Two (or More) for Tuesday

A homecoming is in my horizon.

Tomorrow I visit Kent State to celebrate the Wick Poetry Center 25th Anniversary by reading with past scholarship winners/some dear friends I haven't seen in a while as well as reading as part of the Why & Later anthology with benefit yoga classes.

If you can make it out Wednesday the 17th at 7:30 in the Honors College (Johnson Hall) is the Why & Later reading. Thursday the 18th from 11-12:15 p.m. is the benefit yoga class at the KSU Student Rec Center. Thursday the 18th at 8:00 p.m. in the Kiva is the Past Scholarship Winner Reading.

I'm beyond excited. In fact, I'm so excited I can't decide on what to wear.

Looks like I'll have to study the wardrobe binder intently tonight.

~

In other news, I've offended almost all of my friends by declaring my presence a politics-free zone. I care. But, more so, I don't. Usually during this time every 4 years I'm all fired up and ready to talk shop with propaganda pins neatly attached to my denim jacket and stickers attached to my bike helmet. Not this time. Really what difference would be had if I did care? Every candidate declares change, but there never is one. I don't have the emotional energy to deal with another loss or the brain occupancy to deal with bickering about something that will be over in two months. I easily could turn this blog into a rant about both sides. But being that I declared this a politics-free zone, that would go against the whole idea. I will say, though, my dream is to see Nader or Perot on the ballot. Again.

~

In more uplifting (or not) news, the Big Bang Experiment seems to be going well.

~

Thank God I'm going to Kent. Looks like a reunion is just what my spirit needs.

Farwell, my dear friend, Time.*

I like to think I have a sunny disposition. That I'm happy, warm, lovable.

That I spread my joy to all who know me.

Until this week. (Don't worry, next week I'll be fine.)

This week, though, is my last week of summer. And today is the only day that is going to be totally mine. Therefore, I must make it count. I will cross off these six things on my to-do list today: swim, finish reading Rachel Zucker's The Bad Wife Handbook, finish the first draft of a new chapbook, dry the Blue Basil leaves I have no idea what to do with, wrap FD's bday presents while snacking on cheddar cheese and NutThins or raw baby carrots (I'm not much of snacker but I LOVE cheese, to put it mildly), oh, yeah, and complete this blog tag** from Stokes.

Easy enough.

10 years ago I was entering my 4th year of undergrad, just taking filler classes like yoga and ice skating because I finished all my major classes in 3 years and I was going to the gay bars to dance my off ass because I didn't want to be worried with being assaulted by drunken frat boys and I was discovering the world of poetry. It's funny to think today I'm the teacher, preparing for the first-year writing students, who dances around my house while dusting, a Swiffer as my imaginary microphone, and who knows full-well that the world of poetry isn't all that magical.

It's this last week of summer, though, that makes me wish I was a billionaire. That I could teach a few classes here and there when I felt like it. And set up a pretty fat retirement plan for me and FD as well as for both of our families too. And build my prefab dream house with a guest house and two detached offices (one for me and one for FD) all with the arty, expensive appliances and furniture I see in Dwell each month. And give money to worthwhile foundations like Alicia's Voice. And travel to cool places like Japan and India. And do yoga whenever and whereever I want. And hire a cleaning staff, a chef, and, because if I was rich why not have kids and hire a few nannies. Finally, of course, I would be a shareholder of The Grey Colt and wear extra fabulous clothes all the time.

Yeah, that'd be the life. But then if I was billionaire, would I really appreciate the days when I cleaned residential construction sites, sweeping wood and dust into piles and shop vacuuming it all up? Or when I cleaned model homes, how I adored making perfect vacuum lines in the never-used carpets? Or when I worked for a cleaning service and scrubbed the settled cigarette smoke off cheap vinyl floors in some office that could totally be in a 70s sit-com, even though clearly we were in the 90s? (God, no wonder I'm a clean freak!) Or when I managed Hons' clothing resale shop & every Thursday Stokes & I would go to Applebees for dinner & drinks b/c she got a discount there. Or how about when I was the women's clothing department manager at Off Fifth & I went into debt buying hoity toity designer clothes. (No wonder I'm a label whore!) Or my days struggling as a TA, trying to figure out what kind of poet/teacher/woman/person I wanted to be until I finally figured out & became the poet/teacher/woman/person I always wanted to be.

Really would all that be lost if I became a billionaire? How would my values change? Or how would I teach my children values, that is if I decided to have kids?

Maybe it's simpler knowing I start teaching again next Monday and life will regain it's schedule, a schedule that I know & have come to love.

That doesn't mean I won't dream of living on Captiva Island, FL; or in Portland, OR; or Martha's Vineyard; Napa Valley; Boulder, CO; Ireland; Scotland; or even just plain ol' Clevelend, OH.

