Kickstart 2/30 8 Events of the Summer/Fall
Nov. 4th, 2011 01:14 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
textileowl1. Four weddings! 1 dress made for myself - it is now too big. *sigh* Pictures at some point, none of the candids were flattering.
2. I bought a commuter bike! I began biking to work 2-3 days a week in June and stopped in late September. 26 miles round trip and you can see why the dress I made was too big very soon. I lost several inches of body but not much weight. The hope is to start back up in the spring after acquiring cooler weather gear and continue the exercise farther into next fall.
3. Over Labor Day weekend, we were in Cincinnati for the History Museum and Fireworks at the Levy. The museum was awesome, the fireworks were awesome. The downpour in between the two for hours was not. We were completely soaked and freezing by the time the fireworks actually happened. Thankfully the drive home warmed us up.
4. The worst part of that weekend was my uncle dying suddenly and rather unexpectedly. Well, we knew he was sick - he'd been in the hospital for several weeks dealing with a gastrointestinal tumor that cropped up in the last year. The problem was that he hadn't realized quite how bad things had gotten, I think. My mom has been hit hard by this, and my grandma, all of us really. There hasn't been a major death on that side of the family since my great-grandma Brubaker died when I was really young 4 or 5, I think or a little older. And to have it be the younger son and so well loved in the community and family. I think we are all mourning still and will be for a while.
5.The last weekend in September was the Earth Warriors Festival out in southcentral Ohio, only about 30 minutes away from my major childhood home. This is a pagan festival that centers around warrior aspects, but could be beneficial, I believe to almost any pagan. It was an enjoyable weekend even if it was rainy and cold most of the time. The people who introduced us to the festival swore up and down that this was the coldest and wettest it had ever been in the 5 year history of the festival. That I had fun and will again is a testament to how welcoming the entire group had been. Some of the more metaphysical workshops and ritual got the skeptical eyebrow, but I learned from them so it was a worthwhile experience. I am far more a hedgewitch than a high ritual person...heck, cleaning the house is about as ritualistic as I get. I hope to get to go again, though it's the same weekend as the National Bookfest and I got some hell for taking that weekend off as a holiday. By all accounts, it was a trip from hell so I'm really glad I didn't go this year even if it meant giving up that event pay.
6. We saw a lot of Cincinnati this fall. Jeff's girlfriend moved back home when her lease in Columbus was up and because she joined the Peace Corp and was leaving in October, we spent a bunch of weekends down there hanging out and getting her ready for 2 years in Lesotho. One weekend was her going away party and then a tour of Over the Rhine and the buildings that were in the works to be restored in order to keep that history alive. The tour was really cool, involving a building that housed an indoor biergarten and several other theatres, an underground beer storage facility that had been forgotten until a couple of years ago, and a couple of tenement houses. The whole tour was pretty much a bid for money to help restore the neighborhood and hopefully it does help since there hasn't been much renovation since it was abandoned by the Germans in the 30's. It makes me really sad I don't have 10 million dollars to renovate the biergarten place, the imaginings we had for that place.
7. So the Peace Corp...She left on the 12th of October, we were there to see her off. I hope she's enjoying it and having a whole lot of learning experiences because it took us a whole lot of effort to get her ready for living in Africa for two years. First it was getting all the things she would need, and convincing her and her parents that yes she really needed those things, including a good sleeping bag, a good coat, and shoes. Then it was dealing with her parents who sort of treated the whole decision like it was a week overnight camp and that she might call one day in tears demanding to come home. It was a mess. We know she made it safely there but probably won't hear from her until January. If then.
8. The latest event was Halloween, which frankly was far more important to Jeff than it was to me. Which is ok, I didn't even know what I was dressing as until the day of. But the party was a lot of fun and it meant I got to see a lot of people that I hadn't seen in ages and am likely to not see again for a while. Darn real lives, jobs and busy schedules.
2. I bought a commuter bike! I began biking to work 2-3 days a week in June and stopped in late September. 26 miles round trip and you can see why the dress I made was too big very soon. I lost several inches of body but not much weight. The hope is to start back up in the spring after acquiring cooler weather gear and continue the exercise farther into next fall.
3. Over Labor Day weekend, we were in Cincinnati for the History Museum and Fireworks at the Levy. The museum was awesome, the fireworks were awesome. The downpour in between the two for hours was not. We were completely soaked and freezing by the time the fireworks actually happened. Thankfully the drive home warmed us up.
4. The worst part of that weekend was my uncle dying suddenly and rather unexpectedly. Well, we knew he was sick - he'd been in the hospital for several weeks dealing with a gastrointestinal tumor that cropped up in the last year. The problem was that he hadn't realized quite how bad things had gotten, I think. My mom has been hit hard by this, and my grandma, all of us really. There hasn't been a major death on that side of the family since my great-grandma Brubaker died when I was really young 4 or 5, I think or a little older. And to have it be the younger son and so well loved in the community and family. I think we are all mourning still and will be for a while.
5.The last weekend in September was the Earth Warriors Festival out in southcentral Ohio, only about 30 minutes away from my major childhood home. This is a pagan festival that centers around warrior aspects, but could be beneficial, I believe to almost any pagan. It was an enjoyable weekend even if it was rainy and cold most of the time. The people who introduced us to the festival swore up and down that this was the coldest and wettest it had ever been in the 5 year history of the festival. That I had fun and will again is a testament to how welcoming the entire group had been. Some of the more metaphysical workshops and ritual got the skeptical eyebrow, but I learned from them so it was a worthwhile experience. I am far more a hedgewitch than a high ritual person...heck, cleaning the house is about as ritualistic as I get. I hope to get to go again, though it's the same weekend as the National Bookfest and I got some hell for taking that weekend off as a holiday. By all accounts, it was a trip from hell so I'm really glad I didn't go this year even if it meant giving up that event pay.
6. We saw a lot of Cincinnati this fall. Jeff's girlfriend moved back home when her lease in Columbus was up and because she joined the Peace Corp and was leaving in October, we spent a bunch of weekends down there hanging out and getting her ready for 2 years in Lesotho. One weekend was her going away party and then a tour of Over the Rhine and the buildings that were in the works to be restored in order to keep that history alive. The tour was really cool, involving a building that housed an indoor biergarten and several other theatres, an underground beer storage facility that had been forgotten until a couple of years ago, and a couple of tenement houses. The whole tour was pretty much a bid for money to help restore the neighborhood and hopefully it does help since there hasn't been much renovation since it was abandoned by the Germans in the 30's. It makes me really sad I don't have 10 million dollars to renovate the biergarten place, the imaginings we had for that place.
7. So the Peace Corp...She left on the 12th of October, we were there to see her off. I hope she's enjoying it and having a whole lot of learning experiences because it took us a whole lot of effort to get her ready for living in Africa for two years. First it was getting all the things she would need, and convincing her and her parents that yes she really needed those things, including a good sleeping bag, a good coat, and shoes. Then it was dealing with her parents who sort of treated the whole decision like it was a week overnight camp and that she might call one day in tears demanding to come home. It was a mess. We know she made it safely there but probably won't hear from her until January. If then.
8. The latest event was Halloween, which frankly was far more important to Jeff than it was to me. Which is ok, I didn't even know what I was dressing as until the day of. But the party was a lot of fun and it meant I got to see a lot of people that I hadn't seen in ages and am likely to not see again for a while. Darn real lives, jobs and busy schedules.