Who Says You Can't Go Home?

This weekend I went home to help Joel celebrate his 22nd birthday.  On Sunday dad made a delicious dinner of steak, chicken, potatoes, veggies, ice cream cake, etc.  It was so super yummy! My only regret is that I didn't get any pictures.  I was so hungry and it smelled so good, pictures were the last thing on my mind.

Even though I was there to celebrate Joel's birthday, he gave me a present.  Yup, it's a BACON SODA HOLDER!  Pretty much the coolest present ever!

Afterwards, Joel and I went out and talked and laughed and watched a girl walk into a door.

The next day, Joel had work so I stayed home and watched the hunger games with dad and grandma.  In the evening Dad, Joel and I decided to go to Red Lobster for dinner.  Sadly there was a 1 hour wait!!

We decided not to wait and instead to go to Charlie Browns instead.  Charlie Browns is right next to what use to be Borders Bookstore.  Since all of the borders closed, this one was being changed into a Halloween store.  Joel saw it and said "There's nothing scarier than books"

Joel and I got steak at Charlie Browns and Dad got the endless salad bar.  Believe it or not their salad bar had a whole lot of everything, so dad got his moneys worth!  I would recommend Charlie browns.  It's pretty yum.

Sadly, I couldn't stay more than a couple of days before I had to head back to PA.  It was a fun trip.  I only wish it could have been longer!

The Adventure of Dating

For the last week I've embarked upon the adventure of dating.  Anyone who has dated will remember quite fondly what an adventure it is!

While I have an OKCupid profile, and a The Big and The Beautiful profile, neither have really netted any results.

  

Occasionally I'll post on craigslist as an ego boost.  What I tend to do is post an ad for 3-5 hours, rake in a bunch of compliments and creepy responses, and then delete the ad.  The creepiest response was:

Hi there, I'm a 51 year old hairy romantic Italian male who would love to welcome you to cleveland with a nice nude massage and bubble bath, Interested ?

Which, honestly, isn't too bad considering it was craigslist.  In case you are wondering I did not respond to this email, nor do I ever plan on responding.

Anyway, one guy responded with a lot of pictures and an honest/sincere email.  Since he was so different from the pack, I decided to email him back.  We emailed each other for a bit and then started texting.  After a day of back and forth texting we decided to meet up at Ruby Tuesdays for dinner.

Not only was the guy punctual, but he was early!  +1 points for him.  He insisted on opening doors (+1) and paying for dinner (+1).  He was funny (+1), polite (+1), charming (+1), and asked lots of in depth questions about me (+1).  After 2 hours of talking and flirting the waitress at Ruby Tuesdays hinted that it was time for us to leave.

At the end of the date, he was nothing if not a perfect gentleman.  He hugged me and said he would really like to see me again.  I, being the cool cat that I am, nodded energetically and said "yes!  YES!  Me too!  A lot!!"

Within an hour of the end of our date we were texting back and forth again.  In the week since our first date, we have had 3 more dates.  All of them have left me smiling, giddy as a school girl!  Again, I felt like he was honest and sincere about everything (nothing like this:)

It has been so long (1 year) since I've been on a date, let alone a great date (3-5 years) that I had forgotten how much fun it is!  Meeting and experiencing new people truly is one of the most fun adventures out there!

Am I sure this is going to last forever? No, I'm not sure of anything, except I am sure that I will enjoy the adventure, wherever it may take me.

Brunch and Burning eyes

Sunday I got together with some friends at the west side market cafe.

Most, if not all of the food is from the West side market, so everything was really fresh and delicious.  I got an open faced omlet with bacon, spinach, cheddar cheese.  So tasty!!

Today (monday) I decided it was time to clean my oven.  I have been making a good amount of oven bacon (see recipe here).  Oven bacon may be the most delicious and easiest way to make bacon ever!

Last week I tried to bake chicken and noticed the oven was smoking a bit.  When I looked inside, I realized the oven desperately needed to be cleaned.

My oven has a self cleaning feature, which I decided to try out.  I made sure everything was out of the oven and then turned the 2 dials on the oven to clean.  3 hours later I realized my oven wasn't even warm.  I figured out that you have to use the clock feature to tell it how long to clean for, so, I set a time, turned on the exhaust and went to watch TV (toddlers in tiaras).

After about 45 minutes the condo started smelling horrible.  I decided to open the windows to help alleviate the horrificness coming from the kitchen.  I went to my bedroom first.  Before I opened my window I realized that there were spiderwebs between the window and the screen.  Spiderwebs with 2 spiders still on them!

Thank goodness I'm not super grossed out by spiders.  I calmly went into the kitchen to wet some paper towels to clean off the spiderwebs.  While in the kitchen, I notice my eyes were burning and watering (later I found out this isn't uncommen when running self cleaning on the oven).

I quickly get out of the kitchen and start cleaning up the spiderwebs (the spiders scuttled back outside while I was cleaning).

I checked the second bedroom and the porch door and they both had spiderwebs.  I had to go back in the kitchen multiple times to get paper towels (and throw away paper towels) coated in cobwebs and grime from the windows.  By the end of it I was leaking tears left and right because my eyes were burning so bad.

The moral of the story is:  Make sure to wipe down the oven after making oven bacon, or else you will find yourself crying while fighting monstrous spiderwebs

The Cleveland Zoo

Today the crew (Mitch, Dom and KW) and I went to the Cleveland Metroparks Zoo.  I had been waiting all week on pins and needles to go!  I was not disappointed!

One of the first things Dom noticed when we walked in was this sign:

I guess Iron Man supports the zoo.

Next we went to the koala habitat and Mitch took my pictures.  The koala wouldn't turn around for us, but it was super cute and cuddly from the back!

There is an awesome little choochoo train that runs around part of the zoo.  I was super excited for it...until I saw it was 2 dollars.  We decided to save our 2 dollars a person and just walked around the area.

While we were walking around we came across a part of the zoo where we could pet little ponys (SQUEEE!!!)  Mitch was the only one cool enough to do it with me:

After walking around a bit we decided to take a tram up to the monkey/big cats area of the zoo.  Unlike the train, this ride was free.  While we were on  the tram (pretty filled with kids) KW said loudly that there was no santa claus.  He proceeded to say this randomly thoughout the day.

Some other things we saw where a couple of cuddling monkeys:

A bear who kept posing adorably for pictures:

and a firefox:

No, not that kinda of firefox, a red panda (also called a firefox)

We were all tired at the end of the day, but super happy to have seen so many cute animals!!

The Cleveland Art Museum

My work recently gave me 4 free tickets to go see the Youth and Beauty exhibit at the Cleveland Art museum

It was interesting.  I might go back and read some more of the notes below each painting!  After the exhibit, we went to the free part of the cleveland art museum to view the rest of the art/sculptures/sarcophagi.  It was interesting, but again, everyone was getting tired so we decided to leave.

(Bye, bye art museum!!)

As we were on the way to the car I remembered that I needed pictures for my blog.  No one wanted to be in a picture, so I gave the camera to Mitch to take a picture for me:

Then she kept taking pictures.  She wouldn't stop!  She was like a paparazzi possessed!  I ended up in a fit of giggling while I tried to wrest the camera from her hands (she's stronger than she looks)

Mitch, being the best friend a girl could want, finally agreed to let me take a picture.  The moral of this picture is:  Don't wear stupid glasses or you may get punched by Mitch:

Next week, the gang and I are going to the cleveland zoo!!  I am hoping for a petting zoo.  Get psyched for animals!