Idiots No More

Kurt and I are moving. We actually purchased a house this time so this should end the saga of us having to share walls with noisy neighbors or put up with their cigarette smoke entering our unit uninvited (the most recent rental fiasco had both issues).

Alas, we couldn’t afford to do so in German Village, but we are staying in Columbus. We are moving NE of downtown in a neighborhood called Kenmore Park. We officially move on Monday.

While we are excited about home ownership and the presumed peace and quiet, we hate to leave German Village. We also dread the actual move process (“Didn’t we just move?” we keep thinking to ourselves–and yes, yes, we did). Today I will be busy at the new house supervising the delivery and installation of a washer/dryer set, the thorough cleaning of all the carpets (former owners had pets), and the re-keying of the locks.

Moving also creates a good reason/timing for retiring this blog. For starters we won’t be living in German Village (at minimum the name would need to change), and secondly, my rate of posting to this blog has dwindled to about once a month. At that rate I can return to my previous mode of sending out the occasional e-mail updates.

In closing, I leave you with a picture of our new digs:

Cultural Revival

Summers are over-rated (unless you’re a student or teacher). Being a “responsible adult” and working through the year takes some of the fun out of the summer season. Of course, it is a nice time of the year weather-wise, and certainly not all bad, but Fall has an edge in my book. Why? that is when culture returns to Columbus in full force. It is the time of year to begin new seasons of theater, from local troupes to the traveling Broadway shows.

These past few weeks I have been to several cultural/entertainment events, ranging from The Old Trout Puppet Workshop’s performance of “Famous Puppet Death Scenes” to a screening of the new documentary film about homosexuality and religion “For the Bible Tells Me So” to the wonderfully creative dance group Pilobolus, to the silly-but-oh-so-fun Broadway production of “Monty Python’s Spamalot“.

Fall is good. The only trouble is having to pick and choose which bits of culture to indulge in.

October 15: Blog Action Day

My two cents today on saving the planet one small step at a time? Recycle.

If you live in Columbus, Ohio, recycling just got a little bit better. Until very recently, the only plastics that were easily recyclable in Columbus were plastics #1 and #2. I have been working in Cleveland, Ohio several days a week, however, and discovered that Cleveland recycles all numbered plastics (#1 – #7), and was actually considering carting my plastics to Cleveland to recycle them. The other week though, I saw a post by a writer for the Alive! publication in Columbus, asking for ideas about an upcoming ‘green’ issue, and decided to e-mail them about this gap in options for recycling in Columbus. Low and behold, when I went to link to the web pages that described what plastics were acceptable for recycling, I discovered that Columbus is now accepting the additional plastics (#3 – #7) as well. Sure enough, the next time I dropped off my recycling at Kroger (the nearest free drop-off point for me), the signs on the recycling bins had been modified with stickers, indicating the new plastic acceptance policy.

The irony is that if you live in Columbus and actually pay $$ to have recycling collected along with your trash, they haven’t caught up with the times yet and still only collect plastics #1 and #2.

I got a tattoo today…

It’s true. Sort of.  (Got your attention though, didn’t I mom!)

At a doctor’s visit this morning I decided to get an official opinion about a small dark spot on the back of my right hand.  One day when I was in grade school (I forget what grade, but it was probably between 15 and 20 years ago), I stabbed myself (accidentally) with a pencil. I have had a small dark spot there ever since. My doctor actually called it a ‘prison tattoo’ because a similar method is sometimes used by inmates (purposefully) to create amateur tattoos. He also said there is nothing to worry about, health-wise, but it will probably be there forever unless I have it removed for cosmetic reasons.

So there you have it. I learned today that I do have a tattoo. Sort of.

Work, and other mundane things

A friend recently pointed out to me that I hadn’t really kept my blog up-to-date in terms of my job situation, so here is an official update:

As most of you know, one of my previous jobs, an exploration of self-employment, involved what I liked to call “chasing robots”. In a nutshell I worked for a project manager on closing out the installation of a system of Auto-Guided Vehicles, aka robots, at the Ohio State University Medical Center. My duties ranged from producing a training video for the employees to archiving architectural drawings. Previously on this very blog, I mentioned a second project that we were planning to work on in Greenville, SC, but that one didn’t pan out in the end.

