Ahhh yes. Summertime. Post Personal Pansamatic. I say that because as far as I know, we're still in a pansamatic, but somehow, someway, at least in my state, it's "over"? At least the amount of cautions has been taken out of my daily routine. No masks pretty much anywhere. Most places have seating inside without even a partition. My grocery store still has some of their plexi up, but they moved the credit card machines back to where they were. All signs are now "mask required if you are not fully jabbed". So, there are still a few wearing them. I still feel odd going to the restroom at my local without wearing one. Maybe because I can SMELL again, and my masks anyway were good for NOT smelling. So, as I start doing things I used to do in dribs and drabs, I "celebrated" by taking this candy bar down from the desk shelf it stared at me for 15 months and chowed on it while I was on air. Anything for a bit right? How did the 15 month old candy bar do?

Um... Best by date Dec. 2020. Hmmm. It was melty. I tasted it, and it it was fine if a little stale tasting. What did happen is the layers of peanut butter solidified into a taffy like texture that stuck to the teeth. That was not so good, but still, it was my victory treat. 15 months passed. To quote the Grateful Dead: "I Wheel Survive". No worries, I had special sauce to wash it down with....

14 Year old OBAN scotch. Of course, Grand Macnish was the sub for this photo shoot.  Into a Dalmore rocks glass I poured the nectar of the scotches while I was on air. (Another 5 minutes of radio. Hey, keeps the show going right?) This scotch the single most expensive bottle of booze I've bought, period. I had it once long ago and it became the best scotch I've tasted. Sure I've had tastes of other scotches, but none topped this. So, I figured I'd get a bottle as a treat for my PPP. It was as advertised by me and I drank it slow. The error I made was trying to wash down the taffy like 15 month old Butterfinger with OBAN. Not recommended. Fun nonetheless. 30 seconds more of me gagging on the air. What a great show huh? Podcast. Phew.

No problem. The summer cougar had brought me a 6 pack of fresh Butterfingers. I found the summer cougar at a participating Tarjay. He was only a buck and he looked happy, ready for summer. It's how I felt.

So, with my new found no mask wearing but still distanced self, having turned the corner, one of the first things Mom and I did was again, go for a pizza. Then we went back to a "favorite" place to shop. I'd mentioned it before on this blog but now it was here. The return to Trader Joes. You could see lines outside the parking garage where the peeps must have lined up before they cleared all from coming in again. This sign said it best.

Look at that! It's whole bean coffee from Trader Joes. Different flavor coffee. Nice cans Doug. (It's how I kept my Dunkin and Aldis beans fresh, now I have replacements. ) One thing that was decent about this trip, it was Saturday about 4PM and the you could actually keep your distance from everybody. Really. They do have small stores, and always felt like you were elbow to elbow with other shoppers. It was a half full store. I don't think I've ever shopped at a half full Trader Joes. The other thing, at least for this trip, the coffee was the same price paid in early 2020. Even ALDIS raised their prices on coffee. Awww, but I couldn't get the shot glass free sample of coffee that I get every time I went there. Give it time....

Here's another sign that things are "back to the way they were". Of course, I can't purchase kitchen towels. I have to use old shirts. I hung the shirt back on my fridge so I don't have to drip water to the other side of my kitchen where I had a chair laid out as my "sterile" chair. It was the place I'd put things I was taking outside my house in the plastic bag "briefcase" that was during the pansamatic. All that is no more. Place the germ catcher back on the fridge. Dumbass. This happens to be a really old blue shirt from my retail days. Wonder if they want it back?

CLUNK! Hear that? Another transmission on a 1977 Ford Pinto sliding into gear. I guess I'm into slowly getting back the things I stopped because of the pansamatic. One of them was getting "credit" for drawing at a place I had never drawn before. This does include when a coffee house or restaurant does a remodel and it's new to me again. Here was the 'Bucks near me that moved locations to add a drive through. All 'Bucks in my area  are open until 9PM even on weekends and the staff is wearing masks, but otherwise, the lobbies are wide open. This was the very first credit I got for myself in 2021. I still think their coffee is harsh mud, but so be it.

