CurlyShavings

Remember, you heard it first here! A giant spider is menacing Cleveland. No, it isn't red and blue, only out of focus.

So, what is it? The Cleveland Water Crib Web Cam has a spider whose web has been in front of it for some months now. Every once in a while he/she/it gets into a position and menaces our fair city's skyline.

I just thought I'd share.

So check the live images every once in a while (this image was from around 8pm today) and see what the spider is doing! Here's the spider in September.

Now for the real news. Why is there a web cam on one of Cleveland's water intake cribs? I'm not sure, but it is part of Green Energy Ohio's feasibility study of wind power generation off Ohio's north shore. Looking at the streaming data from the anemometers, etc. placed at various levels, we ought to be able to work something out.

Like Sarah Taylor (disclosure, she's my neighbor), I feel strongly that we ought to have wind power generation on the Cleveland waterfront. Check out her website, Windustrious.com, see the opening Flash presentation and get a feel for why this makes sense. Please approach it with an open mind; she has answers for all your objections, from bird body counts to lake-bed vibrations.

I suppose I'm conflicted. This time of year I like it cold, crisp and bright outside and warm, moist and bright inside. (I'd really rather be sailing, but that's another thing.)

Like Anna at little.red.boat, I'm a bit impacted by the dark gray skies and short days. (I sometimes read little.red.boat simply because of the little red boat graphic.) Seasonal Affective Disorder is a bummer and so I might huddle under my "happy light" more in the next few months than I ordinarily would.

And now I remember that tonight the US Congress has inflicted a "Fall Back" maneuver on the timepiece. Daylight Savings Time ends (or begins, I forget which) tomorrow at 2am Eastern. Having saved nothing in terms of energy (which the bill/law was supposed to do) and expended tons in terms of effort (to update computer systems, etc.), we merrily go our way into the darkness that is Fall in NE Ohio.

Here's an example of what I was talking about yesterday: the Port Authority issued some bonds for an office building (no where near the port). Can't we let private citizens decide if and/or where we need more office space? Why do taxpayers have to help? Let these builders/developers get a bank loan.

Crain's Cleveland posted yesterday some information on office buildings in the `burbs. The Wall Street Journal posted some vacancy rates for Cleveland. It seems pretty high and is rising (2Q2006 was 17.9% and 2Q2007 was 18.1%). Why build rather than buy? Is it that much cheaper? (Never mind the County's $35MM asking price for their E9th street screwup.)

(Full disclosure: I work for a bank. And while I may not sound like it, I love my town, Cleveland.)

Ripe from Downtown Salsa comes in two varieties (medium and hot) and is really quite good. Not authentic Mexican-from-my-childhood good, but "Hey, this is good!" good. And it is quite exciting to be able to eat something local. The Cleveland Botanical Garden has an outreach program that produces it.

While researching this blog I discovered that I couldn't determine how I'd found out about this. [11/14/2007 - Update: It came from this TOIstudio blog entry.] We stopped by Heinen's yesterday and grabbed two jars (and consumed one already). We'll look at Zagara's later this week.

We're going to be busy this Christmas season. This is the list of movies we're planning to watch (including six versions of A Christmas Carol).

• White Christmas (Irving Berlin)


• The Bells of St. Mary's (Bing Crosby & Ingrid Bergman)


• Santa Claus is Coming to Town (Fred Astaire)


• A Christmas Story (leg lamp, anyone?)


• Miracle on 34th Street (1947)


• Rudolph the Red-Nosed Reindeer (original TV version)


• The Star of Christmas (Veggietales)


• The Muppets Christmas Carol


• A Christmas Carol (Patrick Stewart)


• Scrooge (Albert Finney)


• Scrooge (1951, Alastair Sim)


• A Christmas Carol (George C. Scott)


• A Christmas Carol (Focus on the Family Radio Theater)


• The True Christmas Story (Zondervan)


• A Charlie Brown Christmas


• It's a Wonderful Life


• Nutcracker (American Ballet Theater)


• How the Grinch Stole Christmas! (Boris Karloff)


• The Year Without A Santa Claus (Mickey Rooney)


• The Toy That Saved Christmas (Veggietales)


• Jiminy Cricket's Christmas (Walt Disney)


• A Disney Christmas Gift (Walt Disney)


• National Lampoon's Christmas Vacation

If you have any questions (like why is Bells of St. Mary's on the list), feel free to write. Some of them I hope to be at work for (all the Disney ones). I think National Lampoon is the TV version so we'll be able to show that to the children. The best Christmas Carol is actually a radio version. And why are we watching A Christmas Story? Because we live 8.1 miles from the Christmas Story House and because we live in Cleveland!

And this doesn't include the 7.8 hours of Christmas music we've collected on iTunes.

I like the idea of plastering the Cuyahoga County Commissioner's East 9th and Euclid construction fence with the graffiti that citizens post on a website. Sure, there are a million other (and largely better) ways to spend that money, but this remains an interesting idea.

I walked past this location yesterday (attempting to use RTA on the Euclid Corridor to get home) and saw that most of the posters from earlier in the year had blown away. As far as media goes, these posters become interesting social objects: I walk by, note the "checkthefence.us" domain, go home (hopefully by RTA), remember to type it into my browser, read up on the construction, create some graffiti, go back (hopefully by RTA), see my poster!

Except for the wind's impact (Oh, the irony of the first poster's image!), nothing seems to have changed. Not even the website seems to be getting much use -- there aren't any images or comments accessible from what I could find poking around. Poking around yielded a few other interesting items as well. Why did the Commissioner's feel the need to register both the checkthefence.us and checkthefence.com domains? Who is John Dowling and does he know that on all the pages, one of the links ("About the Construction") is just text? Does it mean anything that the contents of that page are all gibberish?

Regardless of where you stand on the issue of what to do with the Breuer (I'm in favor of keeping), wouldn't you like to know what our Commissioners think about it? About the Construction would be such a place. Since the links to this page don't work from the site's other pages, I can only assume that what I found is a stub of a page to be used when the Commissioners' plans are coherent enough to communicate to the rest of the public. (In case they update it later, this is what it looked like this morning.)

When the sun is shining, Cleveland is a nice place, even today when the high was in the teens and the wind chill was single digits, sometimes on the negative side of zero.

