Cleveland.

So I went up to Cleveland this weekend. Justin goes to school at Case Western Reserve University and since he is in session and I am not, I figured this weekend would be the perfect time to get together and celebrate our third anniversary (the actual date of which is not until October).

On the way up I was nearly busted by a cop for speeding, but he actually nabbed the person right in front of me. Talk about scary! The rest of the driving went without incident, except for the few times this afternoon that I shut my eyes for a liiiiiiiiiiiiitle too long and started drifting out of my lane. It's a boring drive except for the actual campus area in Cleveland, since it's basically one single freeway for two hours.

Friday was our movie day. I got to Cleveland by about 3:30, and Justin and I decided to exchange anniversary presents. I gave him a digital picture frame (great for keeping photos and memories close by!) and he gave me Adventureland on DVD, a strange-looking Care Bear-knockoff statuette thing (which is kind of adorable actually), and a gift certificate to a spa redeemable for a full-body massage. Definitely going to be using that this week, as I will probably be a bundle of nervous energy by this upcoming weekend.

We were able to get most of our meals on campus at the dining hall closest to his fraternity house. It's just so strange to visit campus friends and see how they eat and live and stuff like that. I don't even think about these kinds of things when I'm home. We caught a movie playing on campus (The Bourne Ultimatum, very good action flick), watched the beginning of my favorite Mystery Science Theater 3000 episode (The Final Sacrifice [part 1 of 9], definitely worth watching), and were able to watch Adventureland before we called it a night.

Woke up in time on Saturday to catch brunch before the football games started up. We were able to watch Dr. Horrible's Sing-Along Blog for a little bit and we played through a few levels of Halo 3 before the real games started up. It was really rainy in the entire Midwest, I think, because the Ohio State game looked miserable and it was coming down hard outside while we were watching. We weren't able to finish that game, though, because we had dinner reservations at this really great place.

Yeah. Everyone, next time you're in Cleveland, check out L'Albatros. It's actually kind of in the middle of Case's campus, but I've never really eaten at a better restaurant. Seriously, check out their website, because they have pictures of their interior and of some of the dishes on their menu.

Just to start off with, their service was excellent. Bartenders coming in and out with unspoken refills for drinks, water out of a glass bottle, very knowledgeable and courteous waitstaff. One guy even took Justin's umbrella as we were entering, no questions asked. They serve slices of French loaf while you wait, with olive oil, coarse salt, and some kind of seeds-in-oil mixture to spread on it. I want to know what was in that mixture, because it was tangy and absolutely delicious on the bread.

As our appetizer, we ordered their goat cheese tart with sun-dried tomatoes and olives. It was really a small slice of this cheese mixture on top of a really flaky crust, served with a tomato pesto on the side and covered with just a few slim salad greens. It was delicious; the cheese was so flavorful, and so were the sun-dried tomatoes, plus the saltiness of the olives and the texture of the crust made it excellent.

Justin got the simple mixed-greens salad, but somehow this place was able to take a simple salad and make it something extraordinary. Some of their greens came fresh-picked from their back garden. Every one of the varieties had some different flavor to it, and the best part was, instead of covering it up with some sort of heavy and over-marinated vinaigrette, they just tossed it with a little light something. Very good.

For our entrees, Justin ordered the almond-crusted trout while I ordered the seared sea scallops. Everything was delicious. Justin couldn't stop praising the taste of his fish. His two filets of trout came covered with haricots verts, and the presentation looked wonderful. For my part, the scallops were seared perfectly. They cut very well and melted in my mouth, almost tasting like a finer version of lobster. The sear was perfect, with a slight peppery taste. The three scallops were served over egg noodles and some sort of green in a very rich white cream sauce. I later realized the greens were brussels sprouts; they were just so well-prepared that I didn't want to give them any credit!

By the time the dessert menu came around, the restaurant was emptying fast. As it turns out the symphony was playing Beethoven's Ninth that night. Oh well. We'll catch the symphony next time I'm in town, I'm sure. But that meant the restaurant quieted down a little, so we were able to enjoy our dessert in a little more peace once the worried symphony-goers had departed. We ordered their chocolate napoleon, which was this elegant stack of wafers sandwiching dollops of chocolate mousse and raspberries, garnished with tart raspberry sauce. Absolutely delicious.

Too bad they didn't serve hot chocolate on their dessert menu, only coffee, tea, and cappuccinos, or we would have lingered over 'drinks.' As it was, we were missing the ND game (which I had completely forgotten about, the food was so good, and that's saying something from an Irish student), so we quickly hit up the nearest Starbucks and went back to the house to change and watch the games.

I say 'games' because in their common room, they had two TVs, so we were actually able to dual-screen the Penn State and ND games both at the same time. They were both interesting games, but we got interrupted in the middle of the third quarter by the announcement that some of the guys were going to be watching Fight Club. I couldn't pass that up, so all of a sudden I'm in a very small room with one futon and one desk chair, eight people in this room, watching the movie. What a guy thing to do on a Saturday night.

After the movie was finished, we (I use the term liberally; it was really one of Justin's friends who extended the invitation to both of us) were invited to another fraternity's house for a 'challenge.' Turns out they were testing new beer pong rules. It was kind of entertaining, watching my first game of beer pong (didn't participate). After hanging out with a room full of guys for a while, Justin decided that while we were on that part of campus, we should visit some of his old friends that lived in his dorm last year. It was actually kind of interesting seeing those old faces again.

It's easy, re-reading that, to see how college nights get to be so late. I don't think that I've ever gone to sleep before 1:30 on a 'real' college weekend before, and this weekend was no exception.

This morning we were awake in time to catch brunch. The original plan was for me to leave after I ate, but it was such a nice day out after it had rained all day Saturday that I wanted to take a walk around campus. The air was breezy yet crisp. The leaves aren't quite changing color here, which actually made things seem more summer-like and less like autumn. Justin took me to a park just on the edge of campus where there was a man-made 'lake' (really a pond) sunk into a little dip in the hills, with lots of trees, Greek-like sculptures, and fountains. (And most people say Cleveland has no redeeming qualities!) Turns out that the park actually faced the Cleveland Museum of Art. Too bad it was a Sunday or we would have had a blast.

We ended up back in an area of campus I was more familiar with from my previous visits: the library and humanities quad. In the quad there was a structural fountain, basically a stack of rectangles with shallow water flowing down two sides of the sculpture. We took our shoes off and splashed around in the cool water for a while, just acting like little kids. But the general tour ended after that.

And I think it took two (maybe three) hours to say goodbye. It always hurts. This time it just hurts really, really badly, because I don't know for sure when I'll see him again. Three months from now is a good guess. It'll be the longest time we haven't seen each other, and we'll also be the furthest away (actual time zones and countries!). Don't get me wrong, I'm sure we'll be fine, it's just not going to be the most fun thing we've ever done. (Truth be told, I still feel like crying.)

... And that was my last weekend of the 'summer,' my last weekend completely within the United States for a long time. This upcoming week is going to be difficult, what with the stress of caring for my grandparents, the last-minute errands I'm going to have to run, the packing lists that will need to be made and re-made, the list of errands that need run once I actually get to school...

It's all a little overwhelming. All of it. So I think I'll take a break for now and come back to my blog around Friday night. The screen's a little blurry right now anyways.

- Jen -