethroned the Mayor of the CVG Parking Garage

Got up uncomfortably early to head from the Keys to the Fort Lauderdale Airport. (There are no direct flights to Miami from Cincinnati.) Casey did all the driving without the aid of coffee. Next time we’ll have to wake up even more uncomfortably early to rectify that.

The airport process was fine. Delta offers some new way to pre-print luggage tags or something and I have no idea how that works, but want to understand as that queue for that was empty.

Whenever I move through an airport I lament the opportunities for additional messaging and clarity.

Made it home in one piece with the cat staring at me in disdain.

And yes, I’m now the mayor of the CVG Parking Garage on Swarm which will always be Foursquare in my heart.

And they’re off

Spent about 1 minute in the kayak before I paddled back a few feet to exit the water. I don’t know what’s wrong with me, maybe the open water snorkeling freakout in Cancun activated something. Regardless, I was very happy to let Casey, his dad and Renee go forth while I read a book at the empty pool.