Today's post has a number of pictures of Cleveland in it. They were all taken from the north-east quadrant of Cleveland's Public Square while I was waiting on a 32x to take me home. I was playing with our newish camera, a Canon PowerShot SX100 IS. Even so, I love my city.

There's something special about interacting with a building with a camera. "Hmmm, there's a lamp post in the way. What if I stand on this bench?" Or "Wow! There's a neat angle between those two buildings—what if we try a zoom?"

And most, no, probably all the buildings have something really neat about them. And that's coming from someone who knows (relatively) little about Cleveland. Maybe it is because I've spent the last ten years walking amongst them.

When the Euclid Corridor Project messed up the commute in 2006 (yes, I think it's been that long), we 32x-ers got shuffled around downtown when the routes changed. It turned into a good thing. No longer was I dropped off in front of my building (the old May Company Building); I had to walk.

For example, my morning walk sometimes takes me from in front of the building seen behind the Peace Memorial. It's labeled "Cleveland Public Auditorium" in this picture. I walk past the Peace Memorial and along the side of the Metzenbaum U.S. Courthouse. Sometimes the east side and sometimes the west side. Sometimes I go into the BP Building for coffee and bypass the Soldiers and Sailors Monument. Other times I skip all that and just walk the Square to the May Company building.

Sometimes I just linger in the Square, looking around. The other day, for example, we had a Charlie Brown Christmas snow going on and the Square was just perfectly lit, it was early enough (7am?) that the traffic wasn't terrible and I could just enjoy the scene.

I don't have any 127 Public Square (Key Tower) pictures here, but I can remember a time on the 5xth floor in a training class and taking a recess to watch one of the falcons disembowel a pigeon on the sill. That was a day to remember.

My first experience with a subpoena was in the BP Building, testifying about a situation at a former employer.

My point is that these are like silent old friends. And some aren't so silent. My company has its roots in the Society for Savings building. I have a friend (and co-32x rider) who works in the Metzenbaum U.S. Courthouse. I have a work colleague who drags us out of the office once a year to the Soldiers and Sailors. I sometimes have lunch on its steps. I always look for the May Company building when I watch A Christmas Story because it shows up there in a couple of scenes.

Tower City can be seen in Spider-Man 3, complete with scaffolding. There's a geocache near this famous Charles Brush lamp on the corner.

I used to meet in the Old Stone Church with a bunch of men with the CBMC.

I used to work at 55 Public Square. That was an adventure. My boss would take me to Johnny Q's for my performance review. We'd have root beer floats. Nice. I think I've even passed along the favor a few times.

I have a piece of red granite from the BP Building in my back yard that I scavenged from a scrap pile years ago.

Even when the sun isn't shining, it's still a nice place. Sun helps, though.

The light was just right when I got off the 32x today near my home.

St. Ann is a landmark for people trying to find my house. I'm sure that it's due to their tower that we have such lovely mobile reception. They give us carillon recitals daily. They don't strike the hour, but one can get into the rhythm of their schedule. We chuckle when they play reformed hymns and praise choruses.

The architecture is just incredible. You can read more about it in this Cleveland Heights Landmark Brochure, landmark #8, pg9.

Distracted by a reorg at work today, a colleague and I went for a walk at lunch and ended up at the Euclid Arcade to get Vincenza's pizza for lunch. As we passed the cutover from the Euclid Arcade to the Colonial Arcade, I caught a glimpse of Anne DeChant, a frequent performer during Friday lunch. That's a pleasant surprise.

I was already looking forward to good food and good conversation, now I could add good music to the mix.

After picking up our pizza (I got two slices of Chicago Artichoke, my favorite), we walked over to the cutover and sat down opposite the Baseball Heritage Museum to talk, eat and listen.

Once we figured out the new org chart, we turned to listen. She's good. I don't always understand nor agree with all the lyrics but good live acoustic guitar is still good listening. We listened to "I love you Carolyn" and a few others before needing to head back to the office.

As we left (and dropped a couple bucks in her guitar case), we chatted a little bit, as always. One of her songs will be on TV tomorrow night. What she didn't tell us was that in April, she's moving to Nashville. That's an unpleasant surprise.

Her next time to be at the Euclid Arcade will be March 7th. I'd better schedule lunch with my colleague now.

I like a bit of weather.

That sounds silly, given that we always have weather, of one sort of another. Maybe what I mean is that I appreciate different weather that gets you jumping. Or maybe what I mean is that I enjoy the fact that the weather is always changing. It's like visiting someplace new just because the weather rolled out a new fog for us to enjoy.

My enjoyment is probably helped by the fact that I take RTA, Cuyahoga County's public transportation. I can stand in the rain at 6:18 am, catch a bus to downtown, walk to the old May Company building and be inside by 7:00 am (most days, unless I stop for coffee).

Well, after a very productive lunch discussion yesterday (Tuesday), I walked over to my 6th floor window (shared with all the other people on the north end of the floor), looked out over Public Square and couldn't find Key Tower. Some cat just took it away. Gone. Not even a hole in the ground. The Solders and Sailors Monument was still there and I think I saw Old Stone Church (both pictured nearby). But Key Tower was just gone.

I figure that the scenes all existed before I started carrying my wife's camera, but somehow, with it in my satchel, I caught more of them.

So here are two pictures of downtown Cleveland in the 2/5/2008 fog taken around 1pm, facing northwest from the sixth floor of the old May Company building.

And a zoom shot of a Cleveland Mounted Police Officer taken from the southwest corner of the southeast quadrant of Public Square (near the Soldiers and Sailors monument). He's situated on the southeast corner of the southwest quadrant, with Tower City Center behind him.

Cleveland Heights has just amazing architecture within its bounds. St. Paul's Episcopal Church is just one example.

This picture is of their bell tower. It is reported to be 150 feet tall and holds Seabrook chimes.

Boy Scout Troop 22 meets in their dining room every Monday night at 7:30. This past Thursday I had the chance to descend even further and go into the basement. You're so far underneath this building that you'd expect it to be nothing but a crawlspace. And yet you're so far underneath this building that you're under the parking lot and the room is a voluminous cavern.

The way the building is organized does allow for a rather enormous boiler room. But I'd like to emphasize the word enormous.

The architecture (not the boiler room!) is just incredible. You can read more about it in this Cleveland Heights Landmark Brochure, landmark #12, pg12.

