weekend update + a few photos

Well, the trip to Ohio was a lot of fun. Stefy and I mad it down there by 7:30 or so on Friday. It wouldn’t been earlier, if not for a dinner stop at the slowest f#cking McDonald’s on the planet for dinner.

We just hung out with mom and Dan outside for a while and caught up once we got to the house. Since Stef still hadn’t seen the video I made about my grandparents, we popped that in and watched the whole thing (it’s about an hour).

I slept pretty well on the new guest mattress that night, and got up at about 8:30 or so on Saturday morning. We had a light lunch, and got up and around for the Food and Wine festival in downtown Columbus. The whole thing was basically organized by the local Farmer’s Market, and they had all these vendors there from different Ohio wineries. Now, I’ll admit that I’m no wine expert or anything, but I thought everything we tried was pretty tasty (and no, I wasn’t chewing gum or anything).

The best part of the afternoon was wandering through the Farmer’s Market, which was really cool. They have all these different fresh food stands, little stores, bakeries… the whole nine yards. It was just one of those places that you go to and ask yourself, “Uh, why isn’t there anything like this in Michigan?”

We all had a nice lunch at the market, and then did a little poking around in the “Short North” district (which is basically the artsy fartsy part of downtown). We popped into few shops here and there, but none of us bought anything. It was just nice to walk around and explore a part of the city that we hadn’t been to before.

Most of the afternoon and evening was spent back at the house relaxing, but it was just nice to hang out with my mom and Dan.

Mr. Schafer whipped up some steaks on the grill for dinner, so we ate pretty good that night.

Afterwards we decided to play Scrabble, which might’ve been a mistake. Things got a little heated once or twice, but for the most part, I think everyone had a time. Of course, my mom won (as always), but Stefy came within six points of beating her.

Once we were done with that game of Scrabble, we decided to move onto Sequence. It was my mom and I against Dan and Stef, and after each team won a game, we had a rubber match to see who would win for the night. Dan and Stef wound up winning, so that made me the big loser for the night.

Chef Dan made a really nice pancake breakfast this morning. After we ate, we all decided to get dressed for a set of tennis at the high school. So, we get there only to find out that none of the nets or out, which basically put the kibosh on those plans. Since we still wanted to work off our heavy breakfast, we just came back to the house and went for a nice long walk through the neighborhood.

Stefy and I eventually hit the road at around 12:30, and made it back to her house in well under four hours. I took a break there for a little while, and then took off for home.

So that’s the weekend in a nutshell. Good times with the folks down in Columbus.

Oh, one last thing… here are a few pictures from the last two weekends. I don’t feel like whipping up a gallery right now, so I’ll just post the small versions:

Here’s Stefy and I at the Ben Folds concert at the Palace

At Comerica for the Red Socks game

We ran into Mary Spiro (Stef’s cousin) at the Red Socks game

We sat behind this guy at the Food and Wine Festival. Apparently, it wasn’t the only festival he went to this year. He must have a ball at these things.

Stefanie Spiro is: The Happy Greek!