Adventure #10 – Vacation!

Adventure #10  – Vacation!

June 13, 2012

Vacation Day!  Another glorious day in June.  My friend, a teacher, who has been set free for the summer from the bonds of slavery to The Standarized Test, has come into town to enjoy a couple vacation days with me.

She has been kind enough to follow my blog, so I have decided  to show her some of the sites.  After a long walk and some beautiful views of the lake from my favorite local park, we head down to Tremont for lunch.  There is a restaurant there like I wanted to try out call South Side.  It is located in a former firehouse.

Inside, the restaurant is long and narrow.  It is clean, sleek, dark browns and blacks. To the right is the bar, a wavy, granite topped affair.  Tall glass block windows lined with shelves sport the various bottles of liquor.

To the left is a row of tables.  Beyond that, seen through glass windows is another lower level dining area sporting a fireplace that serves both the indoor dining area and the outdoor patio beyond.   We head for the outdoor patio.

The patio is enclosed with wrought iron fencing and shrubs on two sides, a colorfully painted brick wall on another side, and the restaurant on one side.  The menu is reasonably priced and has some interesting selections.  Since this is my year for adventure, I choose what (for me) is an adventurous choice – Chicken and Waffles.  The meal is perfect Belgian waffled, covered with maple syrup, powdered sugar, topped with chicken fried in maply cruchy something with a side of hot sauce.  The maply chicken dipped in hot sauce is really a good combination.  Really, really yummy.  That’s my official food review

The patrons include several business types in their suits, a few tables of female friends lunching in the afternoon, and a table 6 priests.

Our waitress is exceptionally friendly.  (Now, those  native Clevelanders who might be reading my blog are probably saying in your “in your face” voice – “And you said Clevelanders are unfriendly!”  Well, our waitress was Puerto Rican, soooooo……)

After lunch, we walked around Tremont.  I am starting to feel like the unofficial Tremont tour guide.  I also have a confession to make – as I continue on with my project to “re-discover Cleveland”, I am starting to like Tremont and I am starting to appreciate Cleveland more and more.

After the Tremont tour, we drove down 25^th Street, down the hill to the West Bank of  Flats (the area of lower elevation that runs along the mouth of the Cuyahoga River), crossed what I think is the Canal Street Bridge, over to the East Bank of the Flats (and I crossed the Cuyahoga without a passport – Hmph!) , up the hill to downtown, meandered around and found my way bank onto the Shoreway to head to home.

For our afternoon treat, we hit happy hour at The Wine Bar in Rocky River, a favorite of mine.  It has a large, tree shaded outdoor patio.   Continuing on with my adventure of food, we ordered Fried Rice Balls with our wine.  Very tasty.

Tomorrow – the South Chagrin Reservation.

http://www.southsidecleveland.com/index.htm

http://rockyriverwinebar.com/

© 2012 transplantjoy

Weirdest First Day at Work Ever – True Story

After stepping out of the workforce for a few years to be at home with little ones, I once again re-entered the workforce.  I had a good deal of catching up to do.  When I left the workforce, there was a “new thing” called personal computers with DOS programs that you used at work.

When I came back, there was something called “Windows”.   I didn’t even know what it was.  I went to the library to try to use a computer to “brush up” my skills.  I looked at that screen with all the bright colors and icons.

Where was the C prompt?  Where do I start typing?  What is a “Windows”?  Window to what?  Boy, was I in trouble.

I spent the next several months dragging “how to” books out of the library and working on a cobbled together computer my brother had made for my parents.

Gradually, the whole idea of Windows and Word and Excel began to take place in my mind.  I felt I could possibly get a job somewhere and marched out to the temp agencies to get my foot in the door somewhere.

I temped for about a year, then finally landed an interview with a contractor.  His receptionist who also did his bookkeeping for him was quitting.  He needed a replacement and he needed someone who could figure out how to operate the accounting package.  Lo and Behold – he had a DOS program!  He didn’t care that I had taken 8 years off from work.  I knew bookkeeping, and  I knew how to do in in DOS.  I was in!

Monday morning arrived.  My first day of work.  Sue, the lady I was replacing spent a little time showing me where things were.  She introduced me to the salesman for the company and a retired gentleman that came in part time to help out in the office.   The salesman was very jovial and friendly and talked a lot about himself.  In no time at all I knew he used to teach, where he lived, and that he was a deacon in his church.