Following a hiatus from self-employment where I interned at Highlights for Children, and work for various temp agencies, I am back in self-employment, working for my previous boss on a similar project, this time at the Cleveland Clinic. My boss is in an owner’s rep role this time, working on the Clinic’s behalf to make sure things run smoothly for installing all of the equipment in a (very) large service center that is going to be distributing supplies of all sorts to the main hospital buildings, using robots to transport the supplies from the service center (in the basement of a 4,000-car parking garage, currently under major construction).

So far my job description has varied from setting up a construction-trailer office, to finding a corporate housing solution (we are typically in Cleveland 3 days a week), to creating a spreadsheet comparing the equipment offered by various vendors bidding on one portion of the service center. All in all, it’s been a good fit so far.

This week I also expanded my work options by signing on with a Columbus catering company to serve food and drinks at various events as I can fit them into my schedule.

In other news, this weekend we are collecting the last of our farm-grown food (from the Community Supported Agriculture program we signed up for this year). I was hoping to post a grand tally of the produce we received through the weekly program, but somewhere in the middle, between dashing back and for to Cleveland, my record keeping fell behind. Suffice it to say we have enjoyed countless pints of green beans, many tomatoes, zucchini, and yellow squash, bunches of sweet corn, and occasional surprises (eggplant, Chinese cabbage, and melons).

Headline: ‘Great American Pastime’ Not as Horrible as Expected

A couple of weeks ago, I enjoyed one of the perks of living the life of a consultant: an invitation to a ballgame, all expenses paid. The game in question:

            
Cleveland Indians vs. Minnesota Twins

This being the first professional baseball game I have ever been to, I did not have high expectations that I would enjoy the game itself, but I did do my best to go into the game with a good attitude and an open mind. I didn’t want to seem ungrateful to my hosts, after all. I have watched one or two baseball games on television (boring), but the experience of being there live is definitely more interesting. It also didn’t hurt that we were not sitting on bleacher seats, and in fact were in a ‘luxury suite’.

Here is the setup of the suite. You walk in, and immediately to the left is a bathroom, private to your group. Next a coat closet, and finally into the main room, a living room style room with comfortable couch-style seating, a big screen television on the wall (playing the game, of course), food set out along one wall (typical ballpark fare: nachos, hot dogs, etc.), a kitchenette on the rear wall (one fridge stocked with various soft drinks, one fridge stocked with beer), and finally one wall of mostly windows looking out onto the field. There were also 8-10 stadium seats available, which were out in the larger seating area, but privately accessible only to your suite.

The game started out with a bang: the first inning ended with the home team (Cleveland) up 4-0. The score crept up to 4-3 by the final inning. There are many nuances of the game that I’m sure I missed, but the crowd energy was high, and I did enjoy myself (again, the suite didn’t hurt my opinion any).

Did I mention the dessert cart? While most of the food was a help-yourself sort of arrangement, dessert arrived on a cart in the hallway outside the suite (and I believe was charged to the host on an item-by-item basis). Also while most of the food provided was decently presented, but still ‘ballpark’ quality, the desserts were a cut-above in both presentation and quality. The layered chocolate mousse creation I selected was wonderfully decadent.

Blog Reactivated

Yes, I know. It’s been over a month since I posted anything to this site. Life happens. Work, especially has been taking me to Cleveland several times a month for 2-3 days at a time, and while I’m there I generally haven’t had steady enough Internet access to do more than check e-mail occasionally. But enough with the excuses already…

So, in the past month, this blog has been the target of more than 100 spams, only two of which got past the spam filters and had to be removed manually. Not too bad, I suppose.

On a related note, I also seem to have recently been the target of a virtual card shower. In the past month I have received e-cards from:

a Mate!
a Neighbor!
a Class Mate!
a School-Mate!
someone special!

The e-cards have ranged from “greetings” and “birthday e-cards” to “animations” and “love postcards”.

Point being: if any of you do send me a legitimate e-card, you probably better preface it with a phone call or a personal e-mail.