Christmas lights tour

When I was young, I never dreamed that I would have Christmas lights in my own yard, let alone look forward to driving around looking for lights. Boy, what a little age will do for you.

You must be able to see this house from space. We forgot the exact street this display is on, so we just searched for the glow in the sky and aimed for it. The house has two sets of trains.

The Christmas house comes with elves. They meet and greet and take you to see...

That's right, Santa hangs out in a Strongsville Ohio neighborhood. Boy was I excited to visit with him. I haven't seen him since I was a little kid, or was it last year when we did the tour? Well, Ho! Ho! Ho! anyway.

Every time we see parents with young kids doing round robin picture taking, we volunteer to take a family pic. It only takes a second and puts a smile on peoples faces. That's how we got our picture taken.

We headed to what I call "the vacant lot" at the intersection of the two busiest roads in town. When we first moved to Strongsville, I saw this big vacant lot with some kind of faux New England clock tower on it. I wandered why there wasn't a gas station on the corner. The upholders of town snootiness and morals told me that it was "the commons." Well OK then. Still looks like a vacant lot to me. I would have added faux ruins of a fort or something to the faux clocktower for instant history.

Pat and I headed to downtown Cleveland and public square. The city of Cleveland puts on a marvoulous Christmas display. Terminal Tower is lit up in green and red and the colors change. I never noticed it till Pat pointed it out when we were looking at pictures.

I would have put lights on it.

Old Stone Church

This is Cleveland's founder, Moses Cleveland. He spent one night here. After claiming the area for land speculators in Connecticut, he left, not unlike other recent personages.

Tom Johnson was one of the greatest figures of the Progressive era at the turn of the last century. He made his money in steel and street cars and became Cleveland's greatest mayor. You know I always try to sneak in a history lesson.

baby, it's cold outside

I took these pics the same day as my wordless wednesday pic. The wind was howling in from the north. Boy was it cold. The Plain Dealer says we are 10-15 degrees below normal. The television stations try to see who can have the most dramatic "it's cold out" story. Our sports teams are fighting for mediocrity and just about every politician has been indicted, so what else is the media to talk about. It's normally supposed to be in the mid 30's in early December. It has been in the mid teens during the day. Cold enough that Fred our 12 year old dog doesn't want to go outside, but not cold enough that you have to get a block heater for your car. It's not Minnasota cold or even Chicago cold, so I still don't need my long johns or heavy coat. But having said all that, I really wanted to get back in the car after I took these pics.

There is a bush in there someplace. it almost looks like some kind of ice cactus.

There is a tree under all the ice.

I took this pic today on the way home from work. If you enlarge the picture and squint real, real hard, you still can't see our northern neighbors in Canada. It's a curvature of the earth kind of thing, or maybe it's just too far away. The water is usually open because of the power plant, but with the economy what it is, the power plant is off line. I don't know what the birds and geese are going to do.

wordless wednesday

lunch with our winged friends

We’ve had Mallards in our yard since Pat and I moved to Cleveland. The pond nearby doesn’t freeze over and the ducks never leave. We have food for all the animals. I think how we treat the animals we don’t eat makes a statement as to the type of person you are. Our reward is a constant presence of winged and footed creatures. I took these pictures over the last two days. We are in the middle of what is supposed to be a four day snow storm, which explains the difference in the snowscape.

My backyard neighbor let his dogs out, so off they go.

lake effect snow

If you live on the wrong side of the Great Lakes, this story will sound familiar. For those of you who don’t know whether you’re on the wrong side of the Great Lakes or not, trust me, you aren't. The great city of Cleveland sits on the south shore of Lake Erie. Until Lake Erie and Lake Huron freeze (evidently even Lake Huron is too damn close), we can get a lot of snow in a very short time. Being an adopted son of Ohio, I feel obligated to blame Michigan for the snow that comes off of Lake Huron. Now I’m not talking Donner Pass, you eat your uncles’ leg kind of snow, but a lot of snow. But I digress. Until the Great Lakes freeze over, we can get "hope the snow blower fires up" kind of snow.

When I arrived at work Thursday morning, the air was filled with large pretty white snow flakes. I knew that the winds had changed, since we hadn’t gotten any snow for the last three days by the lake while 15 miles southwest where we live had got slammed with the white stuff. The snow did not stop. The snow picked up in the afternoon. I heard “snow day” being whispered around the room. Since Ohio has a three day limit on catastrophe days, I discussed the concept of the individual snow day with my students. My evil cynical twin thinks that the concept of the individual snow day could present us with the perfect school day, school is open but all the students called off because there is two feet of snow on the ground.

I kept waiting to see a city snow plow drive past the school. As it played out, the whole city was waiting for snow plows. They must have been swallowed into some kind of dimensional time shift, or some other kind of science fictional explanation. There is no other explanation that doesn’t put the snow crews playing cards or plowing politicians' streets. Everyone was anxious to leave. When it was time to go, I never saw school empty out so fast. I wasn’t concerned. The Aztec has new tires and in a past life, I drove for a living. I had a full tank of gas, 5 gallons of windshield washer fluid and a broom. The only thing I needed was food because getting home was going to take a while. I had a remedy for the food situation, Siam Café. I got on the Shore Way and to my surprise it was bumper to bumper and going nowhere. Alright, I wasn’t really surprised. The trip to go the three miles from school to the restaurant took close to an hour. OK, I thought, the trip will be slow but manageable. The restaurant parking lot had a foot of snow in it and it was full of cars. Evidently a bunch of people think like me: Thai food for the trip home.