I guess as much as I don't want to, I need to look on the sunny side of this summer, the good times had, the time that I wasted doing God-knows-what.

Last week of summer, please treat me well. Be kind to me. Help me accomplish my to-do list in the best of moods. And help me smile when I wake up in the morning of the 25th, ready for school to begin again.

*Said in a unbearably tight hug that turns into a sloppy sob fest 08.
**I tag SEM, Chop, & C.L. Jones.

Fun in the Sun

New Buffalo, MI. Harbor Country.

I met up with a very close friend from grad school, KLA, recently for a girls' getaway--something we both really needed. (Thanks for a great time KLA! You rock!)

Of all the pics I took this one was my fav. I took it from the balcony of our room at the Harbor Grand. The hotel was exceptionally clean and comfortably spacious, and its central location made getting around town on-foot or bike a cinch. The pool area was goregous too! However, the staff were not-so friendly or informative. I would recommend Harbor Grand if you know the area and/or don't use the concierge service much. If you rely on the concierge, I suggest finding another hotel with better customer service or figuring out your way around BEFORE staying there. The concierge at Harbor Grand were force-ably nice, not reliable, & a little put-out with our questions and requests that were not of of the ordinary and were encouraged by their website.

The area is fantastic, though! AB FAB!

Best memory of our trip: The first night there as a horrible storm where lightning struck one of the marina's piers, creating a human-sized sparkler. Of course we gawked from our patio door with it open & our heads hanging out. Then the tornado siren went off. Instead of huddling down in the lowest level of the hotel (a 1/2 flight of stairs down from us), we braved it in our room, swearing (literally dropping f-bombs) & swearing to dive into the bath tub if we see any twister action. It was AWESOME. I haven't laughed that hard in a really long time!

If you find yourself in New Buffalo or Harbor Country, check out these great restaurants or places of interest:

Redamak's: Great for lunch, especially if you're hungover. Burgers are the specialty. Milkshakes are grainy in that powdered-milk way, so avoid those. They only accept cash. Remember to bring cash. ;)

Timothy's: AWESOME for a swank dinner out while wearing casual attire. It's a seafood place, so know they're not the best at cooking filet mignon. Portions are huge and the food is intoxicatingly delectable. Prices are good. Homemade blueberry martinis are a MUST!

Gordon Beach Inn: Where Timothy's is located. This inn has a woodsy, homey vibe. Definitely a place worth investigating for future stays.

Bentwood Tavern: Rumor has it that one should be asked to sit on the roof of this marina restaurant.

The Stray Dog: No Black Dog Tavern but decent food in a beachy setting. Again large portions.

Vickers Theater: KLA & I talked about going here just b/c it looks purely radical. However, why see a movie when there's so much to catch up on? Therefore, I plan on going there with FDR sometime.

Go to the Beach: Of course!

And explore all the fun that can be had in MI!

In the words of Sufjan Stevens, "Say Yes to M!CH!GAN!"

And said YES to MI we have! KLA & I both loved the area so much we're planning next year's trip with ourselves, husbands, and dogs. I can't wait! Lounging on the beach, swimming in Lake Michigan, and eating at fabulous restaurants like Timothy's with good friends sounds beyond fabulous.

I just wish we were going this week. But, no, a year from now.

This week is dedicated to lesson planning, uploading Blackboard sites, and general readying for the semster, not fun in the sun.

Ride On

Cedar Point: The Top 10 List

1.) I look like I'm from NY, according to a lady from MA with a Lily Pulitzer polo shirt. When I told her I was from OH, she frowned. But it's nice to hear on my birthday, "You have way better style than someone from Ohio."

2.) Cedar Point is a tutorial in tattoos: What NOT to get and Where NOT to get it.

3.) At the Point I saw way too many "hot" chicks looking at "old" men who were looking at "hot" chicks.

4.) Translation of #3: If there were a Cedar Point show it would be a special edition of Dateline mixed with What Not To Wear mixed with The Hills.

5.) Park food is disgusting. Barbara Kingsolver would frown. A lot. After lunch at the 50s dinner by Top Thrill Dragster I wanted to die. Or throw up.

6.) Found a beautiful $168 Tommy Bahama bathing suit at the Hotel Breakers clothing store. I showed it to FD. He frowned. Then he shook his head NO.

7.) Best Food on the park campus: Bay Harbor. FD and I smiled a lot during dinner. Though I thought they could use local veggies...

8.) The TGIF bar in Hotel Breakers is very shapely and a great place for a night cap after riding rides for about 12 hours.

9.) My new arch-enemy: Top Thrill Dragster. In the late morning we waited an hour and half only to make it to the gate on the platform while nervously anticipating the thrill that was to be ours next and hear, "TTD will closed indefinitely due to high winds. Enjoy your day at Cedar Point." Then we were only disappointed again to have the crew tell us after the thunderstorms, "There's no way it will reopen tonight." Only to see car after car go on it while we riding the Millennium Force for the 4the time...

