Goodbye, Cleveland

We finished up Cleveland this past Wednesday. We had our biggest collect day yet - 299 miles. It was great being home in the summer and seeing friends and family. There were also some festivals I attended while home. The Burning River Fest is held on an annual basis at Wendy Park which is on Whiskey Island. There is a great view of the city from the park and it's also on the Cuyahoga River. The fest is held to raise environmental awareness of the river and lake and is named so from the Cuyahoga River fire of 1969. There was live music, local food, and other various vendors. The next day, I was able to go to the Midwest Reggae Fest, which was held at Nelson Ledges Quarry Park. I hadn't been to the ledges since high school, but it was everything I'd remembered. The Quarry is absolutely gorgeous. The water is extremely clean and very deep. You can basically dive in from almost any spot along the Quarry edges because it gets so deep so fast. There's also a spot about 30 feet up that you can jump off of into the Quarry. Lots of fun to be had there! And, I can't forget about the MelonHead Gainer. I was also able to go to the first Browns pre-season game against the Chiefs. We won, so let's hope it's an indication of the rest of the season. Emily and I were also able to take the Mega-Bus to Chicago for a weekend. I was able to visit my very good friend, Meredith and Emily was able to visit some of her friends as well. I also got to see some of my neighbors from college, so that was fun. We had drinks on top of the Hancock Building and the view is absolutely amazing. The drinks may be expensive, but it's worth it for the view. It was actually really strange - it was raining down below, so we thought the view wouldn't be that great, but it was spectacular. You couldn't even tell it was raining from the 95th floor. So, basically, it's a great thing to do - rain or shine! I got to have one last night out with my girlies before we left for Pittsburgh (yes, we're back in Pittsburgh). We went to a Vietnamese restaurant on the corner of 31st and Superior called #1 Pho. It was delicious - huge portions, good beer, and good service for a reasonable price. Definitely recommended! So, we're back in Pittsburgh for just a few days. We're staying at a hotel in the South Side, which is a really cool area. It's basically 20 blocks of bars, restaurants, and odd shops. We went out last night for sushi and drinks on East Carson Street, which is the main strip of the South Side area. Tonight, we think we're going to hit up the Strip District which is an open-air market by day and a bar/club scene by night. So, we're here because we had to recollect 12 scenes from our previous collect here and then we go to court Monday to sue that lady who won't give us our money back. So, we are looking forward to a victory followed by Pamela's Pancakes. Then we're off to Toledo - we think we'll be there for about 2 weeks and then Cincinnati - we'll probably be there for about a month. So, I'm thinking Toledo for the end of August, beginning of September and Cincinnati for the end of September through mid-October - just in time for Oktoberfest! So, if anyone will be in those areas during those times, let me know! Cheers!

C-Town

Hi All! I've been in Cleveland for two weeks now. Things are going well. We've had a couple of rain days since we've been here (today included). We're hoping to be done by August 17 with Cleveland, but it's all depending on the rain right now. I've seen a lot of music since I've been here, starting with Xavier Rudd at the House of Blues - he is just amazing! I also went to the Tri-C jazz fest to hear some Medeski, Scofield, Martin, and Wood. The Jazz fest was located on what's called The Mall downtown. It's right by Lakeside Ave. in between Ontario and East 6th. It was a great location for a concert and I really hope the city decides to play more music there. Last weekend I went to Matisyahu and 311 at Tower City Amphitheater (I will not call it Time Warner) and it was great. I've really wanted to see Matisyahu for a while, so I'm glad I was able to. Then, Emily and I went to Blonde Redhead at the House of Blues - they're a band she likes, but were also really good. We also went to see Hurricane on the Bayou at the Omnimax Theater at the Science Center and the Rockefeller Gardens in University Circle. Omnimax movies make you feel like you're actually in the movie and the footage was just amazing, so it was a good time. I didn't even know the Rockefeller Gardens existed - it's a small outdoor garden and indoor garden, but it's free and it was kept up really well. Other than that, I've just been hanging out with the fine folk up here in Cleveland. It's really nice to know people in the city we're working in. It's also really strange to see Cleveland how I'm currently seeing it. My outlook of the city were always definitely swayed living out in B-town. There's so much of this city that I have never seen and is quite sad. Almost the entire East Side of Cleveland is boarded up. You can see there things used to flourish, but everything moved out to the suburbs since the 1960's and 1970's. On the positive side of things, there is construction EVERYWHERE, so it looks like a lot of efforts are being put forth to turn this city back around. Pictures to come soon - everyone have a good week!

