Back (and Better Than Ever?)

I've returned from a lovely trip to Cleveland, Ohio, where I had a blast hanging out with friends and family. We ate at some great restaurants, saw downtown, went to a comedy club, checked out the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame, watched a Grand Canyon film at the Science Museum's Omnimax, bought some toys at Big Fun, and helped a friend have his first (and probably last) White Castle experience! All in all, a successful trip, I'd say.

The highlight of the trip for me was just hanging out with friends and family. It was great to see everyone! I suppose I'll also add the Omnimax experience; even though the film was lame, it managed to rekindle some childhood wonder. This really is the closest thing to 3d films I'll ever experience and, occasionally, it was quite convincing. I wish they'd release more films in this format.

The lowlight of the trip was the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame, which is a beautiful building with well made exhibits, but the six story high structure is designed with open excalators. This was fine for the first few floors, but vertigo hit me hard on the 4th-6th floors so much so that I was terrified and disoriented. To make things worse, there is only one elevator, so I often found myself waiting for long periods of time just to catch up with my friends on other floors. As if from a nightmare, I was forced to wait the longest on the Bruce Springsteen floor where they blasted his mind numbingly annoying and godawful tunes. Oh how I hate that man.

Even lower than that experience, however, was my total freakout over "losing" my dad's cellphone, which I was using for its GPS. I only have one strong and distinct memory of where I put it for later use, but apparently I decided to move it into my backpack and not form any memory of the event. So I concluded wrongly that it was stolen. And I made my companions miss what was to be our last outing together watching the movie Galapagos at the Omnimax. (By the way, the Darwin Exhibit was in Cleveland at the time and I'm just a little bit sore that we didn't schedule the time to go see it. Oh well)

I still had a great time. Thanks to all for helping make it happen!