The Week We Ate (The EID Week in Review)

Eastern Market is now open on Tuesdays for the remainder of the summer. I have no snarky comment because Eastern Market is rad (and also they've got some different vendors that aren't there on Saturdays, and also there are way way wah-wah-way fewer people there which makes Tuesdays the new Saturdays or something). [WXYZ]

Griffin Claw in B-ham breaks ground. This could be the one, guys. [Birmingham Patch]

A lot of pigs died for this event. And so did a lot of whiskey trees. [Ferndale Patch]

SHAMELESS SELF-PROMOTION: Please buy tickets to this season's Detroit Passport to the Arts, for which I am on the advisory board, and also mark your calendars for the DIY Street Fair Sept. 14-16, for which I am a sponsor. KTHX. [EID FB]

Stiiiiiiiiiiill waiting on some staffer at one of the many, many local (and hyper-local) media outlets to explain why Onion Roll Deli closed. Because I'm not doing it. I'm not. [EID FB]

Famous Person Jamie Oliver descended upon the Rattlesnake with the cast and crew from his new show The Amazing Top Iron Chef Race (or whatever) for BBC America. [Eater / Rattlesnake FB]

BREAKING NEWS: half of the world's population likes beer just like the other half. Stellar reporting, IndyStar. [IndyStar]

Yes, you will be able to get the Rogue Voodoo Doughnut Bacon Maple Ale soon. No, I'm not sure you actually want to. [8 Degrees Plato Beer Co. FB]

The Free Press reports that Coach Insignia will be "making food the focus." You know, Coach Insignia ... the restaurant. This is almost as awesome as "delicious plant-based meals." Guys, let me know if you need some help writing titles over there. [Freep]

And the Branch Floridians cried into their pour-overs before riding their fixies home to water their carrots. [Salon]

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[EID Feature] Drinking Beer and Telling Tales: IFAD

All photos by Nicole Rupersburg.

I am a teller of stories. It’s the part of this job I enjoy the most, the part that is the most interesting. If you want to know what kind of food a place serves or what it looks like on the inside, there are plenty of other media outlets that will provide that information for you in spades.

If you’d like to know what kind of food and drink is served at the new Great Lakes Coffee Roasting Company bar and café in Midtown, read here.

If you would like to know more about what it looks like on the inside, read here.

Now allow me to tell you a story.

The Great Lakes Coffee Roasting Co. bar (TGLCRC? …alas, a bit cumbersome) – an artisan coffeehouse and craft beer/wine/cocktail bar somewhat cheekily referred to as “The Institute for Advanced Drinking,” or IFAD for short (much better!) – was not a place I had intended on featuring. In my endless quest for ego gratification and the desire to be FIRST, I simply did not feel compelled to add my voice to the chorus that already have and will very soon be singing the praises of this place. If I’m going to write about something EVERYONE else is covering, I’m going to do so way before anyone else does (here, and also here).

And then I visited during the week of their soft open. And I chatted with partner, roastmaster and public personage James Cadariu. And now here I am, despite my aversion to redundancy, writing on the very place I had previously resigned to let every other blogger and writer in town trip over. TGLCRC, IFAD, the Institute … call it what you will, but this place is on another level. This isn’t just another bar with trendy city cred and equal parts hipster and booster appeal. (It is both of those things, but also more.) It is a place to communicate and commiserate, to caffeinate and congregate, to imbibe and indulge. To work. And also play.

James Cadariu is also a storyteller. I had a chance to sit with him at length and get what is ultimately just a glimpse into his mind, but found it a fascinating place to wander around. So here is a little piece of his story; the rest I suggest you discover for yourself by bellying up to the bar and engaging him in conversation. (He’s the guy with the beard, and you’ll know what I mean by that when you see him.)

James started roasting coffee while working as an attorney in wine law (a background which has certainly helped inform the IFAD endeavor). At the time Great Lakes was owned by Greg Miracle and was still importing coffee in addition to roasting it; now they roast and sell only their own and for several years have functioned primarily as a roaster/wholesaler.

Great Lakes started as a retail space in Eastern Market’s Shed 2, when the Eastern Market Corporation began courting independent food businesses and start-ups (and not just farmers). “We came into it backwards,” James says of opening a café after securing a position as what has become easily the largest wholesaler of locally-roasted fair trade organic coffee in metro Detroit.

