It's Memorial Day Weekend...I Am Outta Here!

It seems to be a tradition for me to get out of town on Memorial Day Weekend. Two years ago, I headed North and went to Toronto for the weekend. Last year, I headed East (way East) and was in Ireland over Memorial Day Weekend. This year, I am going West and spending Memorial Day weekend in San Francisco. If you need me, you may want to use this handy San Francisco microbrewery map to track me down:

Blog Vacation

Like Barack Obama, I was offered a new job last Tuesday. His position is a little more exciting than mine, but it's still a transition nonetheless. I have been quite busy the past week, and probably will be for the next week or so until I get settled into my new position. With this in mind, I probably won't be blogging nearly as much. In case the two of you who actually read my blog get bored, you can always watch one of my favorite videos:
The first Sarah Palin spotting on SNL:

The Las Vegas Blog Post

Introducing the first-ever Sportygrrl Las Vegas awards. A ceremony that chronicles our wonderful stay in the real city that never sleeps.

Best place in Las Vegas to get anything you could ever want on your burger from lobster meat to black truffles to fried egg: The Burger Bar (earlier during the awards ceremony, The Burger Bar also won for best selection of imported beers). This restaurant was located in Mandalay Place, not Mandalay Bay which is a little confusing at first, but it is worth the search.

Best place in Las Vegas to see a re-creation of King Tut's Tomb: The King Tut Museum located inside the Luxor Casino. This award could also be re-named: Best place to visit once you have realized you are lost inside the Luxor and can't find your way out of the casino area.

Best place in Las Vegas to watch Beer Pong after midnight: O'Sheas Casino. They actually advertise the authentic beer pong tables they have in the back of the casino. This place resembles a bar from 1982 more than a casino, which is part of it's charm.

Best place in Las Vegas to use a public bathroom: The Venetian. On our long trek down the strip at 3 a.m., it was nice to know you could stop inside a public bathroom with gold trim and private rooms to take a pee break.

Best place in Las Vegas to sit in front of a firepit and eat chicken wings: The Peppermill Fireside Lounge (earlier in the awards ceremony, The Peppermill also won for best $18 drink, which was named The Scorpion). This whole experience was amazing. It was definitely our favorite spot on the strip as we spent a couple hours at the bar and then moved down to the firepit to eat dinner. This is vintage old school Vegas! The wings here were also really good. I gave them a 4.0 out of 5.0 on my wing rating scale.

Best place in Las Vegas to play slots at 5 a.m.: Slots A Fun. Sure...it's dingy and a little scary, but you won't get the real feel of this place during daylight hours. We were quickly sold on the yard-long daiquiri and tacky slot machine themes.

Best place in Las Vegas to eat lunch when you are hungover: The Spice Market Buffet at Planet Hollywood. They have everything here combining every nationality you can think of including a middle eastern selection. The food was extremely good for a lunch buffet and perfect for a "morning after meal".

Best place in Las Vegas to experience an atomic bomb being detonated: The Atomic Testing Museum. This hands-on museum is located right off the strip and was a great late afternoon activitiy. The museum includes movies, war propaganda galore and many pictures of Miss Atomic Bomb 1957. The best part about this museum is that it shows a very accurate reflection of how crazy people were during the Cold War.

Best view in Las Vegas: The Foundation Room at the top of Mandalay Bay. The Foundation Room is a private club affiliated with the House of Blues and located on the top floor of Mandalay Bay. We were able to get in because my cousin was kind enough to pull a few strings and get our name on the guest list. This place really did make us feel like royalty with the velvet ropes, elevator greeters and an unbelievable view of the strip. They do open this place up to the public on Monday evenings and I highly recommend it to anyone who visits Las Vegas.

Best view of Las Vegas from the middle of the strip: The Eiffel Tower at the Paris Resort and Casino (earlier in the awards ceremony this also won as the most french thing you can do in Las Vegas). Sure, it's a little cheesy to go up a fake Eiffel Tower, but we had a coupon from our Players Club Book, which makes it so much more legitimate. What really made this vertical venture worthwhile was viewing the watershow at The Bellagio from above.

