July is my new favorite month

I just had two pretty awesome weekends back to back. I met an awesome new person who just so happens to not mind taking me with their family out on the lake. We watched the Lakewood and Cleveland fireworks out on Lake Erie for the fourth. I got a few "so-so" pictures while I was out with my Droid that can be seen here.

We also checked out the Bodies exhibit downtown on East 4th. I had already seen it a few years ago in Toronto but that sort of thing is fun to see more than once. I definitely liked it better in Toronto. For one thing, the Cleveland exhibit didn't even have the cut away side view of the pregnant woman (Toronto did). The other two things that were worse about the Cleveland exhibit were: 1) they tried taking a souvenir photo on entering as if you're entering Cedar Point or something and 2) they had people menacingly following you around the exhibit supposedly to "help" you but really there to make sure you didn't touch anything or take any pictures (there were no such people in Toronto).

We then went out on the lake again this past weekend and just tooled around swimming and went up the Cuyahoga river. The tall ships exhibit was also in town so I got some pretty cool pictures of them as well. This time I had my "real" camera which sadly takes better pictures at 3.2mp than my 5.0mp Droid camera. I found out these past few weeks that it's true that the company you keep definitely makes any experience that much better.

Wat?

I haven't updated in awhile and I guess some sort of major things have happened since February so why not?

• I changed jobs some time back in April after being at the last place for two years. It ended up being good timing because they ended up closing the entire office permanently on May 14th. The picture on the right is my new office at my new job taken with my Droid.


• I'm single. I don't know if that's a good or a bad thing. It definitely helps in the finance department. Of course if I actually start dating there goes that money.


• I got a new car - a 2011 Hyundai Sonata. It's no BMW but with my job being a good 30 miles away I needed something way more fuel efficient than 18mpg.


• I found out I have jerks for neighbors who reported building code violations on my house. Because I didn't already drop $70k into my house or anything and was working on the rest when I could get the money... Let's just say it's been worked out and they didn't accomplish anything.


• Birthday at Brasa again. Awesome.


• Got a new roof put on the house. That was a nice $5000 I'll be paying off for the forseeable future. This was not related to the code violations: it was just badly overdue and leaking.

Steak on a Stone

I forgot to mention in my previous post that I had lunch at this place called Steak on a Stone in North Olmsted yesterday. This is a pretty sweet concept. From their site:

First we heat our volcanic stones to over 750 degrees in our specially designed oven for 6 to 8 hours. When they come out, they are placed upon our stoneware dishes that help to keep the meal warm while the outer dish remains cool to the touch.

Then we place your meal selection directly upon the hot stone. This extreme heat sears the food and seals in the natural juices and flavor of your food. You then simply slice a piece off and by placing it upon the stone, cook each individual bite to the wellness you enjoy.


Basically when they give you the steak to eat the top and bottom are seared and cooked already but the middle/sides are still raw. You cut slices off and individually cook each piece. I'm not one for working for my food usually but it was really good and no more effort than cutting pieces off a steak normally. The cut of meat and flavor easily beat out any Texas Roadhouse, Longhorn, or Outback steak (not that any of those are exactly high quality... just sayin'). The bill for a dinner steak, a lunch chicken sandwich, two sodas, and two desserts was $49. Not bad considering the quality of the food.

Ice festivals and home shows... oh my!

I recently went to the The Great Big Home & Garden Expo 2010 and the Medina Ice Festival 2010.

The Home & Garden Expo was interesting and all, but I'm not sure it was worth the $11/person (and that was with an online discount) + $6 parking to get in. I wanted to see more futuristic homes for that kind of money. They only had three or four model homes setup and they weren't laid out any different than the nicer stuff you'd see in Home Depot or Lowes for the most part. The link to the gallery above shows some of the outdoor gardens that were pretty cool (and other overall shots).

The Ice Festival was somewhat neat (checkout the pictures in the gallery linked above) but our interest didn't last very long. It took maybe an hour or so to walk around and see everything. The works in progress were very rough and it seemed like they wouldn't be done for hours. While I realize art takes time I don't have that kind of patience when its 28 degrees out. The saddest little snowman ever that was just chilling on the sidewalk was kinda amusing though.

Happy Halloween

I have no big updates to speak of right now. I just got back from an uneventful week long trip to Boston for ecommerce software training. Aside from the inside of the hotel and one or two restaurants I saw nothing of Boston so I don't have a single picture from the trip.

Check out my mad pumpkin carving skills on the skull pumpkin to the right. It won't win any awards but not bad for ten minutes of last second work. Several kids commented on how cool it was. I took a pretty cool night shot of all of the pumpkins we had out that you can see if you click the image to the right.

We had a fair amount of trick-or-treaters this year having gone through 7-9 bags of candy. It lasted from 6PM-8PM with the streets being all but empty around 7:30PM.

Another day in paradise

It's been an eternity since I posted something and a lot has changed since my last post. The highlights:

• I'm still at the same job and was promoted to "Manager of Development" from "Senior Developer" in January. It came with a substantial raise and management responsibility of off shore resources.


• I broke up with my previous girlfriend in December and have been going out with a new person for about seven months now.


• I'm heading to Minneapolis for one day for a technical meeting with a new Fortune 500 client


• I'm heading to Boston again in August/September to get trained on our soon-to-be-released ecommerce product


• I bought a sweet museum quality wooden ship because... I've always wanted one (and just look at it!)


• I sold my Xbox 360 and Wii and finally admit I am done with console gaming (except my PSP). I'll stick with a PC for gaming from now on.


• I still don't have a Facebook, MySpace, or Twitter account.


• I signed up for AT&T U-Verse IPTV service and absolutely love it. I passed on their Internet service for now since I had bad experiences with DSL in the 90s.


• I had my porch torn down and rebuilt this summer (it was practically falling down). Now all I need to do is get a new roof, paint the whole house, get a new driveway, fix a hole in the side of the garage, and finish the basement.

Rafting

I went white water rafting in West Virginia for the first time this past weekend. Four of us stayed in a cabin in the middle of the woods for two nights and rafted for one day. The cabin was nice with plumbing, electricity, and air conditioning (but oddly no phone). It was also quaintly located in the middle of "did you hear a banjo?" country between two mountains at the end of a one and a half mile "mule trail", er... "road".

The rafting was awesome and the scenery was fantastic. It just sucks you can't bring a camera to take pictures of it because you pretty much are guaranteed to lose it in the water or up against a rock somewhere. We hope to go again next year for possibly two days since one day just didn't seem like enough. If I can find a way to encode it, I may post a the short DVD video of the trip that we purchased. Here are some pictures of the cabin and surroundings in the meantime.