Date 64 - Tale As Old As Time.

Date: Tuesday, November 13th, 2012
Type: Art, Culture, Out on the Town
Cost: $$
Planned By: Dani

Living in the playhouse district of Cleveland is wonderful. We really want to take advantage of it while we are living here. We've already seen The Addam's Family and the playhouse has a great list of musicals for this upcoming year.

We decided to go see Beauty and The Beast at the Palace Theater. We decided pretty late and ended up having to go on a Tuesday night and having pretty far back seats. And when I see pretty far back I mean we were in the last row of balcony C. They were cheap though.. only $10 a piece! Also the view was still pretty good. Beauty and The Beast is one of my favorite stories from childhood. I haven't seen it in years, and I actually learned some things while watching the musical.
                                                  
When we arrived we went to the bar to see what featured drinks they had. Break The Spell and Be Our Guest were the two special drinks for the night. We each got one. They were both pretty good, and luckily we both liked separate ones better so we didn't have to share.
                                                      
The musical was impressive. The singing was amazing and the dance numbers were beautiful. I really love musicals. I think there is just something magical about people performing on a stage. Every time I see a play or musical I wish I still participated in them. Maybe someday I'll audition for a community theater. :) Until then I will just enjoy watching them.
                                                      
I can't wait until our next trip to the Playhouse!

Date 63 - Get Out Of Town!

Date: Friday, November 9th - Sunday November 11th
Type: Travel, Out of Town, Family, Friends
Cost: $$$
Planned By: Other

Adam and I were invited to Lori & Alex's wedding in Cincinnati for November 10th. We decided to make a whole weekend out of traveling to the other side of Ohio.
                                                       
On Friday night we stayed with Michelle and Jim in Columbus. We went to Cap City for dinner, played Nirtz at their apartment and went to Tasi for breakfast the next morning. We had a delicious meal at both places. Cap City is a fine diner. I got a yummy chicken sandwich and Adam got the fried chicken dinner. At Tasi we both got the Sausage Gravy over Biscuits.. because we love them and Michelle claimed them to be better than Boyd's. They were very good, but I still like Boyd's a tad bit more mostly because it was the first place I'd ever had them, and it changed my life. Nirtz is a card game that I am horrible at. I will not explain it to you, and I may try to avoid playing it again. It started out fun then I realized I sucked and I'm a bit of a sore loser.

On Saturday we drove the rest of the way to Cincinnati. We got to the church early and got pretty good aisle seats for the ceremony. It was a beautiful Catholic ceremony. The bride and groom looked amazing! After the ceremony we checked in our hotel room, had a couple glasses of wine and jumped on the shuttle to the reception. The cocktail hour was very nice with an open bar, hors d'oeuvres, live music and a cute slide show of the bride and groom. Around six o'clock the wedding party arrived so we found our table which had a great view of the dance floor. We had a delicious dinner of salad, stuffed chicken, red skin potatoes and green beans. They quickly got the party started after dinner with the cake cutting, first dance, father/daughter dance, mother/son dance, and bridal party dance. We didn't get to participate in the bouquet toss or garter toss, but they had the anniversary dance! Being married for only a year and half kept us in the dance just longer than the bride and groom. But someday we'll be the last ones standing. :) Then there was lots and lots of dancing. Alex, the groom, wrote and sang a beautiful song to Lori, the bride. I haven't ever seen him perform live before, and he was very talented. I loved it. :) Lots more dancing and celebrating continued. At the end we took the shuttle back and went straight to sleep. (Some idiot burned popcorn at 2AM and it took the hotel 20 minutes to turn off their smoke alarm... and the burned popcorn smell filled our room.. it was horrible)

Sunday morning we met Tim, Liisa and their baby Camden at Perkins for brunch. It was our first time meeting Camden, and he's already one! He was super cute, and I'm glad we finally met him. Tim and Liisa are moving to NYC so it was nice being able to see them before they leave. Although it will give us a good excuse to visit NYC. (my camera died.. so no pictures :( )

The drive back home wasn't too bad mostly because it was such a nice weekend. I'm glad we got to see so many people that we rarely see. :)

Date 62 - Halloweeeen

Date - Saturday, October 27, 2012
Type - At home
Cost - $$
Planned By - Both

Because we went out and dressed up for Halloween on October 20th for the OU alumni Halloween party we decided to stay in this weekend.

We still dressed up. Just not as elaborate. I was a witch, Adam was a bat and Obi was a gentleman.

Adam and I made a new cocktail, Witch's Brew! It has three equal parts of Creme de Banana, Blue Curacao and Bacardi Dragon Berry flavored rum. It was disgusting. DO NOT try it.
                                            
Then we played Glee Karaoke Revolution on the Wii. We played for a couple hours trying to accomplish some challenges. We did pretty good on most songs, but let me tell you some were a little scary!

 

 

Date 61 - Ice Cold Beer Here.

Date: Friday, October 19, 2012
Type: Out on the Town, Culture
Cost: $$
Planned By: Adam

Cleveland Beer Week 2012 is October 19th - October 27th. Adam found information about this online and asked if I wanted to go to the collaboration kick off. I knew it was something he would like to do, and even though I don't like beer that much I was pretty excited. Here is what the event consisted of: 5 bars, 6 collaborated 10 oz beers. All 6 beers had at least two of the Cleveland breweries collaborate to create a unique beer.

It all started at the Winking Lizard downtown. Our first beer was the Fat Heads and Chardon BrewWorks Smoked Maple Bacon Stout. Adam could taste the smoked maple bacon, but all I tasted was beer, but a pretty good beer. The second beer was also at The Winking Lizard and it was the Market Garden, Rocky River Brewing and Indigo Imp Tallboy, a wet-hopped brown ale. This was NOT 10oz. It was very hoppy and very difficult to drink. Luckily, the Winking Lizard has free popcorn. :)

Bar 2 was the City Tap. It was a very short walk which was nice because it was raining. The beer here was Brew Kettle and Willoughby Brewing: Hoppy Hellesbock. Again a bit difficult to drink, but Adam liked it.