10.) If it storms, STAY at the Point. Go have dinner. Take a break. After the storms there's no wait for rides. We walked on the Millennium Force 3 times and the Maverick twice. AWESOME!

~

The Rides Ridden List (in order)

Maverick

Mean Streak

Millennium Force

Waited in line for Top Thrill Dragster for an hour and a half.

(Horrible lunch break. Next year I'm going to bring my lunch or eat at the Sports Grill by Raptor or I'm going out of the park.)

Raptor

Blue Streak

Magnum (2 times)

Gemini

Mine Ride

(Dinner and Storm Break. Good times!)

Last hour park was open. Yes, we rode the following rides in ONE hour:

Millennium Force (3 times)

Maverick (2 times)

Millennium Force (Last train of the night)

RAD!!!

While there was a little frowning here and there FD and I laughed and had a great time! It's just hard to go to such a consumeristic place and not become a little depressed by American culture and behavior. I just had to remember it's a dream come true for me to be at Cedar Point on my bday with my totally RAD hubby!

♫ While My Puppy Gently Sleeps...♫

Right now a puppy is sleeping on the couch in my office, and I'm quite content.

We attended our first puppy play-date, and BooBoo is wiped out. Perfect. Now I can get some much needed blogging in.

While I didn't win the 6word Twitter contest, I did win a different Twitter Zappos contest, which yielded a higher reward: a $150 gift card to Zappos.com! Yippeeee! The Twitter contest from @zappos_alfred was "Best advice I've gotten is from my Mom. What's best advice your mom gave u? I'll pick 2 replies for free shoes." Here's the winning advice I got from Hons: " Winners are: @HelloKittyAMR-mom told her marry your best friend and @katgil-mom told her to always think positive. I will direct msg you."

(Being a part of Twitter pays off, dear friends!)

Because I did marry my best friend, I gave him the gift card for a new pair of shoes. Ahhhh! Cute--I know.

I must admit, though, I bought myself a new pair of shoes too...I'm addicted...And I blame my no new clothes and shoes resolution for it. I will NEVER make that resolution evereverever again.

Still feeling run-down lately and pretty emotional. After Lemon Cadet's comment that I should take a pregnancy test, I must let all of you know I'm not preggars. I'm just crazy, which apparently is one pink line. Speaking of Lemon Cadet, Baby Lemon is here, and she's precious! Congrats Lemon Family!

I've been feeling a lot better over the past few days. Finishing my book review for Literary Review Magazine helped and being home again helped a lot too. I'm finding the older I get the less I like traveling. Perhaps I'm becoming a crotchety hermit. Or perhaps I'm just tired of traveling almost every weekend. It's exhausting and expensive. And as much as I love our families sometimes I just want to be home doing nothing but reading, blogging, and walking the dog. It's hard to be so close to our families and so far away in terms of distance, but it's life so I must try to handle traveling better. Somehow.

The highlights of seeing our families this past weekend was that my sister visited us for two nights and one day, which was really nice, and we had really nice Mother's Day celebrations with all of our moms, and I got to see the Cortes' fam pics with them and Flat Stan visiting the free stamp and Rock'n'Roll Hall of Fame as well as Flat Stan sitting on a kid potty. Good times! (Suz, send me those pics ASAP!)

Speaking of Flat Stan, I'm willing host him if anyone out there needs a Flat Stan host...I adore him.

Just a two more things real quick before my sleepy head wakes up:

There's a dog park right here in Bowling Green! Does anyone take their dog there? It looks a little deserted...More on the dog park situation soon when it's not raining and I can investigate more.

And this weekend come on out for the Poetry and Yoga Alicia's Voice Event. We'd love to see you!

The Partial Summer To Do List

Schedule Dentist Appointments -- Check.

Clean Lawn Furniture -- Check.

Yoga every morning -- Check.

Twitter & convince everyone to join Twitter -- 1/2 Check.

Why and Later Poetry Reading/ Alicia’s Voice Benefit Yoga Classes Promo -- 1/2 Check.

Two Review review -- 1/2 Check.

Puppy Playdates.

Puppy Classes & Training.

CheeBurger CheeBurger date w/ FD.

Shop for Mother’s Day, Father's Day, and birthday cards.

Why and Later Poetry Reading/ Alicia’s Voice Benefit Yoga Classes.

Revolver din-din with Car, FD, me, and a special guest.

Rilo Kiely w/ Stokey!

CTLT Clicker Training Sessions.

Cedar Point for my bday! Yay!

June 18 Alicia’s Voice Golf Outing – JOIN US!

Harbor Grand meet-up with KA. Yay!

Visit families and friends!

ENG 110 syllabus and lesson plans.

