Back to the real world

Ithaca was wonderful (gorges, in fact), but my vacation is over, and today was my first day back at work. Today was a Big Meeting day, so I wore a tie with sea turtles on it, a reasonable approximation of the mascot of the university at which I work. The tie is by Desert Designs and is the work of Australian Aboriginal artist Doris Gingingara (1946-1999); note the crabs woven into the silk! (I was impressed today when the design was correctly identified as Australian sea turtles by a man who works upstairs from me, and whose name is quite similar to mine: we're next to each other in the department phone directory, and we sometimes receive phone calls meant for the other.)

While in Ithaca I discovered the beers of Middle Ages Brewing Company of Syracuse (and in researching it on the web I've just discovered A Good Beer Blog, which even features the beer store I went to, and will now become regular reading). The Middle Ages brews I sampled don't appear on that blog, though: Dragonslayer Imperial Stout (excellent) and the delightfully-named Druid Fluid barleywine-style ale (good but a little too hoppy for my taste, similar to Sierra Nevada's Bigfoot Ale). Ithaca has its own brewery as well, the Ithaca Beer Company. Their Apricot Wheat and Nut Brown beers are quite tasty; unfortunately I was in Ithaca the wrong time of year for the Gorges Smoked Porter winter brew, which sounds like just my thing. Maybe my local store will stock it this winter; stranger things have happened.