I found these images from the Craftzine blog.

Mini pizzas…

… and bento boxes!

Delicious, nutritious and cute!!!

If you need a championship, try this nugget on for size. Did you know that Michael Symon has the highest win percentage of all the Iron Chefs?  Other than Wolfgang Puck who only has competed in one battle.

And on a final note, why does Florida keeps trying to poach from us?  For instance, Floridians LOVE The Cleveland Orchestra and Cleveland Clinic.  I’d be heart broken if the orchestra got more love from Florida than Cleveland.

Speaking of the Cleveland Orchestra… we had the privilege of hearing five members of the orchestra play at The Happy Dog a couple of weeks ago.  In my opinion it was one of the “do not miss” events of the summer.  Fortunately based on our conversation with the musicians and the Plain Dealer article it sounds like those who missed the event will have another opportunity in the future.

World class musicians + hot dogs/veggie dogs + tater tots  + Choco Taco = AMAZING!

I consider myself a basketball fan.  Anyone who knows my brother understands that I must have watched a considerable amount of basketball in my life.  Several years ago I also managed the Cavaliers account at the ad agency I worked for.  So not only am I a born and bred Clevelander, I’ve been invested in this team for a very long time.

All that being said, I think it’s time to state the truth here.  I care more about our community than I do about Lebron.  At this point, I hope he leaves.  I think it’s time for us as a city to find out what we’re made of.  Will our whole identity be based on one person?  A kid.  Who plays basketball.  I’m not trying to diminish Lebron’s talent because he’s the best basketball player I’ve ever seen.  However, I’d like to see the evidence that a city that is struggling can be turned around by a single person- particularly a single, professional athlete.  Others have said this but I want to say it again: Lebron will not fix our schools.  Lebron will not create jobs. Lebron will not solve our foreclosure crisis.  Lebron will  not make our weather better.  Lebron can play a role in some of these things if he wants but he hasn’t solved all of our problems and he never will.

This week a number of Clevelanders have suddenly turned on Lebron calling him a media whore, a narcissist, a loser.  I find this just as ridiculous.  From a marketing standpoint I think Lebron and his camp are doing exactly what any other player would do in his position if they could.  Lebron has made it very clear that he wants to be a mogul, not just a ball player.  Why is he able to do this?  Because we all pay attention!  We tweet, blog, write facebook updates, talk about him at dinner, etc.  All this because Lebron and his advisers understand that this is all bargaining power for him.  Let’s think about it… who has the most power in every negotiation now?  Lebron James.  Anyone who has every negotiated anything, particularly a salary would love to have this much leverage.

So back to Cleveland.  Some are also saying that Lebron is putting us on the map.  Maybe to people who know nothing other than sports.  In medicine people know The Cleveland Clinic.  In classical music everyone knows the Cleveland Orchestra.  In food– well pretty much the whole country knows Michael Symon and now Jonathan Sawyer.  I can go on and on… The point is that there are plenty of people, organizations and resources in Cleveland that are underappreciated.  Lots of other cities would love to have what we have.  I think we should all name something that Cleveland has that’s awesome other than Lebron James.  I’ll start:

The Foundation Center.

The Foundation Center only has offices in New York, Atlanta, San Francisco, Washington D.C. and… Cleveland! If you do any work with non-profits you know what an amazing resource this is to have in our town.  Some people have to pay money to have access to resources that The Foundation Center offers but we can access lots of classes, books, and databases all for free by visiting the beautiful Hanna building.

Since we’ve moved into our condo we’ve been excited about getting our own small garden where we can grow our own delicious food to eat.  Unfortunately the past two years we never got ourselves organized in time to get anything planted.

Yesterday D’s dad and grandfather came over to talk garden plans.  They scoped our little plot of land and not only gave their approval of our space but even began to lay out all the veggies we’ll be able to plant.  It’s going to be more than enough for the residents of our condo.  I’m super excited for it!!  I just hope that I don’t kill the plants because to date I have not had much of a green thumb.  Sorry school, but I’m putting  my work aside the first day that’s nice enough for me to clean up our space and turn the soil.

Hopefully we’ll work out some good trades with the neighbors so that we have even more variety.

Right now we’re looking at having tomatoes, hot peppers, cucumbers, beans, blackberries (which are really more for next year) and maybe some onions and garlic.  We’ll also be doing herbs and lettuce in containers on the front porch.

We’ll post pictures of our progress.

In the meantime, let the search for cute garden equipment begin!

There’s something about people from the past that I love.  I love hearing about people I’ve lost touch with and even more, I love catching up with someone I haven’t heard from or spoken to in a long time.  However, the people from the past that are springing up are actually people that I’ve lost touch with because of a conflict or wrongdoing.  I’m confused about my own feelings…why I would want to catch up with such a person… or why WOULDN’T I want to know what has happened to such an individual.  Is curiosity a good reason or is it just opening up a can of worms?  For the record I can truthfully say that I have long since moved on from these situations so I certainly am not harboring any ill will or negative feelings.  Yes, yes, I know, you’re thinking, ‘That’s what Facebook is for!’  Yes, in fact it is, but I don’t think Facebook is going to cut it.

