First days as a city dweller
I'm sitting here in our new Cincinnati apartment, waiting on Michael to get home and fending off Clyde, who either really wants me to pet him or really wants to eat the used Kleenex in my lap.
I am at the start of what I think will probably be a pretty heinous cold – last night was hours and hours of the "I can't breathe" feeling, and when I woke at 6am, there was no falling back asleep. So I went to CVS and spent $40 on various cold medicines and vitamin C gummies. We should be well-stocked for cold season.
I missed the last three blog posts – Saturday we had a wedding, Sunday we moved, and yesterday I worked all day and then went to a wine class and a late night dinner. Then the snot basically incapacitated me. But no fear and no failure! Here I am getting back on track.
Cincinnati is good so far. I had a few moments where I just wanted to go home, like in the middle of the first night when the upstairs neighbors seemed to be stomping around in circles dragging heavy furniture, and Clyde thought the footsteps in the stairwell were someone trying to invade our house. And I can't seem to feel entirely comfortable walking around some streets by myself yet, though I haven't really been harassed the way I have in downtown Indy before. ("Hey gurl, you want me to straighten out those legs for you?")
But I'm finding my way around, and really everyone has been ridiculously nice. A man at the grocery put my cart away for me. Clyde gets compliments everywhere we go (apartment living means lots of dog walking). And every time I go out our door a neighbor says "hello." And there have been interesting (still friendly) moments, like when one neighbor told me there were raccoons the size of Clyde ("raccoons on steroids") on our street sometimes, and when one woman, standing on the front porch to make sure her niece got home, told me she was going to get a dog classified as an "emotional needs" dog so she could get around her apartment's no dog policy. Overall, things are good. At this point I'm still glad I can go home to my Indy house whenever I want, though.
Last night at the wine class I learned some interesting things. The class was called "Ballin' on a Budget," and it was held at 1215, a local coffee / wine bar that I've had many a latte in on random trips to OTR. Did you know that cabernet is a low yield grape, so it's basically impossible to find a quality cabernet made the way cabernets are supposed to be made for under $20? Except for one specific kind that we tried: Chateau Fontanes Les Traverses de Fontanes from Languedoc, France. $17 a bottle. It was probably my favorite, though I'd had 5 other samples by that time, and I'm pretty lightweight nowadays.
I also learned that wine regions are called "appellations," and a "cru" is a specific site within an appellation (a vineyard or group of vineyards). A crémant wine is a sparkling wine made in France in the manner of champagne, but not from the Champagne region. Sparkling wines can be spumante (very sparkling) or frizzante (somewhat sparkling). And carbonic maceration is where you press grapes by putting them in vats with CO2, and the CO2 eventually causes them to rupture (or EXPLODE, I prefer to think).
So it's been an eventful and educational couple of days, and I managed to get a reasonable amount of work done, as well. Olive & Clyde was accepted by a new store, I have a potential new consulting client, and I've gotten three separate consulting projects done. The only thing I've been neglecting is my writing, which is always what seems to get pushed aside when other things come up. But tomorrow Sarah is coming to Cincinnati and we're going to write all day, so there's still hope for the week.
Till later, dudes. <---I dunno, it just felt appropriate. I never know how to end posts.
I am at the start of what I think will probably be a pretty heinous cold – last night was hours and hours of the "I can't breathe" feeling, and when I woke at 6am, there was no falling back asleep. So I went to CVS and spent $40 on various cold medicines and vitamin C gummies. We should be well-stocked for cold season.
I missed the last three blog posts – Saturday we had a wedding, Sunday we moved, and yesterday I worked all day and then went to a wine class and a late night dinner. Then the snot basically incapacitated me. But no fear and no failure! Here I am getting back on track.
Cincinnati is good so far. I had a few moments where I just wanted to go home, like in the middle of the first night when the upstairs neighbors seemed to be stomping around in circles dragging heavy furniture, and Clyde thought the footsteps in the stairwell were someone trying to invade our house. And I can't seem to feel entirely comfortable walking around some streets by myself yet, though I haven't really been harassed the way I have in downtown Indy before. ("Hey gurl, you want me to straighten out those legs for you?")
But I'm finding my way around, and really everyone has been ridiculously nice. A man at the grocery put my cart away for me. Clyde gets compliments everywhere we go (apartment living means lots of dog walking). And every time I go out our door a neighbor says "hello." And there have been interesting (still friendly) moments, like when one neighbor told me there were raccoons the size of Clyde ("raccoons on steroids") on our street sometimes, and when one woman, standing on the front porch to make sure her niece got home, told me she was going to get a dog classified as an "emotional needs" dog so she could get around her apartment's no dog policy. Overall, things are good. At this point I'm still glad I can go home to my Indy house whenever I want, though.
Last night at the wine class I learned some interesting things. The class was called "Ballin' on a Budget," and it was held at 1215, a local coffee / wine bar that I've had many a latte in on random trips to OTR. Did you know that cabernet is a low yield grape, so it's basically impossible to find a quality cabernet made the way cabernets are supposed to be made for under $20? Except for one specific kind that we tried: Chateau Fontanes Les Traverses de Fontanes from Languedoc, France. $17 a bottle. It was probably my favorite, though I'd had 5 other samples by that time, and I'm pretty lightweight nowadays.
I also learned that wine regions are called "appellations," and a "cru" is a specific site within an appellation (a vineyard or group of vineyards). A crémant wine is a sparkling wine made in France in the manner of champagne, but not from the Champagne region. Sparkling wines can be spumante (very sparkling) or frizzante (somewhat sparkling). And carbonic maceration is where you press grapes by putting them in vats with CO2, and the CO2 eventually causes them to rupture (or EXPLODE, I prefer to think).
So it's been an eventful and educational couple of days, and I managed to get a reasonable amount of work done, as well. Olive & Clyde was accepted by a new store, I have a potential new consulting client, and I've gotten three separate consulting projects done. The only thing I've been neglecting is my writing, which is always what seems to get pushed aside when other things come up. But tomorrow Sarah is coming to Cincinnati and we're going to write all day, so there's still hope for the week.
Till later, dudes. <---I dunno, it just felt appropriate. I never know how to end posts.