Busy weekend

We usually don't run out of things to do but we're rarely as social (in at least some sense of the word) as we were this past weekend.

Thursday night was Naoyuki's department's holiday party at the Saturn Club in downtown Buffalo. It's a cool place, in a "how many of these places are left?" kind of way. As usual, great beef on weck, free liquor, and more beef on weck for dessert. Naoyuki's colleagues are charming and gracious and as is always the case when I'm not actually acting as host my preferred location was holding up the wall and watching.

Friday night we made our second foray to the Studio Arena Theatre, this time to see The Fourth Wiseman, a re-telling of the Christmas story. I was hoping for something a bit more challenging but the cast and crew did a great job (I especially enjoyed the puppets.) And Paolo Andino, who played the lead, was really just topnotch (and way hunky!) Naturally I googled him as soon as I got home and while there are many references to him (and at least one to his mom, or so it would appear!) he doesn't seem to have a personal website of his own. Sigh!

Saturday afternoon we travelled to Rochester for the Rochester Philharmonic Orchestra's annual holiday concert. I thought it was quite good as holiday concerts go and the high school chorus was very nice. Mostly, though, I was blown away by the Eastman Theatre, which is just simply spectacular. I figured it would be pretty grand but it is really quite over the top in a 1920s, gilded age sort of way! Afterwards we stopped by Alexandria's Mediterranean Cuisine for a very late lunch and/or very early supper. Very good food and cute waiters -- what more could I want?

Sunday morning we joined my chat friend, Jim Cooper, at Betty's in downtown Buffalo, on Virginia right off of Elmwood. The food was very yummy -- I had amazing French Toast Anglaise with blueberry compote! The company was good, too. It was the first time we'd had to meet Jim, another native Buffalonian and a long-time resident of the West Side.

That afternoon we managed to decorate three of the remaining four Christmas trees (the live one, the aluminum tinsel one, and the tiny tabletop tree with the handcrafted wooden ornaments Naoyuki bought on a trip to Germany) -- he had already taken care of the fiber optic tree in the living room.

It's looking festive!