India Meets New Orleans!

The title is exciting but it's where I'm going next and unfortunately not where I've been all week. This was a particularly stressful week of work but I thankfully am able to come home early for a few more days with Gladys before heading to Pittsburgh for an undoubtedly fun wedding that will bring an Indian friend and a Louisianan friend together. I'm really looking forward to their culturally diverse wedding and especially the Robot themed Raas-Garba! More about the wedding in the next post.

I haven't had much sleep so there won't likely be Wed or Thu night shenanigans like last weekend. Having our good friend, Gladys, in town has been adventurous! This pic is representative of the foolishness that ensued over the weekend. Yes, that is a pristine 1985 Lincoln that Cynthia climbed up on like she owned it! In reality it belongs to some good friends and was quite fun to roll around in! There may or may not have been classy Tool Box strippers involved?

There was also dancing, of course! We enjoy the Barracks at AWOL! It was a little slow on Friday but that gave these boys room to flail around like frat boys (or girls as the case may be)?

The real weekend dance fun was at the Garage on Saturday night! These two posed all sexy but I got to dance with Andrea Cambern! 

I should be landing soon. Until the next plane ride...

Free Detroit Family

I'm going to start with a mini-rant instead of the normal journal entry. It frustrates me to see people complaining about free apps and services like Facebook or Gmail. They are FREE and you are not contractually bound to keep using them. If you don't like the new Gmail ads, close your account and choose a new service. It's simple. Unless we're paying for something, it is quite difficult to justify complaints about changed layouts and functionality. Now that I've vented here I don't have to delete that friend on FB!

T-shirt display at the Rust Belt Market in Ferndale. I picked up some sweet holiday gifts! I think this might be my next FB profile pic!

So much has happened since the last work trip! Tim and I spent a delightful weekend in Detroit and my baby Agador is running like brand new! We were conflicted on accommodations since everyone was so spread out this year. We considered the amazing Hostel Detroit but it was so far from the venues. I'd always go back the the Book Cadillac but it too was not geographically ideal. The camaraderie of scooter rallying is intensified when there is a rally hotel or at least a few folks stay together. Since this wasn't the case, we put a shout out to Rover friends and had an offer to crash. It was great to spend time with J/J and they have nice guest accommodations. We got to know them better and had fun playing with their 8 month old baby! So much fun! Detroit has some super amazing people! Now I just need to remember to mail that thank you card!

  

The closing party was at a sick space called Jam Handy on East Grand Boulevard. It's basically an abandoned warehouse that has been used for various purposes over the years. Some dude bought it for pennies a few years back and uses it for events. Eerily quiet on that street filled with abandoned commercial places, no street lights, and downtown looming nearby.  While none of us won the raffle bike, we sure did have fun posing with it! Thanks to JG for this pic! I also took my social media responsibilities seriously and actually tweeted a few pics for the Cutters. This one was from the party. 

We had my Dad's family reunion on Saturday at the farm. Only a few folks showed up but it was quality time. It's quite the contrast from my Mom's family that literally gets together in some way at least once a week. It did remind me to reach out to my cousin in CMH. It's a shame ten months passed before I saw him to say we moved back. My baby girl was stuck in Wooster hospital over night and missed the reunion. She has a pretty gnarly infection from her wisdom teeth extraction. I'll spare the gory details of the doc opening and draining the puss filled pockets. That description alone about makes me want to hurl!

Finally, our friend, EH, from Albuquerque is visiting for a week and a half. He's on his final break before graduating with his economics degree. We missed the Crew match on Saturday due to the hospital issue but did manage to get in quite a bit of weekend fun. I even danced with an old news anchor at the Garage. While we have many mutual friends and used to cross paths quite frequently, I really never got to know her. Memories of my baby girl with her starstruck eyes when the "lady on the news" would show up with our friends was priceless. I do love a local celebrity, especially when they are genuinely nice people! I was sad to see she moved out West before we returned to CMH. 

