Remember that time it rained so hard in Cleveland that the rain actually cleaned my porch chairs?
It was two weeks ago. It still amazes me how much dirt and fine was cleaned from my chairs that didn’t look that dirty to begin with.
Tag: Cleveland
Something relative to Cleveland.
Piebald
Waking up to a notice telling me Piebald is playing in Cleveland this July is just an excellent way to start the day.
International Women’s Air and Space Museum
Sam and I went a dinner at the International Women’s Air and Space Museum on Friday night. This is the second time we have gone to a dinner and speaker there. Just like the last dinner where the speaker talked about the IX Center and it’s history as a tank and bomber plane plant in WWII, this one was had and entertaining and enthusiastic speaker, good food, and interesting people.
Friday the speaker was there talking about Jerrie Mock. A little known aviator who was the first women to fly solo around the world. Yep, not Ameila Earhart. She famously went missing on her attempt in 1937. Jerrie completed her attempt in 1964.
The speaker was Wendy Hollinger. She knew Jerrie, and worked in the last several years to re-release Jerrie’s book Three-Eight Charlie that chronicled that trip around the world. She eventually got it re-released in time for the 50th anniversary of the flight last year.
It was kind of inspiring to hear how this suburban housewife from Ohio went from having never flown to setting records in just a few years. She flew in an 11 year-old Cessna 180 and made the trip in 29 days. The whole time she was out there was another woman (a professional pilot) who took off just days before her in an attempt to set the record as well, but was unable to complete it before Jerrie landed. Newspapers at the time printed headlines declaring it a race (even though the women themselves didn’t see it as a race).
Best part of the evening. I won the raffle for Shuttle Sam. A slinky pet so rare that I couldn’t even find a picture of it on the web. (That’s not true, I eventually found someone selling one on eBay.)
The woman hosting the event said she never saw someone so excited to win it. It is true, I was pretty excited.
We sat at a table with a very, well, outgoing woman and her husband. But that’s what made this great. Good conversation before and during dinner before the speaker started. When she found out we lived on the West Side she had all these questions about living here (she lives on the other side of town and was thinking about moving) and even knew a few restaurants that Sam and I had never heard of. She even told of the Cleveland Flea, which is definitely something Sam and I are going to make it to one of these days.
The International Women’s Air and Space Museum isn’t big. It’s located in the old Burke Lakefront Airport terminal. You can tell that they aren’t a well funded huge museum. But I’ve got to admit that I really like that I live in a city where it is located. Dinner and speaker events like this are fun outings, and they do a great job putting on the event.
Cavs Game
To be perfectly honest, I’m not good at basketball, I don’t ever care about being good at basketball, have never been interested in following basketball, or cared about the sport.
But when I had free tickets to a Cavs game given to me it was a good opportunity to get out with a friend and watch a game. So I went to my first NBA game last night.
A few conclusions I’ve come to:
A) Basketball is much more interesting when you see the game live
B) Its always fun not knowing any players names. I gave them nicknames and just referred to them by the nickname all. #8 – your name is Spaz. You are the Tazmanian Devil from old WB cartoons on this team. Keep it up, you’ve earned AJ’s favorite Cavs player status. It is a new title, but deserving.
C) Watching Cleveland sports teams is a lot like watching Buffalo sports teams. The teams always know how to suck you in and get your hopes before crushing your soul with a loss.
D) If I get another chance… If anyone wants to come out and go to a game…. I would definitely go to more games. The arena is less than 10 minutes from my apartment, parking is cheap(-ish…. less than $20 for right next to the arena) and its always fun to root for a home team.
A week in review
Its been one of those weeks. You know, the never ending weeks of crap. Never mind that I only worked three days this week. Never mind that one of those days was my birthday. It was a week of just never ending things going about as bad as they can.
Lets start at the beginning. Monday was President’s Day. Probably the best day this week. I played video games. I had a friend (Dani) come over. Haven’t seen in her well over a month. She’s one of those friends that lives just far enough away that seeing her takes more thought than it should. 20 – 30 minute drive to work. I’ll make that twice a day 5 days a week. 30 minute drive to see Dani. I need to plan that.
But it was nice seeing her. She was down and needed to talk. I was able to be there for that. Plus we ate cheese bread, played Lego Marvel Super Heroes and watched a few episodes of Community. Plus Sam got home in time to see Dani (their schedules rarely sync up). It was good.