Another weekend, another new 'Bucks to get credit at. This one was a real outlier. See, two of these 'Bucks so close to me just waiting for my fat ass to sit back down and muss up some sort of cartoonery..but I couldn't because... This one took over for a Steak N' Shake restaurant and they didn't sub divide. So...HUGE! I mean you could use this store for an airplane hanger. Plus they had outdoor seating as well. The bathrooms alone were the size of efficiency apartments. Lets just say I'm going to this as my regular 'Bucks from now. This picture is only half the lobby! We used to have the smallest 'Bucks here in Clevo. I remember when I went to the one that opened that was three floors with a party room and thought that was big. Nope. There's a few more that I have to go and get "credit" for including another Steak and Shake conversion. I was bummed because the Biggsby coffee that is close to me still doesn't have indoor seating. I went to that store a lot for the two years it was open before the...yadda yadda.

So the next big step to take in my PPP is a ROAD TRIP. Crossing STATE LINES. Taking COORS to the states it's not in! East Bound And Down! Loaded Up And Truckin! Burt Reynolds was pushed.  Oh yeah. Construction time again! Gee, I had forgotten about the fact that summer travels were plagued by orange barrels. Why? No freeways for me in 2020. At least not ones that see work every year like clockwork. I was headed to Pittsburgh and I was going the route to avoid the automatic tolls because I don't trust the cashless  "We'll Bill You" crap.  This was three lanes into one complicated by an exit on the freeway 1/2 mile earlier and at the bottleneck. 30 minute delay. Stopped on a bridge that shimmied from the weight of the cars and trucks. Ick. Yep. Welcome back to summer in 2021.

Here I was! Back in Pittsburgh. I wanted to do it all. Eat at the exotic Pitt restaurants. I was there to see Boomer. We pulled up to this very exotic "fast food" place where we both had the pleasure to dine at before and have a "tasty" double stack. Hey, wait a minute? Haven't you heard Pittsburgh? It's my PPP! I want to spread out in your spacious lobby with the fake fireplace  and enjoy 4 for 4! Have that drink "Mello Yellow Peach." Reality was? I needed to take a whiz. They still had the lobby closed. In fact half of the fast food joints in the area had closed lobbies. Employee issues or just a refusal of the fat guys? At least they had Frosties. Boomer tuned in the polka station and we enjoyed our fake ice cream listening to "chubby" over modulating when he spoke. Hey, when in Pitt...

So we decided to go to this pizza joint. We like this place. It's smallish on the inside and a bit on the pricey side, but the food is always top notch. Because it had rained somewhat when I was going there and it was threatening rain most of the time I was there, the outdoor seating was not available. Boomer wasn't so sure that we could be in of doors and believe me, Pittsburgh had that vibe of "not just yet PPP time...". The place wasn't that busy, so he agreed that we could eat in. We had the Mufaletta hoagies which were great but could have used more and we both doctored up our take home halves to really make them tasty burgers. Then we went shopping. I went to the SUPERBEERSTORE. Glad to see it open and selling beverage, maybe not as full as it used to be but I was able to buy a 12 pack of Sierra Nevada Torpedo in the can. (Not readily available in Clevo...) Plus I bought the official ZIGGY ZOCKY size Pabst. What burned me about it, the 30 packs. They were 18.49 in Pitt. F the CAN SHORTAGE. We then went shopping at a place that we haven't been for ...wait for it... 15 MONTHS. (Ick. Ack. Ugh.)

It was good to see. In fact, this store was busier than Trader Joes was, but with twice the space, it wasn't so bad. They also had all their checkouts open. It's always busy a 5PM on a Saturday. They didn't have their king sized subs that I love so bad, but Boom was able to do a ton of shopping. I joked that his fridge would have more food in it now that it has for..I won't say it. I had the Christmas gifts to give him which we went back to his place after this shopping trip and he opened while I consumed one of the aforementioned Sierra Nevada Torpedos that Boomer had been "aging" in the back of his fridge since my last visit in March of 2020. As always, it was more complex, less bitey and Mmmmmm that's good beer. We also went to his 'Bucks for a "coffee draw", where we both draw or he draws and I write. Jeeze, we remembered when some dude a few tables from us was wearing a mask March 2020 and we thought that was silly. Uh huh.

When it came time to do our show again, I had also "liberated" from Boom's "fridge beer cellar" , two official Ziggy Zockys. The 24 Oz "king can" Pabst Blue Ribbon cans. Since Pitt law says that you have to buy beer from a "distributor" unless you sell a lot of prepared foods, they sell these which I'm sure are bar specials. You can't get them here. I'd left two of them in Boomers care because "what, I'll be back in two-three months right" said the dog in March 2020. Here they were and I had to photograph the "best by" date just to prove that this had aged "gracefully."

