Dumpsters

OK, I don't think I have written about this on my blog yet. Which is amazing, because sometimes I feel like it is RUINING my life!

I moved downtown about five weeks ago, and love love love living down here. It's a whole new world for me, within the same city I have always lived in. How great was it yesterday to walk out my door and into Browns party world?! I love my actual apartment too. As it turns out, I should have slept here for a night before I signed my lease...

I live behind the bars of W. 6th, which is easily the most popular area of downtown Cleveland to go out in. I am a night owl, so the noise from the bars never gets to me. They are really only super busy on the weekends, and I am usually out anyway. However, come Monday thru Friday, all of the dumpsters filled up with thousands of beer bottles start being emptied. And this is not a city thing- they are privately contracted waste management companies that the bars rent dumpsters from, and pay to have them come empty them. There are about four different companies with dumpsters around my building.

I totally understand that garbage needs to be taken care of, BUT, one little particular company called Allied Waste Management has taken the liberty of emptying their dumpsters before the sun comes up. Right under my window. I mean, as early as 4:45am. It is so loud, you have no idea. Some days I want to cry, others I laugh. Then by the time I fall back to sleep, the construction in my building starts, usually around 7am. This is all way beyond ear plugs, by the way.

Without going on for too long about this, I just can't take it anymore! I start every day ticked off. I have tried calling Allied, and of course leave messages and do not get calls back. Well today was the last straw. I called the Cleveland Police at 5:00am to file a noise complaint. They were super nice and even called me back later in the day to give me the correct number for a department at City Hall where they issue permits to these companies. Turns out you are not allowed to empty dumpsters until 6:30am. Still early, but not as bad.

My new friend Casandra at City Hall is sending Allied a warning letter, and I am supposed to follow up with them next week. I either have to find a way to make this better, or go insane! If you see Channel 3 News Investigates hiding in the corners of W. 6th before the sun comes up, you'll know who called them. And I'm not kidding. :)

Kicking It For Labor Day

This last weekend was REALLY fun! I went to Erie for the weekend, and Darrel and I stayed with his two best friends, literally out in the country. They live on a main road, and it is not paved. But their house and property is super nice. Their son, Noah, turned one on Saturday, so they had a party for him that we went to, went out to dinner, and just hung out. Noah is SO CUTE and mild mannered. Check him out digging into his cake once he finally figured out it was something you eat:Sunday was the annual Erie peeps kickball game. This is code for drink a lot of beer and kick a ball around. I didn't play last year, but Darrel convinced me it would be fun, so I put on the gear and decided to try playing for the first time since probably 5th grade gym class. Lets just say I wasn't the best outfielder there, but when you are playing a game where the guys are running the bases with beers in their hands, it's not that embarrassing. All of his friends there are great, and only a few made fun of me for not being a stellar player. :)Monday I drove home and went to my mom's pool for the day. I couldn't believe how awesome the weather was all weekend! Some friends came over and we just hung out all day. All said and done, it was perfect!

The Old(er) Person's Party

Kind of a funny name for it, but it's what we called it. :) About a month ago, a bunch of us were over at my mom's one afternoon, and we were talking about the loft downtown I was moving into. I was saying how awesome it was, and how it was such a fun and great place for younger people to live, etc. One of my mom's friends said, "well what about us old people?! Can't we enjoy it too?!" So I thought, what the heck! Have 'em all over!

It was pretty easy to find a Friday night to have the party. Saturday's can be nuts in the summer, but Fridays seem to stay pretty open. So I had the "Italians" and the Kubach's over at 6:30. My mom, Ernie, George and Rosemary decided to go for the FULL downtown experience and take the RTA rapid (Cleveland's version of a train... kind of) and everyone else drove on down. No one could figure out how to call me on the call box, but overall they did a pretty good job of finding the place!

I bought and made a ton of apps, and to my surprise, people brought more as well. I was so worried they were going to starve and that we would not have enough food because I was not making dinner, but on the contrary, we had tons of leftovers! The plan was to graze on the food, play a game or two of of LCR (a fun dice game where you can win a big pot of singles at the end) and then maybe go to a more upscale bar to show them the nightlife. Well, everyone wound up having so much fun that we just stayed here all night, and the rapid crew barely made the last one home! Success. :)

Northern Exposure

I haven't written a blog in so long! Reason being, I was up at our house in Canada (about two hours north of Toronto) for a week with Darrel, my sister, and a good family friend. My dad came up for a few days too, mostly because our roof is leaking (again) and being Mr. Fix It, he brought his tar and did it himself. I have been going there since before I was born, and it is definitely one of my favorite places on earth.