When lunch time rolled around, she announced that she was leaving and not returning.  (I thought she was going to work the entire day, and I still had a lot of information I wanted to get from her, but this wasn’t the first job that I had stepped into in which I had to figure out what my job was, so I wasn’t too worried.)

It was at that point, that it became my weirdest first day ever.  The salesman stood up to say goodbye, walked over to where she and I were standing and announced, “Well, Sue, we wish you the best of luck in your new job.  I think we should say a prayer and give you a blessing.”

Being the wisecracking person I am, I assumed he was being facetious, and I nearly laughed, when before my eyes he bowed his head and started saying a prayer!  At 12 noon on a Monday.  In the workplace.  In front of others.  In 1998.  Right where anyone walking into the office could have seen him.  Really?  This was someone I was going to be working with?  Yikes!

You just can’t make this stuff up.

© transplantjoy 2014

What was your weirdest first day at work?

 

 

 

Happy Labor Day!

9/1/2014

Cleveland At Work

(Otherwise known as “You Can’t Make This Stuff Up!”)

 

The workplace is a wild and wacky place.   Working in Human Resources, I probably get to see that on a deeper level than most people.   The gems I come across are just too good to not share.  Names and some details have been changed to protect the guilty.

Candidate #1

Candidate applies for a job working with a vulnerable population (children, elderly, individuals with disabilities).

Background checks must be done.  Candidate asserts that he has no criminal convictions.  The recruiter follows routine hiring steps, which include a background check.  The report comes back showing a conviction in Domestic Violence.  Very bad.  No one with that type of conviction can be allowed to work with vulnerable individuals.

Recruiter calls candidate.  Informs candidate of result.  Candidate immediately is upset.  Swears up and down a stack of Bibles that he never committed domestic violence.  Recruiter calmly reviews the details, including dates of conviction, etc.  Recruiter asks if that event happened. Details of the case states he hit another person.

Silence falls over the phone conversation. Then the candidate responds.  “Yes, that happened, but it wasn’t domestic violence.  We weren’t married.  She was my girlfriend.”

You just can’t make this stuff up!

© 2014 transplantjoy

 

 

 

August 10, 2014

It has been over a year since my last Adventure entry.  Why did I stop?  Oh, the usual excuses…..    Life got “busy”.  I got bored with my subject matter.  And so on and so on.

When I first started writing at the age of 11, I had dreams of writing The Great American Novel.  No, I haven’t written it, and frankly, I don’t even want to anymore.  Yet –  I can’t seem to put down my pen!

The ink used to flow from my pen.  Then came marriage and children and full time jobs and yard work and laundry.  The ink began to dry up.  I would look at my pen.  Sometimes late at night, I would even pick it up, refill the ink and scratch out a few paragraphs that lay hanging like an unfinished sentence. The words didn’t feel right, and it was late.  In a few hours it would be time to wake up children, fix breakfasts, pack lunches, go to work.    I would shrug and say “Later.”

Writing is a compulsion.  Not an addiction.  If it were an addiction, I probably would have written The Great American Novel by now.  It is that quiet little voice that keeps saying, “This is your gift.  It’s the only one you got.  You need to use it.  You need to take the jewel that you have allowed to get dusty and rusty in your hands.  You need to polish it up.  Wipe off the dust.  Clean off the rust.  And use it.”

Unfortunately, that is all that stupid voice ever says.  It doesn’t tell me how to use it.  It doesn’t give me the energy and motivation to think up ideas at 8 pm after a 12 hour day at work.

So here I sit, determined to not give up, writing short blog pages that only 5 people in the world ever see, but that’s okay.

I just need to write.

Oh, and hey, switching gears –

I am really excited about what the Cleveland Metro parks is doing with Edgewater Park.  This summer, they have put on Edgewater Live every Thursday from 5:30 – 8:30 pm.  Food, music, sun, beach, lake – great combo.

Edgewater Park is a beautiful park on Lake Erie that most people avoid because it has a pretty sketchy reputation.  Now, on Thursday, the park is packed.  There’s music, food, and a long line of traffic on the Shoreway to get into the parking lot.  The sketchy people are there, but so are a lot of other people.

Cleveland really is no longer the dreary rust belt city it was when I arrived 30 years ago.  It still has its problems, but the influx of entrepreneurs and neighborhood improvements is a delight to see.

© transplantjoy 2014