James, much like the other artisan coffee roasters in metro Detroit who are collectively contributing to the Seattleification of the area, is seeking to undo the damage that was done during the decades of coffee’s commodification, when it was a mass-produced household commodity freeze-dried and shipped in plastic tubs, a product of agricultural industrialization. He wants people to treat it more like wine, to discover its nuances and complexities. The booth in Eastern Market was the first time the Great Lakes staff engaged the customer directly; as they began to foster those direct customer relationships, the idea for a Great Lakes café took root.

He could have opened ‘the Institute’ in Ferndale or Royal Oak, but he wasn’t interested in that. Instead, he connected with “Mayor of Midtown” Sue Mosey, long-time President of the University Cultural Center Association, and had what he jokes is the “traditional experience of driving around in Sue’s Subaru looking at spaces when you’re trying to open a business in Midtown.” It ended up being a serendipitous relationship; Great Lakes is housed in the same building as the Midtown Co-Lab, part of the Woodward Corridor Initiative that will be a long-term evolving project rehabilitating vacant spaces all along the Woodward Corridor. James’s plan is to evolve with them. “The idea of activating a blighted block all at the same time interested me more than just the realm of coffee,” he states. “[These are] the relationships that add value to the drinks. Part of it was planned; part of it has taken on a life of its own.”

He hopes to repeat the same formula with Mosey in the future, opening coffee houses that are community spaces that help shape and build the community around them. “I don’t want to franchise the fuck out of it,” James says firmly. “This is sort of my baby, my vision. We can take this from one blighted area to another. If you have an anchor tenant like this, that brings people in.” He speaks of the traditional coffee house as being a place where people talked, where ideas were exchanged, where relationships were formed. With the Institute he wants to foster a community space where people can come to work (they’ve got WiFi) and meet and talk … and also drink. “I know from planning this business I made more relationships at the corner of Slows’ bar that I would have anywhere else.”

James is most interested in building relationships – with customers, with the community, with the farmers and distributors and winemakers. “As we go through this we have these relationships with the coffee farmers we’re trying to promote … [we’re more interested] in the quality of the product and the relationships [with the people who make it].” He says that they are intentionally being very selective in their approach. “We want to know as many of the people who grow the grapes [and] who make the beer [as we can]. Those relationships have value.”

And those relationships are often born out of the stories behind the places and producers, like wine made from grapes grown on the side of a volcano with no commercial yeast or sulfur dioxide added in. He wants grapes that are sustainably grown, wine that is in its natural state straight from the vine, “not fucked with,” and to be able to manage that whole chain of knowing the grower, the winemaker, the importer, all the way down to the customer. “My relationship with [my] customer is in having all those other things in line … I don’t want it to seem pretentious but we did select these things for a reason.” He says that part of that selectivity is inherent in his business ethos, but “part of it is also because that’s how I want to drink.”

In talking to James it is clear that this is a person who is utterly restless in the best possible way. Words pour out of him with such fluidity that the best you can do is cast a mental net and hope to catch as much as you can. “I would keep getting degrees and never got a job I enjoyed. I had such an odd life…” This is a guy who went to Scotland just to try Scotch because he wanted to learn more about it. “My mom always said it would all come together and it finally feels like it is.”

He is very much the storyteller himself, telling tales peppered with sly one-liners you might miss over the sound of your own blinking – stories of his parents, stories of the city, stories of himself. “Story-telling to me is part of the fabric of any society,” he says. He speaks of old men sitting around a table reminiscing over the way things used to be, and how he loves the idea of the old Irish poet. “Food to me [also] ties into this a lot. Food has this element of bringing people together.” He jokes, “The key to peace in the Middle East is falafel!”

Ultimately James wants the Institute to be a place that helps build community. And not just the community of entrepreneurs and creative types who will inevitably be drawn to the space, but the drinking community as well. And not the SHOTS SHOTS SHOTS SHOTS SHOTS SHOTS drinking community; James seeks to be more civilized. He wants to share these tremendous (and tremendously limited) wines he has sourced, and the quirky coffee-based cocktails they’ve created, and the crazy wild yeast-fermented beers they’ve acquired. “My goal is to expose as many people to these things as possible. I’m not worrying about ‘competition’ but about everybody having good wines so I have somewhere to go … [this is] the agenda of the drinking crowd, not to be pretentious or douchey but just to get better product out there.”

