massena in the news...and not the public record

i've had some damn good pancake breakfasts growing up...

http://nymag.com/daily/intel/2008/11/chris_smith_on_hillary_paterso.html?f=most-commente

who doesn't love a good book?

i'll keep the list updated as i start/finish books.

09.12.08-09.12.08 A: "veronika decides to die" by paulo coelho
09.09.08-09.12.08 A: "not just a pretty face: the ugly side of the beauty industry" by stacy malkan
09.13.08-09.16.08 A+: "the world without us" by alan weisman
08.19.08-08.27.08 A+ : "in defense of food: an eater's manifesto" by michael pollan
08.09.08-08.18.08 B: "lullaby" by chuck palahniuk
07.28.08-07.31.08 A+: "the witch of portobello" by paulo coelho
07.15.08-08.15.08 C+: "the politically incorrect guide to global warming and the environment"

green tp

yes, that's right...tp that's from 100% recycled paper and bleached without chlorine. and it was the cheapest (besides wegmans brand) in wegmans. seriously.

pear trees in ny?

who knew...

barktoberfest

today we walked 1.5 miles at barktoberfest, lollypop farm's annual fundraiser. too bad it was kinda of a crummy day. but we did see lots of animals on our walk...and one pulverized car from who knows when.

http://www.lollypop.org/

choke

i'm a big fan of chuck palahniuk's books, so when i saw they were making another one into a movie, i wanted to see it (the first was fight club). yes, it's just as messed up and twisted as fight club, but what the movie was lacking from the book is the deepness about life. fight club (and all his books) are messed up in their own unique way, but they all have a fundamental lesson and are pretty deep about different aspects of life. the movie was missing this. i think that's a huge reason why people liked fight club...all the talk about life being a machine and not living your life to serve it. the depth was missing from this movie, which is a disasspointment as it's definitely a big part of the book. all in all, i give it a B.

soymilk

no, i haven't gone completely hippy yet. i was in lowell, mass for a work thing and wanted milk for dinner. the grocery store didn't have small single serve milk, so i got soymilk. all those silk commercials made me think it wasn't going to be so bad and i've always kinda wanted to try it. well...it's not that it's horrible, i would just much rather have real milk than soy. it has a bad chalky aftertaste that i do not care for. others may like it. me, not so much.

weird red berries

these are the same bushes/berries we saw in the park in cleveland. only these were in corbett's glen. no clue what they are either. they look like cherries, but definitely aren't.

weird berries

i saw these berries when we were walking through corbett's glen. i have no clue what they are, but i love the bright colors.

night tree

corbett's glen

we went to corbett's glen for the afternoon today. not a bad little park at all. there were a couple people there with their dogs and some playing in the water, but definitely tucked away enough to not be crowded. i wanna go back in the summer when it's hot and play in the water...and later this fall when the leaves have changed.

lovin cup

we tried lovin cup today for lunch. here's my take:
the food is basic cafe fare...salads, sandwiches, pizza, and coffees...nothing too crazy. the food isn't bad. nothing great, but not bad. i'd go back there if someone else really wanted to, but i don't think i'd make a point to.

i had the "i'm hot for teacher." sounds funny at first. until you realize their entire menu is made up of names that don't even hint at what the food actually is. not only are the meals themselves named this way, but the groups of foods are too...for example, "unplugged" means "cold sandwiches." it's pretty obnoxious considering you need to seriously read the entire menu to determine what you want.

...couple the above weird food names with the menu display and it takes a good ten minutes just to read the menu. the menu is on the wall above the register written on a good 20 old picture frames. and in hard to read text. annoying.

the menu wouldn't be so annoying if you didn't have to order at a counter and instead had a waiter.

my coffee was kinda lame. frankly at this day and age if you're charging $4 for coffee, it's expected to be really good. mine was subpar.

and it was pricey. $20 for two sandwiches and a coffee.

really?!

i got my new rachael ray magazine (yes i get it...the recipes aren't bad) and got to this page. how did this make it past editors?!

goodness cakes.

i ate my slice of wedding cake from them today. as far as bakery cakes go, it was only ok. nothing amazing about it, but none the less better than anything i could make at home.

day of fun!

