Weekly Roundup

XAVIER UPSET - Didn't make it to the final four round of the NCAA tournament. I've watched all the games in this tournament. As an alumni, I was really hoping that they would have gone on, but alas they were spanked by UCLA. It was not meant to be. MORE CULTURE - I guess you'd call our meal at Nada cultural. Well, Jason and I furthered our cultural trend on Saturday with a trip to Cincinnati's Contemporary Art Center. The special exhibitions included work by Daniel Libeskind and Sol Lewitt, both of which I found fascinating. Photography was strictly forbidden. Here are my photographs: Jason shot this one: WEIGHT - While I continue to lose weight, I've not lost as much weight in the past two weeks, despite me ramping up my trips to the gym. I lost only .8 lbs last week... I'm not surprised, though, because I have not been the best. I drank a fair amount during the Xavier games. All that testosterone and the up/down nature of the game encourages drinking of beer. I'm going to lessen my booze intake and continue my gym visits.

On the Town

No, I'm not talking about this musical that opened in 1965, although that is a really great show. Last night, Glenn, Paul, Jason and I went out on Friday night for a classy dinner and some drinks. NADA Jason's birthday was a couple of weeks ago and we had wanted to go to Nada, a classy Mexican restaurant then. But, it was closed, as it was Sunday. So, Jason, Paul, Glenn and I met at 7:30 pm. I didn't know really what to expect. Bella, the previous restaurant that had been located there had had a nice atmosphere, but had been known for overpriced food and underwhelming service. Nada was a treat right from the beginning! We started off with grapefruit margaritas that were out of this world. (I think the secret recipe was some type of sorbet, along with a healthy dosage of premium tequila.) We sat and talked for a bit before we were seated. The atmosphere was classy but not presumptuous or snotty. The guacamole was easily the best I've ever eaten and it disappeared VERY quickly. I liked the chips but they were probably a bit too greasy. Being on Weight Watchers, I was relatively reserved with my eating. Jason and I split a very light green salad. I then had mahi mahi tuna served over corn with jalapeños in chipotle sauce. It was succulent. Like in Kate's Random Musings, I took a couple of pictures of the food: The pace of the meal was not rushed and all of our food was top notch. Despite the slightly elevated price point, I would have to say that was one of the best meals I've had in a long time. Afterwards, we wanted to get a nightcap at bar, but decided to get a tall beer at Rock Bottom. (Reenactment, actual toast occurred 10 seconds prior.)

Weekly Roundup

Sorry, I've not updated in a while. Life has been so hectic... WORK WORK - My projects have been in a critical state and I've been in "firefighting mode" all week. It's been so crazy. I work a lot of hours, but it's hard to get on top of things. GOOD FRIDAY - I did get Friday off work, however, because I'm not quite on top of things at work, I ended up working 3 hours of my day off. The new IKEA offerings has meant a lot of new improvements to the house! I will take more pictures this week. XAVIER - I'm pretty excited about Xavier's presence in the Men's NCAA basketball tournament. Paul, Romeo and I watched the game at Dana Gardens, one of the most popular student bars for the university, my alma mater for grad school. We found the place almost empty and remained empty for the game. Fortunately, the game was really good. And you can't hate a bar that offers $4.00 pitchers of beer, albeit wilting green St. Patrick's day beer. We left feeling no pain, elate that Xavier beat Georgia. EASTER - Troy, Romeo and Troy's mom invited Paul, Glenn, Jason and I over for a very nice Easter lunch. I made a nice chopped salad that, by design, was Weight Watchers friendly. We ate and visited: After our meal, Troy suggested that we all decorate eggs (how homo-fabulous!) His mom was to be the judge. Brenda picked my egg as a winner. Ironically enough, the prize was chocolate, which is not all that Weight Watcher friendly: I ended the day pulling a bunch of points from my weekly POINTS, but I had a wonderful day of eating. NEW LOOK - I got some fresh contact lens. I'm trying to look less slouchy, more attractive. WEIGHT! - I'm down 5.2 lbs since my last Weekly Roundup. OK, that was 3 weeks ago, but it's still a good amount of weight! I'm happy how my clothes are fitting. However, I only lost .4 lbs last week--I really need to tighten things up this next week.