Maybe there’s something about the Christmas season that stirs up emotions or thinking that people have put out of their minds for awhile.  People feel a little nostalgic.  They’re actually thinking more about memories of the past and somehow making sure the present turns into future memories…

Speaking of the present… (yes, I know this is a horrible transition)

This winter break has been completely insane!  I haven’t even had time to take the laundry from last week out of the dryer!  Today I spent the morning on the couch because I felt emotionally fragile after two horrible incidents with the pup but other days have just been filled with activity.  Christmas related activity, The Reckoning, seeing friends, just generally catching up on things I haven’t been able to do because of school.  Yet the house is still filthy.  What up with that?  Sometimes I think a housekeeper would be nice- just to come and clean the floors and vacuum the dog hair once a week.

I’ll try to blog more the next couple of weeks because we have a lot going on…

**EDIT**

What a pleasant day this has turned out to be!  Somewhat spontaneously met up with my best friend for some Johnny Mango’s, then picked up the husband and shared a hot cocoa at Gypsy.  Came home, took a quick nap before heading over to Tree Country where we ran into Gauri post violin recital.  Enjoyed a delicious dinner of Sweet Potato Tempura Maki and Massaman Curry (soooo good!)  Ended the evening at Zachariah’s book signing party.  It’s good to see him and catch up with other friends.  As a bonus we came home with Motley Crue’s autobiography signed by the notorious Zachariah.  We should have had him sign Becoming A Woman of Freedom too.  On a kind of sad note, we noticed that our copy of the Five Love Languages is gone.

After class, a friend and I were venting our last week of school anxiety.  My personal schedule this includes six papers, a fundraiser (helping and attending), and two plays, all on top of my usual life.  Since this is the last week of school every student feels like they have an obscene amount of work due- and each and every student is correct.  However, as my friend and I were talking I realized that a disproportionate amount of our stress tied directly to various friends that we had to work with on group assignments.  We both felt varying degrees of frustration/anger/annoyance/shock at people that I know we like very much.  The funny thing is that just moments earlier this same friend and I had been sitting next to each other in class and I kept finding myself feeling borderline annoyances.  Sadly the annoyances were around things like her chair being too close.  Sometimes a girl just needs some personal space, right? Right?  No one?

Anyhow, it makes me all feel like I can’t wait until this week is over and everyone can go back to being just friends again.

To all my friends that I have to work with this week in some form (school, party planning, etc) let’s try doubly hard to be patient and loving to each other.  And I’m going to ask in advance for a bit of grace because I am definitely a grumpy bear this week!

Huh???

Me being who I am decided that these two interactions amounted to a sign.  A sign that I should Tweet!

I’ll be honest, it’s been rough.  How do you decide who to follow?  Why would anyone follow me?  The whole thing is uncomfortable and strange.

However I think I turned the corner today.  I’m afraid of becoming someone who only retweets other posts but I can’t help it.  I’ve seen so many interesting posts today!  I’ve tried really hard to resist retweeting but it’s kind of hard to decide.

There are probably dozens of others that I should be following but I’m getting a bit overwhelmed with those I’m following now.  In the meantime, I hope my friends don’t think my tweeting is annoying.

For most of my life I kept journals chronicling everything from daily occurrences to my heartaches, joys, and hopes.  Sadly I think that as I grew older I grew more afraid of someone discovering my journals and reading them, thereby reading my innermost thoughts.  That’s one of the most horrifying things I can imagine.  I think this idea scares me because I’m too concerned of what people will think of me- that is, the me that I usually hide away.  The reason I mention this is because I wonder if part of the reason that I don’t write more blog posts is because I’m censoring myself.  This is a public place after all!  I’ve learned that the internet is not the place to vent your real feelings about your co-workers or even questioning/surveying other about your friend’s demands of her bridesmaids- seriously, that’s a BIG mistake that you cannot take back and may not be forgiven for making.

The net of all this is that I think it’s kind of funny that I don’t want people to read my thoughts in the form of journals but I do want people to read my thoughts in the form of blogs.

On that note… I think I should write in my Moleskine more, not just for taking notes of meetings but more to keep track of my journey and maybe help to keep me honest.

A final note… does anyone even blog anymore?  Or has everyone moved on to Twitter?  I’m too long winded for Twitter.

Next week, from Wednesday to Friday we will be attending the Sustainable Cleveland 2019 Summit.  The summit will be facilitated by David Cooperrider, one of my professors next semester, and one of the reasons why I decided to attend Case for my MBA.  That alone was enough to get me excited about it but add to that Ray Anderson, CEO of Interface Flor and Van Jones, special advisor for Green Jobs to the White House.  Woot woot!

More to come next week!