Lunch by the River

Last Friday, I met a friend of mine for lunch at Margaritaville in the Flats, in downtown Cleveland.

The Flats are so called because they're lower than the rest of downtown. They're the shores of the Cuyahoga River. For a long time, the Flats were mainly for the loading or unloading big cargo ships that still traverse Lake Erie and dock at the port of Cleveland. But a few decades ago, developers started putting restaurants, bars and entertainment venues in. The Nautica Queen is a pleasure boat that cruises up and down the river, and can go out on the lake when the weather is appropriate. The Dancer had her senior prom on the Nautica Queen.

Parking is convenient, and was only $4 for the lunch crowd.

Down the street from Margaritaville is the river.

On the west bank of the Flats is one of the older bars, Shooters.

I have no idea what it costs to be able to dock your boat or jet ski in the Flats. You can see the Nautica Queen side on and head on in the two pictures below.

This is the best shot I got of the Nautica concert stage, and the Powerhouse building, which now contains several restaurants and entertainment venues, plus the Cleveland aquarium.

I think I need to get Mr. BTEG to take me down to the Flats again before the bad fall weather sets in. :)

Twenty-Five Years Ago Today

Grass Is Green, Water Is Wet, Cleveland Gets Midges

Apparently, the yearly infestation of midges is important news this year. Is there an unusual amount of them in 2018, or something? I don't really get that from the article. I spent most of my childhood years living two blocks from Lake Erie, in the 1970s. The outdoors would be crawling with those things for a little over a week. You kept your mouth closed and dealt with it. For that matter, it's difficult to drive your car in NE Ohio during a summer evening, or ride a Cedar Point roller coaster as dusk settles in, and not encounter a few bugs, even once the midges are gone. Take your car to the car wash, and as for the roller coaster, well, it's sometimes hard to keep your mouth shut, so be prepared to pick a bug out of your teeth.

Would Catholicism Save America? Discussing the Concept of Why America Will Perish Without Rome

I picked a bad time to try to start being consistent with my blog posts. Life has gotten super chaotic here at Casa BTEG, and I've neglected blogging as a result, especially since it's hard to even get to my personal computer at the moment. However, I think we're approaching the end of the current difficulties, and also, I found something that I really want to blog about! The subject today is two videos on YouTube from the channel of Milo Yiannopoulis, concerning a new book being released by his new printing company, Dangerous Books.

I've been reading and watching Milo's content since before he left Breitbart. I've never been an enormous fan, per se, but his take on conservative life and culture in America, as a Catholic gay man from the UK, comes from a very different place than other prominent conservatives, which makes him interesting reading and listening. Also, he's a lot of fun, which is refreshing.

Since I follow his YouTube channel, I saw two interviews Milo recently did with a man named Timothy Gordon. He is publishing a new book through Dangerous Books entitled Catholic Republic: Why America Will Perish Without Rome, to which Milo has written a forward. I'm definitely not going to touch on everything in the interviews, as the two videos together are almost an hour long total. If you want to watch them, they can be found on YouTube here and here. But there are a few points that I wanted to make, and hopefully discuss. I'll only be covering one today.

The most important issue I took from the videos was the idea that Protestants, from Luther on, do not believe in free will. Therefore, their thinking, Gordon argues, is antithetical to a country like the American republic, which was founded on the idea of Americans using their free will to make, for the most part, their own plans about how their lives should be arranged, with as little government coercion as possible. One of the most important values of the Founders was the right to individual liberty. Protestants therefore, who deny the existence of free will, cannot co-exist with a country of individual freedoms, or so Gordon posits.