Recently there has been a bit of a surge in craft bars and artisan coffee roasters opening in and around Detroit (Astro Coffee, Sugar House and Anthology, just to name a few), and James welcomes it. “I think that helps the overall culture of this area … we need to collaborate because there’s so much crap out there, and [we need to] be exposing people to [better products] so they’re looking for that.”

James has many ideas for future plans and other things he can do with this concept, and as someone who doesn’t ever seem to rest easy we can be assured it will only be a small matter of time before his next big project. He jokes that no matter what he does, “I would love to have booze anywhere I go. It’s just normal. Why isn’t that true in all parts of life?”

Indeed.

Want to see more? View the Flickr set here.

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Don't call me a food critic

There is an aphorism: if you can't take the heat, stay out of the kitchen. Would that every restaurant owner paid heed to this advice.

I am not a food critic. Anyone who calls me a food critic is terribly mistaken as to what the term "food critic" actually means. I write for multiple publications about the food and restaurant industry; yes. I also have this blog for funsies, in which I get to indulge my love of story-telling and rabble-rousing. I do not, however, critique food. Which is probably for the best as I feel that that's probably the least interesting part of what I do and I usually find myself acutely bored when having to give detailed descriptions of dishes, but that is neither here nor there. I am a food writer; not a food critic. It is a distinction that needs to be made. Here's why.

I'll let you in on a little secret: I don't actually love everything. I know. It's, like, you'd think with how much I try to support all these many, many different businesses through my various media (traditional, social and web) channels that I must think that every last one of them is the cat's ass. They're not. Most aren't. Hell, here in metro Detroit the bar is set so excruciatingly low that places that rank among THE BEST is a purely relative positioning: the best of what we have is far more accurate. That being said, readers probably wouldn't be keen to read every post here and on Facebook bookended with, "It's really only just okay, but it's the best we got so whad'rya gonna do?"

But readers aren't the only ones who wouldn't appreciate that. No no no no no Jesus on a mother-ing pterodactyl no. I can't tell you if this is a phenomenon entirely unique to Detroit (we do like to think everything is unique to us; it's not, but in this case where every association is a matter of the two degrees of Detroit there could be some of that small town self-policing mentality at play), or if the pandering to advertisers and business owners' egos is more pandemic, but I can tell you this: you can't say anything remotely critical without being A BIG MEAN MEANIE WHO DOESN'T SUPPORT SMALL BUSINESSES.

It's true. The three times a year that I'm not blowing rainbow-colored, candy-scented smoke about some local restaurant I have to deal with a business owner with a butt-hurt getting all pissy-pants on Facebook.* Owning a business is hard. I get it. But this pitiful expectation that all people absolutely must be blindly, unquestioningly supportive of your business in perpetuity solely by virtue of the fact that you exist isn't just ridiculous; it's insulting. Then there's always the old go-to: "We do some much for the community!!!" Oh, well, in that case, your product and service can suck (or your business ethics be downright criminal) so long as you donate food to fundraisers. And the violins played on.

Yes, I see the logic there. Look, I do a lot for the community too: I put asses in the seats of your businesses and get people to spend money at your establishments which ultimately enables you to stay open for all of your community-supporting martyrdom. And I do all of this for free. YOU'RE WELCOME. But let's not argue the color of red herrings.

In addition to business owners with butt-hurts, there is also the almighty ad dollar to contend with. I'm going to let you in on another little secret: everyone caters to their advertisers. Everyone. Without exception. EVERYONE. Some publications just happen to be more forthright about it, and that might just be the only real honesty left. The death knell of undiluted critique in the media** rang a long, long time ago; we just forgot to have a funeral. There may have once been a time when the sanctity of critique was valued over the necessity of ad revenue, when advertisers were easily replaced but reputations weren't (and actually mattered), when the editorial department actually dictated content. Those days are dunzo.

In a compulsively litigious society in which all egos are precious and value is measured in ad dollars, there simply is no room left for criticism. Traditional media outlets (I'm specifically referring to print pubs here) have been downsizing en masse over the last decade. Circulation is down, advertising is down, therefore employment is down. As the old guard struggles to adapt to new media (IT'S CALLED THE INTERNET), there really isn't an effective money-making model currently in play. Print pubs hemorrhage money and the best thing we've come up with for online revenue generation is click-through advertising, which is kind of like trying to move a car by pushing it WITH YOUR MIND even though the keys are in the ignition and the engine is running. In their panic, publishers cater to the advertisers they can keep. And so much of journalism has become mere PR.