Best place to spend two hours in the desert viewing three acres of old Las Vegas signs: The Neon Boneyard. Like Las Vegas? Like history? Like neon? Like getting sunburnt as you walk around looking at old Las Vegas signs? Then this is the place for you! It all came together for me when the tour guide said: "In 1929 neon was patented, and in 1931 gambling was legalized in Nevada." These two events led us through decades of tacky neon signs that eventually ended up at this somewhat secretive Las Vegas escape. If you are going to take this tour, you have to book it in advance.

Best Place in Vegas to get a 99 cent margarita: Our Hotel, Bill's Gambling Hall and Casino. This was way too convenient. The margarita bar was located right by the door, so you ALWAYS passed by it.

Best place to get a cheap microbrew: Ellis Island Casino and Brewery. This place was a pleasant surprise, and a favorite spot for locals. It's an older casino, located two blocks behind the strip with a microbrewery right inside the casino. The best part was that all their brews were only $1 no matter which one you ordered.

Best place to drink a beer under the World's Largest Pint Glass: Hennessey's Tavern. Before entering the Fremont Street Experience in Downtown Las Vegas we stopped inside this little Irish pub to grab some dinner. Luckily for us, Tuesday was Burger night, so we got a free meal. Located above Hennessey's is the largest pint glass in the world, which also happens to be a club called Brass The Lounge. Its a good pit stop as you walk around Downtown.

Best place in Las Vegas to drink out of a plastic football while watching a crazy light show: The Fremont Street Experience. If you haven't seen this light show or been involved with this experience, it is hard to describe. Every hour, the biggest light show in the world goes off for five minutes and completely captivates everyone who watches it. We debated going downtown, but I am so glad we did it.

Best place to gain five pounds and lose a lot of money: Las Vegas!

A Small Taste Of Vegas And A Foreign Dose Of Wings

While the "Las Vegas Blog Post" has yet to be finished, I did want to direct you to a very small sample of pictures, that I uploaded last night. If you click this link, you can catch a glimpse of our four-day trip keeping in mind there are still hundreds of pictures yet to be loaded. You should be able to click on the individual pictures to enlarge them and see the caption.

In the meantime, I read this story yesterday about a hockey player from Czechoslovakia who was hospitalized in Buffalo after a traumatic incident during a game. The player was critically injured, but as he recovered in Buffalo, his one request was to eat authentic Buffalo Wings. Stories like this just warm my heart! My favorite quote from the story was from the doctor: "He asked if he could eat Buffalo chicken wings," Noor (the doctor) said. "So we let him." This quote reminded me of the famous words uttered by Marie Antoinette, instead of letting them eat cake, she should have said: "Let them eat wings!"

Sportygrrl Went To Toronto And All You Get Is This Lousy Blog Entry

I am back in the states (I have always wanted to say that) after being tourist extraordinaire in Canada and Western New York the past couple days. There were many attractions visited and much beer drank in a short amount of time, but I am sure I remember enough of it to pass on.

On Thursday we arrived at our crazy bed and breakfast. We were greeted by a large deer head, a crazy umbrella and hat collection and the most eccentric collection of stuff that followed us all over the house. Our room actually ended up being the whole third floor of an old victorian house with our own private bathroom that had a hot tub and a private rooftop deck that allowed you to see the city skyline. One amenity that was not mentioned on the website was that we were right across the street from The Beer Store-that was quite a bonus.

We actually didn't spend much time at the bed and breakfast because every morning after breakfast-a huge spread of eggs, potatoes, sausage, bacon and fresh fruit-we headed out on our urban adventure. Our first night there we ate at the oldest restaurant in the city called the Senator Diner, where I got the Macaroni and Cheese that came with homemade ketchup-everything in Canada is served with ketchup, which is why I loved this trip so much! After dinner, we went to see Evil Dead The Musical, on our walk home we spotted the CAVS game from outside a bar called The Beer Cellar, and went in for a couple of beers and finished watching the game. On Friday we went out on our much-anticipated double-decker bus tour around the city, made a quick stop at the CN Tower, ate lunch at the best thai restaurant in the city, Green Mango, adventured around the West side of the city in search of hats and books and caught a French fim that night at the local film festival. On Saturday there was an event called Doors Open Toronto, where most of the buildings in the city opened their doors for tours. We chose to tour the old Distillery section of town, which was followed by a self-guided tour through the south side of town straight to the Steam Whistle Brewery. At the brewery we were allowed unlimited beer and access to the old-fashioned photo booth where I seized the opportunity to take my picture while drinking beer. After the Steam Whistle we headed back to enjoy some beverages from The Beer Store, took advantage of a sunny day on the rooftop deck and then headed out for the night. We had a magnificent dinner at a restaurant called Hair of the Dog, where we enjoyed calamari, peppercorn ribeye steak and lamb stew. From there we were let into a concert free of charge just because we got there late. We were able to catch a group we were interested in seeing all weekend called Kids on TV, a crazy queer punk, electric band that was incredibly engaging. We had just enough money for the cab to make it back to our bed and breakfast that evening, which showed that we used all of our Canadian resources to the fullest. We headed out of the city on Sunday to do some last minute things, like pick up some funny t-shirts and our favorite alcoholic beverages to take back with us.

