summer so they do not have to wait another year to graduate. I took them so that I could get a lot of work done in a short time. It was a mistake I will never repeat, but I lived to tell about it and maintained my 4.0.
Before another semester of school starts, I had the goal of updating the blog. The next semester starts in two days - so here I am. I intended to update this more, and add to Facebook less, but frankly it takes a lot more effort to post here, and time grows more scarce every day.
With the move to O-H-I-O (The "sloopy" song is acted out here, YMCA style, for some reason), my intention was to use the blog as a compare/contrast of our experience here vs. our old digs in the 801. I'll try and review a little for those that are interested:
First, had Lester known that the Land of Cleves receives more annual rainfall than Seattle and the same number of rainy days (39" vs. 37" per year, respectively,and both with 155 days of rain per year), she would have never accepted the job; the rub is that it also has much, much more sunshine, too. Days in Seattle are cloudy and misty frequently, where here, it rains frequently, but rains a lot harder when it does, then is sunny when not raining - except in the winter where I shoveled 19 times last year vs. an average of 7 or 8 in UT. The snow is frequent, heavy, and slick as hell. Storms develop as freezing rain, then he heavy snow falls atop it. And every day is grey. People "hole up" and neighbors do not see each other all winter, in fact, people do not go out, so quite a few local restaurants close in the winters. (SLC gets 16.5" per y
ear, and 91 precipitous days per year, in case you were wondering). We do not water lawns here. Ever. Nor anything else. The humidity inside makes watering almost non-essential indoors, too. Everything living grows like crazy here - everything.
The trade off is mold. Mold (and all things that like moist living areas such as beetles of all kinds, cockroaches, ants, mushrooms and all other fungi) is an ongoing battle, and stores here sell "dehumidifiers" like stores in the 801 sold humidifiers and window mounted air conditioners. Surprise! - they cost several hundred dollars and are made by the same people. I asked my Realtor why so many people had humidifiers in their basements and he laughed. He has never lived in the desert and thought I was kidding.
Next topic for the time being - green space. There is a lot more of it here; a lot lot lot more. Where SLC had neighborhood parks, some gems like Liberty and Sugarhouse for sure, and loads of unimproved BLM and other federal lands, Cleveland has "The Emerald Necklace"; a series of parks, mostly interconnecting, that ring the city- 22,000 acres of park. Not that we have anything against them, but there are no bicycling or off-road vehicles allowed so it is nice to just go and walk or jog the improved areas without fear of being run down. There area literally
thousands of miles of trails, with very few people on them. The necklace connects with Cuyahoga Valley National Park a few miles from our house.
Here's a diagram:
The South Chagrin Reservation (middle to bottom right) is a mile from our new home, and we visit it several times a week. We live about 9 direct miles from downtown, but we are surrounded by the country here (suburban sprawl is a lot less here, too - most national chains are hard are a 15-20 minute drive away). Behind our house is a valley that drains to the Chagrin River, and at the end of our block is a 140 acre park owned and maintained by the city. We recently found a dog park that is part of the necklace, and it is like no other dog park we've seen:
Mowed trails through high grass fields that connect several wide open grass areas. Very few people seem to use them (These pictures were taken around 6:00p on a weekday) but they're owned by the Western Reserve Land Conservancy, so they're there forever if people want to use them.
Next topic: Stuff to do. With any larger city there is always more things to do - With the manufacturing needing labor in days of old, the resulting diversity makes it so there is always a festival or celebration going on, and has killer restaurants, too; Cleveland used to have a larger Hungarian population than Hungary, so pierogies and paprikash are more authentic here than elsewhere, and there are sections for each ethnic area (because in days of yore, they settled by people they knew). There is also a very large Jewish population on the Eastern side of Cleveland, and they run some outstanding restaurants and delis that rival New York in terms of quality and quantity. There are, however, no outstanding burger joints such as Crown or Apollo or Atlantis etc... burger. Five Guys just came into the area, so I'm hoping more will follow to improve the burger situation. Beside Five Guys, we essentially have McD's, Burger King, and Applebee's for our burger desires.
Cleveland used to have a much larger population before manufacturing went overseas and elsewhere, and we are benefiting from that today as far as the arts and culture goes (lotta old money here - still Rockefellers and Carnegies around that give to the arts). The result is world class arts and humanities, with a declining population, so traffic and parking is not an issue, either. Here are pics of the Cleveland Botanical Gardens from today:
But there is a downside... While a lot of the arts are under enormous endowments and thus are free to attend, those that are not are pretty expensive to go to, since there are fewer people in the area to support them, and the roads around downtown are horrible. Pot holes as big as cars, huge ice heaves that go unfixed, dilapidated parking structures, and antiquated stop light systems at every street corner that take a millennium to get from one point to he next. There is also no safety inspection required to licence cars. So the streets beat them up, the car's owners do not know it, and a lot of the cars in and around the downtown area are hazardous; running on donut spares, shot suspensions, wracked wheel balancing and no brakes. Big American made Buicks and Cadillacs bouncing about the roads, only semi-controlled.
So, great arts scene, not-so great infrastructure. That's what we're all about. Getting late, more to come.
