I mentioned recently to Shannon that I missed how we used to occasionally go out to brunch together on a weekend (usually at Saul's, when we lived in north Berkeley) and do a crossword puzzle, so today Shannon suggested we do that as a last birthday week outing. So he grabbed my old book of New York Times crossword puzzles and we headed out to The Restaurant Formerly Known as Mel's.

Unfortunately, the crossword puzzles in that book are very difficult. We could only come up with a few answers; the rest elicited shrugs and "I have no idea"s. ("Followers of J. Ammann"? "Tacloban's locale"? "S. African fox"?) It was frustrating. I've never liked that book and prefer to do the crossword puzzle from the pink section of the weekend paper, but Shannon thought there was no reason to buy a paper when we already had the book. Next time I'll buy a paper.