This past Christmas break we went to Guadalajara and during our time there couldn’t miss out on a trip to the area around the town of Tequila to learn more about Mexico’s national drink. That’s how we found ourselves at Casa Herradura in the town of Amatitán, a functioning hacienda that claims to be the […]
New York State Campgrounds and the Adirondacks

Camping at a New York State campground is a balance between nature and comfort at an attractive price point. You can reserve and research online, though until you’re there, you’re not quite sure what you’ll get. We had a lot of questions and everything turned out fine, so this is my effort to share what […]
Looking at construction through the “Kyle windows”

Paola calls these “Kyle windows”. I’m always poking my nose in these clear plexiglass diamonds to see what’s going on beyond the green plywood barriers. Construction is fascinating and I think it brings out the little kid in all of us. My theory is that these windows have been put there for liability reasons so […]
DIY: Super Nintendo nostalgia on your TV

I’m going to put this in Brewing, as in your own homebrew Super Nintendo, since it’s the best category I have for now. When we were in Montreal, we stumbled on this cafe that had a Super Nintendo with Super Mario for customers. It was the coolest idea, video games while you enjoy your coffee. […]
Honey Smacks Honey Brown Ale

The following recipe was of my own design for our Brewminaries cereal beer showcase, pouring mid-August. I chose Honey Smacks and decided to make a brown ale to showcase the cereal and for nostalgia reasons, since when I was in Syracuse we used to drink J.W. Dundee (Genesee) Honey Brown fairly often, it being a […]
Weekend Getaway to Storm King Art Center

Imagine you could book a semi-organized day trip outside New York without getting in a car or bus. Well, you can, with Metro-North Getaways, which offer round-trip on the train and discount museum and event tickets. We’ve been big fans of the Metro-North option for some time, having done the Farm Fresh tours twice, Dia:Beacon, […]
Classic camping with a Coleman briefcase stove (How-to)

We were planning a car camping trip over the July 4th and I had to get us a Coleman stove. That’s because few things cause as much pleasant nostalgia as using the same equipment we used as Boy Scouts: Eureka Timberline tents, Coleman lanterns, and Coleman stoves were our mainstays. As you may have noticed […]
We’re going camping
I have my briefcase, time for a July 4th weekend trip to the Adirondacks. More to come soon.
Japan’s 21st-century toilet technology

Never have I seen so many buttons in a bathroom stall, I thought as I took a quick pit stop after our 14-hour flight from New York to Tokyo. It turns the sleek international terminal of Narita Airport would not be the last place we’d see what I’d call “toilet technology”. Japan is indeed a […]
How to Take a Bath in Japan

Our Western stereotype of Japan is that everything there is small and more efficient, and while that isn’t entirely true, it does hold for the perplexing task of bathing in a Japanese bath. Believe it or not, bathing is not a straightforward exercise, and at the moment to you go bathe, we have found that […]