Tag Archives: no i really do love ohio

Happy Bigtime Birthday, Tracey!

Filed under all of my friends are prettier than i am, holidays don't suck for me, just pictures, no i really do love ohio, par-tay
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I know presents are the reason for the season and all, but I was really back home in Ohio for the past two and a half weeks to celebrate my best friend, Tracey‘s, 30th birthday. While I celebrated my last birthday quietly and with fingers crossed that no one would remember it was my 30th, Tracey celebrated hers with karaoke, gigantic 3-0 candles, and Justin Bieber cupcakes all around:

Tracey's 30th Birthday

Tracey's 30th Birthday

Tracey's 30th Birthday
Tracey pretending that she’s not really into this whole party thing.

Tracey's 30th Birthday

Tracey's 30th Birthday

Tracey's 30th Birthday
Guess who ate these in abundance and wore the Bieber rings without irony. This guy!

Tracey's 30th Birthday

Tracey's 30th Birthday
This is a hilarious picture until you remember that the noisemakers Tracey bought actually turned out not to make noise.

Tracey's 30th Birthday

Tracey's 30th Birthday
Only a party at Tracey’s house would include a bowl of just pepperoni.

Tracey's 30th Birthday
Tracey totally made this for her husband’s last birthday and not for herself. Just so you know.

Tracey's 30th Birthday

Tracey's 30th Birthday
Tracey’s husband, Dan, presents Tracey with her cupcakes while Erin serenades her.

Tracey's 30th Birthday

Tracey's 30th Birthday

Tracey's 30th Birthday

Tracey's 30th Birthday
Graham is mesmerized by the non-noisemaking noisemakers.

Tracey's 30th Birthday

Tracey's 30th Birthday

Tracey's 30th Birthday

Tracey's 30th Birthday

Happy 30th birthday, my best best friend!

You are my life partner, my lab partner, my partner in crime, the wind beneath my wings, my baby bumblebee, the demon seed and the factor!

And I love you.

Merry Christmas + Happy New Year

Filed under holidays don't suck for me, narcissism, no i really do love ohio
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I’m visiting my family and friends in Ohio until

JANUARY 8TH!

I’m going to get so many presents, eat so many of those sugar cookies with the Hershey’s Kisses pressed into the tops of them, and do so many gay things with my best friend.

Like so:

I’ll miss you, blogfriends!

Deep-Fried Homesickness

Filed under it's fun to be fat, just pictures, no i really do love ohio
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Thinking about going home to Ohio in a couple of days for Christmas has me really craving the kind of fair food I can only get at the yearly pumpkin festival in the town next to mine.

Fried Cheese

Is it wrong that I evidently associate my hometown with deep-frying?

Circleville Pumpkin Show 2011!

Filed under all of my friends are prettier than i am, it's fun to be fat, no i really do love ohio
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Kamran’s been bugging me to post pictures of our trip to Ohio for the Circleville Pumpkin Show (mostly to see himself, I imagine), and I guess pumpkins are still in fashion for another week or two before the holiday sales start and my favourite Christmas song begins to wear on me after only a few days, so here’s a recap of our fun:

My best friend, Tracey, has a long-standing tradition with some of her freshman-year college friends of gathering at her house a few towns over on the Friday night of Pumpkin Show and driving down together. We always park in Ted Lewis Park and then walk up the hill to Court Street, which begins the blocks and blocks of closed streets full of vendors selling pumpkin-related everything. On the way, though, we always pass a house that sells pumpkins (on the honor system! adorably quaint!) and has this pumpkin farmer sitting outside:

Circleville Pumpkin Show 2011
Tracey, Dayna the ice skater, and Justin-who-convinced-me-to-buy-my-first-Apple-iBook

Before we had even made it one block into the thing, Tracey was already double-fisting a corndog and a bloomin’ potato that we all shared

Circleville Pumpkin Show 2011

and then we quickly moved on to calzones that my dad introduced me to a couple of years ago. I recognized the booth because the same wildly-stereotypical white trash woman was working in it, but she’s very nice and slathers the things in butter sauce before giving them to you, so I’m not judging.

We met up with my dad at the church booth where my cousins were selling hot chicken sandwiches (an Ohio phenomenon that involves cooking chicken in its broth, shredding it, and mixing it with, I don’t know, lots of black pepper and weird thickening stuff that gives the broth this kind of gelatinous texture; it’s awesome despite this disgusting characterization) and said embarrassing citypeople things to remind my dad how long I’ve been away from home.

