Tag Archives: friends

Baseball Pants, Take Two

28 Aug

Tonight, we got to go to our second baseball game of the season.  This one was a Columbus Clippers game, our minor league team.  But first, we had Ben, Rachael and Megan over for dinner.  They brought delicious locally-made veggie burgers and amazing yellow-watermelon.  I made a hummus/veggie tray and two dishes that I was proud of (sorry if you already saw these pictures on facebook!).  First, was a quinoa, black bean and corn salad:

Mmm!

Then, I made Dan’s new favorite, curried carrot bisque (the swirl is a little bit of maple syrup):

Mmmmmm!

I forgot to take pictures during dinner, but it was quite a feast and we had a nice time sitting around and chatting.  After dinner, we put our walking shoes on and headed down to Huntington Park, the new baseball stadium that was just built last year, and one of the many reasons it’s so nice living downtown in walking distance to a bunch of cool things.  Here we are on our way:

Ben, Rachael, Megan and Dan take High Street

When we got to the stadium, we were sitting in the sun for a bit.  But when the sun went down, it was such a pretty night.  Check out the stadium at dusk:

Nice, right?

And, here we are, me and my honey:

A lucky girl

That little old lady next to me was pretty cute too.  It was a good night, even though we were getting killed (8-0) when we left in the 7th inning.  Now, we’re at home, watching UFC 118.  I don’t think I’ll make it to the main event… Night!

Wicked

16 Aug

This week’s challenge was to go to a play. Marcy and I went to see the Broadway musical, Wicked at the Ohio Theater. We got all dressed up, went out to a nice dinner at a sushi restaurant, and then headed downtown feeling a little bit fancy. See, we had splurged on fifth row seats and when we got to the old regal theater, with the gilded walls and ceiling and red velvet curtains and seats, it felt nice (and foreign) to walk right into the first level and then be escorted to the front by a kindly old gentleman in a tux that asked us one question before we took out seats, “First you have to tell me, how excited are you?” Neither of us have ever been good about masking our feelings. We must have been beaming.

We sat down and took the theater in. It was beautiful and I’ve never had to crane my neck backwards to see the entire theater before. We sat and listened to the fancy orchestra seat crowd talk about how they were getting rid of their horses, taking an aging parent to Ireland, and sending the kids off to college in California and Texas. It reminded me of a comment Marcy said earlier that day. “You know what’s funny about us getting fancy? We’re so not.” But, then again maybe we are. I mean, there we were, right?

The lights went down and we both looked at each other with our super-sized smiles. Two hours later, I felt like I’d barely been watching for twenty minutes. It was intermission time and we went to grab some snacks from the lobby. We debriefed that we loved the costumes, couldn’t find the mic on the main characters, saw themes of power, truth, history, depth of character, racism, animal rights, etc (This story had to have been written by a PhD, I swear. Yep, just looked it up). Marcy had read the book beforehand and was letting me in on just how different it was. I didn’t want the show to end, but the second act came and went as quickly as the first and before we knew it we were giving a standing ovation and fawning over how well the writer of the screenplay incorporated this story into the original story, The Wizard of Oz (One of my top two childhood favorites… the other, Annie). It was fun to see this author’s ideas about how the Tinman, Scarecrow and Cowardly Lion came to be, and how, of course, the Wicked Witch might not have been so wicked.

What’s so great about getting to spend an evening watching a really good play, or any other type of performing art, is that you get to feel fancy. What do I mean by “feeling fancy” though? I like to use that term, and what I think I mean is that I allow myself to appreciate and partake in some beauty in the world. Instead of my old practical, efficient self, I enjoy dressing up, eating good food, watching and critiquing art, things that most of us as we get caught up in the day-to-day do very infrequently. Feeling fancy is usually a little above my station. I need to remember to allow myself to feel fancy more often.

BFF

15 Aug

Yesterday was such a fun day with my best friend, Marcy, that I was totally exhausted today.  Here’s a recap.

Yum!

1) Got up early to run.

2) Was at the North Market by 10:00am to get a free Jeni’s sundae.  Lemon yo with stonefruit compote and whipped cream.  It was refreshing and fruity enough to be considered breakfast (right?).

Awesome

3) Saw a string band at the North Market.

4) Got a bite of free cake from the bakery at the North Market that was celebrating 7 years.

