what more

Taste of Buffalo is amazing. Vendors of all the restaurants in Buffalo together, downtown, between ‘the chip strip’ and City Hall. They are set up with their best menu items and with tickets you buy things and eat your way through downtown Buffalo. It’s a great way to get people out and appreciating the city.

Downtown Buffalo makes me sad. It is everything Albany would be if it weren’t the capital of New York: cities that were booming during industrial periods that have since been decimated. Vacant streets and little business. Abandoned store-fronts and ‘historic’ landmarks that are falling down but too precious to demolish.

I’m really starting to like the city of Buffalo. It has a lot to offer a younger crowd and downtown is actually really [architecturally] beautiful. If I were to have gone to school here I would have had a great time. The people of Buffalo are as nice as those of the mid-west (I assume, based on stereotypes, having never been there). Buffalo has an arts scene and great coffee. Bars and restaurants are open late and real estate prices are low. Everyone should pack their bags, become Bills and Sabres fans, and move to Buffalo.

Good chicken wings and lake-effect snow. What more could you want?

heatwave

It is hot out. Yes, it is summer. We are having a heat-wave. I am not complaining. I love the heat.

After work I went out to the pool in our apartment complex that I have never before used. I have found my place for the rest of the summer.

If I complain about heat I constantly think of when I complain of the cold during winter. I am trying to be appreciative of things when I have them. I refuse to want what’s on the other side of the fence.

I don’t want to regret losing things I didn’t appreciate to begin with.

disease

I have a dress collection that has been in progress since high school. I love dresses and wear them the majority of days. Today I wore two different dresses and found both of them uncomfortably large. I’m borderline depressed because my dress collection is beginning to render itself useless. Who wants fifty dresses that are too big?

I suppose I will just have to buy more.

the90 home

I drove back to Buffalo with a friend from home who is also living out here for the summer. He lives in a part of Buffalo that I’m not familiar with (the suburbs…). After dropping him off I was nervous I wasn’t going to be able to find my way back to W. Ferry, but my navigational skills surprised me and I was home without a glitch.

I felt like I was driving home tonight and being familiar with the streets of Buffalo is comforting. I am finally getting to know the area, a little, and it is definitely a great feeling.

I love traveling and seeing new places but I think I want to spend enough time in each place that I am familiar with the area enough to call it home. Is it practical to think I could live in many different areas throughout my life? I might get tired of moving around. I might crave to consider one place home.

a tip for retail

Ellie and I took Audrey for a walk when I got home from work. It was a beautiful day in the mid 70s and sunny, a rarity for Buffalo, even in the summer. We walked through Elmwood Village, where I, naturally, had to stop at Spot Coffee.

While Ellie waited outside with the dog, I went in and got a cappuccino, a Thursday afternoon reward (yes, I can justify anything). The hipster punk-scum that worked there asked what he could get for me. But no, he didn’t phrase it in such a nice way. He said, “Ma’am, what can I get for you?” Oooooh, he called me ma’am (which now justifies my calling him hipster punk-scum).

When complaining to a friend about being called ma’am, I was told, “why don’t you blog about it”, in a rather belittling way. However facetious this phrase was meant, I am taking the suggestion seriously. This is an opportunity to set something straight.

The term, Ma’am, should never be used to refer to a woman who is either A. younger than thirty, B. unmarried, or C. wearing an adorable sundress.

For those of you working in retail, pay attention. You are always safe when you use Miss. Nobody will ever be offended when they are referred to as Miss, even if they are approaching an age that is embarrassing to reveal. If you do feel the necessity of throwing around Ma’am, save it for a woman who has a toddler on her hip or a baby in a stroller.

To break it down:

Stroller/hip child- Ma’am
Girl in sundress- Miss

That is the end of my rant. Spot Coffee, I will forgive you if you fire that child.