Monday, October 23, 2006

It snowed today

When I got up this morning, Oct. 23, imagine my surprise when I looked out the window and there were big white snowflakes falling outside. Nothing stuck to the ground or anything like that, but there were snow flurries hanging around almost all day. It sure was pretty out there. For a guy that left Dallas four months ago, it is kind of shocking to see snow in October, that's for sure!

And a fun week was had by all ...

My former roommate, Jeff, flew up here to Ohio to visit on Friday, Oct. 13. He arrived at about 9:30 p.m. and the fun times began. We got up early on Saturday morning and drove about an hour and a half southeast to Rio Grande, Ohio for the annual Bob Evans Farm Festival. When I was a kid, I would go with my mom and dad to work at the festival each year (although it is quite debatable how much "work" I actually got done). It was nice getting to go back and re-live a little of my childhood for a day. We arrived at the festival at about 10:30 a.m. and proceeded to walk the grounds. Let me tell you, this was a cold, windy October day. It was probably in the lower-40s while we were there. We went to a lumberjack/log rolling show and checked out other old-timey activities.

After leaving the festival, we visited with some of my family that lived nearby and then headed back to Lancaster for the evening. Sunday was basically spent hanging around the house watching football.

On Monday, we got up really early and headed for Cleveland (about a two and a half hour drive) for a trip to the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame. We ended up stopping at an outlet mall along the way. We got to the Hall of Fame at about 11:30 a.m. and spent the next five hours or so there. It is really a neat place if you ever happen to get the chance to visit. If you are really into Rock and Roll history, I would even say it should be a destination trip for you at some point in your life. We left Cleveland after the Hall of Fame and drove about 40 minutes southeast to Akron, Ohio. That's where we stopped for the evening. We had already decided that we wanted to go to the Pro Football Hall of Fame in Canton, Ohio the next day, so we would just stay over somewhere and Akron seemed like as good a place as any.

We got up on Tuesday morning and drove the remaining half hour to the Pro Football Hall of Fame. We spent a couple of hours there and then headed back home to Lancaster (about two hours away).

On Wednesday, we drove to the western part of Columbus and spent the day at the Columbus Zoo, home of Jack Hanna (the dude that is on Letterman with his animals all the time). Very nice zoo. We are both animal lovers, so it was pretty cool to both of us. I really enjoyed the Red Pandas and the Komodo Dragons and of course the Koala Bears.

On Thursday we went to see Employee of the Month since it was a gloomy, rainy day. I enjoyed the movie (not just because I got to look at Jessica Simpson the whole time either!).

Friday was kind of sad because I had to take Jeff to the airport so he could return to Dallas. It was nice having a friend around for a week since I still don't really know anybody here. All in all it was a great week.