Tuesday was a Snow Day. Roads were a mess. School was cancelled at 5:25 am, which necessitated me getting out of bed and making a lot of phone calls. Being that I was up I made Sam lunch and coffee (since she still needed to go to work) and shoveled out her car and mine. I couldn’t get back to sleep but I wasn’t awake so I laid on the couch and watched Netflix. I was tired, but couldn’t fully fall asleep. Regardless, at 9 am Cleveland declared a parking ban, so I had to shovel out my car and move it to a side street.
I hate Cleveland parking bans. They institute them if there is ever more than 2 inches of snow. Coming from Buffalo and Upstate New York it just shames me to live here. They are shifty about parking bans to. You have to search for the news. It doesn’t usually show up on news websites, or even Cleveland.com, Cleveland’s website. I’ve been able to find it by going to CleCityHall.com, City Hall’s website, but that’s absurd that they can ticket you for something like a parking ban, when they publicize it less than I do when I close school. I’m pretty sure a parking ban affects more people than the 150 students in my building.
The other annoying thing about Cleveland Parking Bans is that while they are shifty declaring them, they are just as shifty letting people know when they are lifted. Every parking ban that has been declared this year has been declared with the statement “in effect until further notice.” Earlier this year a parking ban lasted over three days. I went to work and back three times before it was lifted. That is crap. And again… when they lift parking bans it isn’t publicized any more than when announced.
My first winter in Cleveland I got ticketed during a parking ban. I worked on the East side of Cleveland then. Someone at work informed me there was a parking ban, lasting until midnight. So after work I stayed out at a friend’s house until near midnight. By the time I reached my apartment it was 11:50 and the street was clear and plowed. I parked, figuring it would be ok for ten minutes. The next morning I had a ticket for violating a snow ban on my car. It was written for 11:59 pm. I looked at the cars lining the street and every car ahead and behind had been ticketed. Looking closer I saw they were all written for the same time, 11:59 pm. Fuck you Cleveland Police Department. Shit heads much.
Alright. So that’s my rant on Cleveland Parking Bans. Tuesday wasn’t the worst. The ban ended by mid-evening and I was able to park back near my apartment before the end of the day. But still. Damn Parking Bans.
After moving my car for the parking ban I still felt tired (not to mention having to shovel out the new parking spot I had moved my car to). So I returned to the couch. It was one of those days were I didn’t get enough sleep to be rested, but got just enough to be unable to get back to sleep. It was a haze. I made a nice pasta and sautéed veggies dinner with some garlic bread. Otherwise It was lost day.
Wednesday though. What a day. It was my birthday. It was also supposed to be the honoring of Kenny Loggins’ Day. Whenever the 16th falls on a weekend like it did this year, Kenny Loggins’ Day must be honored the next work day. Like an ‘observed holiday’. So thanks to the snow day it now fell on my birthday. However Kenny Loggins’ Day as not to be. I got up and left for work early since we hadn’t been in school in five days and I wanted to get things ready. I got to school by 6:45am and the days started…..
However because this is my blog and I don’t write about work on my blog I’m not going to tell you about the day I had. Suffice to say it felt both quick and yet unending. Because of the day I had at work, this birthday was unredeemable. It officially made my top 4 Worst Birthdays List, and was on that list by 11 am. That’s quite a feat. Some day I’ll write up my worst birthday list for the blog, but not today. The only good to come out of the work day was that I finally got the little gift I had bought for Sam and myself the week before off of Amazon. Some Kid Robot Futurama figures. I gave her Nibbler, and kept Zoidberg for my desk at work.
After work I spent some time walking around Giant Eagle trying to figure out what I wanted to make for my birthday dinner. I didn’t think of anything, walked around the store for almost an hour, and ended up leaving with vegetables, chicken, a loaf of asiago cheese bread and a hunk of parmesan cheese. It came together when I got home. I made up a can of tomato soup, cooked up the chicken I had and made a Chicken Caesar Salad. I shaved off some slices of parmesan for the tomato soup and salad served myself bread on the side. I was cooking for one since Sam had class, but it came out pretty nice I think.
Sam came home after nine. It was good to see her after an extensively long day. She bought me an Egg McMuffin Sandwich maker for my birthday. Laugh all you want, but its awesome. I had one several years ago, and it wasn’t nearly as nice as this one. I don’t eat breakfast often, and even when I do I don’t like spending too much time on it. I’d actually been staring at this machine for a while, and it makes great breakfast sandwiches.
