B3: The Kids Are Visiting Edition

Shoe Queen and Slim Jim are here at Chez Knit for a visit. Of course we had to do some fun things.
1.
We went to the West Side Market yesterday. We all know how much I love and adore this place. The old budget takes a hit when we shop there. The produce always looks fabulous and we often find something that we have never seen before.

Rambutan! They look like some strange sea creature. The flesh has the consistency of a grape and the taste is faintly citrus and grapefruit. Deeeeeelicious.

There is always the one stall that has a suckling pig for sale. I have no place or way to cook this…..and yet I want to buy it so that I can attempt it.

Shopping is very tiring work indeed.

2.
After making the rounds of the market, and maybe buying about 18 loaves of bread at Mediterra (my FAV place for artisan bread), we put our stuff in the car and walked back out to find lunch. Walked past Market Garden Brewery and on down to Nano Brew, just down the street.

Can I just say that if you love beer from a microbrewery or small region brewery, Cleveland is the place for you. Great Lakes, Market Garden, Nano Brew, Brewkettle, Thirsty Dog, Brick and Barrel, Platform Brewing, just to name a few.

For lunch I indulged in a Fathead Brewing Head Hunter IPA. Deeeeeeeeeelicious. And it fell within our guidelines of drinking local microbrew. Fathead is located in North Olmstead. Dang I love Cleveland and the surrounding Frozen Northeast Ohio and their microbrew beer culture

Did I digress? Did I reveal that HHBL and I are beer snobs (hangs head in shame and reaches for a snobby, locally brewed IPA)? Get me talking about good beer and all other things go out of my brain.

Where was I?

When you can have tater tots with your Falafel sandwich, it is a really good day.

TOTS! Who doesn’t love tater tots? Crispy nuggets of potato, deep fried. Oh be still my beating heart. I might have taken half of the portion home because there were so many. And because I am a VERY NICE MOMMY I let Shoe Queen consume them as a late night snack.

3.
After shopping and lunch we staggered home and rested for an hour before going back out to go to a movie. Don’t want any down time!

We saw……….

Three of the four of us liked it. I thought it was good, HHBL was not as enthused. Of course not as good as Jurassic Park but then it is hard to come up to that standard. There were a couple of memorable lines that I am sure will fall into family movie line quoting.  It didn’t take itself all that seriously. There were funny moments. There was excitement. There were cute kids. There was family tension. There was a surprise villian (sort of). There was the clueless park owner who just wants people to have “fun” but doesn’t think about the cost. I hoped throughout the entire movie that Vincent D’Onofrio would be eaten by some dinosaur……..

Spoiler Alert

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He is. I know it is wrong to rejoice at death and dismemberment at the tiny hands (but large teeth) of a Velociraptor….but he had it coming.

Overall, it was a good summer movie. CERTAINLY better than San Andreas. All I can say about THAT movie is that it is two hours of time that I will never get back.

4.
Friday evening saw us going to the Cleveland Indians – Tampa Bay Rays game. They were celebrating the 1995 Cleveland Indians, a fabulous season. We had season tickets at that time in our life and 1995 was so much fun.

Plus……

It might have been “Dollar Dog Night” at Progressive Field. Ahhhhhh, there is nothing like a lukewarm hot dog in a soft, wrinkled bun to make your heart go pitter patter. I might have had two of them, smothered in ketchup, mustard and pickle relish. Yes, I KNOW that isn’t the way that I grew up having a hot dog. But if I asked for a dill pickle and sour kraut on my dog and hold the ketchup then I can tell you I would have gotten strange looks indeed. Cleveland doesn’t understand the Chicago Dog.

Other than that, and the fact that despite several chances the Indians did not win the game, we had a good time. And at the end of the game…….

There were fireworks!

5.

The sunset might also have been fabulous. We were in section 546, which is where we had our first season tickets in 1994. You have a great view of the field except for the 1st base line. From 1995 onwards we were in section 548, just a bit to the left, which gave you most of the 1st base line as well. Oh how I loved those seats. We have had season ticket seats in other sections of the park in other years but the seats in section 548 were my favorites. Everyone around us were also season ticket holders so we saw the same people for all 20 games that we attended as well as all of the post-season games. It was a wonderful year for baseball.

6.
I also might have figured out that the iPhone camera has a “photo burst” mode.

Who knew!

I didn’t bring Big Bertha to the game and I really wanted to experiment with taking fireworks photos with the iPhone. But no matter how quick you are with your finger on the button your reaction time would be too slow. However, as I sat there in the top of the 7th I decided to let Google give me some information. Low and behold if, instead of just touching the “take the picture” button, you keep your finger on the button it takes a boat load of pictures. It keeps them in a “stack” on your phone and you can then decide which ones that you like.

Genius.

And a very easy way to take WAY TOO MANY PICTURES.

7.
Instagram. Just because I love pictures.