And then he left, and we ate some more.

• deep-fried pickles
• pumpkin whoopie pies
• fried cheese on a stick
• homemade ice cream
• cotton candy
• deep-fried s’more
• deep-fried buckeyes
• apple cider slushes

and plenty more that I’ve forgotten, no doubt.

Circleville Pumpkin Show 2011

We visited the six-foot-wide pie and posed in front of the year’s biggest pumpkin (1436 pounds!)

Circleville Pumpkin Show 2011

before sidling up to the stretch of tables, where you can buy every kind of gourd imaginable, for the obligatory sexy pumpkin shot:

Circleville Pumpkin Show 2011

And then the HOLY CRAP, IS THAT A FACE ON A PUMPKIN? shot:

Circleville Pumpkin Show 2011

We could only guess that these things were grown inside of a face mold. They had the texture of the outside of a pumpkin, so they must not have been carved later, but whatever they were, they were creepy as can be.

When we got to the usual pile of various decorative gourds, Kamran picked up one that was especially weirdly-shaped and made a freaky face for me to take a picture of. Well, right at that moment, some big dumb Circlevillian stepped away from whatever meth he was smoking and yelled,

HEY!!”

Now, if it had been me holding the gourd, I would’ve thrown it smack-dab in the middle of his big empty head and said, “I FLEW HERE FROM NEW YORK CITY FOR THIS THING!! IF ANYONE LOVES THE PUMPKIN SHOW, IT’S ME!! YOU’D BE MORE LIKELY TO BRUSH YOUR TEETH THAN I WOULD BE TO STEAL THIS GOURD, YOU SLOBBERING BEEF-WITTED CANKER-BLOSSOM!!

But it was Kamran holding the gourd, so he quickly put it back down and apologized, and I caught this picture of him halfway between making the funny face and whipping his head around to see his accuser:

Circleville Pumpkin Show 2011

The only thing I could do to get revenge on the guy was to continue hanging around the table and taking pictures so he and his redneck cronies were forced to watch us not stealing anything. I never got this sort of treatment before I owned a pleather jacket.

Circleville Pumpkin Show 2011

(I really hope I was making this face to be funny and not because I ever really look like that.)

I enjoyed that this picture harkened back to the days of yore when I had prize-winning potatoes as my blog header image but would love to know how anyone can judge what makes a good pie pumpkin without actually using it in a pie:

Circleville Pumpkin Show 2011

Tracey and I modeled our pumpkin earrings by Handmade by Sandi maybe slightly too creepily

Circleville Pumpkin Show 2011

and then humped Justin for good measure:

Circleville Pumpkin Show 2011

At the end of the night, well past the supposed closing time, we made our way back to the cars and couldn’t resist stopping for one last hurrah as we passed the farthest cotton candy/soda stand on the strip. As we stood waiting for Kamran to get his soda, someone noticed one of these wooden cane/stick things that I would say I associate with the Pumpkin Show even more than pumpkin burgers and pumpkin cream puffs and all of those things.

Growing up, we would spend hours at the game where you won these things. For $5, you’d get 50 rings that you’d try to toss onto one of the sticks, which were standing up in holes cut through a long table. There’d be 30 kids standing around the table, trying to ring one of the sticks or hook the crook of one of the canes, which were hanging above the table even more out of reach.

It was such a status symbol when we were teenagers to walk around the Pumpkin Show with a handful of these things, tapping the ground to remind people of how many you had. And also to pretend to be blind. Naturally Kamran wanted one after hearing about how cool having them used to make us, and he finally had his chance in the last moments of the evening:

Circleville Pumpkin Show 2011

But of course he actually left it there, because we’re adults who don’t need status symbols to feel good about ourselves. Except for our phones and laptops and vacations and clothes and cars and dinner reservations.

The next night, we came back with my dad, and my sister and her husband drove up from Kentucky, and we did it all over again. And we’ll do it again next year and every year for the rest of our lives.

Adventure Time with Kat and Kam: Columbus, Ohio’s, German Village

Filed under adventure time, no i really do love ohio
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The moment Kamran arrived in Ohio on Thursday night, two hours late thanks to the rain, my best friend, Tracey, and I whisked him off to Skully’s to dance until 2 a.m. And then we went home and ate ice cream cake until 3:30.

