Dana's Special Day!

In honor of Dana's birthday, we had declared a cluster of days in the third week of September "Dana's Special Day!"s Dana's too special to only get one Dana's Special Day! so she got a few of them.

Dana's Special Day! 1 - Blind Tiger Ale House Victory Event
This sounds a bit like giving your girlfriend a subscription to Sports Illustrated, but Dana really does love the Blind Tiger, plus we are going to be serving Victory beer at the wedding... so we were taste-testing! Ben and I got there early to hold the prime real estate on the side of the bar facing the door. The usuals trickled in throughout the evening, and much excellent beer was enjoyed. Victory might be my favorite brewery... at least in the US. They had 17 beers available, and nearly all were fantastic. A couple were mediocre, but none were undrinkable. And, of course, a few were astounding. As their brewery has grown in size, they have not stopped experimenting, almost always with success, and their well-known beers have not suffered in quality. Sure, they don't have the same percentage of out-there beers as Dogfish Head, and they don't have the distribution of Brooklyn, but for now I think their maintaining the balance perfectly. Guess what... I brought my camera.

Dana's Special Day! 2 - A Hike in New Jersey and Dinner
Hiking in Jersey? Yep. About 15 minutes from where we are living is the South Mountain Reservation, which has 19 miles of hiking trails. These are real trails, not paved, and there are plenty of birds, chipmunks and deer to see. For a little while during the hike I was worried we get lost, like the Pine Barren episode of The Sopranos. I kept hearing Tony saying, "You got lost in the woods in Jersey?" Christopher corrects him, "South Jersey." Well, we were in North Jersey, so a trail of broken beer bottles next to a waterfall led us back to civilization. Dana's Special Day!

To satisfy the hunger we worked up, we had dinner at Antonella's with Susette, Marvin, Tom & Alexis. The Venetian food hit the spot. I know it was Venetian because of the blinds. I'm sorry, I had to.

Dana's Special Day! 3 - Gutterball!
After a makeover at Bloomingdale's with Beth, the two met Ben and me at Mug's for dinner. The destination for the night was the newly-opened Gutter in Williamsburg. Or is it Greenpoint? No one seems to know for sure. The place, opened by the same guys who brought you Barcade, is a retro bowling alley with craft beers on tap. (They do have some cutting-edge computers for managing the lanes, though. I think it was a Commodore 128. That's one hundred and twenty-eight kilobytes of pure power. I'm still using the 64.) Sadly, the hipster line was too long and we never made it bowling. I would like to get back there on a Saturday afternoon someday. The mooches that we are, we stayed at Ben & Beth's for the third weekend in a row. And so the Brooklyn apartment hunting began this week. For more on Gutter, you can find some great photos and misleading information here. Our photos here.

Dana's Special Day! 4 - French Food at Sophie's
Finally, Jim & Gail took us to enjoy the most authentic French food we've had since we left France. Mussels, goat cheese, beets and various fish and meat products left us very satisfied and very full. It was a fun week, but Dana and I need to take a break from birthdays for a little while now.