jason got up this morning and announced "let's have a day of fun activities today" so here's what we did:

i had leftover italian bread, fontina cheese, and prosciutto (the di parma is way better than the wegmans brand) from our wine and cheese night on friday, so i made sandwiches for breakfast for us. i just layered the cheese and then 2 pieces of prosciutto on each piece of bread and toasted it in the toaster oven. it was heaven. jason was skeptical until he tried it and then was disappointed when they were gone. try it sometime, you'll love it.

we went to the public market downtown and got our fruit and vegetables for the week. some people say you need to get there right when it opens early in the morning, but we went later, around 1, and i almost think that's better. you don't need to worry about anyone running out of produce and since it's late, all the prices are reduced. we left with apples, peaches, a zucchini, cucumbers, new potatoes, carrots, and romaine. not bad for 45 minutes.

before heading home we stopped at Goodness Cakes, a new bakery on University (just east of Starry Nites). the bakery is meant for takeout, but everything looked really good. i settled on a piece of wedding cake and a mini vanilla bean cupcake. both were really good.

we spent a couple hours in the afternoon at marketplace. we got mariokart for wii...which i'm still surprised is finally in stock anywhere. and i got some clothes. nothing too exciting.

our newest favorite dinner is lo mein with chicken and tons of vegetables. tonight we had it with snow peas, carrots, zucchini, green onions, water chestnuts, and bean sprouts...with a sauce simply of sesame seed oil and soy sauce. delish.

next up was a trip to tinseltown in gates to see the newest Cohen brothers movie Burn After Reading. it was more like the big lebowski than no country for old men. jason said it best - it was a comedic thriller. it was definitely a comedy but it also had a good story as well. i give it a B+.

after the movie it was on to vertex. we met up with some friends we hadn't seen in a while, had some drinks, and left in the pouring rain. we ended the night with a trip to the taco bell drive thru. yes, that's how the day of fun ended. taco bell. never saw that one coming.

i love surprises.

i guess jason got sick of hearing me complain about not buying earrings i saw at the clothesline festival last weekend...little did i know that he bought them when i wasn't with him. instead of waiting for a holiday, he gave them to me this morning...probably so i'd be quiet about it.

life's a bowl of peaches

every year i look forward to august just for peaches. i love them. it's the only time of the year i'll eat them and i eat at least 2 every day. i wish every day could be as good as a bowl of peaches.

i love accessories

i had a real dilemma. my sixth and final watch battery died. i called macy's...they only change watch batteries if you bought the watch there and if you bought the extended warranty plan (people actually buy those?!). i obviously didnt do either, so i went to dakota watch company in marketplace mall...man was a lucky. battery change costs $10 a watch...but they have 20% discount and buy 5, get the 6th free. so it costs me only $42 to get all 6 batteries changed...not nearly as costly as i thought it was going to be. and no, you dont have to buy all the batteries at once, they have a frequent buyer card. now i have a new dilemma - which one do i wear?!

peach crisp

if you couldn't tell from the brownies, i feel like baking. so tonight i made peach crisp, one of my all time favorites. it was really good, would have been better with vanilla ice cream.

clothesline festival

even though it was a really crummy day - it rained the whole time we were there and we of course didn't bring an umbrella - the festival was very similar to the other summer festivals. cornhill arts festival and park ave art festival are basically the same, just in a different location. that being said, i love spending an afternoon looking at handmade arts & crafts.

homemade brownies

brownies from scratch are a million times better than the mix. homemade ones aren't greasy and gross like the ones from the box, but they're still really moist. i'm definitely not going back to the mixes.

corn hill landing

i haven't been to corn hill landing at all really since they built it, so we went to the corn hill creamery for ice cream tonight. the ice cream was good, but i was really impressed with the layout and choices of restaurants there. each of them are located so they have outdoor seating on the water with a great view of the city and the new bridge. siam (thai), tony d's (pizza) and chayote (mexican) are all places i want to try for dinner soon.

caricature

jason and i had our caricature drawn at the rit farmers market today. he was paranoid about his nose looking big...i think i got the weird nose.

buh bye riverknoll

they're tearing down parts of riverknoll this year (and the rest next) to make way for a global village - apartments, fitness center, coffee, food, etc.

