Week 40: Nutters, Naan & Presidents

A good week for new things:

While my husband and I were running errands on Saturday, we stopped by a new brewery (to us) for a little lunch and tasting. The décor was a bit . . . quirky? I don't like clutter, so not my thing, but the beers we tried were really good. I had a tasting of the strawberry lemonade shandy and the nutter butter ale. I've had peanut butter stouts before, but never in a pale ale. It was superb. My husband liked his IPA's, but didn't notice when ordering that one of them had some sort of pepper in it. He can't do spicy things, so that was unfortunate. They also didn't have much in the way of food. If it was closer, I'd go just for the beer, but otherwise, wouldn't go out of my way to visit again.

I mentioned before that my group of friends always gather to celebrate each others' birthdays. For September, the two birthday girls chose a newly (mid-July) opened restaurant for happy hour. It was in one of those strip malls where the place seems to change hands every few years. I had been there when it was an Italian restaurant and a farm-to-table social kitchen. This time, it's Lebanese. Oddly, they had no wine or beer specials for happy hour (and they only carried bottled beer). A few $5 drink specials. The menu was sorely lacking. Basically, every item was made with Naan bread. Now, I love Naan just as much as the next person, but seriously? Five Naan flatbreads? Hummus platter with toasted Naan? Naan gyros? To top it off, I had ordered a Kenwood Chardonnay and recommended it to the friend sitting next to me. She tried to order it but the server came back and said they were out. The food was fine, but I came home and told my husband we probably didn't need to go try it together. Good thing, because when I googled it this morning, it said 'permanently closed' on Yelp.

NOT the sort of book I'd normally read, but I was browsing the library and stumbled upon this. I thoroughly enjoyed reading it last week. It was a chronological order of mini biographies of each president, featuring where they chose to go to get away from the White House. It also focused on their wives and families. Such humble beginnings for the vast majority of them and interesting tidbits about each one. I learned that William Howard Taft loved baseball and one day stood up during a game at the 7th inning. Everyone in the park followed suit and thus began the tradition of the 7th inning stretch. His wife, Helen, visited Japan and got the idea to have flowering cherry trees planted along the reflecting pool by the Jefferson Memorial. Her efforts resulted in the gift of the trees by the Japanese government in 1912.

Before Twitter, there were diaries and the press for the president to make disparaging remarks. James Polk wrote in his diary about the incoming president, Zachary Taylor, "A well-meaning old man, he is, however, uneducated, exceedingly ignorant of public affairs, and, I should judge, of very ordinary capacity." Lyndon Johnson said of Gerald Ford, "He played too much football without a helmet!" and "Jerry Ford is so dumb, he can't walk and chew gum at the same time."

So much for the good old days!