Ever since I captured the St Ann Parish bell tower with the fading sunlight behind it, I've been fascinated with interplay between the tower's environs up there, the "stuff" around it (sunset, fog).

One of the ubiquitous honey locusts in the neighborhood becomes my tripod; I brace the camera against it to keep it from wobbling too much.

The USNO tells us that the "phase of the Moon on 9 February" was "waxing crescent with 8% of the Moon's visible disk illuminated" and that we had "New Moon on 6 February 2008 at 10:44 p.m. Eastern Standard Time."

When we left the Cleveland Home and Garden Show at the I-X Center last night, we observed what my oldest daughter calls a "bananamoon". I wondered if it would hang up there long enough for me to catch it at St Ann's. And it did. Another few minutes and we'd have missed it, though.

The architecture is just incredible. You can read more about it in this Cleveland Heights Landmark Brochure, landmark #8, pg9.

Professor Cecil Isaac first pointed me to Rosencrantz and Guildenstern are Dead in 1991 in a distraction to a music appreciation course I was taking with him and I doubt I have ever sufficiently thanked him for it. Since then I have listened to a radio-theater version multiple times and read and re-read the script many, many multiples of times. So seventeen years later I was extremely tickled to see a poster at Tommy's in Coventry that my wife pointed out with our local Cleveland Shakespeare Festival (CSF) offering both Hamlet and R&G. (I think it was the children who first saw the poster and wanted to know why the guy was kissing the skull!)

Times being what they are (Indifferent? No, just busy!), we were unable to properly schedule our date until the last weekend of the performances, August 2nd and 3rd. The other details of the evenings can be found nearby. Here's what we thought of the plays.

Hamlet

Prior to this weekend I had dusted off my old Yale Shakespeare to re-read. I had forgotten that Hamlet was "just a bunch of old quotes strung together" and re-reading helped bring those famous lines back to the forefront.

CSF did a marvelous job with our local talent and made the evening quite enjoyable. Dusten Welch (Hamlet) was (in my wife's words) either not feeling well or truly mad and either way, his performance worked for us. Erin Barnes (Ophelia) made you want to skip around the stage along with her when she was in love and rush out to comfort her as we watched her heartrending decent toward her death. She captured the "O, woe is me" (III.i.164) very well as she came undone and unraveled before us. She may actually be my favorite performance in this play.

The performance was well-done with both the minimal scenery, props and actors. Nothing was superfluous and yet nothing was lacking either. The partitions were well used and act and scene delineations were clear when they needed to be. The sound was adequate as both the actors and the sound system fought against the gentle NNE wind that cooled us that evening.

All-in-all we had a wonderful evening with a great play and a moving performance with convincing acting. CleveShakes did a wonderful job.

Rosencrantz and Guildenstern are Dead

Although I probably didn't need it, I dusted off my 1991 paperback of this name and this past week re-read it as well. Stoppard's mastery of the English language comes out very well in this work. He takes common words, uses them uncommonly, weaves them in such a way as to obfuscate his desired meaning and supplies alternate meanings as the situation calls for it.

I'm not certain how CSF cast the actors for either of these plays. I doubt I would have chosen Allen Branstein (Rosencrantz) or Erin McCardle (Guildenstern) for either (or both) of these works but they both surprised me and delighted me. I think their casting became clearer in R&G as we watched them play off each other and bring Stoppard's work to life. Branstein was convincingly off-kilter while McCardle tried to ground him. And a female Guildenstern? Well, that worked, too.

In fact this time around I noticed a steady and gradual increase in Rosencrantz' madness while Guildenstern actually grew more grounded. I was impressed with both their performances.

At one point my wife poked me and commented that the dialog was maddening, but I would place that more as Stoppard's responsibility than the actors. (Or perhaps she hears such back-and-forth near-meaningless dialog from the children all day?)

My sole complaint was the after-ending when R&G appeared from after being declared "dead" to begin spinning coins again. Perhaps it was an attempt to continue the humor and comedy of this play after the large body count at Hamlet's ending. Maybe that makes it more family friendly, but they were "dead" and dead they should remain. A minor point perhaps, but it did lessen my enjoyment and confuse my wife.

Overall

Many thanks to CSF for putting these two marvelous plays on and making them so accessible. There were large audiences both evenings and folks genuinely seemed to have good time. I certainly enjoyed both and so did my wife. Being able to do so in a weekend was icing on the cake.

The past 48 hours has been extremely busy for us. Here's what's been shaking.

Home Repair

Saturday morning found me up a ladder at a friend's house, cleaning a five-foot long section of downspout and tarping the resulting rotting shingle siding. The goal was to make it sufficiently functional that the water stops leaking into the foyer but sufficiently ugly that the homeowner wouldn't leave the tarp there indefinitely.

Sailing Lake Erie

Dinner at Cleveland's Saigon

After picking up and installing the baby-sitter, we headed to Cleveland's tasty East 4th Street for dinner at Cleveland's Saigon restaurant. Not far from my employer, I've eaten here three or four times and have developed a taste for BBQ Beef over Rice (C2). We have a rule in our house that you can't have the same dish twice in a row (unless Mom is serving leftovers) so I had to try something different: Salt-baked Scallop (T6). My wife had the Lemongrass Beef (E5). While I tasted hers and she enjoyed it thoroughly, I much preferred mine. Oh! Scallops were meant to be eaten! And whoever thought to lightly-salt and bake them?! The portion was a bit too big but that didn't stop me. Perhaps I could convince them to serve a lunch portion some day.

Cleveland Shakespeare Festival's Hamlet

Elsewhere on these pages I describe our evening watching Hamlet. Less than two miles from dinner, a quick jaunt down the freeway to West 14th street saw us to Tremont's Lincoln Park to see CSF's Saturday evening performance.

The weather (temperature, light and humidity) was perfect. The wind was a bit strong from the wrong quadrant, NNE, which, while blowing the actor's words away from us, also kept us from telling a hawk from a handsaw. Probably also kept the mosquitoes away, too.

All in all, a very good day and an excellent night.

Covenant Reformed Presbyterian Church

Sunday mornings find us at church. While there are many, many Presbyterian churches in the area, there are few nearby that hold to their ancient roots as much as the former RPCGA and, to some extent, the PCA. So we drive a gazillion miles to Covenant Reformed Presbyterian Church, part of the John Knox Presbytery. Why do we go there? It's complicated. Ask me some time.

