It also goes well with: long drives across town at dusk, trying to find parking in the evening, rainy Saturday afternoon naps, beers at a quiet table, the bookstore, reminiscing, and procrastinating.

1. The Little Ones - Let Them Ring the Bells
2. Fruit Bats - Canyon Girl
3. Clinic - The Witch
4. Vivian Girls - Tell the World
5. The Submarines - Fern Beard
6. Forest City Lovers - Sullen Seas
7. My Latest Novel - The Hope Edition
8. Our Lady of Bells - Adeline
9. Sarah Harmer - I Am Aglow
10. Frontier Folk Nebraska - Parker Browne
11. Norfolk & Western - Terrified
12. Seabear - Hands Remember

Download June 2008 Mix (59mb)

1. I’ve been very immersed in my new job, I am working on some awesome things I can’t talk about now because of trade secrets etc, but billing and payments in online insurance are about to get much much better.
2. My long term, live in girlfriend of four years and I broke up. This stuff is always hard, but new beginnings are nice too.
3. I moved from the West Side of Cleveland to Cleveland Heights (the East Side.) I miss the West Side but am loving exploring this part of town and being close to the Grog Shop and the Beachland. Incidentally I’m only 5 minutes from the Apple Store now. I’m also really excited to have a dedicated office space.
4. I’ve been doing a lot of freelance. I finished teaching my class, but I’ll be teaching another for Fall semester.
5. I started seeing someone else who is amazing (and also a talented baker) and I’m sure I will gush about her to the point your RSS feed will make you puke and you’ll unsubscribe.

I’ve also been putting some serious time and (ugh) money into decorating the new place. I bought a new couch and loveseat, I’m still waiting for the couch to be delivered. I’m getting a new dining room table. I’ve done a ton of painting (with lots of help.) I am replacing all my bedding and towels. I am going to put up all new window treatments. Someone should bar me from Crate & Barrel. I’ve also been going crazy with the Martha Stewart collection at Macy’s, and ended up with Martha Stewart paint. The dining room color is called Mint Gelato. The list goes on and on, so I’ve made two photo sets on Flickr, a before and an in progress. Here’s a few highlights:

I also want to mention Room Service, a fabulous shop where I bought my throw pillows on Detroit in the Gordon Square Arts District. They were pretty reasonable and have a lot of pieces by local designers and artists.

Long overdue, here is my mix for May. On June 2nd. I’m a little behind, give me a break I’m moving and completely drained.

Listen to this while lying on your couch with minimal lighting. Bonus points for incense and headphones.

There is also some album art.

1. French Kicks - Abandon
2. Annuals - Sore
3. Ladytron - The Lovers
4. The Sound - Heartland
5. My Brightest Diamond - Inside a Boy
6. Plants and Animals - Bye Bye Bye
7. Brightblack Morning Light - Come Another Rain Down
8. The Black Angels - Better Off Alone
9. Mary Timony - Look a Ghost in the Eye
10. Pete and the Pirates - Knots
11. The Warlocks - Dreamless Days

Download May 2008 Mix (60mb)

• Naked Juice in the cafeteria
• Netflix
• Contemplating getting a scooter
• A friend’s successful recovery
• This article on blogging and personal privacy. Will resonate with anyone who’s ever had a LiveJournal.
• Five cent HDMI cable
• New upscaling DVD player
• Desperate Housewives season finale
• Ellen and John McCain
• New issue of Martha Stewart Living has a bee cake on the cover
• Scharffen Berger

Cons:

• Auto Kerning
• Packing
• Gas prices
• That Scarlett Johansson album
• Frutiger Serif
• Wishing I was going to Terrastock
• Best Buy ripping me off on upscaling DVD player
• Missing X show
• Ohio taxes
• People who wear lots of perfume/cologne and ride in the elevator
• Lakewood contemplating ignorant Pit Bull ban

A gastropub is a British term for a public house (”pub”) which specializes in high-quality food a step above the more basic “pub grub.” The name is a combination of pub and gastronomy and was coined in 1991 when David Eyre and Mike Belben opened a pub called The Eagle in Clerkenwell, London. They placed emphasis on the quality of food served.

Gastropubs usually have an atmosphere which is relaxed and a focus on offering a particular cuisine prepared as well as it is in the best restaurants. Staying true to the format requires a menu that complements the assortment of beers and wines the gastropub offers.

Some describe gastropubs as the Anglo-equivalent of the French brasserie or the Japanese izakaya.

We had a great start with a pretzel and smoked cheddar stout dipping sauce. The pretzel was soft, and not too salty or greasy. I appreciated that the beer menu used color to easily identify what was on tap and which beers were large.

I ordered the duck breast and sun dried tomato risotto, while my friend had the mac and cheese. The portion of her mac and cheese was pretty generous, and she said it was great. (I’m not a big mac and cheese person so I’m by no means qualified to comment.) However I was a little surprised to find my sun dried tomato risotto was really more of an alfredo risotto with sun dried tomatos haphazardly mixed in. I was expecting some type of sun dried tomato pesto, and the menu made no mention of cheese. I don’t expect menus to list every ingredient in a dish, but I do think in this case the cheese/sauce should’ve been explicit since it (and not the sun dried tomatos) was clearly the main ingredient.

I also felt the dish could’ve used the accompaniment of a vegetable. The duck breast itself was moist and tender. I generally feel you can judge a restaurant by how it prepares duck. There’s rarely an in between, it’s either great or terrible. (Too fatty and slimy or shriveled and dried out. For the record the best duck I’ve had in Cleveland was at the Flying Fig.) While the almond crust was mostly enjoyable, albiet with a strange aftertaste, it didn’t go very well with the risotto or the acidity of the sun dried tomatos.

The atmosphere was odd, a raucous crowd in the back was Wii Bowling and it sounded like they were about to come to blows over their tournament. The music was bad even though I’d heard otherwise, but for all I know someone with terrible taste was hunched over the juke box. The seating was comfortable. Service was slow, there was a lone bartender waiting on the entire restaurant. We definitely received a grimace when we asked for our checks to be split.

I’d visit again though, it’s worth it for the beer selection alone. While it’s not particularly huge it is more diverse than the Bier Markt, which is centered on Belgian and Lambic brews. Dark beer drinkers rejoice. I only saw one bitter on the menu, Cleveland apparently doesn’t have much love for bitters outside of The Pub. I’d stay away from the main dishes and instead experiment with the small plates or sandwiches. The short rib sliders looked promising. But I wonder, does every distinctly Cleveland dining establishment have to serve pierogies?

Don’t bother trying to find them on the web, their lone internet presence is a Myspace page with nefarious custom layout. The Tremont Tap House is located at 2572 Scranton Rd, Cleveland, OH 44113.

MSNBC recently picked Tina Fey as their funniest person. Though I would hardly call MSNBC the barometer of hilarity, it’s nice to see a woman in entertainment get respect for something other than her boobs. The best part of the article:

…women (along with other women in comedy) still battle periodic declarations by male performers and writers that women aren’t funny — from the notorious John Belushi bellowings of the late 1970s to a Christopher Hitchens essay last year in Vanity Fair. So being the first female head writer at “SNL” isn’t merely a “happened to be first” situation, but a victory over daunting odds.

So Tina Fey in a movie with Amy Poehler (second most hilarious lady on television) is basically my dream comedy duo. The only way this movie could possibly be funnier would be throwing Amy Sedaris into the mix. Baby Mama opens this Friday, watch the trailer.