Phipps & Floyd

Hi All - I'm already a day late in posting every Sunday, but I'm really close (today is Monday). Anyways, we are leaving Pittsburgh today. We're going to take one last yoga class at this place called Amazing Yoga. They do Baptiste yoga and it's pretty intense, but really good. Then probably have one more breakfast at Pamela's Pancakes. They have amazing hashbrowns and pancakes. Then we're headed to our new place in C-town, which is on Lake Ave. and West 104th Ave. We're excited because it has a pool, jacuzzi, fitness room, and elevator. We have this really heavy bag of equipment that we've been hauling up and down three flights of stairs everyday in Pittsburgh, so this will be nice.
We've been working really hard the past 2 days trying to finish up Pitt. We took Friday off to do some last-minute touristy things here before we left. We first went to Phipps Conservatory to see the botanical gardens. The gardens were amazing on their own, but there was a special exhibit by Dale Chihuly, who is masterful in the creation of glass art. He's done glass work in the Bellagio in Vegas and also in the Atlantis casino's in the Bahamas. It was really quite amazing. The glass pieces were huge - some were hanging from the ceiling and some were installed into the gardens. All of the pieces added so much to the garden experience and he did a wonderful job making each piece really bring out the other elements in each garden. If you ever plan on coming to Pittsburgh between now and November, you must see this exhibit. I think I took over 100 pictures, but I won't post them all!
After our amazing Chihuly (by the way, he's my new hero!) experience, we went to Frank Lloyd Wright's Fallingwater, which is about an hour and a half away from Pittsburgh. He too used very organic methods in building Fallingwater. It's built around this waterfall but he incorporates parts of the landscape into the house. There's this huge boulder that most architects would have eliminated from the landscape before building, but he decided to make it a part of the house. So, you can see the boulder from outside of the house on one of the many terraces, and then it's used as a bench in the kitchen and as a fireplace in the living room. It was really great, except for the tour guide. We think she had a hangover or something because she didn't really explain much. But I did find out the house used to be occupied by the Kaufmann family, who owned the Kaufmann's Department Stores, but I think those have been bought out by Macy's.
Here are some pics of the glass gardens - I will get some up of Fallingwater soon as I haven't downloaded them to the computer yet and everything is packed away for our move to Cleveland. Come visit me in Lakewood! Oh, and we're trying to put together a Put-In-Bay trip for a weekend in August. We'll be camping, so let me know if one of the earlier weekends in August work for you and if you'd be interested.

For you mom...

Hello again - here are some pics from Team 2 (Maureen and Jacqui) from Disney, Jacksonville, and DC. I thought I'd post them to keep you occupied. Enjoy!

Eeyore trying to eat me at a Cast Brunch at Disney.















Inside a phone booth at Epcot.
















Outside the Phone Booth at Epcot.





















PB&J before Rafting in West Virginia - thanks, Emily!
















Dinner at the Argonaut on H Street in DC















Dinner on Team 2's rooftop terrace!

Home for Weddings

Hi All! I've been kind of bad about posting on the blog, so I've decided to post once a week - probably on Sunday's from now on. So, I went home for a little over a week for two of my very good friend's weddings. Both of them were very nice and tons of fun. I don't have any pictures though because I relied on my friends and am waiting for them to send them to me - thanks, Pam and everyone else who sends pics! I also got to spend a lot of time outdoors while I was home. We went to Vermilion on Lake Erie for two days with Dev's family, which was great. Lots of beach time! Katie O. and I also went water skiing with my dad at Fairport Harbor. Katie is a much better skier than I am though. Hopefully I'll get better when I'm home next month. There was also lots of quality pool time spent at Allison's, which was wonderful. It was great to see everyone and I can't wait til we can all get together again! So, I'm back in Pittsburgh now. Emily and I worked for two days, but it rained today so we're hanging out in a coffee shop. It's supposed to rain tomorrow, but I really hope it doesn't. We'd really like to leave here Sunday and we have two more days of collecting and one more day of fun left. After we're done here, we'll be heading up to Cleveland until mid-August. Ok, it just stopped raining, so we're go try and collect. We're looking for places to live in C-town right now, so if anyone knows of any furnished apartments near downtown or downtown let me know. Right now, we have a pretty good lead on a place on the lake on Lake Ave. on the Cleveland/Lakewood border. So, look for another update with pics this Sunday. Take care!

