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.

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.

Best Thing Since Sliced Bread

Well…actually it is sliced bread!

I just discovered a bakery that I will probably be buying bread from on a weekly basis. I have been trying different breads from the grocery store trying to find a great bread that wasn’t full of artificial sweeteners and preservatives. I’ve been making a weekly trip to the Pearl Alley Farmer’s Market to pick up my produce (from the CSA program we signed up for this year), and Great Harvest Breads of Pickerington, Ohio is always offering free slices of bread as a sample. One slice and I was hooked. Great taste, great texture, and with a simple ingredient list I can get excited about. I can’t wait to try all the different varieties they offer.

Lights out

Nothing makes you appreciate something more than having it suddenly taken away. Last night the electricity went out at 6:30 pm. I was watching TV, just about ready to get up and put dinner in the oven when I heard a loud bang/pop sound from outside (probably a blown transformer), and all went dark.

Later, after eating a much simpler meal than had been planned, we went for a walk to see who all was sharing our misery. Not many as it turned out. Only a small strip of houses, one house wide, by about two blocks long, was out of power. It’s all the more irksome when you look at the houses next to you on three sides and they all are blissfully unaware that a power void is so close to them. And of course, since it was a relatively small outage, the power company didn’t feel a lot of pressure to rush. They didn’t even show up with a truck until 9 pm, and the power was back on 45 minutes later.

The biggest loss of the night was missing the season finale of Heroes, which we’ve been watching every Monday. Hopefully they will re-play it soon.

Ooh, I just looked up the Heroes site in order to link to it and discovered that you can watch any/all of the episodes online. Sweet…

College students with too much time on their hands

This video is hysterical (if you ever played video games on the NES):

Super Mario Bros. – Live!

Hot Rods?

I don’t understand the logic behind putting shiny, rotating hubcaps on a vehicle that is not already a stylish ride. Maybe they were on sale or something, because I saw two cars today with fancy hubcaps which were totally out of synch with the rest of the car. One of them was actually a soccer-mom-style mini-van!