We weren't quite done being tourists as a we made a pit-stop in Niagara Falls. This is where my nerdy side came out, because I was determined to catch a movie on the history of Niagara Falls at the visitor center. After the typical pictures that everyone takes at the falls and the movie, we headed south to Buffalo to eat at The Anchor, the birthplace of wings. As you may know from my many previous entries on this blog, I am a huge lover of chicken wings, so visiting this place was better than many of the attractions we caught in Toronto. After filling ourselves with wings and spilling sauce on myself, we headed back to Cleveland where the skyline looked so small in comparison to Toronto. However, it was good to be home for Memorial Day to cook out, while still enjoying the fruits of our trip by drinking the Canadian beer we bought on our way out of the country. Shhh...don't tell border patrol!

Cleveland's Great, But It's Time For A Vacation!

This past weekend I tried two new experiences that made me realize how much I love living in Cleveland. On Saturday we went to the roller derby. If you get the chance I highly recommend catching a bout next month in North Olmsted. (Technically if its taking place in North Olmsted, I guess its really Cleveland+) This experience is the most fun you can have at an indoor soccer complex drinking beer out of a can watching women skate around in circles trying to knock each other down. On Sunday we decided to take a more sophisticated approach to the city as we walked around my neighborhood and did the Ohio City Home Tour.

While I love the summertime in Cleveland, it is time for a small break, so I will be spending this Memorial Day Weekend in Toronto. Tomorrow at this time I will be laying out on the sandy beaches of Toronto breathing in the fresh air coming off of Lake Ontario. Wait...thats not right. Tomorrow at this time I will be at the duty free buying cheap bottles of my favorite vodka. Either way, I am looking forward to getting away for a couple days. A full update should be expected upon my return. Have a safe and enjoyable Memorial Day Weekend!

Back to the Grind

It is weird to be back in Cleveland. Everything seems like it is moving in slow motion compared to the pace of Boston. What a great trip to the East Coast! I heard the weather here was horrible but we had beautiful weather almost everyday. It rained on our drive to Cape Cod but once we got there it was gorgeous for two days. The Cape was deserted so we had the beaches and the restaurants to ourselves.

I won’t have any of the pictures ready for a day or so but we got some amazing shots in Provincetown and in the city. It was truly an incredible vacation where we ate like kings, slept in everyday and lost track of the outside world. This is the first time I have been on-line in a week and I hardly watched any sports the whole trip. It is extremely hard to miss the Red Sox on television because they are on in every restaurant and pub. We were unable to get tickets to the baseball game. We went down to Fenway and tried but it is a good city to be a scalper—everybody wants a piece of the Red Sox. Instead of going to the game, we enjoyed a couple beers at a pub behind the Green Monster and still felt like part of Red Sox Nation for a night.

The food was incredible. My first night there I had scrod stuffed with crab in a lobster béarnaise sauce for $13 in a cute little restaurant in the North End overlooking the Harbor. In the Cape, we ate at the famous Lobster Pot where you can add a whole lobster to any entrée for $10. Eating a whole lobster was quite an experience. A few words of advice: wear the bib. The ethnic restaurants in the city were incredible. We had great Thai food, cheaper and better than what I have had in Cleveland. We also ate these Chilean sandwiches in the city that were phenomenal.