Time for a little nap. I wasn't supposed to head out until Monday night but responsibility beckoned and I'm a loyal employee so off I go. Hopefully will be able to get back early on Wednesday for some quality time with EH before next weekend's adventures. 

I sleep!

It still amazes me that I can fall asleep before a plane even takes off. Unfortunately this often means I miss beverage service. I am quite ready to go home after six long days in Dallas. My 7/31 deadline seems to be doable after a bunch of hard work by the team. Here's what I know:

There is more than one Bolsa in Oak Cliff. While the Mercado might be a great cafe, wine bar, and market, your friends are probably at the restaurant having a delicious meal and proper cocktail. http://www.bolsadallas.com/

Working on a Saturday isn't so bad if you relocate the management team to a place for the idle rich in Uptown Dallas and find $7 carafes of mimosas! (Picture above!) http://www.idlerichpub.com/

The Dallas Dirty Bird isn't so bad for Happy Hour! You can get cheap drinks and make great friends and it goes late enough for those working long hours to catch. The bird is, however, quite dirty on a Saturday night. http://www.dallaseagle.com

Dallas has pool parties. Despite being a glamorous name for an enormous apartment complex, the Village Country Club throws one hell of a frat boy style free weekend afternoon pool party, complete with DJs and cheap drink specials! http://www.thevillageapts.com/club/

Being away from family during rough times makes you feel guilty and alone. My Dad fortunately made it through a rough spell in his recovery and came home today. I'll get to see him after my daughter's wisdom tooth extraction tomorrow. 

There are big beautiful blind drag queens in Dallas! I didn't remember how huge a space or how fun S4 could be. It's actually worth the little $5 cover. http://www.station4dallas.com/

Le Meridien at the Stoneleigh is a fantastic property. When it shows up with a reasonable price again, I'll book more business trips to stay there! http://m.starwoodhotels.com/lemeridien/property/overview/index.html?propertyID=3895

If you have too much to drink because your friends offer to be designated drivers, it's easy to lose your car once and leave your credit cards twice. I'll let you guess which of the above places align with such challenges. Thankfully my recovery mission the following day was successful on all counts!

Optimism

Jay is once again on a plane. If the rough math is accurate, I've logged 1,200+ miles in the car over the past week with a trip to the DC Rally and to Cleveland for Dad's surgery. I'm not sure there's been any nights with more than four or five hours of sleep and there's no end in sight. Hopefully won't have to work all weekend and hopefully won't have any issues getting back on Tuesday before my daughter's surgery. I know she's smart and I know she's clever, but I didn't realize how wise she is. W apparently has five impacted wisdom teeth. While I was perhaps six or seven years older when all four of mine were removed, the experience will undoubtedly be unpleasant and I need to be there for her. 

Here's a pic of W and Dad before his surgery on Wednesday. His spirits were high and my brothers, Mom, Sister(in-law), Uncle N, and a few folks from Dad's church were all there by his side. Others wanted to visit last night but he was pretty tired so we encouraged them to wait until today. A close family is such a blessing. The chemo has apparently been working and the latest lung tumor shrunk. The Doc still removed it but was able to take a smaller portion of his lung. According to the scans and what she could see inside, no others are currently growing. Despite the fact this is surgery number three in three different places, we're optimistic this "stage 4" cancer is now under control. We could use another 13+ years of remission because these last few years have been terrible. He'll quickly heal from the immediate pain. It's the unknown that is hardest to stomach. 

Off to work soon! Time for a nap before we land. At least there are hot young men sitting all around me. Apparently that's when they travel? I'm generally stuck on a Monday flight with cranky old business men; like myself I suppose?

Bulls & Cancer

I have so much work to do. If it wasn't for Dad's hospital stay starting on Monday and his surgery to fight the big bad C on Wednesday, I'd stay in Dallas through the weekend. 

