Remember yesterday how
I mentioned that I’d still mix things up with the occasional off-topic items?
This is one of those items. Okay, it’s a bit weird to go off-topic on the
second post to this blog, but I thought a Very Special Valentine's Day post was in order. Also, Iwant to really get the ball rolling on this blog.
I work from home. I’ll
never complain because there are more advantages to that arrangement than I can
even count, but there is one down-side: I don’t get out much. So on those
occasions where I do leave the house to visit people or get away for the weekend
or pick up a loaf of bread, it opens the door for
Destination: Skaneateles, NY
That’s pronounced “skinny atlas.” As in, “I doubt you have a
street map for Hoboken in that skinny atlas of yours.” Skaneateles is a small town sitting at the tip of the eastern-most Finger Lake in New York State, and it’s known for… being a small
town at the tip of a Finger Lake, I guess. I’m under the impression that the
place is absolutely lovely in the spring and summer.
Naturally, my girlfriend
and I went in February.
Some context: I live in central New York State (I always
have to emphasize the “State” part, because otherwise people say things like,
“Oh yeah I have a cousin in the Bronx – maybe you know him!”). It’s a cute
little town on the Erie Canal about four hours from anyplace you’ve ever heard
of. That’s great if we want to do a long weekend in Boston or New York City.
But if we want run away somewhere overnight, we have to get creative. And
that’s how we discover places like Skaneateles.
“But what is there to do
in Skaneateles?” people kept asking me. And my answer would ultimately boil down to,
“Who cares?” We’re not in our 20s, needing constant adrenalin rushes in between
pounding Red Bulls and Snapchatting (that’s what people in their 20s do,
right?). We were looking forward to sleeping in, puttering around town, hitting a winery because you
can’t go far in the Finger Lakes region without tripping over a winery, going
out to dinner, and just enjoying being away together. Easy.
And it was all made easier by the fact that Skaneateles
looks like the setting of every Hallmark Christmas movie. Imagine this, but
without the holiday decorations and 90s TV stars gushing about Christmas:
The very walk-able downtown area was loaded with quaint
little indie shops and the whole area buzzed with activity for no other reason
than it was a Saturday. Even the residential streets were quaint.
It was great: the indie bakery had great donuts and even
better coffee, the art gallery had great local art, and the tasting room had great gin and a fantastic bourbon cream that I had to buy a bottle of despite not at
all liking bourbon.
That’s not to say the place isn’t without its quirks.
Consider this:
Apparently Doug does quite well for himself. Good for you,
Doug.
And then there was this promotion we found in the town
library:
We thought the idea of a "Blind Date with a Book" was a neat promotion, but the more I think
about it, the more questions I have: How exactly does this work? It is like literary Tinder,
where you swipe through a pile of gift-wrapped books and let you pick one based
on the adjectives written all over it? Or is it more like literary dating site,
where you tell the librarian what you’re looking for (“A historical fiction
with romance and intrigue, please!”) and the librarian makes a selection for
you?
I know it’s counter-intuitive to razz a program that
encourages reading on a blog written by somebody writing a book, but I’ve been
trying to wrap my head around this for days. Maybe I should have asked Doug
about it…
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