From a theological standpoint, the concept of humanity and free will has been argued for centuries before me, and will probably continue to be a point of discussion until Christ's return. For Lutherans, our concept on free will, at least from the point of view of becoming one of God's redeemed creatures, can be found in our catechism: "I believe that I cannot by my own reason or strength, believe in Jesus Christ my Lord, or come to Him. But the Holy Spirit has called me by the Gospel, enlightened me with His gifts, sanctified and keeps me in the one true faith." So in this sense, Luther certainly does not agree that Christians become so merely by personal free will. Rejection of God is another matter, and one on which I am not as well versed. I do know that we do not follow Calvin's doctrine of people being foreordained to go to either heaven or hell. Modern day Protestantism, however, certainly does seem to follow the idea of free will, with the idea of "making a decision for Jesus." For whatever reason, Gordon seems to discuss only the early Protestant leaders like Luther and Calvin. I would like to know what he would have to say about the current views of the many Protestant denominations that do emphasize making a personal decision.

However, is the eternal different from the temporal? Is being unable to use my free will to be redeemed by God, mean that I am unable to use my free will to decide who to marry, for whom to vote, what type of government I want, or even what I will eat for breakfast? I was going to develop this idea more today, but this post has already gotten longer than I intended it to be! Hopefully I'll get some comments to draw on for my next post, and if not, I'll still keep going with the idea of secular free will, for a Thursday post. Maybe I'll be able to find some reading about Luther's views on the role of free will in our earthly lives in the meantime. There are also a few more things from the interviews that I wanted to go over, so be looking for that as well.

Friday Already?

To be fair, I had a really bad day yesterday, and I never even remembered my resolve to blog on Thursdays. But just keeping at the blogging is important, even if I do mess up, so here I am. I'm so glad that spring is on the way, even if winter decided to remind us that it's not quite gone yet yesterday. Anyone else have Seasonal Affective Disorder and have a rough winter this year? Of course, I didn't use my light box as reliably as I could have, so it's partially on me. My psychiatrist gave me an article recently about a light box being more useful to bipolar people if it is used around noon, so I might try that as March slowly winds away.

Where Have All the Lutherans Gone?

Talking with Scottius led me to blog today about something that I think about a lot, which is why there doesn't seem to be a strong conservative Lutheran community. The church Mr. BTEG and I currently belong to is a good distance away from our home, to begin with. While I suppose it would be asking too much to have a solid church actually in my community, it'd be nice to have one closer by. I don't feel any sort of connection to anyone at my current church. In addition, there's not really much of a strong Lutheran presence online anymore. Not only are bloggers gone, but people that I used to see on Google Plus aren't there, and Facebook is dying all on its own. When you don't have a church family, and you don't have an online church family, you can start feeling pretty detached from your church.

Working at It

I've been doing a lot of thinking about blogging, ever since one of my fellow doll bloggers made a post about the benefits of it. I enjoy the doll blogging, but most of the regular bloggers from when I first got started on this blog aren't around any more, and the Lutheran blogging world is pretty much non-existent. However, not only do I still enjoy blogging, it still seems to be the best platform for me. Besides which, as my doll friend's post pointed out, blogging can make you a better communicator and writer. That's always a good thing, so even if I never had a huge following here, it will help me provide a better doll blog too! Don't worry, I won't be blogging about dolls here, but doll collecting truly is where a lot of my time, blogging and money goes, now that my daughters are starting to make their own way into the world.

Both of my daughters and I each have several YouTube vloggers that we like to watch, although I'm waiting for some of my favorites to be shut down any day now. However, what the most successful vloggers seem to do is provide regular content. Even if it's crap content, they get something new up one or two days a week. So for now, I'm going to try Mondays and Thursdays as my days to blog here. Even if I have nothing that seems exciting to say, I'm going to try to put up a new post every week on those days.

For this post, let me tell you about what Mr. BTEG and I were able to do with some of the "crumbs" we received in our tax refund this year. For starters, this past Saturday we drove down to the IKEA in Columbus, Ohio, and picked up a cart full of items that we've been needing for quite some time, like a mattress, a set of dishes (most of our old plates got broken or chipped during the child-rearing years,) and a bookcase with glass doors for my doll collection! The IKEA warehouse makes a Costco or Sam's Club look like a little mom-and-pop operation.