German Village, Columbus, OH
Tracey told me I’d hate my duckface in this picture, and she’s right

I was still getting over a cold, too, so when his alarm went off that morning at 8, I was seriously dreading having to get up and spend the day in downtown Columbus. But we had decided to have Tracey drop us off in German Village before work so we could revisit some of the places Kamran remembered from the years he lived in Columbus from 2nd to 4th grade. It turned out to be one of the most memorable moments of the trip.

We started at Katzinger’s Delicatessen, where we ate bagels just piled with cream cheese while sitting next to cases loaded with rugalach and barrels brimming with pickles. It’s fitting that I never once went to Katzinger’s while at THE Ohio State University and have never once been to Katz’s deli while in NYC. Someday I’ll learn.

As soon as The Book Loft opened, we walked a few blocks through the cobbled streets and fallen leaves to explore its 32 rooms of books. It’s a creaky old building divided off into themed rooms of every shape and size.

German Village, Columbus, OH

This was the smallest room we found. Kamran thinks its doorway was hidden by a huge map the last time he visited in 2000 on his way from California to Princeton for grad school.

German Village, Columbus, OH

He bought a book on the philosopher Heidegger for himself and a book on lobsters for me, which I realize makes me sound like a child, but it’s a totally serious book!

As we left, a guy from the Human Rights Campaign accosted us and forced me to donate money to the gayz, so we had to go to Starbucks to make ourselves feel like a part of the system again. And not to be a sellout or anything, but you guys, I got a salted caramel mocha thingy, and when I put my cup down on the table next to my extra-plush armchair, the sweet caramel began bubbling through the hole in the lid. COME ON. I can’t resist that.

German Village, Columbus, OH

Across the street was the Golden Hobby Shop, which is an old school filled with gifts handmade by senior citizens. Everything seemed underpriced to us, but that may just be six years of NYC shopping talking. We couldn’t figure out how to transport 400 buckeye necklaces and some really creepy-awesome folk art cats back in our suitcases, but I can imagine that this place would be excellent for local Christmas shopping.

On our way to lunch, we saw a green Yoda pumpkin

German Village, Columbus, OH

and a beheaded Brutus Buckeye

German Village, Columbus, OH

and stopped to take pictures of ourselves being badass for posterity:

German Village, Columbus, OH

German Village, Columbus, OH

German Village, Columbus, OH

We made it to Schmidt’s Sausage Haus and Restaurant (excuse me, Sausage Haus und Restaurant) around 1, somehow thinking there wouldn’t be a line on a Friday afternoon.

German Village, Columbus, OH

After a 25-minute walk around the neighborhood, our names were called over the loudspeaker outside, and we were seated at the most adorable old wooden booth for two. We briefly contemplated ordering plated entrees but then realized we’d be idiots not to get the $9.50 ($9.50!!!) buffet, which has four kinds of sausage, two kinds of potato salad, sausage stew, sauerkraut, and everything else German you could want.

German Village, Columbus, OH

We only made it through one plate apiece, but we had a good time doing it:

German Village, Columbus, OH

And of course we saved room for their famous big-as-your-head cream puffs, which we got with pumpkin filling and which they so graciously topped with an extra piece of my very favourite Halloween candy:

German Village, Columbus, OH

I can really only remember going to Schmidt’s once or twice while living in Ohio for twenty-four years, and I’m pretty sure I was a vegetarian at least one of those times, so I wasn’t all that excited when Kamran said he wanted to relive his childhood there. Well, it really struck me while I was there how different and better it is than all of the chain restaurants I want to visit every time I’m back home, and now I know I’m going to want to go back every time I’m in Ohio. I’m still dreaming about that sweet and spicy sausage stew . . .

German Village, Columbus, OH

After filling our bellies, we walked a few blocks to Schiller Park, where we watched dogs run free, climbed the very smallest hill just to run down it, got weirded out by how into things like bones and catnip dogs and cats are, and planned to buy every one of the Victorian houses lining the park’s edges.

German Village, Columbus, OH
Kamran’s only pretending to not be sure about this whole thing

German Village, Columbus, OH

And now you should understand why I love Ohio so much and stop making fun of me.


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