Returning to Columbus - Weekend of October 29th

We haven't both been back to Ohio in quite a long time - Katie visited friends in Columbus in August, but Charlie hadn't been back since last Christmas!  At the end of October, we made a trip back to Columbus for some tailgating and visiting some of the old stomping grounds.  We flew in on Friday the 28th and headed straight to Planks Pizzeria - the best pizza on the planet!!

We met a bunch of Katie's former co-workers there, and our friends Kevin and Kyle met us as well.  It was great to see both our friends and Katie's old AEP co-workers.  Then we headed to our friend's house (Ashley and Craig), where we were staying for the weekend.  They used to live next to us at Victorian Gate in Columbus, but they had just bought a house in Dublin.  Their house-warming party was Friday night, and a bunch of Katie's college friends came over - Sarah, Lisa W., Matt and Lisa B.  Also attending were Joey, Kathy and a new friend, Lilly, who was all of 8 days old at this point!

6 Labyrinth Ladies with the newest Labyrinth Lady - Lilly

The next morning, Katie dropped Charlie off at the Varsity Club around noon so he could hang out with some old friends from KPMG and to watch the Michigan game.  Charlie was in quite a good mood because Michigan won.  Ohio State was playing Wisconsin and it was a night game that didn't start till 8pm.  Katie came around 5pm with our friends Gary and Heidi and Katie's friend from college, Sarah.  Charlie and the KPMG crew were way ahead of us, so we tried to do some catching up.  Varsity Club was packed as usual and a lot of fun.  Charlie and Gary got a text from one of their fraternity brothers, Joel, that he was over at the Hiney-Gate.  Sarah and Katie had fond memories of the Hiney-Gate when it was in front of the Holiday Inn with the Danger Brothers Band - Hiney-Gate is a long-standing Buckeye before and after the game tradition, sponsored by Heineken.  Last year, they tore the Holiday Inn down and built a Dorm Hall there instead, so the Danger Brothers moved their show way up the road on Olentangy River Road. This year, they moved their show again to right behind the Varsity Club.  Once we got there, we were a little disappointed....it definitely was not quite the same.  The Danger Brothers are getting up there in age; they were still trying to rock and roll, but the location just made it feel a little different.  We didn't stay very long and decided to go back to the Varsity Club, where we got a table inside and watched the game from there.

Well, not all of the game.  Unfortunately for us, with 4 minutes ago and the score was 26-14 (OSU winning), we figured the game was over and the Burritos as Big as your Head were calling Charlie's name.

Please note - Charlie NEVER wants to leave a sporting event early, so this clearly can be blamed on the 12 hour day in combination with him missing La Bamba's.  Anyways, after we left Varsity Club and started walking to La Bamba's, we heard everyone talking about the exciting end to the game...Wisconsin scored 2 touch-downs to actually take a 28-26 lead, then OSU scored again on hail mary to win the game.  Our burritos tasted great though...Charlie missed them so much that he ordered two.

The next day we went to visit our good friends Bryan and Kristen who had a baby 6 weeks ago.  We brought some skyline over for lunch.  Charlie didn't understand why the baby couldn't eat skyline yet, so instead Kristen gave Charlie a bottle to feed baby Will.

Afterwords, we met Ashley, Craig, Gary and Sarah at Buffalo Wings and Rings to watch the Bengals game.  It was fun watching the Bengals game with some friends because we don't get to see many of the Bengals games in Jersey.  The Bengals pulled off a win against the Seahawks.

Sorry about that last post...Charlie posted that while I was not looking.

Sad day for the Buckeyes :(  I suppose we can let the Wolverines win once every decade. 

Go Blue!

that is all

October Weekends

We had 2 separate visits from former members of the Wyoming High School cross country team in the middle of October....