The BTEG family has not taken a vacation in many years, partially due to commitments like school, but largely due to finances. Mr. BTEG and I both suffer from seasonal depression, which seemed especially bad this year. So this past Sunday, Mr. BTEG and I were able to spend the night at one of my favorite places, Great Wolf Lodge indoor waterpark in Sandusky, Ohio. I'm not a strong swimmer and not really up for large water slides, but there are enough water attractions at GWL to keep me happy, and it's got a very nice restaurant and a few other in-hotel food options handy, so Mr. BTEG and I were able to wind down and relax. Plus, I got some swimming in Sunday afternoon and evening, and Monday morning.

The first time we took a vacation at Great Wolf Lodge was all the way back in 2004. Mr. BTEG was working a contracting job in Chicago during that time, which meant that the girls and I didn't see him as much as of course we were used to. Fortunately, we were already homeschooling, so there were a couple of weeks the girls and I drove out to Chicago and stayed at his apartment there with him. It was even educational, since we visited a lot of the family attractions Chicago has to offer. But we wanted to spend some serious family time at Christmas, and on a contractor's salary, Mr. BTEG was able to afford a couple of nights stay at what I believe at the time was Great Bear Lodge.

Honestly, it was probably one of the best times we had as a family. The girls were young enough that somehow "Santa" managed to sneak all the Christmas presents past them, so that they were truly surprised when they woke up on Christmas morning.

Our eldest had brought some "reindeer food" that she'd made with her Brownie troop. We put that on the balcony the night before, and I scuffed the snow around after they went to bed, to look like the reindeer had come by and snacked on it.

We had a Kids' Cabin room, where the girls had their own little cabin with a bunk bed, a twin-sized bed, and their own game console and TV (the two pictures below are from another Christmas that we spent there.)

Most importantly, we got to spend that Christmas holiday together without worrying about dealing with annoying family, making food, washing dishes, or even going out in the very inclement weather that we were having at the time.

It's one of those times that as a mom of two adults, I still look back on with fondness, and they do too. (They *still* don't know how we managed to sneak all their presents past them.)

So yes, Great Wolf Lodge has wonderful memories for me, but Mr. BTEG and I still found it a very relaxing place to recharge this past weekend, so we can hold on until spring weather gets here to Northeast Ohio (Spring Training notwithstanding, Scottius!)

And I'm going to do my absolute best to put content up here every Monday and Thursday! It might be crap content ;), but it won't be doll-related. And no, my doll stuff is not crap, thankyouverymuch! :)

Happy New Year!

I've meaning to put up a blog post for a while, because I have some big news, but I never did. I'm out of the habit, not sure anyone reads this thing anymore, etc. But then Scottius Maximus re-emerged from his own blogging hiatus, which gave me the impetus I needed to revisit my own blog. However, this post isn't going to be about 2018, but the last big family event of 2017. Our eldest daughter got married!

As you can guess, the wedding had a Halloween theme. Overall, it was very nice. I'm hoping I won't have to deal with any big events in 2018, however, at least not in my immediate family!

Taking Stock

So the Dancer is officially done with high school, and the Musician is getting married in October! Time to do my own thing is becoming increasingly less scarce. Even though I'm really introverted, I'm still trying to find new ways to get out of the house, that I'll enjoy. I already attend a knit/crochet group once a month, and I'm trying to find people locally who are interested in doll collecting. I like going to baseball games, and it'd be fun to go to a concert once in a while. Neither my husband nor daughters are interested in the same music I am, nor are they interested enough in baseball to swing tickets, for the price.

At the same time, while scanning Google Plus a few days ago, I realized how few of these people online are my actual friends. It was enjoyable having other people to talk to about homeschooling, for example, while I was still doing that. But quite a while back, I realized that during the last period of time when Mr. BTEG and I were especially suffering through a difficult situation, we had absolutely nobody there for us. Our pastor did come and commune us, since Mr. BTEG's health hardly let him leave the house at that time. But it was just Mr. BTEG and I in the day-to-day struggle, me mostly trying to support him and be there for our girls. And now that I have more time to make better friends, even if some of them are still online friends, I don't want to waste thoughts or time or bandwidth on people that I don't have a real relationship with. And with more discretionary income and time, I can focus more on things I've always wanted to try, and maybe make real friends that way too.