This trip was a little different than other years. In the past, I have had groups of my girlfriends come up, but it's just too hard now. People have kids, are married, can't get off work.... but no matter what, BA and I are always up for some quality Georgian Bay time!

My dad didn't put our boats in the water this year, and he sold our jet skis, so that left us with very few options for transportation (you have to take a boat to get to our house). Luckily, a friend let us borrow one of his boats for a few days, and then we rented a little outboard from a resort island for a few days. It was hilarious how slow this boat went. It had a 15 horsepower engine on it. Put four of us in the tiny boat with all of our stuff, and we're looking at about 7 or 8 miles per hour. Maybe. We decided we could have swam faster! If anything, it made us grateful for what we usually do have.

There is really not a whole lot to "do" up there, but we seem to fill our days with no problem. We made huge dinners every night, went swimming, played games, went cliff jumping (I don't like it, so I was the person who stayed in the boat!), read books on the dock, watched a few movies. The weather was PERFECT! All in all, it was a really great week.

Wedding Weekend Part I

I call this "part one" because in only a few short weeks, I have another fun family wedding to go to.

This past weekend I went to South Bend, IN for my cousin Pat's wedding. I think he is actually my third cousin, but whatever. Pat in in the Army, graduated from West Point, and is currently training to be a Black Hawk Down pilot. Crazy! Anyway, he and Katherine have been dating since pretty much the 6th grade, and they took the big step on Saturday!

Now see if you can follow this: my cousin Jon is Pat's brother. Jon's wife is Rachel. Rachel's sister is Katherine, who married Patrick. Got that? The sisters married the brothers!

My favorite part of military weddings is... well, the military aspect of them! All of the guys in uniform look so cool- marching down the aisle, putting their swords up, smacking the girl on the behind to welcome her to the Army. LOVE it!

We have had a LOT of babies born in the family over the last year (I think five), so it was really fun to meet a few of them (and see how cute they were dressed). Not everyone could make it, but my extended family is SO big that there will still a ton of people there to chat and catch up with. The weather was beautiful, and the reception was great.

And did I mention that I got to meet some of the people I stalk on their blogs!? Haha! Rachel has links to her friends and I check some of them- as my aunt Susan says, blogging is like legal voyeurism!

Home SWEET Home

Well, I am officially moved in to the loft downtown. I LOVE IT! While living down here might become a bit dangerous (in regards to the many bars and restaurants literally right outside my door), I think I will love the city life. :) A few pics of the new place are posted below!

The Big Move

Moving really stinks!

When I decided I was going to go back out on tour again this season, I decided to just rent out my house, and start using it as a permanent rental property. The house is great- deceiving from the outside, it has four bedrooms (two being very large), two full bathrooms, and an extra library/office. Unfortunately, I don't love the neighborhood. All of the houses on my street pretty much look the same, and while I made my house very warm on the inside, there is not a whole lot of "character" to it. I really like older homes with a lot of woodwork. There are also not a lot of trees on my street, and I never made friends with any of my neighbors. Sooooo, while it has been a great first home, I think next year when I come home from tour I will be ready to live somewhere else (close to where I am now).

I found four guys to rent my house starting August 15th, so a friend and myself decided to rent a really cool apartment in downtown Cleveland for a few months until I go back on tour, and she goes back home to Australia. It is fully furnished, and all we had to take with us was our clothing and personal items.

The new apartment is great, but packing up my house is NOT!! I have to pretty much put everything I own in storage, which is why I think this is more difficult than a normal move from one house to another. Absolutely everything I own has to go in a box. I can't say, "well, I'll just put this stuff in the backseat of the car and take it out when I get over to the new house". Because there is no house! It's just nuts. The amount of stuff I have thrown out and gotten rid of is pretty ridiculous. You would think I would have nothing left, but everywhere I look is something that needs to be packed.

Darrel came to town to help me for the weekend, which has been really nice. So we just keep picking away at it, in between parties, going out, and lounging at the pool, hoping I figure it all out before the 15th!