The weekend of October 15th, Charlie's friend of high school, Jason, came to visit him and another high school friend, Brian.  Jason had been in New York for work for the week and stayed for the weekend.  On Saturday, the three of them met at their favorite Wings Place (The Candlelight Inn) in White Plains near Brian's house because his wife, Adrienne was just a few days away from her due date.  We posted about it about a year ago, but the Candlelight Inn isn't a romantic restaurant that the name would make you think .... it is quite deceiving because it is home to the area's best wings (or so Charlie claims, even better than his previous favorite in Ohio, Wing and Rings) and a small little bar with only about 10 tables.   Katie had a hair appointment and met the guys and Adrienne later at their house with a brand new hair-do.  Charlie was a little shocked because it was first time in our 11 years of being together that Katie had bangs.  Charlie said it was a nice change but he said he always liked the way I looked before too.

All three of the boys' teams - Michigan (Charlie), Illinois (Jason), and Clemson (Brian) - were all undefeated coming into this weekend.  It looked like they were bad luck being together - Michigan lost to rival Michigan St. in the 12:00 game, Ohio State beat Illinois in a 3:30 game, and Clemson was on the ropes against Maryland in the 7:00 game.  Clemson did come back, so the teams weren't winless.   Katie brought Griffey to the Adrienne and Brian's - he was a little nervous, but he got along great with their cats!  Just kidding - Griffey does not seem to be a cat-friendly dog...

The next weekend, Charlie's sister, Abby, came to visit NYC and Philadelphia with some of her medical school friends.  She came a couple days early to stay with us and it was great spending time with her.  We picked her up from LaGuardia Airport on Saturday evening and took her to a new (well new to us) restaurant in Ridgewood, New Jersey, which just a few towns over from our town but has a larger down-town area.  We picked a Neapolitan Pizza place called A Mano.  The restaurant is one of 3 in the United States certified by the two organizations that authenticate Neapolitan Pizza restaurants.  We shared 2 pizzas between the three of us - a classic Neapolitan (Margherita) and a "Mezza Luna" - or half moon pizza - which is half pizza, half calzone.  And then we got a smorgasbord of desserts - Tiramisu, Nutella "pizza" and even some Gelato!

On Sunday, we headed into the city with Abby for some sight-seeing.  Charlie and Abby went to the famous Katz's deli in Manhattan for lunch.  Katz serves some of the best deli-style sandwiches you'll find - Abby got corned beef and turkey reuben, Charlie both got a pastrami and tongue combo.  When you walk into Katz's - each person gets a ticket.  When you order, they cut you a taste test of what you ordered, write down what you've got to pay, and you can't leave without handing over the ticket and payment on the way out.  If you're ever there - go with the corned beef.  Charlie usually likes pastrami best - but he tried some of Abby's sandwich, and the corned beef here is amazing!

Katie met them down in New York laster due to a Junior League lunch.  We met in the Meat-packing district where the "High-Line" starts.  The High-Line was an above ground rail-road system (similar to Chicago's Train system ) that was built in the 1930's remove dangerous freight trains from the streets of Manhattan by building a train system 30-feet in the air. The train system stopped being used in the 1980's and was transformed into a park in 2009.  It starts in the Meat-packing district around 13th Street and currently ends at 30th street (but there are plans to extend it to 34th street) and we walked the whole way.  It was a beautiful day and had lovely views of the city.

Here's the website: http://www.thehighline.org/

Afterwords, we walked over to 5th and 34 Street streets for the Empire State Building.  Charlie and I had gone to the top of the Empire State building, a few years after we graduated college once while we visited NYC.  The top of Empire State building is magnificient and is amazing to think of how it was constructed in 1931 and towers as New York's tallest  building at 102 stories currently.  Charlie had some fun with the camera settings on his phone...

Abby headed down to Philadelphia to meet her friends - while there she determined Penn Station has better Philly Cheesesteaks than Philly does, and after a few days there, she and her friends headed to New York City.  Charlie was working in the city on Wednesday, and he got a chance to meet them in the afternoon at the new 9/11 Memorial at what used to be Ground Zero.  The monument is an excellent tribute to the tragedy of those days - there are two reflecting pools where each of the Twin Towers stood, surrounded by the names of people who passed away in the 9/11 attacks and the 6 casualties of the 1993 WTC bombing.