Um. Yeah. A year from the best by date. Now I've had these cheap beers when they were a month or two past the best by date. The didn't taste quite as good (sic) as a fresh version but they still went down. I had faith that because Pabst has a little more hop content than your average BudMillerCoors and these were kept cold the whole time, they would at least be drinkable right? As someone that almost booted when having a warm Genny Cream Ale, I didn't hold much hope. Ahh, but 10 minutes of content! I'd do it.

Old in the plastic tumbler and new in the glass. I had to get the picture so you could see the difference in appearance alone. The old Pabst was drinkable..if you were a passive beer drinker. Pabst is brewed with corn to help it ferment quicker and they can produce more beer that way and at a cheaper price point. What they call an "adjunct" beer. Trouble is, beer is still very much alive when it goes in the can. The fermenting never stops. Sure you can slow it by refrigeration or brown bottles to block it from light, but eventually it becomes... The slight hops profile of Pabst had been eaten up and it was a strong corn flavor. Again, not bad, even passable, but not to me. Drain pour.

Remember these? Sure you do. This was the Kay Store that I bought the desk that I've been raving about in this blog. It was a shadow of it's former self. I do remember this store at least being clean and well stocked the few times I went to it. It closed sometime in 2019 and then it was announced it would be replaced by regional discounter Meijer. It seems they took a lot of K-Mart spaces here in Cleveland. I went to one in the summer of 2020 where I was annoyed by the long lines and the auto checkouts not being able to take cash because of the great change shortage of 2020. Remember that? I only had 5 items so I went to the service desk to check out.

THEY TORE DOWN MY BIG-K! Yep. Brand new Meijer. They are super centers. I worked for Meijer for a short time while I lived in Louisville. This was state of the retailing art. It would seem in a small space, they are HUGE on the inside. I went shopping for groceries and well, prices were like every grocery store. Some things cheaper, some things more expensive. I didn't dwell on the "HARD" goods side for very long but I'll be going back lots because I timed it pin to pin my ride home at 15 minutes. I wonder what their portable desk stocks are like?

Which brings us to something else I haven't done since before. I spent the Sunday in Mentor. I went to the record store to buy the latest King Gizzard album but it's not going to be out on physical media for another month. Damn. No biggy. I had lunch at a participating Arbys and decided to experience the "2 Dead Anchors" mall. Sears went a few years earlier and Macys went during the pansamatic, but surprisingly the place was fairly busy and fairly filled! It's still got a Dillards and a JC Penny, plus a Dicks sporting goods and a fairly new anchor sized entertainment center, so this mall had morphed and made it through the pansamatic. I noted while walking through that a local micro brew chain "The Brew Kettle" was open someplace near, but couldn't find it attached to the mall... It was attached to the entertainment center.

It was the micro brew that features 400 variations on their one "okay" IPA. I had one version and it was terrible and another version that was better than the original. I had a guest beer that was a "sour" fruit beer. Good but not my cup of beverage. Then I had the Irish Stout and well, it's what I should have been drinking since I got there. Then the DOWNPOUR happened. They had to pull down their garage doors because the tables got soaked. It was so great to be watching the Cleveland baseball team get their asses handed to them while drinking great stout during a tsunami.

I left there and could have gone across the street to the 'Bucks were they had a lobby with 8 seats total. (Told you, small lobbies...) No, I drove down the road to the alt 'Bucks which to my surprise, was now a sub shop. The 'Bucks was another that didn't have a drive through and they moved across the street into a former Half Priced Books. I was sad that it wasn't a Half Priced Books anymore. I had bought "Greyfolded" from there a few years before which is Plunderphonics mix of a mess of Greatful Deads's Iconic song "Dark Star". It was long out of print so I was lucky to find it. Now, it was sub divided into a modern "new" long box 'Bucks and two other spaces. I got the unexpected credit from this place as well as the micro brew. I ended the Sunday with a stop at Speedway for a 32 Oz Cherry Mountain Spew and then a few beverages at my local while I finished writing for my radio show. PPP baby. We're back. Leon is getting LARGER! "Fat, Drunk and Stupid is no way to go through life." *skitch* Animal House. Thanks.

Look at that. A man built that. It's a 12 pack of 24 OZ Ziggy Zockies taking the place where the 30 packs I had to buy because I didn't travel for those long months. Brings a tear to my eye. Actually, these would rest with 2 in Pitt and 4 pack in my fridge...the rest consumed in Pitt. This really looks odd for me nowadays but so be it.  How did that mask get in there? -Junk Blog