Living there, you'l be free, if you truly wish to be

The next day came, as it would. We had a lunch date. chefmongoose wasn't able to get to any amusement parks with us, but he was able to find some time to meet us for lunch. And he was able to bring his imminently-new roommate along. They met us at an eagerly, almost painfully, hipster restaurant. We sat at a table carved of an irregular lump of wood, one that curled up to a dramatic and impractical-for-table peak on one end. It's a well-regarded restaurant, at least, and the food was pretty good.

We spent lunch talking about the New England Parks Tour, and the unhappy incident that closed the amusement parks out of it. Our schedule was to drive to Trenton and set up in the hotel that I'd be staying at for work the next day. chefmongoose and partner sympathized, as we so needed. And shared with us gossip about various furry conventions and the astounding stories of ones that collapsed, or teetered on the brink of collapse. This did much to cheer us up, at least for the length of lunch.

chefmongoose also had --- again! --- a gift for us, a box of doughnuts from Stew Leonard's. This is a small supermarket chain I always heard ads for on the radio, but never thought much about because why would I go to Yonkers for a supermarket? He explained that, if he understood it right, Stew Leonard's is rather akin to Jungle Jim's, the bizarre and sprawling Cincinnati-area supermarket that's also stuffed with animatronics and quirky activities and general weirdness. I hadn't realized. But does show more pictures of people in cow costumes than you get in your average furry convention. We'd been missing something grand.

Trivia: When originally settled by westerners, Rye, New York, was named Hastings and was thought to be in Connecticut. In 1655 the Connecticut legislature declared the town to be two villages, Rye and Hastings. Source: The Old Post Road: The Story of the Boston Post Road, Stewart H Holbrook.

Currently Reading: Media Hoaxes, Fred Fedler.

PS: Reading the Comics, October 17, 2015: Rerun Edition, some mathematical comics talk that maybe I already did? I forget. I'm feeling ill; give me a rest.