I will admit however that when we got home last night at 9:00 we did go to the Winking Lizard because we missed our wings. And smoking. We also missed smoking and having a beer in the same spot. Massachusetts is a non-smoking state which was a little hard to get used to at first. It was amazing though to be hanging out in all of these pubs and restaurants with no cigarette smoke. There is something to be said about going home and not smelling like smoke at the end of the night.

I loved the city but I just don’t think I would ever be able to afford living there. We stayed in a 950 square foot condo about 15 minutes from the city which cost our friends almost $300,000. It just amazed me how much more expensive it is to live in the city. We went to a party thrown by a girl who lived in a suite for $1000/month. This was just one room, a small kitchen and a bathroom. Of course there is also Beacon Hill right downtown where the houses, with no yard whatsoever, sell for six million dollars and up. The houses on the Cape overlooking the ocean were half this much.

Overall it was an incredible trip and I feel so well rested from my much-needed vacation. I must admit there were some things I missed back in Ohio and I was ready to come home after seven days. I should have pictures up and ready in the next few days.

Finally!

Finally after weeks of planning, my vacation is here and I couldn’t be more excited. Tomorrow at this time I will be eating fresh seafood sitting in a city with a playoff-bound basketball team. (I haven’t given up complete hope for the Cavaliers but things are looking bleak). I will spend the next week trekking around Boston, Salem, Cambridge, Jamaica Plain and Cape Cod on an overdue vacation. I realized yesterday since I have started working full-time six years ago I am yet to take a real vacation which makes this even more exciting. Being a history and sports buff, this trip is going to be incredible. I can’t wait to go to Fenway Park but I am also so excited about going to Salem to see the Witch Trial Museum. And the ocean. I can’t wait to see the ocean! Pictures and entries to follow at some point during the week and after my trip.

Top O' The Tournament To You

Whatever happens in Cleveland on the first day of March Madness which also falls on St. Patrick’s Day, stays in Cleveland. Yesterday was one of the best St. Patrick’s Days I have had in a long time, though there is nothing too crazy to entertain you with on this day after. Liz and I both had the day off, so we decided to walk from our place down to the parade. The parade turned out to look like every other parade I have ever seen in my life but with a lot more drunk and pushy people. (It was nice to be sober for that event and watch everyone else act like morons for once.) Afterwards we hung out downtown and took the RTA back to our neighborhood haunts. At each bar, we ended up running into a few unexpected guests, which is always such a pleasant surprise. We did end up at this gay bar last night which refused to turn off Will and Grace to put the tournament games on. How was I supposed to know anything else was on TV yesterday? Luckily, I had Mark calling me every 30 minutes to give me updates just like the ESPN ticker. Now that’s the true meaning of family.

My Poor Inbox

As I sit here putting together the final details of a seven day, six night trip while looking for new jobs, I have noticed my inbox is getting a little out of control on my desk. I am the type of anal person who usually likes to do things as they come to me, but I have really fallen behind this week. The ironic part is that people think I am so busy because I have never had such serious looks on my face as I stare at my computer trying to figure out: in-season vs. out-of-season rates, flight itineraries, ferry and bus schedules, car rental rates, oceanfront vs. ocean view, how to book the bed and breakfast I want, how to find the best Red Sox tickets, how compensation tables work, job descriptions and the best way to restructure my resume. As you can see, I am very busy.

Mid-American Conference Sidenote: Congratulations to my alma mater, Ohio University, for defeating Kent State last night and making it into the MAC semifinals tonight at Gund Arena. I love that my brother called me before he went to the game and said: "What was the name of the point guard who played with Gary Trent...I am trying to impress some guys who graduated from Ohio University." What I said: "That was Geno Ford and it should be really easy to remember because he now coaches for Kent State, so they will be impressed when you mention that as well...don't forget Ohio won the preseason NIT in 1994 with Ford and Trent...good luck impressing them."

Two Extremes

In the past two days, I have discovered what the most exciting thing and most stressful things are in my life. The most exciting thing is planning a week-long vacation on the East Coast. The most stressful thing is trying to make a deposit in an ATM machine before you run out of time. Last night I was stuck watching the screen of the ATM and trying to get an envelope and write my information on it in 34 seconds. I felt like I was on some European game show or something.