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Dayton Ale Trail
If you scroll back to last year, you’ll see where I recapped last winter’s beer-drinking adventure, the Cincinnati Brewery Passport. We had a lot of fun doing it and checking out some new places we ended up really liking (and some we didn’t). Fast forward to some time in late fall (I only know this because Bearcat football was on TV) when on an afternoon out we decided to make a stop at FigLeaf Brewing in Middletown, which turns out is not too far away from Monroe’s Rivertown Brewery. At FigLeaf we came across the Dayton Ale Trail passports! (I mean, I wouldn’t call that Dayton…) We’re not in Dayton…
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On friendships, and letting them go.
At some point, probably in my late 20s, I took inventory on the people in my life and realized that for the most part, I was pulling all the weight in my friendships. There was no meeting halfway — these people were not going out of their way to text or to visit — because, for some reason, the expectation was always on me. So I started some kind of pseudo social experiment where I just stopped trying. I wasn’t going to initiate the conversations and I wasn’t going to be the one who always went out of my way for everyone else anymore. I wanted to find out if…
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The sticky-sweet Butler County Donut Trail
Have you heard of the Butler County Donut Trail? Just north of Cincinnati, scattered across Fairfield, Hamilton, Middletown, Oxford, and West Chester are twelve donut shops known as the Donut Trail, sponsored by the Butler County Convention & Visitor’s Bureau. You can download the passport off the website or pick one up in store at any of the locations included. Each one will stamp your passport (Oxford Doughnut Shoppe is optional & comes pre-stamped) and once you’ve got all twelve you can return the passport for a sweet t-shirt. Last year, a group of my friends got together to do the passport in one fell swoop. Unfortunately I had other commitments…
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Let’s get surgical!
Last time we spoke I was updating you on my midsummer myomectomy which went really well and the recovery wasn’t bad at all outside the first few weeks. I went back to work around Labor Day and things were going swimmingly for the month of September. Work was busy (how I like it), school was stupidly busy and a bit overwhelming (bleh), I had been helping a lot with some local political issues. Things were going fairly well… then October happened, and this happened: First we thought it was just a sprain, then maybe we thought I had torn a ligament or my meniscus, but it turns out I ripped…
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Post-Op Update: 2.5 weeks
This week marked two weeks post-op, although it’s beginning to feel like it was a year ago. I had my first post-op appointment and it went well; the doctor was pleased with the way things were looking. I am starting to feel better, if I sit still and don’t move… but we all know how hard that is for me. I’ve overdone it a little bit with the freedom to drive again (no more pain medication!), and I’ve paid for it by feeling less than great so I’m currently reminding myself to relax and rest (ha!).
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My post-myomectomy life
Last Monday was surgery day! The day started with a 4:30 wakeup call so we could be en route by 5. The Christ Hospital is about thirty minutes from home and there’s very little traffic at that time of day so it was an easy drive. The hospital was freakishly quiet and deserted at that hour but we made it back to the surgery center where right away they put me into my room to get ready. We were in the pre-op room for about two hours as expected, meeting a series of nurses and doctors, and my doctor came in to say hello before it was time to go,…
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The monster inside of me
Last summer while standing in a beer line at a festival on the Fourth of July, something happened that would change a lot of things in my life in a very weird way. An older gentleman I definitely did not know asked me if it bummed me out when my boyfriend got to drink and I couldn’t. Wait a second — what? This person I don’t know at all just pretty much just implied that I must be pregnant and couldn’t indulge in an adult beverage and … yeah, what? Did he skip that day in common courtesy class when you don’t assume a lady’s pregnant because she’s got a little (or a…
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I’m off like an aeroplane…
A long, long time ago, when dinosaurs roamed the earth and I was in the latter stages of high school or just out of it, I had a friend who was really into aviation and planespotting. At the time, I had never been on a plane before and didn’t know much about them, but he took me to the viewing area at CVG and instantly I was hooked. He took me to the Dayton Air Show one summer (I think this was 2004 or 2005), and I can’t remember a damn thing about the air show that year other than I went (and it was hot, and I got the…
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Cincinnati Dinner Train
At some point last fall, The Boyfriend and I were sitting at the end of the ramp from Wooster Pike/Columbia Parkway to Red Bank Road, directly facing a railroad track that has always seemed vacant. But this time — much to my glee! — was a train! With people on it! A train with people is unusual enough to get my attention and also pique my curiosity. Tell me more [about formerly popular forms of transportation we now find a novelty]! The train read Cincinnati Dinner Train, so an immediate (urgent) Google search led me to the Cincinnati Railway’s Cincinnati Dinner Train. It must have been the end of the season…
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Cincinnati Brewery Passport: I came, I drank, I conquered.
A few months back during a quick stop at Streetside Brewery in Columbia-Tusculum, I saw an advertisement in the bathroom for Craft Connection‘s new Cincinnati Brewery Passport (1st edition). When we prompted the bartender, she handed us two of these beautiful bad boys: Included in this first edition are eighteen craft breweries and two bourbon distilleries. Inside, there’s a small advertisement for each brewery, with the last two pages reserved for stamps (see below). Although a few notable Cincinnati-area breweries were left off this pass (ahem, MadTree), most of my other favorites were included, plus a whole bunch of new-to-me stops to make it extra fun to discover new places…