Two Days Off: IKEA Grand Opening and Assembly of IKEA Shelves

FIRST DAY OFF: IKEA GRAND OPENING The alarm clock went off at 5:00 am. I made some coffee and jumped into the Green Bean (Jason's truck) I got there a little after 6:00 am and got in line. A younger, college age woman was in front of me and an older African-American woman from Lexington, Kentucky was behind me. They would become my neighbors for the next three hours. While I had brought my iPod classic, I have to admit that there was enough to keep us entertained for the time. Mascots from the Cincinnati Reds and other local teams had a dance competition. Then the Nich Lachey's Cincinnati choir from "Clash of the Choirs" sang several songs. I especially liked their renditions of What a Wonderful World and America the Beautiful. Then we had other groups perform, including a Children's choir singing Children's songs in Swedish. The MC for the morning was not terribly hard on the eyes: The sun came up. Closer to the opening, all the employees (some 400 people) came out and there was a river of men and women in yellow shirts flowing in front of the crowd of anxious shoppers. A women's group singing the Swedish national anthem. There were speeches. Although I had dressed warmly, my feet were cold as I had foolishly worn tennis shoes. It was fun to people watch. I was happy as the store opened. The crowd was quickly whisked inside. At the entrance were a hundred or more employees cheering us on with boom sticks. I went right to the warehouse and presented my long list to the worker who helped me determine which row/bin to find each of the components of my shelves. I'm glad I brought printouts of what I wanted from the website. If I hadn't had them, I would not have know what to buy as the workers in the self serve warehouse area had neither access to their website nor an actual paper. It took awhile to load the 130+ packages of lumber into carts. I still wanted to do a bit of shopping in the "marketplace," so I left my 2 carts with the warehouse person and went back and got some other items at the marketplace, in a THIRD cart. At about 11:20 am, I was at the checkout. It was early enough to be empty. I didn't wait at all. I paid for my items. I noticed that the press was really paying attention to the early customers and were taking a lot of stock footage. A pretty woman from channel 9 news asked to interview me. And she did for about 5 minutes. Below is the entire clip from the segment that aired that night. Cincinnati Inquirer also snapped a few pictures of an IKEA and me loading the car, which they published online. It had really warmed up. So the pictures showed my yellow/IKEA blue outfit. ASSEMBLY OF IKEA ITEMS I was home before noon! I was excited as this meant I had the rest of the day to put up shelves and begin organizing the garage. After unloading the truck, I began assembling a "GORM" shelf. I cursed the Swedish gods as I realized that none of drill bits worked with the screws. I figured that they must be in metric. I called around to a couple of hardware stores and visited 2. Neither had what I needed. I decided to head to Westwood to Small's Hardware. While they didn't have a 13 mm attachment for my drill, I did manage to get a socket (and a brand new socket wrench.) Yes, I was most definitely butch. I spend several hours assembling some shelves that afternoon and into the evening. (To offset this butchiness, I did listen to some musicals while working.) It was dark when I finally gave up for the day. My muscles ached as I showered. I slept like a log. SECOND DAY OFF: ERRANDS and MORE ASSEMBLY While I had got up early on my second day off, I managed to waste the morning driving to the Vokswagen dealership. I was told I needed to get the car serviced but upon arriving there, they felt I needed neither an oil change nor service. Fine then. Over lunch, I cleared an area for more shelves. I had an eye exam in Westwood but was home by 2:00 pm to begin more assembly of IKEA items. I tackled the shelves again. I got one shelf built when I realized that I did not have enough cross braces to finish the project. F**&&**! What was I to do? Wait until the weekend? Attempt to go now. I called Paul and asked him how the traffic was there since he works right next to the store. He told me that I probably should head up... that it would be worse on the weekend. So, at 4:00, I did just that. Just as a note, when Paul gives advice, I've found the 180 degree opposite advice to be true. In this case, strangely, he was correct. While I didn't get the most perfect parking, I did manage to find a spot. I was in and out of the store in an hour. There were very few people at 4:00 pm the day after the opening! It made me wonder: why did I wait in line yesterday when I could have gone now? I assembled more shelves until it was dark outside. Both Jason and I were pleased with the progress. I will post "before" and "after" shots soon.

IKEA - Preparing for Opening Day

Tomorrow is the big opening for the new IKEA in Westchester. As I've mentioned before, I'm rather excited about the opening as I desperately would like to whip the garage into shape, installing a series of interlocking shelves. Here is one "before" shot: I made a list of items to bring on my adventure: - Hat gloves and scarf Kashi bar Tape measure Thermos Picklist of all the shelves packages needed Clipboard and pencil iPod General Shopping List Swedish dictionary Store map I decided to wear a blue shirts/yellow tee shirt combination (a la Swedish flag,) flannel long underwear, and tennis shoes. (I would later realize that while the tennis shoes were functional from a walking/standing perspective, they were not as practical in the 30 degree cold. Within an hour of being outside, my feet were very cold.) I laid everything out before going to bed. We went to bed at 12:00 but I tossed and turned in bed. I had listened to Ein Deutsches Requiem the night before and the words the words were flowing through my head: "Herr, lehre doch mich, daß ein Ende mit mir haben muß, und mein Leben ein Ziel hat, und ich davon muß." ("Lord, make me to know mine end, and the measure of my days, what it is: that I may know how frail I am.") Catchy little tune but pretty morbid. I slept only in short segments through the night.

Blizzard!

Having lived 18 years in Boston and 6 years in Iowa, I know what it is like to have snow. One of my considerations for moving to Cincinnati in 1996 was the promise of milder winters. Indeed, Cincinnati's winters are not that bad. Since I've lived here, I've only experienced 3 blizzards: In 1998, there was a weather pattern that dropped 10+ inches in Cincinnati. I remember walking to a pub that day and drinking beer as I watched it snow outside. In 1994, while I was wandering the streets of Vilnius, Lithuania on vacation, it snowed over a foot. Because a certain someone couldn't get to my house to check on it, the heat dipped too low and the pipes in the upstairs of my old house burst causing $15,000 in damage. In 2008--today--we got over 10 inches of snow. Jason and I celebrated by staying in and also taking several pictures. Here is a collections of some of the pictures that we took in the past 24 hours around and outside our house:

VOTE OHIO!

Unless you are living under a rock, you know that tomorrow is a very critical day in US politics. I'm excited to be a part of the process and tomorrow I will resoundingly vote for Hillary Clinton in the Ohio Primary. Why? In brief, Hillary Clinton is the candidate I believe will be most effective in implementing the changes that are important to ME, such as dealing with the economy, lessening US presence in the Middle East, implementing universal health and bringing about full equality for gays and lesbians. I trust her! While every politician has a certain amount of rhetoric and politicking, I believe she has the country's best interests in mind. She has a vast wealth of experience! From day one, she will know Washington politics. She's learned from her own personal mistakes and knows the importance of compromise and working with people on both sides of the political aisle. This is a critical make it or break it time for the US and Hillary Clinton is just the person we need in the White House.