This may not become strictly a hobby blog, but I think posting about new things I'm trying, and hopefully new people that I meet, will make for some fun blog posts. I may go back more to posting about current events, if I have a bloggable opinion. Because I like blogging! I've been able to interact and meet with some fun people while I've been writing this blog, and I'm hoping I'll meet more. Next time I blog, it will probably about my lunch date with a friend either in Ohio City or the Tremont neighborhood. I've never been to Tremont, although that neighborhood has been livened up by the development of the Christmas Story House and Museum. Don't know if we'll visit that, but if we do end up in that area, I'll take pictures.

Starting Anew

I find that I love beginnings, of the year, month, even week. It gives me motivation and opportunity to look at my goals, and try to improve my habits to get to where I want to be. I've learned over the years not to try to make huge changes, but to move a little bit in the direction that I want to go. Once I get that in place, I can move on to a further step. Although this is the beginning of a new week, for liturgical Christians, it is also the start of a new church year. This is the first Sunday in Advent, a penitential season leading up to the feast of Christmas. It's definitely not the time to make grandiose proclamations about being a saint in future, but if God's mercies are new every morning, then it can be possible to make a new start!

Making an Appearance

Besides being busy with my everyday life, I've been spending a lot more time on my hobbies, frankly because I need something enjoyable and fulfilling to me, in my life. But people do occasionally pop in here, so I should probably be more active here again too. As I've said, I'm pretty sure this blog has lost me acquaintances from the hobby side of my life, who've come here and read my stuff. But Barb the Evil Genius was already my private online persona, as opposed to using my real name with family and friends on places like Google Plus. I didn't want to create yet another nom de plume, so I'll stick with who I am, where I am, and hope it works out. Honestly, although I can get passionate about my beliefs, I don't bite. :)

Mother's Day 2016

When my daughters were little, Mother's Day had a certain poignancy, a celebration of a mother's love and care for little beings who were too young to take complete care of themselves. Now that my babies are just about all grown up, it's also a time to look at our relationships with each other. We want to try to remain close to each other, even though we are now three individuals who are scarily alike in some ways, but amazingly different in others. We have misunderstandings, and we frustrate each other sometimes, but we don't want disagreements to drive us apart. The girls' father and I have stresses and sufferings and worry because of them, but our daughters are also their now to share in the difficulties that Mr. BTEG and I encounter. I hope I can give my daughters guidance and encouragement and support as long as I am on this earth, and I hope they remember fondly what I have given them, and are able to give to children of their own.

Blessed Easter!

He is risen!

Jesus lives! The victory's won!
Death no longer can appall me;
Jesus lives! Death's reign is done!
From the grave Christ will recall me.
Brighter scenes will then commence;
This shall be my confidence.

CodeMash 2016

The Evil Genius family got a terrific chance at a basically free vacation, when Mr. BTEG's company arranged to send him to CodeMash, a convention for computer developers, that is held yearly at the Kalahari Resort in Sandusky, OH. Mr. BTEG got a four-person room, and since that entitled him to up to four waterpark passes, the Musician, the Dancer, and I came along. It was not only a great opportunity for a vacation, but family participation is encouraged with KidzMash, "a free family track for the spouses and families of attendees."

The Good:
Free-to-us getaway, as noted above

The Musician and the Dancer got time to interact with all kinds of adults in technology fields, and take part in activities such as helping Daddy build a NodeBot. Most of the KidzMash activities were designed for much smaller children, but the girls were very welcome in anything that was not an official lecture or class. The Musician's outgoing and vivacious personality really shone through here. Since the Dancer is still thinking of studying STEM in college, it was a fantastic chance for her to get a closer look at technology opportunities, and meet lots of adults in the field. They also got to do some fun things like play Settlers of Catan.