At the end of the day, I'd rather dazzle with prose than with my knowledge of quinoa; the New York Times, that one-time monolith of journalistic integrity, would rather wax poetic on pesto. Maybe the death of critique doesn't really matter; maybe it's fallacious to believe it ever really existed in any kind of pure form in the first place. (After all, the only reason newspapers and broadcast media exist is for advertising, and that isn't so much a sweeping statement as it is the subject of countless volumes of critical media theory.) But whatever you do, do not make the mistake of confusing food PR with food criticism. Print might not (yet) be dead, but the role of the critic is.

*Some will assume this comment is referencing a specific business in light of recent events and is therefore a personal attack. It is not. While this post is inspired by a recent encounter, it has more to do with a culmination of experiences and observations over time, and something I've been wanting to say for a long, long while. If anything, said recent encounter was of the most pleasant sort possible given the circumstances.

**For the purposes of this post I am specifically speaking of traditional restaurant criticism when speaking of "media" and "journalism," though one could certainly make a case for this "journalism as PR" motif being much more rampant and wide-spread across the whole of journalism, though sometimes the word "advertisers" would need to be replaced with "political parties," "special interest groups" and "lobbyists." But that's a different rant entirely.

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[Beerie] Summer Sessions

Session beers: they don't suck.

A couple of weeks ago when it was so hot one's face was in danger of melting off, I came home from a 90-minute walk and slammed a Brewery Vivant Zaison. Some slam water. Whatever; not the point. This was immediately followed by an unintended three-hour nap. Why? Zaison is a "super saison," clocking in at a whopping 9% ABV for a style that is typically by definition low in alcohol. (Imagine my chagrin when, after my epic chugging feat, I happened to observe the empty can more closely and realized what I had just done to myself, finally becoming resigned to the fact that my afternoon was effectively murdered.)

Elsewhere, someone was wrong on the Internet. They commented that Founders' Devil Dancer is a "perfect summer beer." It is not. It is a 12% ABV, 112-IBU cock-punch of 10 different varieties of dried hops, a "triple" IPA bastard child of American craft brewing showoffery. This is not a light-drinking, refreshing summer beer. This is the very antithesis of that. This is not something you drink; this is something you inflict upon yourself.

In the grand old American tradition of making everything bigger better faster stronger, the American craft beer industry has fallen into the trap of more: MORE hops. MORE alcohol. MORE MORE MORE. People ask, "How many IBUs?" the way a 14-year-old girl might demand Justin Beiber's whereabouts from an unsuspecting hotel concierge (nevermind that once you top 100 IBUs you've pretty much cashed out your taste threshold) and barbarically beat their chests (metaphorically ... most of the time) over their self-proclaimed designation as "hop-head."

Consistently ranked in the top of all the "best beer" lists produced by American publications are the palate-killing hop-bombs, sadistically high-alcohol imperial stouts and bourbon barrel-aged monstrosities. Like this one here, which is sort of a greatest hits of the country's most over-the-top cult beers, and keep in mind this is supposed to be an inventory of the best beers in the world: Pliny the Younger, Dark Lord, Hopslam, KBS, Rare Bourbon County, all there. In fact, more than half the list is imperial stouts and there is only one beer with a relatively "low" ABV in the whole lot.

You guys. Not every beer you drink has to be an abomination of showmanship. Sure, these are great examples of their respective styles (when the respective styles in question is "MORE"), but to stack the deck in favor of these palate-killing, nasal-clearing mouth-bombs is doing a serious disservice to the subtle session beer. Lower ABV does not mean less taste. If the whole idea behind social drinking is to share a few pints with friends over a pleasant evening of conversation -- or to cool off in the middle of an unholy heat wave -- these are not the beers you seek.

You want the German weissbiers,  the English bitters, the Belgian farmhouse ales, the kolsch beers ... basically a pale ale by any other name ... and also pilsners and other lagers of the "yellow fizzy" variety (because we Americans do so love our extremes). Even Guinness, which is unequivocally good for you, is a fine session ale, and as the Craft Beer Curmudgeon points out is not heavy just because it's dark. You want something that you can keep drinking steadily over a full drinking session without getting wasted; hence the term session beer.