Housekeeping

We're certainly not legalists. We (including the children) have kept the Sabbath on other days and therefore needed to break it this Sabbath. So we cleaned house on a Sunday because we rested some other day when we should have been working.

Cleveland's Zócalo

After picking up and installing the baby-sitter, we headed to Cleveland's tasty East 4th Street for dinner at Cleveland's Zócalo restaurant. Not far from my employer, I've eaten here three or four times and have developed a taste for Enchilada and/or Tamale Platos de Combinacion. We have a rule in our house that you can't have the same dish twice in a row (unless Mom is serving leftovers) so I had to try something different: Chile Relleno, one cheese and one beef.

I was under-impressed. My cheese Chile Relleno wasn't completely melted. I was surprised to find zucchini and asparagus in my beef Chile Relleno. Perhaps if I'd just gotten the one and not both? I don't know. The Queso Fundido was tasty though as were the chips, salsa and bean dip.

My wife may have had the best, though. She had the Sopa Tortilla Con Limón and it smelled and looked marvelous. She claimed to have liked it, too!

I think my fault with Zócalo is that having eaten extensively in Texas, Mexico and places further south (to the equator), there's a certain something that is hard to reproduce in northeast Ohio. It seems that only the fanciest restaurant or the humblest hole-in-the-wall can make good, authentic Mexican food.

Cleveland Shakespeare Festival's Rosencrantz and Guildenstern are Dead

Elsewhere on these pages I describe our evening watching Rosencrantz and Guildenstern are Dead. Less than two miles from dinner, a quick jaunt down the freeway to West 14th street saw us to Tremont's Lincoln Park gazebo to see CSF's Saturday evening performance.

The weather (temperature, light and humidity) was again perfect. I have wanted to see this play since 1991 and finally got to see it.

The Tremont Scoops mint chocolate-chip ice cream sandwiches are awesome!

All in all, another very good day and an excellent night.

I will most definitely be watching Cleveland's Shakespeare Festival's website for next year's announcements. We will be back!

There's a website with a scatological PG-13 title that has accepted a couple of submissions of mine. It seems to poke at builders in the city who build bad buildings. Whether it is an architectural detail or just a bad design, the unknown author published pictures and a short blast against whatever has been discovered recently.

Here's one on a sidewalk near where I walk many days.

Here's another one on a different sidewalk, also near one of my walks.

Most of Saturday was spent solo with my two girls (newly nine and nearly two). We took the boys (twelve and five) and Mom to the trolley and then went in search of bagels. While sitting in the booth enjoying my blueberry bagel with plain cream cheese, there was plenty of giggling, squirming and eating going on. The girls got cinnamon sugar with plain cream cheese (I had one of those, too) and orange juice.

At one point, thinking how blessed I was to be able to enjoy their delicious company, it occurred to me to wonder what the others in the place were thinking. To be honest, they were probably completely engrossed in their own days, flirting at the table in front of us, quickly wolfing down breakfast behind us, furiously typing on a laptop across the room.

But the thought came again a few hours later as we were met on the pathway upstream from the Nature Center by a couple of families. What are they thinking of us? I had two little girls in wellingtons, calf-deep in the dirty Doan Brook with nets.

You might say that I shouldn't think about such things and why would I be concerned about what someone else thinks. You'd be right. And yet, since I'm proud of my children and the strange ways they like to spend time with their dad, I do sometimes wonder what other people are thinking about us.

More than anything else, I don't want observers to be thinking I'm a custodial father (I'm not), only getting his girls on the weekend. It is true that I don't spend nearly as much time with them as I'd (or they would) like. It is also true that I work full-time with a 90-minute round-trip commute. Those are things I can't change easily. Dropping a few evening committee commitments might be possible and is something I have considered and done. Probably the most effective action would be to begin saying "Yes" more to them and "No" more to others.

Yes, I will go stomping in the creek with you. Yes, I will go fishing with you. Yes, I will go to the fair with you. Yes, I will make gummy worms with you. Yes, I will make biscotti with you. Yes, I will sit and snuggle with you. "Yes"—it's such a powerful word.

He will restore the hearts of the fathers to their children and the hearts of the children to their fathers, so that I will not come and smite the land with a curse.

Crossing St. Clair in the morning from Mall B to Mall A (Cleveland, Ohio) is frequently an exciting exercise. There is a crosswalk for those wishing to cross the five lanes (two westbound, two eastbound and a turning lane) however five lanes is a long way to go when you're playing chicken with multiple instances of steel and plastic weighing two thousand pounds each.

As I approached the crosswalk this morning there was another walker considering the distance. I may be a daredevil but my strategy is usually to consider the oncoming traffic for obvious gaps and upon seeing none, I barge forward and stare the vehicles down.

"Fortune favors the bold" I quoted to the man standing there as I stepped out. "Besides, there's a law in Ohio that they must stop."

Turns out he's from out of town and "In New York, they'd never stop—they'd have killed you."

Too true," I agreed and welcomed him to Cleveland."

Something to think about—another reason for enjoying our small(er)-town living.

Please take the time to vote today!

Some time ago I set a goal to eat my way through East 4th Street here in Cleveland. A worthy goal, given all there is to eat on East 4th, and yet an ambitious one, too, for the same reasons.

On this page, I'll catch you up with a quick synopsis and will link over to a larger review where appropriate. Here's where we stand:

Zocalo

I originally had been very excited about this place when it first opened. It sounded like there was going to be an attempt at some real Mexican food. I've eaten there four or five times and each was disappointing. If I'm going to pay these prices, I expect it to taste like a Mexican made it, not like food that American kitchens churn out every day across the country.

More thoughts here.

Flannery's

One can eat rather well at Flannery's. The meatloaf is exquisite and there are many other things that delight as well. It's like eating bar food without eating bar food. (And they serve Woodchucks, yum!)

House of Blues

Food's a bit pricey and not terribly exciting. Yes, you're supposed to go for the ambiance, like Hard Rock, only Blues.

Pickwick & Frolic

Prices seem a bit high but very edible. They've got a cheddar-ale soup that's yummy (among a long list of other tasty things).

Saigon

Of all the food on East 4th, Saigon is where I'll keep going and going and going. Scores high on prices, portions and edibility.