Parts of the waterpark were really fun. The girls enjoyed the wave pool. I got to ride the Zip Coaster, a kind of roller coaster in a water slide tube, which was fun for this roller coaster enthusiast.

The Bad:

I got bored with the water park very quickly. I enjoy the lazy river ride at Great Wolf Lodge, and expected to find a really great lazy river at Kalahari, since it is a much bigger water park. But it wasn't really any longer than the one at GWL, and it was chilly! GWL likes to stress how warm their waterpark is, and I can see why now that I've been in the Kalahari one. Not only was I shivering in the lazy river, but there are several places where water splashes down on you, which does not help with the chill. Another reason I didn't enjoy the water park as much as I would have liked was because:

The air was very dry. After only several hours in the park, my legs were dry and itchy. I would have liked to have gone on the Zip Coaster again, or tried out a few other things, but I didn't want to make my skin irritation worse. I do have sensitive skin, but even though Mr. BTEG hadn't gone in the water park yet, his hands were drying out after a couple of days. I can see that they would not want to have the area outside the water park feel overly humid, but they went too far and dried the air out too much, especially for the winter months.

The food was so-so. One of the fun things about going to an indoor water park like GWL or Kalahari during the winter months, is that everything is self-contained: your lodging, your meals and entertaining activities. It's great fun not to have to venture out into cold or snow for a few days. I'm a picky eater, but even so, with all the different places to eat in Kalahari, there was nothing special for any of us. We quickly discovered that the food options were essentially the same. The food at the cafe by the arcade was the cheapest and lowest quality; the upscale restaurant was the most expensive and best quality, but that was about it. Mr. BTEG found the catered lunches for attendees much more interesting than the restaurant food. Also frustrating was that one of the restaurants, the buffet, was closed for the week, although the park was at or close to maximum capacity for the entire week. This leads us into:

The Ugly

On Wednesday night, Mr. BTEG, the Dancer, and I went to the mid-priced restaurant to grab something to eat. There was a line to be seated, despite the restaurant being half-empty. The hostess mumbled something about everybody from the convention coming in to eat. Well, what did they expect? They had a very good handle of how many people were at the hotel, given that most people got a water park bracelet. This is the 10th year that the convention has been held at Kalahari. The schedule includes lectures during the day, and social activities at night. Many people are going to come for dinner in between those times. There are a few other outside restaurants in that area, but really, shouldn't Kalahari want you to stay and eat at their places? Plus, as I mentioned above, although the weather has been blessedly snow-free, it was rather cold. It was a very appealing option to just stay inside.

After a wait to be seated, we then had to wait for our waitress, who had probably just come on shift. We sat and watched the line to be seated wax and wane, until we noticed the table behind us was getting food. Unfortunately, the people at that table had decided to leave a while ago. At this point we realized that not only had we ordered our food before that table, but it had been forty minutes since we had ordered, and we hadn't even received our appetizer in that time. The manager did give us our entire meal for free, but the whole thing was just a big mess that should have been avoided by having enough staff on hand.

The first night, the Dancer and I grabbed something small in the cafe that was next to the arcade. It was dimly lit, and there was some kind of pipe making noise the entire time we were there, that made it difficult for the Dancer and I to hold a conversation. The cafe didn't look any brighter any of the other times we walked past it, which we did a lot, because:

You have to walk through the arcade to get to the water park. Not only is this over-the-top marketing to try to get you to play games in the arcade, it was unpleasant to have to wend your way through arcade games to get where you were going, every single time. The Dancer and I especially found all the lights, noises and garish colors to be over-stimulating.

The lazy river decor was literally ugly. There were about ten hyena statues placed at intervals around the lazy river. Hyenas are ugly animals, and that was pretty much all there was to look at going around the lazy river. At one point, there were a couple of hyenas that looked ready to take on an alligator, which wasn't really much fun to look at either. I don't know; it was like they got some hyena statues cheap and just decided to throw them there.