A few family phone calls and that was pretty much my day. Ended a lot better than it started.
What day are we on? Oh yeah…. Thursday. Thursday was almost non-existent. That’s not true. It existed. Work was …… well I won’t talk about work. But it seemed longer than it should have been. Non-stop and unending.
I got home at a reasonable hour, but was exhausted. I came home and crawled right in bed. An hour or so later Sam made it home. My tiredness this week makes me think I may be fighting something. Multiple people at work have either colds, pneumonia, or strep. So if I’m just beat and tired, I’m probably fighting something like that. After Sam made it home we made tacos. TVP, lettuce, refried beans, tomatoes, cheese, taco sauce and some sun-dried tomato burrito shells. It was really good. We finished our night watching a few episodes of House of Cards on Netflix. Then bed.
Friday, yesterday, was a long work day. We had an event after school. I was there from 7 am – 8 pm. It was exhausting, and like other work days this week, what could go wrong…. No…. I don’t talk about work on here.
By the time I got home and finally laid on the couch, I was happy the work day, work week, was over and done with. Couldn’t have been a longer week if it tried. I managed to stay awake for about an hour and a half after getting home. Just long enough to fall asleep on the couch next to Sam.
Today (Saturday) is a gorgeous day here. Its over 40 degrees outside. Warm enough for a long walk to the park, where most of this was written. It also allowed me to take my camera out for a trip. I still need to get a book, or play around with settings some more. I think I want to buy a new lens for it. I love that Sam bought me it for Christmas (it’s a Panasonic Lumix DMC-G5KK). I have the kit lens it came with, I’m thinking of getting one with a better zoom, but should learn more about the camera first I think.
But I took it to Edgewater Park. I was thinking how 5 or so years ago, when I first moved to Cleveland, I walked there on my first day fully living here. How I took a shot of downtown with my camera from the hill at Edgewater. If you asked me then I probably wouldn’t have said I’d still be here 5 years later. But I’m glad I am. So I took another picture of downtown from the hill with this camera. It’s a fantastic view of downtown Cleveland, and I can walk to it from my apartment. That’s a big plus for me.
Tonight I’m heading to a Lake Erie Monsters Hockey game with Sam and some friends from work. It’ll be a nice capstone for what was a long, exhausting week. I’m looking forward to it.
Biking to work
Last year I biked to work several times.
Of course by this time last year the weather had changed to consistently warm and sunny, where as this year it’s been warm and sunny one day, and snowing the next. I’m not kidding. This has been a year of bizarre weather in Cleveland. Last Thursday we set a record for the high temperature. 83 degrees Fahrenheit. Saturday morning it was snowing when I drove into work. That’s messed up. Weekends in particular have been either wet, or really cold limiting the distance riding I could do.
So its been hard to get bike rides in consistently. I had done at least one 50 mile bike ride at this point last year. My longest ride has been 18 miles this year. And I’ve only been biking for three or so weeks. Which is probably about the same time frame as last year. But I’m not sure I’m in the same biking shape I was last year. Although I weigh less than last year and I have a new bike which is driving my enthusiasm. I just need the weather to catch up with my enthusiasm.
Monday I think is the day. Sunday night/Monday morning its not supposed to dip below 54 degrees Fahrenheit. Sunrise is 6:26am – so it’ll be light quickly after I leave. Only a 10% chance of rain and very slight wind. In the afternoon it’ll be low 60’s. Perfect biking day. So this morning when the 5:30am alarm went off and I couldn’t fall back asleep (I’m certain its vengeance from my brain for trying to sleep more yesterday… see my last post), I was thinking about what it would have to be for me to start biking to work temperature and weather wise, and when I would have to leave. It is a 24 mile ride to work. Not that far. It should really take me 90 minutes or so bike it, and that’s being pretty fair. That’s 16 miles an hour riding. Not a crazy pace by any means. but I would give myself a little less than two hours. Get up at 5:30am (packed the night before) and hit the road at 5:45am and I should be good. That gives me 1 hour and 45 minutes to leisurely bike to work. No problem.
Last year I jump started my biking with a 50 mile ride. To kind of prove to myself I could. I don’t need that this year. But I need to do something that guarantees a longer ride for me. I think biking to work is it. And I’m excited about it. I like that. Makes me smile.