Normally Siam Café is a five minute drive to the expressway; not today. Oh, did I mention that I still had not seen a city snow plow or police car? Where were these guys? It took another hour and a half to get on the expressway. Anarchy reigned. Drivers ignored traffic signals, drove the wrong way on the streets. Tempers flared because of fender benders. Guys with male enhancement issues drove their pickups and SUVs around as if the rest of us should part the waves. Well, I have a sense of humor and was not in a hurry since I had a ton of food, so I just seemed to get in these guys' way. I saw no reason to get out of their way. Eventually, in two orders' of siam wings worth of time, I saw the expressway entrance. The promised land awaited, if I could only get there before I ran out of food. Did I mention that I had still not seen a city plow or any of its esteemed safety force?

In Chicago, mayoral elections have been won and lost over snow. If there is even a hint of snow in Chicago, everyone whose job relies on getting rid of the snow or on being re-elected is on the job. I finally spotted a police car. It was spinning its tires and going nowhere. For crying out loud, is the city too broke to keep good tires on the cop cars? You can only laugh. I finally got on the expressway. That 20 minute trip had taken a mere two and a half hours; not bad. It was still snowing as I headed south. As if by a miracle, actually because of wind patterns, the snow stopped, the expressway was clear and traffic was going 70. To show that nature has a sense of humor, officially Cleveland did not get any snow yesterday because no snow fell at the official weather station. It was sunny there.

My whole trip, which normally takes about an hour, clocked in at 3hours 45 minutes. It really could have been worse, and the trip became a blogging event.

Inching along on St Clair.
Inching along on Superior.

Still inching along on Superior. When I started this adventure it was light out.

Hey! No buttinskies. This jamoke needed a lesson on which side of the road to drive on. My Aztec happened to just slide over enough to make him stop. No one let him in. His mother would be ashamed, unless of course his mother drives like this also.

The promised land.

Beauty in the least expected places.

Ode to gridlock.

happy birthday to Pat

Winter has finally showed itself as the cold windy snowy gotta shovel the driveway again nuisance it is. Momma pumpkins and Poppa pumpkins are buried under a foot of snow waiting to surprise us in spring. I think I can finally put the lawn mower away. With our ability to garden severely limited by the snow, what can we do? Why take a road trip to the northern most point in West Virginia and visit its most famous destination, the Homer Laughlin Pottery Company, home of Fiesta Ware.

Newell is an easy 2 hour trip through increasingly wooded and hilly terrain. I never tire of the trip. This time I missed our intended exit because I wasn’t paying attention. We were rewarded by a fun ride down route 7 through what Chicagoans call the “woods.” We passed a concrete statuary, or what I would call a yard ornamentation place, in Lisbon. We will visit the place in the early spring when lawn ornamentation season is just starting, because you can never have too many concrete rabbits in your yard. This little sidetrack didn’t add much time to our trip. Besides, nothing starts till we get there and we got there in plenty of time to buy everything Pat wanted.

The Homer Laughlin plant is right on the bluffs overlooking the Ohio River. As you look out over the river you can almost see pioneers on flat boats making their way to the future. But we didn’t make this trip for a history lesson. We came for Fiesta Ware and Pat worked her list. There seems to be a division of labor as I watched the customers. Husbands for the most part mill about waiting for their wives to finish. I dive in. I’m not driving 2 hours to mill about. I can mill about in my own driveway. I want to buy plates, actually bowls, big bowls, medium size bowls, and little bowls. We found a new-to-us selection called the Bistro Collection. It is great looking diner ware, just the kind you would expect to see in a chrome and Formica breakfast and lunch joint. I got a starter set. Pat picked out a bunch of stuff that we were missing and a 2 person set of a discontinued color. If you don’t act on discontinued Fiesta ware when you’re at the factory store, you are stuck with the secondary market. And guess where the secondary market gets their stuff? Yeah, the factory store.

When we got home Pat called out to me. “I got the wrong size plate.” Now there was a time when I would have said, or at least thought, actually definitely only thought, “bummer.” Without hesitation, (now this is a Peter Cook moment from The Princess Bride -- "twue wove") I said, “we’ll go back tomorrow and get other stuff too." So back we went, through a snow storm this time. We got the plates Pat needed and a bunch of other fiesta ware we didn’t know we needed.

The Fiesta ware colors are so bright and happy that they will put a smile on your face no matter what mood you find yourself in.

wordless wednesday

first snow

It finally snowed. I was happy in denial. The Plain Dealer just ran an article about how it’s been 250 days since the last snow. I was hoping for a few more weeks without snow and since I was in denial, temperatures in the upper 50s would have been fine. Now it isn’t the "schools and airports are all closed, there’s a run at the grocery store" kind of snow. It’s more of the, if you look hard, you can see the snow kind of first snow. But, none the less, it is the first snow. It’s time to find the snow shovel.