5) Ate Indian food at the North Market.

6) Got some farmer’s market fruits and veggies.

7) Came home and chatted.

8 ) Got more Jeni’s (we paid this time.  What?).

Double dip

9) Marcy took a mini-nap.

10) We got dressed up to go to dinner and Wicked!

11) Went out for sushi At Haiku and enjoyed every bite.  It was so delicious.

Sushi!

12) Saw a Broadway musical from the fifth row!  It was awesome!*

13) Conked out at home from a good day!

Wicked!

*Will write more about Wicked and my experience tomorrow.  I need to get to bed!  Night!

Eat, Pray, Love

13 Aug

Marcy got into town this afternoon and we shopped, ate Mexican food and went to see the movie Eat, Pray, Love.  It was a perfectly girly evening.  The movie made me feel lovely and want to travel, which was nice, but I kept getting distracted by the inconsistencies between the book and the movie and how I liked the characters in my head better than on the screen.  I think I shouldn’t have reread the book right before the movie.  Ah, well.  Julia Roberts was charming as usual.

Watching the movie right after reading the book reminded me of Walter Benjamin’s argument in The Work of Art in the Age of Mechanical Reproduction. At one point, he claims that photographs and video as media are subject to misuse more than other media because they appear so much more real than, say, a painting.  Because they look so real, they make a more convincing (though not more true) argument and so can be used for things like propaganda.  This “problem” is made worse by the ease of reproduction in modern times, which means that these convincing images are more likely to seen and further propagated.  So, as I watched the movie, and wished for the characters that I had invented in my head or the scenes as I had imagined it, I thought of Walter Benjamin.  The movie is a rather convincing representation of the book, even though much of it was very different from the book.  I wondered how many people had not read the book and were even more convinced and I thought about how this movie was playing all over the country at this moment, reproduced every hour for the next few months.  Not that this movie is propaganda per se, but the making of a movie from a book argues for a certain version of the book (one with a much happier ending), often watered down, oversimplified, and spread easily to the masses.  Reading a book, like reading a painting, allows more room for interpretation, imagination and play, than looking at a photograph or watching a movie.  The photograph or movie, Benjamin would warn, is more dangerous than the more nebulous, less “real” painting or book because it is much easier to be convinced that what looks real is the real thing, when in fact meaning is always much more illusory.

I guess I don’t have a real point to make, I just had Benjamin stuck in my skull and had to try to get him out.  That’s my life now.

A Puke Story

10 Aug

Sunday night, Dan and I headed south to Cincinnati for the week.  We picked up Uncle Ray from the airport bright and early Monday morning, hung around with the family all day and then took Ray to the mall in the evening to get his new iPad.  He loves it.

Today, I got up early again to run before meeting a couple of my teacher friends for breakfast.  I offered to help them set up their classrooms, but they preferred breakfast.  I know why.  They knew that we would get very little classroom setting up done what with all the yakking that would be taking place.  They are very wise indeed.  So, instead we ate breakfast and yakked it up, most likely annoying the poor waitress who was down a table for a few hours.  But, it was oh so nice getting to tell them how I was doing, hearing about travel, weddings and babies, and listening in on some Very Important School Business.

It reminded me that I’d been wanting to share a story from my first year at Heritage… a puke story, so… fair warning.

My first year at Heritage was my second year teaching, but I had student-taught at Heritage and I was glad to be back at the elementary school that made me feel very welcome, even lucky, to be around such a great group of teachers and a nice crop of students.  It was mid year, and we were coming up on our volcano unit.  I had a great idea.  I would allow students to create volcanoes (that’s not the great idea), but instead of giving them step-by-step instructions, I would let them determine how much of each ingredient to use to construct it.  It would be an inquiry lesson inside of a content lesson and it would be experimental, it would be open-ended and it would be fun.  Before I go any further, it’s worth noting that for one reason or another the classrooms at Heritage had carpet instead of the standard school-issue linoleum.  This is not a good idea in an elementary school where things get spilled and accidents happen pretty frequently.  And, my room had, in it’s first incarnation, housed Kindergartners, so there’s really no telling what was on that carpet.  There were many unidentified stains that I didn’t really like to think about and I certainly preferred that students not even sit on the carpet during group projects or indoor recess.  And as a Science teacher, I did not help the carpet situation.  In fact, I made it much much worse every time I pulled out raisins and peanuts to make conglomerate rocks or filled basins with water to illustrate the way that the plates ride on currents of magma or set up a fake crime scene with carefully (usually) placed drops of fake blood or had that one spaghetti/marshmallow building contest or… well, you get the idea.  The janitor started to enter my room each evening with disdain.  Actually, there’s a really good (bad) story about that particular janitor that I’d rather not go into, but suffice it to say that he wasn’t the typical nice, helpful, kindly janitor… still, I don’t blame him for being generally annoyed by me.