So to sum it up, the girls and Mr. BTEG did have a good time at the CodeMash part of the week. I got bored and came home Wednesday night; they will be there until late tonight. I was expecting Kalahari to be so much more, since it is so much bigger than its neighbor down the street, Great Wolf Lodge, but it really wasn't. It probably is at least more fun in the summer, when all the outdoor activities are open too. It was refreshing to get away for a couple of days at least (we got there Monday night) so there's that.

Christmas Gift Sewing

One of the things I love about sewing is being able to make gifts for others. This Christmas, I decided to make an ice skating dress for my niece, who is taking skating lessons. I used a Jalie pattern, because they offer so many active wear patterns in so many sizes. I had already used one of their patterns to make some dance shorts for the Dancer, too. This time, I ordered directly from the company, and bought some patterns as PDFs. Putting all the pieces of this pattern on 8 1/2" x 11" paper together was a pain, but the pattern did sew up wonderfully. We have a large format printer at home; I would love to be able to get patterns that will work on it.

Anyway, here are two pictures of the outfit. My niece loved it, so I'm happy.

Happy New Year!

As I write this, it's just turned December 31st. One more day until the New Year! Don't be fooled by my "new" header. It was taken many years ago, during a winter where we actually had snow. Supposedly we are going to get real winter weather in January and February, but I certainly enjoyed the mild weather of December. I'm looking to blog again regularly in 2016. Hopefully I will have some readers around. :)

Great Product Placement

It's not as great as putting chocolate in the aisle with the... women's stuff. But it's great if you like BLTs.

Digging Through the Past

Has it been a rainy late spring/early summer where you live? It certainly has been here. Many of the homes in NE Ohio have basements, which can flood easily in these conditions. My mother's basement, in the house I grew up in, floods very easily, water even coming up through the floor. So my two sisters and I, my daughter the Dancer, and my niece, went through my mom's basement on Saturday, cleaning items out in preparation for some new waterproofing. And to rescue items from the damp and mildew. Yuck! (Not to mention two dead mice in a trap. Fortunately, Mr. BTEG was around by that time to dispose of them.)

There were lots of cool things down there, and some things that should have been disposed of long ago. There were also some things that didn't belong in high humidity, like a picture of a family member from around the turn of the century. Some old newspapers headlining the Allies' victory in Europe, and the first moon landing, were saved by being in a cedar chest. My mother found her high school diploma, graduation tassel, and class picture. We also discovered two pairs of wooden shoes and a white Dutch cap from my mother's visits to Holland, Michigan, where they still promote the Netherlands. Several hats belonging to my grandmother, and a pair of my sister's old character shoes, are going to our local high school drama club. My sisters and I also found a lot of things that were ours when we were girls. There was lots of laughing over old times. I don't want to go through all that work again anytime soon, though, especially not in a humid basement!

All That I Need, To Support This Body and Life

The above is a quote from Luther's Small Catechism, at least the version that I learned from. I suppose it made sense to update the language, but at the same time it was odd for my daughters to be learning something from different from what I had memorized.

I've mentioned before how one of my medicines can elevate cholesterol. My try to switch to a different medication didn't work out, so my psychiatrist has me get a complete blood panel every year. This time, the results showed that I am very low on Vitamin D, so I have to take high units of Vitamin D pills, and I'm also taking fish oil in an attempt to help the triglycerides. I also have to find a primary doctor, again. During the past few years, every primary doctor I've had has left local practice. I imagine being a specialist might be more rewarding. I also need to get walking again. Summer in northeast Ohio is not exactly conducive to outdoor exercise because of the humidity, but I'm trying to walk later in the evening, when at least the sun is mostly down. Such a delicate dance to maintain health!

What's Been Keeping Me Busy

My daughter The Dancer and Mr. BTEG went to the Origins gamer convention in Columbus, Ohio last week. The Dancer wanted to cosplay as Princess Anna from Frozen, so I put together this costume for her. She and her daddy did the painting on the front of the bodice (as well as the back.)

Oh, and Mr. BTEG also had his gall bladder removed last month. That was a thing that took up a bit of my time as well.