A session beer is light in body but not in flavor. It is thirst-quenching and refreshing. It is not a hoppy cock-punch with a double-digit ABV. This guy gets it, but probably because he's British and those folks exercise extraordinary politesse even in their drinking.

The bigger, bolder beers are fun for beer geekdom but these are not your everyday beers, and especially not in the sweltering heat of summer. Take heed when talking about THE BEST BEERS that MORE does not equal better, and that there are countless many truly exceptional beers in the world that have an ABV under 5% and fewer than 40 IBUs. All hail session ales!

Next up on Beerie: Good Morning Saison

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[HOT LIST] Plymouth

Photo from the Sardine Room on Facebook.

Plymouth: that mysterious Middle Earth that lies somewhere between Ann Arbor and the rest of greater metro Detroit. For many Plymouth is merely a drive-by city, a place you pass on the way to Ann Arbor and only take note of because of the prominent water tower in plain sight of the freeway. But Plymouth is a fantastic city with a vibrant, bustling downtown filled with independently-owned shops and restaurants, flanked by historic Colonial and Cape Cod-style homes on hilly tree-lined streets. It's quiet and quaint, charming and absolutely adorbs. (There is a reason CNN Money Magazine named it one of the best small towns to live in 2009.)

In addition to being so cute you want to pinch it, the community is also committed to maintaining a rich cultural identity. Home to a variety of events including the Plymouth Ice Festival, the oldest and largest free ice carving festival in North America attracting 400,000 visitors annually, and Art in the Park, Michigan's second-largest art fair held every year in downtown Plymouth's fab Kellogg Park (which just so happens to be this weekend), Plymouth remains something of a best kept secret for the 10,000 or so people who call it home.

Photo from the Sardine Room.

#1 The Sardine Room
The name may be a bit misleading as there really aren't an abundance of sardines in the Sardine Room; just roll with it. (To their credit, they do have a Portuguese sardine snack plate.) The Sardine Room is Plymouth's newest restaurant (from the same people behind Plymouth's Fiamma and Compari's) and is already a huge hit with the locals. It's a raw bar and tapas restaurant  that focuses on shellfish with a smattering of high-end odds-and-ends items (like American Wagyu beef, Loch Duart Scottish salmon and rilettes). Mussels, clams, scallops, shrimp, crab and LOTS of oysters dominate the menu, with a lot of love left over for that most magical of animals, the pig. (Porchetta sliders; pulled pork POUTINE.) They have a nice selection of Michigan and American craft beers plus some fun and funky imports (Cuvee des Jacobins all day every day please), and their Sunday brunch is like a little taste of New Orleans. But the best part of all is their buck-a-shuck happy hour, Monday through Friday 4 to 6 p.m. in the bar. $1 oysters, $2 PBR, $3 shooters, $4 cocktails, and $5 cheese plate.

#2 Zin Wine Bar
With new ownership and an ambitious young chef, Zin Wine Bar is poised to become one of metro Detroit's top dining destinations. Hyper-local, somewhat experimental (pushing the envelope of molecular gastronomy about as much as meat-and-potatoes metro Detroiters can handle, anyway), hyper-seasonal, and ridiculously affordable for what you get, Zin is a win -- right down to the wine and beer list crafted with consultation by beverage whiz kid Joseph Allerton of Roast fame.

#3 Cellar 849
As Michigan's first certified Neapolitan pizza recognized by the Associazione Verace Pizza Napoletana (VPN) -- the "pizza polizia" -- of Naples, Italy, Cellar 849 adheres to the strict regulations that respect the tradition of true Neapolitan pizza, including a custom wood-burning oven, hand-rolled dough, and fresh, all-natural ingredients. They use some of the highest-quality imported ingredients available, including Fior di Latte mozzarella, Denominazione di Origine Protteta (DOP -- the produce polizia) San Marzano tomatoes, Italian extra virgin olive oil, prosciutto di Parma and Caputo flour. Their Italian-built wood-burning oven is the same as those used at the flashier Pizzeria Biga joints, and the remainder of the menu is just as delightfully Italian, including the (somewhat predictable) wine and beer lists.