So, back to those volcanoes (now that I’m sure you can guess where this is going).  I gathered up a bunch of materials which included flour, sand, plaster of paris, water, paint, paper towel tubes, and paper plates (that’s all I can remember).  I also created a nice little handout that would “guide” student experimentation.  It was conservative.  Make a plan and test a small amount of each mixture before actually making the whole volcano.  That morning, I lay out all of the materials, students start arriving, and we go through our typical morning routine, unpacking, doing classroom chores, waiting for announcements, etc.  When it’s time, all of the 6th graders head to their first period classroom.

Honestly, I don’t remember anything between the beginning of that first period and the moment I looked around at absolute chaos.  Clouds of flour and plaster of paris surrounded the desks and covered large swaths of the thoroughly soiled carpet.  In other places, the carpet was sopping wet or sand was being ground into it.  Kids were running around with doughy concoctions covering their hands, getting it in their hair and on their clothes.  I shout for someone to go grab a giant trashcan and broom from the cafeteria, so that we can get rid of some of the mess when one student yells, “She’s gonna be sick!”  I look over at a tiny little girl with blunt shoulder length hair and small wire rimmed glasses.  She’s got her hands in a bin of a soupy mixture looking sick and saying something about how she doesn’t like the way the stuff feels.  I tell her to take her hands out and urge her to get to the sink, but just as she takes her hands out and the goop drips on the floor, she leans over her chair and throws up all over that poor, pitiful carpet.  I pause, I look around at what I did, and having no other choice… “Get the janitor!”

A few years later, my room was the first to have linoleum installed.

Nice Days

7 Aug

The past two days have been nice.  Nice enough to forget about blogging.  Yesterday, I read outside on the porch (I’m re-reading Eat, Pray, Love in preparation for the movie that comes out on August 13, that Marcy and I will be seeing together.  I have to say, I’m not disappointed).  Then, I cleaned all morning and ran errands all afternoon.  It was a good day to get things done.  I also had the chance to stop at the library (I had to return some books since I finished reading two books in six days!) and browse at my leisure.  I love browsing the library.  I found two more books and was forced out because the library closes at 4pm on Friday (what’s up with that?).  Later on, Dan and I went out to the North Market for dinner and then to Denise’s for ice cream.  Then, we went home for a little while before heading out to meet up with some school/work friends to celebrate my friend, Nicole’s, successful dissertation defense, which means she is now a real PhD, which means it’s fun to call her doctor and which makes me feel like maybe someday I might get there too.  I hope.

Today, I got up to run 14 miles.  It was such a beautiful morning that I can’t complain (even though my legs are tired).  It was 61 degrees when I woke up, and compared to last weekend, was absolute humid-free heaven.  When I got home and showered up, Dan and I went out for brunch and then walked around Easton for a bit.  Then, I took a much needed nap and made dinner.  We were thinking about watching a movie, but instead we’re just hanging out, Dan playing games, me reading (well, right at this second I’m blogging).  Tomorrow, we pack up for a week in Cincinnati.  Uncle Ray is coming into town early Monday morning!  :D

P.S. Happy Birthday to my cousin Beth!

Canton Fun

24 Jul

After the sweatiest 12 mile run of my life, I decided to make a quick trip up to Canton.  I went to Marcy’s yearly family gathering (called the LAUB) and had a nice time chatting with my BFF and some of her cousins, sticking my feet in the lake and watching lots of babies run around.  Then, I went to a cookout at Julie’s where she and Katie were happy to take some of my clothes that Plato’s didn’t want.  Eat it, Plato’s.  And, now I’m spending the night at my mama’s where Guido promised to make me a delicious breakfast in the morning.  It better be good Guido!  :)

What a nice day!

