#82 - a wing & a player.

 ...so friday night i met up in the city & spent a few hours in midtown (eek!) having beers & conversation with a college friend who i hadn't seen since we graduated twelve years ago (eek!) & found ourselves out in the non-mtv real world (eek!). with my nh upbringing, back in college, when i first met him, he represented a good portion of my initial experiences with nyc types & dramatic types & literary types.

i originally met him during my sophomore year through his cousin, the only girl who lived in our fraternity house. we're both irish & thus enjoy drinking & were in college & not yet beaten down & around the fraternity & whatnot.  as a result, we shared countless late nights of intellectual/philosophical discussions during our time at b.u.  we're both wicked smaht.

so i haven't seen this guy in over a decade & we met up at a bar located at the bottom of his apartment building.  i showed up after work, around 7pm, but since he's not working, he'd been there since noon & drinking since four.  as such, he already had a bit of the enhanced "everyone here is awesome & you should all know each other" swagger that i remembered of him from our college days.

since we were spending the evening on his block & at his regular bar, during the evening, i got to meet everyone who came within ten feet of us.  during the night, i heard the half-joking phrase "oh, you knew him back in college, huh?  you must have stories!" a ton of times.  i was introduced to all the cute female bartenders.  we spoke to a hot mommy outside of the bar, as she returned with her baby from some sort of hot mommy happy hour event.  in addition, he seems to attract famous people, so he regaled me with sweet stories of all the people he's brushed elbows with over the years, including informing me that a relative of his is soon to be married to one of america's most hip, radical authors.

anyway, he's a blast to hang out with & tends to make every moment interesting & friday night was no exception...a high-roller & a true player.

# 82 - a wing & a player.
snack: buffalo nickel honey mustard horespower wingers
drink: newcastle brown ale


it's been a rainy saturday, so tonight, i'm staying in & chillin' & snacking from a bag of buffalo nickel honey mustard horespower wingers that i picked up at the local bodega.  buffalo nickel makes five versions of their "wingers," each with a number rating denoting their hotness.  from tamest to hottest, the flavors are "no bull barbecue," the honey mustard ones, "nacho chilichanga," "caribbean zing" and "fiery buffalo bleu."  they have a makeup that's similar to bugles, with a light crunch, round shape & hollow inside...and of course, there's the awesome, slightly-winglike, slightly-squashlike shape.

these honey mustard horsepower ones have a flavor that's pleasant enough but sort of off.  i utilize honey mustard quite often in my sandwich-making & pretzel-eating & was initially pretty excited about them, but after eating a few, i felt a bit underwhelmed.  the honey mustard taste occasionally shines through, but the horseradish is almost non-existent & overall, the taste left in my mouth was only tolerable with something to eventually wash it away.

...& my choice of weirdly-tangy wing flavor eradicator is a newcastle brown ale.  back in college, newcastle was my beer of choice, the beer i'd carry around in my backpack at frat parties to avoid having to drink lame keg beer.  it remained my beer of choice for quite some time but over the years, as microbrews have exploded in popularity, i've found myself with many more choices, choices which when compared to newcastle, are way better-tasting.  regardless, for me, i still enjoy the slight-bitterness of a brown ale & it's still a nice, easy-drinking beer, so i continue to return to newcastle every once in a while, if only for the place it holds in my history.

on a college related, player-related note, b.u.'s hockey team totally took the national championship tonight. go sports!   sigh, if only i had cable...then i'd be a player too...until then!