We’re planning a trip to New York next month and haven’t figured out what we want to see there yet. Or maybe I should say we haven’t figured out what we’ll be able to see – we want to go to museums, plays, musicals, TV tapings, restaurants, parks, and more.

In the past, we’ve usually chosen from the shows available at TKTS or taken advantage of discounted tickets available through the hotel. This time, we wanted to plan ahead for at least one or two performances. The first thing we did was get on the wait list for tickets for The Late Show with Stephen Colbert, but that’s not a guarantee of seeing a taping.

We watched last night’s show this afternoon and saw Stephen’s conversation with Sutton Foster who plays Marian in The Music Man and decided we’d like to see the show. I did a web search for tickets and followed the first link, which was Broadway.com. There were only a few seats available on the days we could go – and my, were they pricey! I’d entered my credit card and was ready to press the “buy” button but had to acknowledge that I’d read the Terms and Conditions – and I actually read them. And discovered that Broadway.com is a reseller, not the actual box office.

I had 8 minutes left to complete my purchase, so I went back to the web and found the official site for the show – MusicManOnBroadway.com. They had tickets for the same show in the same row at the same price as Broadway.com, but their service fee was $70 less for each ticket. I can’t say we’re getting a bargain – this is one of the top tickets on Broadway – but it feels better this way.

And we found the mirin I was looking for at Whole Foods. It’s even kosher!

We ran out of mirin the other day. I’m pretty sure I bought it at Lunardi’s early in the pandemic, but when I went there to replace it, I didn’t find anything that looked like the bottle I’d been using. The only thing I found was Kikkoman Aji-Mirin but a quick web search suggested I avoid it because it’s loaded with sugar.

Today, I went to a large Japanese supermarket near my allergist. They had several brands of Aji-Mirin (literally “tastes like mirin”), and some “Honteri” (non-alcoholic sweet mirin-like seasoning), but I couldn’t find any “hon mirin” (real mirin). There were a lot of empty spots on the shelf, though, so it might be a supply chain issue.

Of course, I had recycled the old bottle before taking a picture of the label, so I’m not 100% sure I was using real mirin anyway – but I’m going to keep looking.