Home/Pittsburgh

Hey All! Sorry it's been so long since I've posted. We left DC the last week of June and moved up to Pittsburgh. We are living in an area called Shadyside. It's pretty cool - there are a lot of shops and some bars and coffee shops. I went home for a weekend before I moved here for my sister, Sharon's, wedding. Congratulations, Sharon and Michael! Emily went out of town last Thursday evening and her replacement from the Portland office, Danny, didn't get here until Sunday night. So, I decided to go home for the weekend because it is only about an hour and a half away and I had nothing else to do! It was good to see everyone. I also got to see Lake Lucerne's fireworks. I'll be going home again this Friday for Sara's wedding and staying through the week for Allison's wedding. Should be good times!
So, Pittsburgh has been pretty cool so far (except for this lady who basically stole our money, which is a whole other story). Yesterday, we went downtown to see what this place is all about. We went to the Duquense Incline, which is a public transportation method (and also a great view of the city) that gets you up this big hill on the southern portion of the Ohio river. It has a perfect view of the city, which is really pretty. We were hanging out at the top of the hill when fireworks started. They were for the Pittsburgh Pirates baseball game (I guess they won - Go Indians!!!). So, those were nice to see.
We then came back down and hung out at a bar, Doc's, here in Shadyside. Pittsburgh has a big fireworks display tonight downtown at Three Rivers Point State Park, but there's a 70% chance of rain, so it's a little iffy right now. We'll probably go check it out anyways. Well I hope everyone has a wonderful Fourth of July! See you soon!!!

The Great Outdoors in DC

So, I've managed to do a lot of outdoorsey things in DC, which is good! Last week was cool in temperature, so it was perfect for being outside. It heated back up today and should be in the mid-90's for all of next week. Emily and I went hiking one day along the Potomac River on the Potomac Heritage Trail off of the George Washington Expressway. There were lots of toads which jumped out of the path and I finally found some day lilies that I was able to pick because they weren't on private property. They're good to sautée and eat - they taste like green beans - it's a little trick my mom taught me - thanks, mom! We also went to the National Arboretum, which is about 460 acres - it's huge - we didn't even get to see everything. They have a State Tree exhibit, in which there are 51 plots of all the state trees, plus the District of Columbia tree. There were also original columns from the Capital Building that had to be removed once the Capital Building was expanded. We also went to the FDR memorial (thanks, Halle!) and strolled along past the Jefferson Memorial and the Washington Monument. There were lots of middle-school kids there with matching shirts. It made me think back to when we came here in 8th grade and how badly I feel for the teachers who had to put up with us. We took Friday off from work and went Riking, which is a name we made up for Biking and Rafting. We biked 12 miles on the towpath along the Baltimore-Ohio canal through Harper's Ferry, WV and then rafted (thanks, Sue Lynch, for the idea!) down the Potomac and Shenandoah Rivers. It was a lot of fun, but there were only Class I-III rapids, so hopefully we'll get to go again when we're in Pittsburgh or Cleveland because there are rivers with stronger rapids closer to those cities. Yesterday, we shopped for a little bit and then hung out on the roof-top terrace of Team 2's apt. building. The drinking started there and ended after hitting up the Wonderland Ballroom in Columbia Heights. Good bar, good beer, good times. Today we worked for a bit and we're going to Team 2's again for pizza and pirate day, which consists of making pizza and stealing each other's music! So, that's my life in DC right now. We're planning on leaving here on June 25 and heading up to Pittsburgh. Happy Father's Day, Happy Birthday Courtney, Happy Almost Birthday to my little sis, Lindsey and Traci!!!