More thoughts here.

Corner Alley or 4th Street Bar & Grill

Prices seem a bit high for the lunch crowd. One won't starve here.

Wonder Bar

Not yet visited. Is this place open at lunch time?

La Strada

Not yet visited.

Lola

Not yet visited. Yes, I know, this place is famous; how have I avoided/delayed going for so long?

Harry Buffalo

Not part of the East 4th Street neighborhood, but definitely on East 4th Street. Bar food: what else can you say?

There are some who would add Theresa's Pizzaria and Jimmy John's to the list. Why? They're not even on East 4th. It's bad enough that Flannery's door isn't on East 4th (but their windows are).

Wednesday, the management team of which I am a member went out to lunch as we frequently do; this time we chose La Strada in an effort to eat through East Fourth Street.

It was a cold, gray day in Cleveland (as it sometimes is) and by the time we got there (four blocks to East Fourth) and opened the doors, our frozen senses were assaulted by the warm smell of food. I couldn't tell if it was baking bread, roasting meat or what; it was only very clear that it involved food and fire.

The hostess was also our waitress (or maybe our waitress was also the hostess) but did not fill our glasses. The interior was dimly lit, there was a loud-ish rushing air noise and the table wobbled. These, however, were the only things that diminished the experience. Except for perhaps the prices. (I must confess I much prefer an $7-$9 business lunch (or even less)—call me cheap.) On the other hand, my water glass was never empty.

After hearing the specials and being sorely tempted by clams, I settled on the first item that caught my eye on the menu: Pesto Omar for $11 (lunch price). Described as an "errorless dish", it was simplicity defined and yet very pleasing. From La Dolce Vita (La Strada's sister restaurant) website: "a blend of fresh basil, walnuts and pine nuts, parmesan cheese, extra virgin olive oil..."

I am fascinated with the Italian ability to create pasta in a multitude of shapes, sizes, purposes, etc. Almost like watching an Eskimo name snow. The pasta chosen for this dish was perfectly matched for catching the pesto in its many crevasses.

Errorless. Perfection. Whichever, one won't get an argument out of me. It may not be fair to rate a restaurant by a single, simple dish, but La Strada gets the "come back with my wife" rating. Come to think of it, that's probably my highest rating. I'll let you know.

In Cleveland's Key Tower elevator today I was joined by a well-dressed man clearly shivering and shuddering from the cold. Making elevator small talk, I asked "cold enough for you?"

He shuddered again and explained "I just can't get used to these winters" as the elevator doors opened to his floor.

He exited the lift and I asked "where are you from?", expecting to hear somewhere sunny.

With the doors closing he turned and replied "Cleveland." The last I saw of him was his sheepish grin.

I'm a public transportation junkie. I don't really know how to explain it other than that. I enjoy taking buses and trains. There are a couple of aspects to it that I really, really enjoy.

Daily commute

My daily commute involves walking a half-block northwest, then a half-block east, catching the RTA #32 for a 40-minute ride to downtown Cleveland. I sometimes get off early and walk along the Mall, catching the light/snow/darkness on the statues there and just enjoying my city. Sometimes I get off at ground zero, Superior and Ontario and walk a short block to my employer. Unless my ride gets weird and I have to divert to a train or do some strange transfer, I usually get the full 40 minutes to read and satisfy that particular need.

In the afternoons, I reverse the route and get a further read-and-ride.

Recently, RTA raised the rates and lowered the service and I've had some difficulties in catching the right bus. In the morning, two buses come within four minutes of each other. The first one only goes to the train, leaving many riders five miles from downtown. The second one goes past the train and delivers riders downtown. As you can imagine, it is easy to end up on the first bus. Ironically, if you wait the ten minutes for the train, you'll end up downtown a full fifteen minutes earlier than waiting for the second bus.

What's frustrating though, is the lack of reading this bus/train mixture has. You only get a few pages into your book before it is time to get off and wait for the train. Standing on a freezing, blustery train platform is not conducive to reading. And once you're on the train, it's only a short ten minutes or so before you arrive. Short chunks of time don't add up to forty minutes at all.

So I've been known to be early for my bus and yet wave on the first, faster ride in favor of the second, longer ride that lets me read.

Adventures

Then there are the adventures. The "let's see if we can get there from here" type of experiences. Today, for example, I needed to run an errand (pick up two drills I had repaired) and it wasn't on my traditional bus line or even the train line. I spent a few minutes on the Google Transit web site to figure out how I was going to get to the tool shop and then how I was going to get home.

Overall, door-to-door, from my office to home, was just short of 1.75 hours. Going home and taking the car to pick it up would have resulted in arriving after they closed. Driving in Friday and picking up on the way home would have added 30 minutes to my trip home and spent 15 miles of gas (approximately .5 gallons in our Fit) plus $3.50 parking plus a wasted day on my pre-paid bus pass for a total of around $10. Taking the bus(es) to pick up it up on the way home added an hour to my trip home but no extra dollars.

And I got some exercise, too.

So I took the #1 on St. Clair from downtown to East 55th Street and then walked the 1/4 mile to the Kay-Dee tool repair shop. Then I walked down East 55th Street to a bus stop and had a delightful conversation with a fellow traveler. I misunderstood where the #2 went and ended up having to walk another 1/4 mile on Euclid Avenue to the bus stop there. I decided to leave that stop due to the unsavory characters spitting on the sidewalk and caught the #6 (aka "The HealthLine") to move along a bit further where I would wait for my #32. At Euclid and Stearns, I found that I had exchanged spitting on the sidewalk to foul-mouthed hoodlums standing in traffic daring cars to hit them. Too bad no one obliged them.

Some time later my #32 arrived and took me the rest of the way home.

All-in-all, I think if I had shortened my time at Kay-Dee Tools, I might have been home almost 40 minutes earlier. As I commented to myself earlier this evening, it was a complete success: I got my tools, I navigated my buses and made it home in good time.

Wrapping up

So that's how I look at Public Transportation: convenient, cheap, fairly reliable, flexible and a pleasant challenge. Of course, your mileage may vary!

We're big fans of reading. We have acres of books in our house, RSS subscriptions and too many magazine subscriptions. We get the Plain Dealer on Sundays (for the comics and ads only), and the Sun News on Thursdays (for the local police blotter) and the Wall Street Journal Monday through Saturday (for the national and international news as well as the opinion pages).