how to eat an avocado

1. cut all the way around the avocado. don't to the pit, but not through it.
2. once you've cut all the way around, put down the knife and hold one half with your fingers or in your palm. twist and pull so you have two halves.
3. tap your knife into the pit so it stays.
4. twist and pull up on the knife and the pit will come out on the knife. use your fingers to push the pit off the knife over the garbage so you don't cut your finger.
5. hold a half in your palm and run a teaspoon around the rim of the skin to pop out the avodado flesh.
6. the avocado should come out in one whole piece separate from the skin.

cleveland: day 4

so...our hotel. we stayed at a days inn on euclid in the city. not a bad hotel for $65 a night. but there were a few issues...
- the shampoo and conditioner were already open in the bathroom. i always bring my own, so i just threw them away and didn't worry about it.
- the bottom bed sheet didn't fit the bed. that drives me crazy. the whole first night the sheet kept popping off the bed. obnoxious. the plan was for us to let them change our sheets the next day when the housekeeper came in, then the sheets would fit. great plan, except
- our room was never cleaned! we stayed three nights and a housekeeper didn't even come in to our room any of the days, let alone clean it.

on our way out, we stopped at the christmas story house for a picture. the museum was closed so we didn't get a chance to see inside. the leg lamp was definitely in the window!

our last stop was at legacy village, an outside shopping mall. i bought a book (surprise) and we had lunch at california pizza kitchen. we shared a pizza and got two salads...it was the perfect lunch. dessert was gelato at the gelateria...my peach & raspberry was better than jason's chocolate. then we headed home.

all in all not a bad trip at all.

cleveland: day 3

we spent the day walking around university circle and made a couple stops along the way.

we tried to have breakfast somewhere nice, but the only thing open was a quiznos and mexican place, so we went for quiznos breakfast sandwiches. not bad at all. i absolutely hate it when the garbage cans are overflowing outside.

on our way to the botanical garden we walked through case western reserve university. they have a lot of cool art & architecture there. the botanical garden was cool. they have a giant glasshouse and half of it is a desert climate and the other half has a million butterflies flying around. the outside gardens vary from waterfalls and japanese to a set centered around music. it was a good way to spend the early afternoon. we then went to the vatican exhibit at the western reserve historical society. they had a ton of artifacts and pictures form the vatican. jason really liked it.












we walked over to little italy for dinner. i was disappointed that the trattoria had stopped taking walkins at 6:00! they were crazy busy and the food looked really good. i'd definitely make a reservation next time.

we ate at la dolce vita. the food wasn't anything special at all. and it definitely wasn't worth $50.
we walked off dinner before dessert and just missed corbo's bakery closing at 8. we were 0 for 2. pretty much everything closed, so we ended our night with gelato at anthony's, the only place open. it wasn't gelato exactly, much too cold and too hard, but it was good none the less.

cleveland: day 2

we spent the morning at the great lakes science center. it wasn't too bad, but it would have been better if we had kids with us, because it was definitely geared towards a younger crowd. we still managed to spend the morning there. the entrance of the science center not only has a set of working solar panels above the sidewalk cover, but also has a working windmill in the front. it would have been nice if they had some info about it somewhere though.





oh and the cleveland air show was going on this weekend too, so we snuck outside to watch a couple of the jets during the day. they were surprisingly close to us.

we walked across the lawn and spent the afternoon at the rock & roll hall of fame. there are a couple cool things there, but it was not worth the $22 admission fee. i vote skip it if you aren't crazy about music. the building looks pretty cool though.


during the day we made dinner reservations at nighttown, a restaurant that every source i looked at says is the best of the best. needless to say, we weren't impressed. jason couldn't find anything worth eating besides a chicken sandwich on the menu. i had pork chops with fruit on top, but they weren't so great. skip it.

cleveland: day 1

here's what was good, what wasn't, and what was ok but not worth the money...

we arrived around noon and went to the Old Arcade. it's a beautiful building, but we were surprised at how little is actually inside it. we ate lunch there out of shear hunger. and then walked to Terminal Tower, which is a huge, gorgeous shopping mall...a complete surprise to us.






then we went to the westside market. i was disappointed we couldn't buy more than some berries, coffee beans, and a couple other things.

we had dinner at the Great Lakes Brewery...definitely the best meal we had the whole trip. beer was good too. after dinner we went downtown to take some night shots.

then that night i had my cupcake i bought at the westside market. it was by far the best cupcake i've ever had in my life.