 

Bar 3 was the Lincoln Taphouse in Tower city. Beer number four was the Buckeye Brewing, Ohio Brewing and Black Box: Nut Brown Ale with Maple Syrup. This one was my favorite. It had the least amount of hops and I could taste some of the other ingredients. Adam really liked this one, too.

Bar 4 was Pickwick and Frolic and they had the Thirsty Dog, Cornerstone Brewing, and LagerHeads: Belgian Style Dubbel with Plums. This was an interesting beer. It came in a huge (wine looking) glass and I have a hard time believing it was only 10oz. If I had had that much wine in that glass I would have gotten some funny looks. This one took us the longest to finish.

The last bar was the Corner Alley and they had the Great Lakes and Cellar Rats: Wet-Hopped Pale Ale. This one was definitely 10 oz. All the other bars had awesome beer tasting glasses and the Corner Alley had these lame plastic cups. The beer was OK, but by the end I did not want to be drinking beer anymore.

This date was a lot of fun, but looking back we should have only bought one ticket and shared. Poor Adam ended up drinking all his beer and probably half of mine. Oops. It was really cool trying the unique beers, but they should have had a food stop or something because six beers in a max of three hours is quite a lot of beer.

Cheers!

Date 60 - Better Than The Best Ever!

Date: Saturday, October 13, 2012
Type: Out of Town, Friends, Fun
Cost: $$
Planned By: Both

Adam and I attended our second OU homecoming as alumni. Its hard to believe that we have been out of college long enough to go to our second homecoming. We are always looking forward to a trip to OU, and homecoming is the best because most of our friends plan to go, too! The theme this year was Better Than the Best Ever in honor of the late Ron Socciarelli, a past conductor of the Marching 110.

We didn't get in until 1AM on Saturday. We decided to stay with our grad student friend Laura who also hosted Lauren, Rachel and her fiance Sean. We got to Laura's apartment, talked for a little while and went to bed.

On Saturday we all woke up before our alarms that were set for 6AM. We had Sausage Queso dip and Bellini's for breakfast. After we all showered and got ready we called a cab. I have never taken an Athens cab, but we didn't want to walk 2.5 miles up town. We were pleasantly surprised when the limo cab picked us up!! It was very very very exciting for all of us because it was one of the things we have all wanted to do, ride the Athens limo cab!

When we got uptown we went to Pigskin and met up with Penny. Somehow we got a booth and were able to start celebrating pretty quickly. Next, we dropped off our stuff at Anna's (Laura's sister who lives in their old apartment above Pigskin). We also took some great pictures of all of us in our awesome homemade homecoming shirts!
We got down to Union St. a few minutes before the parade started. It was much less crowded due to the route change this year. We were very enthusiastic the entire time trying to get candy and other free stuff. We got a bag full of candy, a pair of sunglasses, 5 drink coozies, a baseball, a plastic ball, and a plastic football. I'd say we did a pretty good job! My proudest moment was catching that baseball one handed like Dottie in A League of Their Own. We enjoyed watching the 110, Alumni band, and the Sigma Kappa banner (which had a band member playing a trumpet (!) doing a rare-back on it.. at least that's what it was supposed to be). The Sigma Kappa homecoming sweatshirts also have a trumpet (!) on the back, and I will keep begging my little Kelsey (who was homecoming chair) for one until I receive it. :)

After the parade we went back to the bars. We spent most of our time at Pawpurrs. Had a few black outs, took over the stage, danced, had lots of fun. Then we went to Broneys. We didn't get champagne slushies because we had too much champagne for breakfast, they were extremely busy and of course their machine was down. Then we went to the Sigma Kappa Alumnae Brunch where they had a waffle bar! It was pretty good and we had fun looking at the changes in the house. Then we went back to Pigskin and got ready for the game.

Even though the Bobcats are undefeated and an awesome football team we decided to show up during the second quarter just in time for half time to watch the 110 and alumni perform. They were amazing as usual. They played a bunch of songs we also played in high school including MacArthur Park, Red Light and Long Train. The entire band did the Long Train dance break which was awesome considering its usually only the Tubas! It would have been nice to stay for the rest of the game and post game to see all the best songs, but we were tired and wanted to take a nap. That's what we get for waking up at 6AM. Maybe next year. Good news though the killed Akron and are still undefeated! :)

After our naps we got O'Betty's for dinner. Yummmmmm! We hung around in the apartment for awhile playing games and watching TV. Then Adam and I went to see JT at Lucky's. Its been about a year since we've seen him so it was nice catching up. Then we met up with the rest of our friends back at Pigskin (yes, this was the third time) for almost the rest of the night. Towards the end of the night we decided we had to go see Tim & Liisa at the Crystal and Megan at Broneys. It was so nice seeing all of them, and it makes me wish we could see them more. (Everyone should move to Cleveland!!) Before we went back to Laura's we had one last stop: Good Fella's! It is very unlikely Adam will ever go to Athens and not get Good Fella's Pizza. I even had a piece this time, which is surprising because I think Good Fella's is gross. Then we went back to Laura's and went to sleep.

The next day we got up and got ready to leave. We went up town and I got my first alumni t-shirt! Adam got a new shirt and a coffee travel mug. The drive home wasn't too bad especially towards the end when the Browns won their first game of the season against the Bengals! Too bad we arrived downtown only minutes after the game ended and got stuck in traffic.

Overall, homecoming was a success, and I can't wait for next year!