READ (about 150 books / 1 down) & post book reviews.

WRITE (as many essays or poems as possible.)

WATCH TV.

WATCH MOVIES.

Catch Up on Gossip Blogs & FAFA.

Nap.

Do “things” not on any to-do list (i.e. be adventurous and spontaneous!)

The Story of the Great Bleu-dini and The Search for a Tasty Milkshake

Yesterday I craved a vanilla milkshake.

But NOT just any milkshake. A CheeBurger CheeBurger milkshake.

This is not a "normal" craving. It's a every-other-year thing or a when-in-Florida thing, so I don't mind indulging in the CRAZY amount of calories and fat content.

I figured FD and I would go to lunch at Kermit's (our fav diner in BG) for burgers, fries, and shakes--a 50's kind of lunch. Yum.

When we got to Kermit's we found out they "don't serve shakes on weekends."

When asked why, our server retorted, a bit snottily, "We're too busy."

WTF?! Milkshakes are moneymakers. Someone really needs to tell Kermit that.

In sadness and a bit of anger, we ate our burgers and fries sans milkshake--a 90's kind of lunch. Ugh.

Needless to say, I spent the rest of the day obsessively considering my milkshake options: McDonald's (can't break no fast food resolution), DQ (didn't want soft serve), Marble Slab (way too expensive unworthily), The Sundae Station (possibly?) or the Ice Cream Machine (maybe?).

All I wanted was a true milkshake with hand dipped ice cream and little crunches of ice, not some watered-down, preservative-ridden, chemically engineered shake. It shouldn't be so hard.

Truth be told, I considered flying to Sanibel, FL (even checked flight costs!) so I could go to CheeBurger CheeBurger. Sans multi-million dollar budget and private jet, I was forced to pick something local.

Well past lunch and still weighing my options, FD and I left the house to grade student essays without worrying about a little black dog named Bleu. We crated BooBoo as always and headed off to the library. FD consumed by his grading ("That essay wasn't so bad...") and me trying to grade but continually talking through my milkshake options ("I could eat a salad for dinner and get a milkshake from DQ...Why can't Myles Baker Street serve gourmet milkshakes?...Why doesn't BG have an old school soda fountain?...Vermilion used have one in their downtown pharmacy; it was so cool...")

FD: "Could you please stop? Just for an hour? I'm really trying to grade."

Somehow I managed to finish five papers during our library visit, which freed up time during the two-minute car ride home to further vacillate my milkshake choices: "DQ and MickeyD's are out...I'm thinking Marble Slab..."

FD: "You want to blow $10 on a milkshake!? Are you nuts? It's not payday!"

Upon opening the door, we saw a black tail wagging beyond the baby gate.

A BLACK TAIL WAGGING BEYOND THE BABY GATE!

A BLACK TAIL THAT SHOULD BE IN ITS KENNEL!

WTF?!

!?!?!?




Somehow Bleu-dini escaped his kennel.

I imagine it looked something like this:
Between Bleu and Kermit's not selling milkshakes on the weekends, I lost my mind.

It didn't return until much later. After I watched the Dog Whisper, after I had my milkshake from The Ice Cream Machine (it was good, but not CheeBurger good), after Bleu pushed open the front screen door and escaped again, after my friend AS came over to play with Bleu and he tried to eat her hair, after an episode of L&O SVU, after I fell asleep and dreamed of Bleu escaping from his kennel again and hopping into bed with us...

~

PS!!!

OMG: There's 2 CheeBurgers in MI! We're so going this summer. Like the first day of summer.

That might mean I have to make milkshakes a twice-a-year thing.

Looks like Bleu-ser and I will be walking an additional mile every day...

Oh My Goodness, So Much to Post, and So Little Time.

We've been back from Utah for about five days, and this is the first chance I've had to blog about it.

It's just one of those semesters.

We saw Logan, Provo, Park City, and Salt Lake City during FD's mini-book-tour in support of Neck of the World.

Utah is gorgeous! Check out my photo journal of our trip on Flickr.

The highlights for me were FD's interview on Utah Public Radio (a dream come true--This American Life, here we come!), FD's reading in Logan, our side-trip to Park City (where the Sundance Film Festival is held), the Butterfly Reading mobile in the Salt Lake City Library (the MOST beautiful library I have EVER seen and maybe my all-time favorite architecture), and dinner at Metropolitan.

Our trip wouldn't have been half as great as it was if not for the company of our fellow Monopoly competitor Mr. Nate!

And I'd like to thank all of those who hosted us, drove us around, or kept us in good company: Susan, Star, Micheal and Sylvia, Micheal, and Hui-Hui.

For more detailed info our trip you can always read my Twitter archive.

All these links should keep you busy for awhile...

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[While getting the to This American Life, I saw Ira Glass has a Facebook page.

I so friended him!]