The only good part is making time to catch up with some Turnbulls DC and other East Coast scooter peeps at the second annual Running of the Bulls. Since I was on the planning committee last year, it will be great to just sit back and relax for this one. 

#exhausted

Note: this was spoda post last Thu but I must have shut down before it went out. Will update when I'm back at the computer...

Quality or Quantity?

Here we go on the road again to Dallas for a long work week. I am scheduled to return on Thursday but the calendar is already filled and Friday might be more likely. This could prove problematic as the DC Turnbulls' Running of the Bullls Rally is next weekend in Breezewood, PA. Hopefully this year I won't jam a shock through the frame. Forty year old vintage scooters weren't exactly engineered for motocross trails! Speaking of scooters, I rode Agador for the first time today after ten months of downtime due to repairs and maintenance. More details on that later but he's faster and better than ever. Surely worth the wait!

Now to the subject of this post. Since my last trip, there have been countless activities to discuss. Sometimes I wonder if we should do less with less people? I love all my friends and don't want to miss anything. How do people decide what approach to take? For example, we had great friends visiting over the Fourth of July. We had brunch, caught the Doo Dah with the lesbians, squeezed in two parties, fireworks, then met other friends from out of town out later that night. We saw "everyone" on the Fourth and truly had a memorable time but...should we have picked one party? Should we have fully embraced one group of friends over the other? Did we nurture our deep lifelong connections to any of them by trying to have it all or do they think we're just fleeting and noncommittal to any of them? Does it matter? How do we maximize both connections and happiness? 

That said, here are some other things from the last few weeks:

My brother, sister, and nephew spent the night. We essentially chatted, ate, and lolly gagged around the village after a haircut at Niko's. My nephew would look so cute in a Mohawk but I restrained myself!

I "passed" my annual physical with a clean bill of health and learned by old Doctor moved into the "castle" in GV. Awesome! There's more work to do with the cholesterol levels but overall good as a 40 year old can be. 

We met friends for Comfest but were essentially rained out and didn't have the patience for the crowds and miserable weather. That weekend ended with a bear pool party and dancing at both the Barracks at AWOL and dancing at the Garage. I may not be the world's most refined dancer, but it sure makes me smile. Oh the memories of the old Garage. The new place is flashy and the bartenders sport ridiculous matching temporary tattoos all over their bodies, but it still has the spirit of the 90s and I felt 22 again. Fantastic!

This weekend was fairly low key with an outing to Sommerfest at the Germania Club. Perhaps I had a few too many shots of Yeager or pitchers of beers. For some reason I felt compelled to join a German Social Club. I told myself it was sustaining a piece of history as it is the last remaining one in Columbus but on reality it might have been grasping for my German heritage. I suppose it pairs nicely with our planned 2014 trip to Germany. Not surprisingly, two neighbors also joined. 

We also caught day one of the 50's exhibit at The Ohio Historical Society Museum. This is kind of funny since it will be there, complete with a full Lustron house, for the next five years. The WOSU Member Card got us in for half price and our teacher friend got in for free. Pretty nice museum. I highly recommend the "Controversy" Exhibit. Timely with the tragic George Zimmerman verdict as there is plenty of room for thought. 

This feels like enough journalling for now. Off to Dallas!

Farewell to the Family Farm

I didn't get on a plane to get there but was transported to a far away emotional place. My earliest memories come from visiting my Grandparents at the family homestead. It's been in our family for generations and tonight was divided into several parcels and sold at an old school auction. We might not own it now, but as a great friend reminded me, our precious memories can't be sold. It gives me peace to know that many new families will now have a beautiful place to make memories of their own. The Holmes County Amish sure have deep pockets! The proceeds will provide a nice contribution to my Mother and her siblings' retirement accounts. Grandpa and Grandma would be proud that their hard work allowed them to pass on a little something to their children. I'm sure the money will be nice but the memories are priceless.