check out photos from some of our recent events here.

I've come home.

Yesterday Jason and I went on a 10 mile hike through the Zaleski Forest area. It was a nice hike, we found a turtle and two newts. There were a few recess caves and lots of bugs, so all in all it was a pretty decent hike for Ohio. When we finished we both decided that we wanted Italian for dinner, around mile 7 all I could think about doing was eating a big plate of raviolis. We drove home, and on the way we decided it was too late for us to try and make our Italian feast and that we were too tired anyway so we figured we would much rather be waited upon. We had two options, The Olive Garden or this other chain called Buca di Bepo, we decided on the Garden since it was closer. On our way we passed this Italian restaurant called "T A T Ristorante di Famiglia" I had forgotten that this was so close to my house so we changed our plans and opted for a more authentic experience. I had heard from a few people that this was pretty good Italian food so I figured we couldn't go wrong, I mean how hard is it to mess up Italian? It was a big mistake on our part, we should have just continued on to the O Garden. Let me paint the scene for you.....the restaurant is at the end of a short strip mall that has a 99 cents store, a Bargain Outlet, and a Sketchy Chinese-American diner, let me also mention that it is sort of in a bad part of town, some lady with a clip board walked around the parking lot looking for people that she could solicit to (we didn't know what she was selling so we just kept our heads down and made a b-line for the door). We stepped over someones hair extensions that were laying in the middle of the parking lot. Inside the restaurant was a time warp, there were curtains that belong at the Holiday Inn and wallpaper to match, old booths that went down the center of the room and tables on the sides, on one wall there was a montage of family portraits of the family that owns the restaurant each picture has a ridiculous gold frame. Waitress is a middle aged and disgruntled, maybe because her pants were hiked up so high it was uncertain as to whether she was actually wearing a shirt. Jason orders beer and the usual look of shock that he is actually of age is exaggerated because when she came for our drink order she said "Can I get you two some milk or a soft drink". Jason orders the lasagna, a salad without dressing and a cup of wedding soup, I order the standard ravioli (I do consider myself a connoisseur) and a salad. She leaves and returns with two cups of wedding soup (i decided not to complain and just eat up) my soup was okay it did have one meatball in it, Jason's soup was fine until he found a vertebrae in it. Now I know you are thinking, "hmm, I didn't know that the Italians use vertebrae in their wedding soup" well you thought correctly my friend they don't, and further more we were both confused as to what animal it could have been from since it was a very tiny vertebrae and ya know chickens don't have vertebrae and it couldn't have been a cow, which left us with no other option than to assume it had come from a rat. Well, being the optimist that Jason is, he decided not to let it spoil his dinner, (what a trooper!) the salads come out and both are drenched in dressing, this does not bother me because i like Italian dressing but Jason was deeply disturbed, but again he didn't let it get him down. The main course comes out and my 14 dollar ravioli dish had TWO raviolis that were rock hard frozen solid with some cold Ragu sauce covering them. Jason's lasagna was better than what preceded it so he happily ate his cafeteria-like lasagna, we were both wishing that we had ordered the jello that the kid's next to us got. We decided this was a rather unpleasant dining experience so we may have shorted on the tip a bit, we really wanted to leave nothing at all but lint from our pockets but thought better of it when we remembered what part of town we were in and feared being tracked down by the mafia to pay up. When we got home we got online to read some reviews of this place, and would you believe it they were a lot of bad reviews! We decided that the few reviews that were actually good were probably posted by the owners or their cronies We had some good laughs over some of them and will probably post our own review too, here is a link just in case you are bored.

'tis the morning of our departure. a little apartment cleaning, packing of clothes, and a few last minute nyc errands and we're ready to go. 'tis sad. 'tis happy.

'tis what 'tis. see you soon left coast.