Most of the articles I read from the WSJ come through my RSS feeds and a cool tool for the BlackBerry called the Mobile Reader.

I think what they've done with their RSS feeds is very usable. Their headline and an introduction paragraph show up (free) in my Google Reader along with all my other "news" and if I want to read more, I click over to the article on wsj.com (paid) to read the entire thing. Since we're paper subscribers, the online version is slightly less expensive than an electronic subscription by itself. (And eliminating both would be gain even more savings, but I digress.)

I'll frequently read the online version at the office over lunch and come home and talk about it with my wife or the kids who have read the paper version at home. Or some days, when things are too hectic, I'll just read all my news on the BlackBerry's Mobile Reader. Today was one of those days.

I had gotten up and left the house before the paper had arrived and then wasn't in touch with a WiFi connection throughout the day. By the time I left Nashville, I had read all the Opinion pages and much of the x1 pages (where "x" is Section A, B, C, etc.) on my BlackBerry.

So it was quite disconcerting to see the fellow two rows in front of me paging through his paper to see article headlines I'd started reading at 5:30 am on my handheld device. At first it was a "where did I see those words in that order before" moment and then it became a "why are those words on his newspaper" thought and then it finished as a "I wonder if there are any differences in the text from his to mine" pondering (there sometimes are as misspellings and typos get corrected).

So, no, it wasn't a case of dual realities. To find those you'd have to compare an article from the Plain Dealer and with the same story from the Wall Street Journal. It doesn't happen often but we're sometimes left shaking our heads and wondering if we're on the same planet. It's (almost) always explainable by the bias that each paper has, but it can be very disconcerting.

My maternal grandmother lived in Erie, Pennsylvania. I visited a number of times growing up (late 70s), but I only ever remember visiting in the summer.

For someone transported from the southern parts of Texas, Erie in the summertime seemed a bit chilly. I now live in Cleveland, less than one hundred miles south and west of Erie and there are times in the summer when I'm transported back. Back in time, back to Erie, back to the front and back yards of the house with the African violets on the tables by the chair and windows.

Today, for example, my youngest and I went for a walk around the block. It's been a cool summer and yet there's something about a couple of warm days followed by a cool one that brings out certain smells.

It's that standing on someone's sidewalk, smelling their grass grow. A particular type of short, weak grass that looks nice cropped low. It might even be the exposed dirt that an edged sidewalk shows next to that grass. It's that mix of oaks and maples and sycamores (with a spruce mixed in for good measure) cooling off in the evening breeze.

And there are sounds along with these smells. Sounds of cars a few blocks away, but none on your street. It's the voices of folks from a distance, talking with one another, greeting one another as they pass on the various sidewalk slabs: sandstone, concrete and blue stone.

But mostly it's the smells.

And I'm nine, all over again.

On my way somewhere else in late August 2006, I found this amazing building at the top of a hill in East Cleveland Ohio. From a functional perspective, it was easily identified: an observatory. As a recent immigrant to the area, it wasn't as easy to figure out what, exactly, I'd stumbled into.

After some on-site snooping and with Google as my friend, I began to put together the story.

There is very little original research I can add to the conversation and so I will be content to simply post some pictures and some links.

Here are some other sites that have more to share on this incredible building:

• Case Western Reserve University has collected some facts about this site.


• Some local designers started this site while students at the Cleveland Institute of Art (CIA). At the time (2002-2005), they were interested seeing the property restored. There's a short and well-done DVD for sale with some great images and information.


• Some more images can be found here along with some information about the buyer from 2005 and what he was doing from 2007 until recently.


• There are many facilities with the Warner & Swasey Observatory name and/or that have Warner & Swasey equipment.

Can you imagine attending lectures in this auditorium?

Or how about using this entrance?

It's just a beautiful old building.

Many thanks to Bridget Callahan and her recent Warner & Swasey post (about the building where the telescopes were made) for reminding me of this trip to the Observatory.

As both my readers know, we're homeschooling parents and as such, we have incredible flexibility on what counts as "school". So when the teacher plans out a study of James Garfield with photos and video to submit to the CLE+ folks as part of their "Be the Plus" contest, well, what's the principal to do?

Well, one day I was chauffeur and another, video editor.

What follows is the result.

They've been studying with the aid of "From Canal Boy to President" and you can get your free copy here.

Much to my surprise, we won 4th place in the 2009 Be the Plus contest for our entry on "James A Garfield: a CLE+ President". It's a short video put together with snapshots from our visits around northeast Ohio and all the places JAG hung out.

We even got memorialized in a Tweet!

We chose the Canton Staycation package and so will be able to explore some of what Canton has to offer in the near future.

For being one of the first 20 entrants, I received a very cool CLE+ t-shirt (in Tidy-bowl blue) and a CLE+ bumper sticker.

So, without further ado, here's the fourth-place winner of this year's Be the Plus contest! Congratulations to my wife and all our kids!

Once we became aware of what we were looking for, we were seeing the blue blazes everywhere in northeast Ohio: on the road to Camp Hi, on the paths and road leading to church and many places in between.

Last week's adventure with Troop 403 logged a few more miles on this circuitous route around Ohio and while the trail felt our feet last year, we hadn't done anything serious since then.

So today we decided to log a few more miles on the trail, this time at the trail's northern terminus near Lake Erie. The trail starts (or ends) in the Headlands Beach State Park (Ohio) just north of Painesville on the west bank of the Grand River. So with our toes in Lake Erie, we started east and south toward Burton. Well, almost—we decided to avail ourselves of the picnic tables and have some lunch first.

The cottonwoods that make up much of the trees in this part of the park had already dropped most of their leaves and our feet made a loud rustling sound as we followed the blue blazes.

The trail isn't extremely well-marked at this point and we kept moving forward with a general idea of what we expected the trail to do until we caught up with the next blue blaze.

This took us out of the park toward the park entrance where we decided to continue west and back into the park toward the GC1QCEW geocache (which we found).

Heading north from there reconnected us to the Bedford section of the trail, coming in from the west. The trail is marked along the asphalt path that leads to the Northern Terminus but we chose to walk along the lake. And pick up beach glass. And chase seagulls. And look out, as if to sea.

The weather wasn't too cold, it wasn't too windy and the sunshine was pretty steady. All-in-all, a very nice Sunday afternoon in late October. After all, it could have been snowing.