#4 5ive Restaurant
5ive, located inside the AAA four-diamond-winning Inn at St. John's overlooking a sprawling 27-hole golf course, offers the full dining experience -- breakfast, lunch and dinner (as restaurants inside hotels usually do), but also custom chef's table menus with wine pairings prepared personally by Executive Chef Jason Stoops. They've also got a beautiful outdoor terrace with fire pits and views of their impeccably landscaped gardens, and plenty of plush lounge seating inside.

Photo from EID.

#5 Plymouth Coffee Bean
Astro it ain't, but what it lacks in post-third-wave coffeehouse appeal it more than makes up for in the adorability factor. Claiming to be Michigan's longest-running independent coffee shop (open since 1993), Plymouth Coffee Bean is housed inside an historic old home. There are multiple different rooms and two spacious tree-shaded patios for lounging and/or lively discussion, with WiFi aplenty. They have a variety of homemade snacks, sandwiches and crepes made to order. In that early-'90s tradition of the coffeehouse-as-iconoclast hub, works from local artists adorn the walls and they regularly host live music, open mic nights, poetry readings and ... *cough* ... "Tweet-ups" (our early '90s forefathers are rolling over in their flannel shirts and Doc Martens). The coffee ... well, you can't win 'em all. They're still stuck in that Starbucksian sense of drowning the taste of stale beans in scalded milk and sugary syrups, but the place has enough character where that can be overlooked in favor of its other fine attributes (an Italian soda or tea works just fine, but if you absolutely must, stop first for coffee at Espresso Elevado nearby which roasts their own).

Bubbling under Liberty Street Brewing Company, Compari's on the Park, Espresso Elevado, The Box Bar, Main Street Pizza, Fiamma Grille, Crawford's Kitchen, Sweet Afton Tea Room, Sean O'Callaghan's

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The Week We Ate (The EID Week in Review)

I would like to thank the news for respectfully observing the holiday and being entirely un-news. It was the hottest, wettest, sweatiest week of the year so far and many had to suffer through it without power; the only consolation was that it was a holiday week and most of us spent it in various states of drunkenness anyway. Which is really the only appropriate way to deal with such foul heat.

Seriously though, it was hot. Really hot. [Deadline Detroit / The Oracles of Facebook]

Brew Jus's space inside the Rust Belt Market has officially been approved, which means you can escape the unholy heat this weekend and suck down some saucy sliders in the comfort of indoor air conditioning. Provided Ferndale doesn't black out again. [Brew Jus FB / Ferndale Patch]

For the record, in an unofficial Facebook poll "brewery" won and I was the first to suggest it. Also all the bloggers pretty much phoned it in this week. [Curbed Detroit]

Part-time Michigander Famous Person Mario Batali makes bologna. [MLive]

Eastern Market opens on Tuesdays once again starting next week. For real though guys, it's, like, fucking ridiculous outside. [Eastern Market Corporation]

Goose Island doesn't suck. (Well, not all of its labels anyway.) And one of those that do not suck is the Bourbon County Brand Stout. Of which there will be more than twice as much available this year. In this regard I am thankful for Anheuser-Busch's acquisition of the brand. Much as I am thankful for air conditioning. [Beer Pulse]

July is officially Michigan Craft Beer Month. [Michigan Brewers Guild]

Aw hell, why not: let's hear it for corporations!!! Buffalo Wild Wings is selling official Michigan Brewers Guild commemorative glasses for Michigan Craft Beer Month all this month for only $4.  [BW3]

Bell's gets into the wine biz. Sorry guys, I told you it was gonna be a slow news week. [Beer Pulse]

GLCRCB, IFAD, "the Institute" ... call it whatever you want (just don't call it Shirley ... GET IT???), it's now open day and night for all your advanced (even intermediate) drinking needs. This place makes me hate Midtown way less. [Curbed Detroit]

In which the acronym MFPIC@D is coined. The name really is that awful. [Deadline Detroit]

The Wall Street Journal takes an interest in the Hantz Farm debacle. Apparently it was a slow news week for everyone. [WSJ]

And here's more about Corridor Sausage's new home. With photos! [Curbed Detroit]

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Go drink beer and blow things up

Because I am an awesome boss, I am giving myself this week off in observance of drinking beer and watching things explode. I'll still be keeping up with Facebook and will have the EID Week in Review at the end of the week so you can catch up with all the important things you missed while you were out barbecuing and jet-skiing and doing other fun not-worky summery things. Because, bottom line, if you're not in your office wasting time on the Internet, there's really no reason for me to be.

XOXO,
NR

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