The Legend of Sleepy Hollow

Most Americans know the famous story of Ichabod Crane and the Headless Horseman.  The short story "The Legend of Sleepy Hollow" was actually written by Washington Irving, whom lived and wrote about Sleepy Hollow, New York.  In Irving's story, the schoolmaster Crane vies for the attentions of Katrina van Tassel with Abraham "Brom Bones" van Brunt.  There are many ghosts known to Sleepy Hollow, most notably the Headless Horseman - a Hessian Soldier decapitated during the Revolutionary War who haunts travelers in search of a new head.

Sleepy Hollow is an area in the settlement of Tarrytown and happens to be right over THE BRIDGE (the Tappan Zee, not the one in the story :} ) from us.  Tarrytown has a number of events in the month of October in celebration of Halloween.  We went to three of them on Saturday night, October 8th.  The first is a storytelling of "The Legend" in the Old Dutch Church, which is the church by the burial ground where Crane is attacked by the Headless Horseman and also the cemetery where Washington Irving is buried.  This is told by local storyteller Jonathan Kruk - and was our favorite event of the weekend.  We'd really recommend, if you're ever around New York in the month before Halloween - this is something to do.  Kruk is dressed up in New England 18th century attire, and he really gets into the spirit of the story and halloween.  It's a great thing to do when the leaves are changing and it's Halloween season.  Here's the link to the website.

Before we went to the Old Dutch Church for the storytelling, we had a alittle bit of time so we took a stroll thru the Sleepy Hollow Cemetery.  Irving is buried there, but he is not the only famous person there.  Steel magnate Andrew Carnegie, oil baron William Rockefeller (brother of John D.) and auto Walter Chrysler (founder of Chrysler Corp.) are all buried in the cemetery.

After the story telling, we walked across the street to Phillipsburg Manor which is transformed into a haunted house for halloween called the Horseman's Hollow.  Katie is a wimp when it comes to scary stuff, so she opted to stay out by the gift shop and Charlie went in by himself.  Charlie was impressed, but things like that just aren't quite that scary when you're 31 years old.

Next stop was dinner and we found this cute little restaurant with great views of the Hudson and the Tappan Zee Bridge appropriately called Bridge View Tavern in Tarrytown.  Great hamburgers and a Captain Lawrence Pumpkin Ale to tide us over before the last Halloween event!

Our last stop was The Great Jack-O-Lantern Blaze a few miles up the road from Tarrytown, at Van Cortlandt Manor.  Thousands (seriously - thousands) of pumpkins carved into amazing displays.  There were all different sorts of themes - pumpkins carved into a large snakes, dinosaurs, pirates and undersea aquarium of pumpkins.  A really cool experience that definitely put us in Halloween spirit.

(this one was Katie's favorite)

Work travel for Charlie - early October 2011

Charlie went on a couple of trips for work in October.  First up, at the very beginning of October, he went to Denver for a two day conference.  Then he went to DC for a conference a couple of weeks later...

I left early on Sunday, October 2nd to fly out and get a day to see some of the city.  The big stop on Sunday was the Coors Brewery with a few co-workers who'd also come in early.  The brewery is actually in Golden, Colorado - 15-20 minutes outside of Denver.

Taking the walking tour was neat, and there was a free sampling of 3 beers afterward.  I tried the new "Native Colorado", which is a new beer being sold only in the Colorado area, and the "Batch 19" - a pre-prohibition style beer.  If they ever distribute the Native Colorado nationally, I'd recommend that

It was also very scenic in the area, here's some more pictures from my phone.

I also went to the area downtown around the baseball park (aptly named "Coors Field"), which was near the hotel I stayed at.  There were a lot of cool restaurants and bars in the area, and I snapped a few shots of the area outside the ballpark.  Katie and I will definitely need to make a trip out to Denver at some point.

A few weeks later, I went to DC for a couple of days to teach and participate in a training.  I didn't get a lot of time to visit the city for this one - so here's the best photo I had of the Capitol.  Good thing we visited there a few months ago!