There were several other singles, couples and families out today as well. Many of them were collecting beach glass for jewelry, collections and, as one fellow put it, "it beats watching the Browns".

So all six of us got another 2.54 miles of hiking under our soles: most of it Buckeye Trail or parallel to it or very near to it.

Someday we want to sink our toes into the waters of the Ohio at the other end (start?) of the Buckeye Trail. There will be plenty of miles between now and then. And when we do, we'll take another picture and post it nearby. I wouldn't be surprised if all of us, were significantly older then.

And we'll just keep following the Blue Blazes.

Note: I'm a Tiger Leader with Cleveland Heights' Pack 4 and occasionally blog on their site. This is a cross post from their latest adventure in Bedford Reservation.

As if I didn't have enough going on in my life, my family and my career, I thought I'd track a roll of quarters over at 42 Posts.

One introductory post, one post for each Bicentennial Quarter in the roll (40) and one concluding post. (Yes, there are only 40 quarters in a standard roll.)

Earlier this year I had mailed a completed roll to my mother (why do this?) and it never arrived. So it appears I needed to start over again.

It should be kinda fun. There's a map of each find, pictures from the scene of the find and snippy little comments about how each was found.

Since there's a defined (and limited) number of posts, you can afford to add it to your Google Reader list!

Last night we enjoyed a fabulous dinner over at Cleveland's La Dolce Vita in Little Italy.

We sat outside on this cool evening and just took the time to catch up the other on the goings on. And since there has been quite a bit going on and even more going on to come, we took our time.

We shared a salad appetizer and both ordered the fettuccine. I had a glass of some delicious pino grigio*. We shared the chocolate cake.

You might think that because I can't tell you the details, that it wasn't fabulous. And you'd be wrong.

It was just that we were more intent on each other than the food.

(Photo from Flickr user KAHOONICA)

*Pino grigio says "summer". This was apparently a blend of pino grigio and chardonnay. It said "summer" all the way to the bottom.

We saw flowers and plants and frogs and birds and butterflies, oh, my!

The moon as seen from near Rock Creek Ohio on July 3rd, 2010.

Our doorbell rang Sunday afternoon. Not the single "ding" that tells us that one of the kids has locked themselves out of the house and is impatiently waiting on the back steps but the double "ding-dong" that indicates someone waiting (patiently?) on the front steps.

My wife and I arrive at the front door together and we find a guy on our porch wearing shorts and a "Matt Brakey for County Council" t-shirt. And a two-day stubble. And a big toothy grin.

Turns out this is actually Matt Brakey, so we pin him down, follow Frazz's advice and asked him lots of questions. And he hung around answering them. He answered the ones we posed to him well.

Things like backing out of the Medical Mart (if it's really so important, why can't private industry find their own funding?), the role of government in the economy (make it easier for private companies to create jobs), limiting government and reducing taxes.

He said he'd look into a response on the Ameritrust property debacle and what he thinks the county should do. I'll post back if/when I get a reply.

If I'd known more about Matt Brakey before his appearance on our porch, I'd have asked him more and different questions.

• Under your proposal of no sales tax but higher property taxes, how might that impact retail purchasing trends? Our property ownership trends? Do you have any examples to point us to?
• Is it the red-light camera that disproportionately hurts the poor or just tickets for running red lights that does so? (Don't get me wrong, I think red-light cameras need to go, I just don't understand your reasons.)
• I'd also like to understand where you think we have a right to privacy. Or do we just expect that we have that right? (I like and enjoy privacy but am not quite sure where that "right" is guaranteed.)
• And I'd like to question some of your usage of social media. Some of your Twitter posts and responses on CleveScene.com aren't exactly County Council caliber. Some of your Facebook posts are. (I'm fairly certain that you, as a 29 year-old, have different views on this than I do!)
  On second thought, scratch that. Our current elected public officials frequently say things that seem intended for a different audience.
• Can we define "corporate welfare"? Let's make sure we're talking about banning the same thing.
• Oh, and one other thing: Where's the RSS feed for your blog?

What do I think of the candidate? Well, his sign is still in my yard. I urge you to give this fellow your consideration. Let's get through the primary and see what our choices are then.

Footnote:

I wish we hadn't changed our county government structure so quickly. I still maintain that it isn't the county structure that's corrupt but the folks in the structure. And I think the nearly-unanimous guilty pleas from all these indictments in our "County in Crisis" back me up.

Update (8/6/2010): Here's a link to the county's cast of characters.

We bought a block of tickets to the Lake County Captains this summer.

I cannot begin to recount all the fun times we had. And I hate to say it, but it was rarely about the baseball. It was nice that the Captains were having a winning season, but for the most part, the baseball is secondary.

As a friend of mine likes to cynically remind me, these folks are about publicity, promotion and razzmatazz. If a little bit of baseball interrupts their carnival, they don't seem to mind.

We enjoyed watching the kids run the outfield during the 7th inning stretch. We enjoyed the fireworks, seeing our names and birthdays up in lights on the big board, the games for flipping Kraft Singles, chasing fish around the infield, tossing tennis balls into hula hoops, and dozens of other gimmicks to keep the crown amused. We had fun interacting with Grover and Skipper and Skippy and standing around to get baseballs, cards and programs autographed.

In many ways it's quite different from a Major League game. Which major-league player would have given my daughter a cracked practice bat? (Well, future Major-Leaguer Ben Carlson did, that's who!) I doubt we'd ever have had that chance at a Major League game.

And it was fun to get ramped up with all the electronics, including the scoreboard hullabaloo and all the musical tricks they use to generate excitement.

And boy, was it ever loud!

Except when it wasn't and then the organ or the pre-recorded snippets of sound would wind up and eventually, they'd be telling us "everybody clap their hands!"

As my cynical friend likes to say, "in the old days" we used to know when to applaud the players with out being told to "make some noise"!

And it was that same friend that inspired me to return to keeping score, something I hadn't done in years. I probably enjoyed that game best of all.

I'm still not very good at it but I know for certain I'll be trying to score future games again.

So what was so much fun? A little baseball, a lot of fireworks, a bit of noise and a whole bunch of family.

We shivered through an early April game when it threatened to snow. We sweltered under the sun in August. We camped on the outfield after a great game. We dodged foul balls, ate hot dogs, gyros, hamburgers and ice cream. We brought our rain gear in protest of the darkening clouds.

