November 27, 2008

Meredith's Ten Year High School Reunion

Meredith and I flew out to Cleveland to attend her ten-year high school reunion!

The reunion was scheduled for the Friday after Thanksgiving. The only flights we could find that weren't a bajillion dollars were on Thanksgiving day - so we went for it. Approaching the runway.

Welcome to Cleveland!

Something tells me we're not in NYC any more.

We were supposed to head from the airport to Meredith's grandma's house, but we couldn't get a hold of her so we decided to take advantage of suburbia and stop off and get some lunch at the Cheesecake Factory.

But it was closed for Thanksgiving!

So we ended up stopping at Houlihan's instead.

After eating, we also learned that no one ever told Meredith's grandma that we were planning on staying with her and that she'd gone to Baltimore for Thanksgiving. Doh! So we unpacked our luggage...

...and checked into a hotel.

This is the expression of a man in need of a nap.

After a little nappy nap, Meredith took me to an awesome picturesque little town called Chagrin Falls. We got there at twilight and it was beautiful.

Peek over the bridge's railing...

...and you'll see the falls.

Packed-snow path leading into a park along side the stream.

Church over the tree line.

Tree hugger.

Everybody was inside eating their Thanksgiving dinners so the entire town felt deserted.

Thanksgiving with nowhere to go is sad! So we decided to go see a movie.

The movie theater was completely empty! Rather than sit through the mind-numbing, slide-projected movie trivia, we decided to see how high Meredith could jump up in front on the screen. Haha.

It's like watching a movie in the awesomest living room ever.

We got out of the movie at 10:40pm and realized that if we wanted to have ANY kind of Thanksgiving dinner, we'd better hustle it up and find somewhere to eat in a jiffy.

We made it to Ruby Tuesday's with ten minutes to spare. We called our parents...

...and wished them a Happy Thanksiving!

Friday, November 28th

The scenic view from our hotel room.

There's nothing I hate more than having to get in the car to drive everywhere. We decided to not bother and trudged our way through snow...

...traversing the wide medians of mallburbia...

...to the promised land!

Nowhere to eat but chain restaurants. Going for it.

Ooof.

Yeah, that's right. I read it while eating dinner at the Olive Garden.

Sunset.

Control valve.

Later that night, we met up with Meredith's fellow classmate Jonah (who lives right around the corner from us in NYC) and we all headed to their dreaded ten-year reunion!

Meredith and her friend David.

All in all, it was a whole lot less painful than both Meredith and Jonah had predicted. I volunteered to be the designated driver and encouraged them both to get good and stinking drunk! I would dare to say they ended up having a decent time. After, we all went back to our hotel, hung out, and got even drunker (and I finally got to join in!) watching TV and talking about the strangeness of seeing what ended up happening to so many people that you had forgotten even existed.

Saturday, November 29th

On Saturday we enjoyed our hotel's awesome pool - complete with a giant spiral waterslide that goes outside of the building and then back around into the splash pool. Every hotel should have this.

And this.

Yep, another parking lot walk to another chain restaurant. We couldn't find ANY non-chain restaurants that were open.

Ok, let's see what Bob Evans is all about.

Holy moly, country breakfast!

That afternoon we laid in our hotel room and read books. Later in the night we tried to go bowling, but it was some kind of crazy Saturday night LAZER BOWLING and they were playing terrible, terrible music at ear-splitting levels...so we decided to get something to eat. I don't even remember which restaurant this was.

So ready for a salad.

Sunday, November 30th

On Sunday morning we woke up and were excited to pack up...

...and head back home!

It was also the first morning that we woke up early enough to take advantage of our hotel's kick ass breakfast spread.

I had a big-ass waffle...

...and an English muffin AND chocolate frosted doughnut. Yes!

Check out the totally insane art hanging on the wall while you're waiting in the security line at the Cleveland Hopkins Airport! It's made entirely of things they've confiscated from people's luggage!

Here's a close up! Is this a fucking crazy thing to have hanging on the wall at an airport or is it just me? Take a close look, there's some INSANE shit in there. Does anyone know more about this? I tried a whole bunch of web searches, but wasn't able to find anything!

Homeward bound.

Coming in over Coney Island in the rain.

After we landed, we waited at the luggage carousel for over 90 minutes only to be told that they'd misplaced our one bag.

Hell hath no fury like a woman scorned with access to Twitter.