A Quick Trip

19 Jun

This morning I did my regular long run, watched some soccer and read a bit before heading up to Medina for a quick trip to see Marcy and Todd.  They were having their first cookout/housewarming party and we didn’t want to miss it.  We had big plans of staying the night, but then Dan had to leave for Arizona early this morning, so we decided not to.  I forgot to take pictures, but we had a great time hanging out with Marcy’s family and friends, chatting, sitting out in the backyard, and eating.  Marcy’s dad was the grill cook and there was cornhole and another game called KanJam in the yard.  It was great to see Marcy and Todd, even for a short time.  Can’t wait to do it again!

Quelle Surprise

25 May

This week’s challenge was to surprise someone.  I usually wait until Sunday to post the results of my challenge, but it was so much fun that I want to post it now.  I feel rebellious.

I had a really good friend at Miami, named Ben.  He was in my middle school cohort, so we had a bunch of classes together.  I’m pretty sure we bonded because I didn’t think he was an idiot (and I had attitude about a lot of people in our program… I admit it).  Eventually Ben and I started hanging out and I remember many times stopping by his uptown apartment on my way to and from class, just to say hello.  Ben’s funny and a genuinely nice person (I mean he’s a teacher, right?) and we had lots of great talks.  He even came to my 21st birthday party and let me store my furniture at his parents house when I had a week lull between leases.  He’s a good guy.  But, he’s also a year younger than me, so once I graduated, we lost touch.  Guess what though?  We found each other on Facebook!  Oh how I love Facebook.  So anyway, it was just earlier this year that we finally found each other, said hey, and figured out that we were both in Columbus.  We sort of said we should get together, meet spouses and hang out, but we left it at that.

Flash forward to last week, when I’m trying to find teachers to interview.  Ben had been posting pictures on Facebook of a trip to DC that he was on with his 8th graders.  One of the teachers I ask to interview says, “Sorry I didn’t get back to you right away, we were in DC with our 8th graders.”  Then I thought, wait…  where does Ben work?  So, I scoured an old message on Facebook and guess what?  He works at one of the schools where I’d be conducting an interview!  I almost emailed him right then, but I thought, it would be much more fun to surprise him.

So, today, I go to the school for my interview.  The teacher and I have a nice interview and at the end I say, “You know, I went to school with one of your teachers here, would you mind if I went to say hi?”  She laughed and said that that would be fine and walked me down to Ben’s room.  Remember, it’s been at least five years since I’ve seen him.  I peek my head in and say, “Hi, Mr. ——-!”  He’s working with a small group of students and he looks up and he gets that great happy, jaw-dropped face that you hope to see when you surprise someone.  “What?!  What are you…?”  We hug and chat while his students wonder who this strange woman is that just hugged their teacher (I mean, they’re in middle school… although the girls said I was “fresh” because I had flowery Target shoes on… I feel old for not having heard that word used that way before).  It was so nice to see my old friend.  It took me back, once again, to those carefree days at Miami.  I miss my old pals that are now mostly dispersed across the country, doing well and living life.  Thank goodness for Facebook.

My other Ben

Soft C

16 May

Friday, I worked on some schoolwork (read some Karen Barad, which sort of blew my mind) and I cleaned in preparation for a visit from Marcy.  I also picked up Dan from the airport (he’s home for two weeks now, hurray!) and we grabbed some Northstar burgers (again) and DQ blizzards.  Saturday around lunch time, Marcy got into to town and we walked down to the North Market, ate lunch, and chatted.  In the afternoon, we played!  We played with sidewalk chalk, made a hopscotch and played that for a bit, trying to stay out of the way of crazy people and runners.  We also played some bananagrams and dress up.  Once we were dressed up, we hula-ed with the hula hoops Marcy brought me (wasn’t that nice of her?).  Here we are:

Hula!

After all the fun, we went to Marcella’s, an Italian restaurant in the Short North.  There was a long wait, so we walked around and visited some shops.  When we finally did get a seat, the food was delicious and we had more nice conversation.  And, one last stop before we went home… Jeni’s!  It was a good night.

This morning, Dan joined us for some breakfast at Tasi and then Marcy was on her way home.  I’m already looking forward to our next visit!  :)