We had a great summer.

KT and I were tasked with grocery shopping yesterday.

Well, actually it started the evening before with a "can we go bike riding tomorrow?" sort of plea.

Why not mix them together!?

When it was all collected, purchased and back home, we had the following items:

2 large pumpkins
2 bottles of wine
4 16oz jars of Little Italy Pasta Sauce (yumm!)
2 bags of pretzels
1 pound of roast beef
1 pound of sliced cheddar
2 pounds of butter
1/2 gallon of milk
2 pounds of apples

Oh, and a gumball.

It was a good trip.

But what made it fun was having KT along!

The Northeast Ohio Hiking Club sponsored a Meetup to hike the Wetmore & Langes Trails in a 9-mile loop this past Saturday.

It was well-attended (about 15 hikers & two dogs) and we kept up a very quick pace (about 3 mph). The Cuyahoga Valley National Park has a good topo map with the trails marked (pdf) and while a couple of us took the map along, the trails were obvious enough that we didn't risk getting lost. There are also a few trailhead markers when some of the spurs/loops or trails connect. Two of the paths we took had large signs indicating that the bridle trail was closed but we hiked it on foot anyway.

Yes, this is also a bridle trail. If you don't like picking the trail around horse scat or if you don't like how horses can destroy a foot path (see update below), then this may not be the trail for you.

We started at the Wetmore Trailhead (near the "X"), crossed Wetmore Road and headed south on the Valley Trail. From there, we picked up the Langes Run Trail in a counter-clockwise loop, crossed Wetmore Road again and connected with the Dickerson Run Trail headed west. Joining the Wetmore Trail again we continued west (now clockwise), passed near the parking area and continued the loop north toward Quick Road.

We briefly considered taking the Tabletop Trail and then continuing on the Wetmore or perhaps looping around (counter-clockwise) and adding another 1.6 miles, but that was quickly vetoed.

Instead, we continued west (clockwise) on the Wetmore, duplicated a short section of the trail and ended up at our cars.

All together, it was a 9.1 mile hike in just over three hours setting a pace of about 3 miles each hour. We started (and ended) at 850 feet elevation. Our highest point was 1047 feet and our lowest was 730 feet. The GPS indicates that we ascended (and descended) about 1300 feet on this route. To do all of this at once made it a fairly strenuous route for this area.

The trail winds its way through the standard Cuyahoga Valley collection of trees including oaks and hemlocks. We saw Erythronium americanum (Trout Lily) and Trillium grandiflorum (white Trillium) along with four or five different violets.

Wildlife was scarce (with two dogs and fifteen quickly-moving hikers) but I did see some chipmunks and we heard downy woodpeckers, flickers and red-wing blackbirds. This was the same hike we saw the hooded warbler last year during the 2010 Cuyahoga Challenge.

I'm not a big fan of these two trails (Wetmore and Langes) largely because of their dual-use nature with also being bridle trails. As Andrew (the hike leader) said in the Meetup page, these trails are always muddy, even in a late-summer drought. The horses contribute greatly to this, but the trails are also situated on shallow dirt over clay. Just be prepared for mud.

Would I hike this again? Probably. Averaging 3mph, it's hard to really care about the trail surface. You just go. Since it was on last year's Cuyahoga Challenge list, it's unlikely to be included in 2011. So I'll gladly hike it again some other year.

Update (20110526): I found this quote about shared horse/hiker trails on a Captain Blue blogpost (he's section hiking the Buckeye Trail) that I thought I'd share:

Whenever a footpath is shared by horses and hikers the hikers usually get the losing end of the deal. The trail was doubly muddy from all the hoof prints. Every hoof print makes an indentation which becomes a small puddle. The small puddles make one long stretch of muddy trail.

This week is Cleveland Bicycle Week and I have decided to take the challenge. I just arrived at the Shaker LaunchHouse where I consult, leading technical projects and people for startups.

Here's the route I took.

From my Bell F20 cyclometer, here are the stats:

Distance

3.339 miles

Time

14:05 mm:ss

Average speed

14.4 mph

Maximum speed

27.3 mph

Here are some of my observations:

Borderline weather can be nice

It was 49°F today and overcast. I started out in shirtsleeves and chilly and ended up nicely warmed by my arrival.

Bike lanes can be a hindrance rather than a blessing

Having a painted bike lane for my whole Lee Road segment in Cleveland Heights made me feel like I couldn't move out of the lane to avoid the many manhole covers, etc. in that narrow confines.

All stop lights/signs should be at the top of hills, not the bottoms

With stop lights at the bottom, all one's momentum (from riding down the hill) is killed by stopping at the light.

It's doubtful that cyclists are taken into consideration when placing manholes, etc.

See note on bike lanes above.

Fenders on bikes are nice

I didn't hit too many puddles today but it was nice not worrying about them.

Using your front and back lights during the daytime doesn't create a force field.

But it feels like it helps

We need more bike racks

Or perhaps when the LaunchHouse gets further along, I'll be able to lock my bike up in the back.

One final lesson I may have picked up. Normally in the car, I budget about 15 minutes to get here. Not counting some extra prep (firming up the tire, packing extra rain gear, etc.) and locking up the bike upon arrival, it was almost a minute faster to ride than it would be to take the car.

'Then what is Durin's Day?" asked Elrond.

'The first day of the dwarves' New Year,' said Thorin, 'is as all should know the first day of the last moon of Autumn on the threshold of Winter. We still call it Durin's Day when the last moon of Autumn and the sun are in the sky together. But this will not help us much, I fear, for it passes our skill in these days to guess when such a time will come again.'

It appears that Durin's Day in 2011 was in late November, toward the threshold of Winter.

Winter itself starts on December 22nd, 2011 at 0530 UTC, with the next new moon on the 24th. That means that the "last moon of Autumn" is about a month earlier, on November 25th at 0110 EST (for my location).

For Saturday, November 26th, the sun sets (for my location) at 1659 (4:59 pm) and the moon sets at 1829 (6:29 pm). The moon on that day and time is 3% illuminated (waxing crescent). If it had been clear, it would have been a great time to observe Durin's Day.

The folks at Moon Watch seem to agree.

Durin's Day for 2007, 2008, 2009 and 2010.