dianaschnuth

I’m back.

I have several corps-related e-mails to answer and some general stuff to take care of (including watering my poor, thirsty plants, both indoors and out), but first I’m going to relax and take some time to document my vacation.

If you’re interested in reading about antiquing in Amish Country and other vacation highlights, read on.
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So far, you already know about the Art Fair and the Zoo trip. Next, on Tuesday, we visited COSI in Toledo, and were particularly disappointed to find that it was nothing like the Cleveland Science Center. At COSI, there are a zillion hands-on exhibits for the younger kids, but very little for big kids like us. The highlight of the day was the Distorted Gravity Room, where the room is built with the floor at probably a 45° angle, if not greater, and with no right angles in the doors or windows. Makes it very funky to try to walk from the entrance door to the exit. Weird, wild stuff.

But that was the highlight of our visit. Overall, I think we spent an hour and a half or so at COSI.

Today we drove out to Sauder Village to see how the settlers and old folks lived. I brought my 35mm camera, but ended up not taking very many photos at all, since most of the interesting stuff was indoors. Aaron and I both had a great time, even so. In each one-room building is a Sauder worker or volunteer, dressed in period clothing, who explains the building and the history behind it. We ended up looking into one original home, a replica of the first home in the Black Swamp, a one-room schoolhouse, a farmhouse, a community jailhouse, a mill, a printing press (including two linotype machines, for the VCT-minded—very cool), and various other buildings, in addition to walking around the grounds and checking out the museum building. Fun time, definitely worth the price of admission.

So, that pretty much concludes the major trips we’d planned for this week. Sometime tomorrow we plan to go see Fahrenheit 911 and maybe hit some earlybird garage sales. Friday we had considered going to a Clutch show in Flint, but I think we’ve opted against it at this point. We may go to the Art Museum for free. Saturday, there’s the community garage sale on Clymena, then we’re going to the Full Moon Walk with Kris and Jamie. We’ve still got some stuff left to keep us occupied, but no more major road trips.

In other news, we happened upon the Concert for George Harrison on PBS tonight. Not something I would have thought to rent on my own, just to watch, but seeing it on PBS was actually pretty cool. It featured a bunch of people we didn’t know, plus Clapton, Petty, George Harrison’s son, Ravi Shankar, Ringo, and McCartney, and Monty Python. Good concert, well-produced.

And I’m out. Word.

Eleven AM on a Tuesday, and here I am, chillin’ at my computer downstairs. Good times.

So, to catch everyone up on what’s been happening at the Schnuth abode: we’re both on vacation. I return to work one week from today, and Aaron doesn’t go back until the following Monday. Our original plan, way back when we requested our vacation time, had been to attend the Star Trek Convention in Las Vegas, but we had to choose between buying a house and going to our very first Star Trek Convention.

Then, I had thought that maybe we could use our new tent this week. However, Aaron brought up the fact that it’s the middle of summer, and it has the potential to get damned oppressively hot lately. With that in mind, we opted to wait until Labor Day to go camping.

So, what are we doing this week? All the shit in Toledo and the surrounding area that we haven’t done yet (or haven’t done for a while).

On Saturday, we went to the Ann Arbor Art Fair. In years past, we’ve always missed when it was, so we were thankful to have gotten a flyer from one of the artists at this year’s Crosby Festival.

Anyway, Aaron and I went with Kris and Jamie, leaving Toledo around 9:30am or so. We arrived in Ann Arbor at the mall shuttle pick-up around 10:30am, paid our $3 per person round trip, and off we went. When we got to the fair, Aaron and I discovered that not eating breakfast had its disadvantages, and that we were starving. So, around 11am, we headed into Amer’s and were delighted to find that they have some pretty decent salads there. Yum.

The rest of the day was spent looking at art (obviously), sitting on the grass in the diag and talking, browsing various stores (including, of course, Wizzywig), taking pictures, and just generally enjoying ourselves. I think we left around 4:00pm, and by then we were completely drained from walking all day. Great time, though.

As for the rest of our mutual vacation… Sunday was our normal errands / groceries / laundry day, and yesterday we went to the Toledo Zoo. Today we’re planning to go to COSI, tomorrow we may go to Sauder Village, sometime this week we’re going to see Fahrenheit 911 (since I haven’t seen it yet), and we’re contemplating going to Cleveland to check out the Rock Hall in its entirety. (We browsed the first floor during last year’s Gravity Games, but we didn’t get beyond that.) We may also visit Aaron’s grandparents while we’re in Cleveland, but I think the jury’s still out on that. Although we would be allowed to sleep in the same bed now, if there’s one big enough for the both of us…

On Saturday, it sounds like Frieser’s neighborhood is having their ‘hood-wide garage sale, so we’ll be checking that out, then on Saturday evening we’re joining Kris and Jamie again for the Full Moon Walk at Oak Openings Metropark.

So, even though we’re not really going out of town this week, we’re still having a pleasant vacation. Oh, yeah… I was so ready for a break.