Cincinnati Zoo, Kings Island, Hatch Green Chiles

Cincinnati Zoo

I feel like with school I’ve not spent much time with the boys recently, so I took the two of them for a day at Cincinnati Zoo and lunch at Skyline Chili. We had a wonderful time at the zoo. Being able to get there before the general public enters gives you plenty of opportunity to see some animals in the cooler morning time. For example, the Night Hunters exhibit has their lights on before 10:00 AM. The big cats tend to be up and active as they wait for their breakfast. It’s a great benefit. The boys had popcorn and cotton candy here also. I did not partake and was kind of proud I was able to not snack on them.

We ate lunch at Skyline in the Clifton Gaslight District. This might be one of the first times they’ve been there. It was a favorite during college because it was always open late. We then walked down to Graeter’s and had my treat. We planned on shopping there a bit to find their mom a gift but one said his belly was upset so we went home.

Kings Island

My first visit to Kings Island this year. I’ve been so busy with school on the weekends that I don’t get out much. I wanted to spend Sunday at least seeing the park and eating dinner there. I ended up getting a delicious barbecued turkey leg (in the future I’ll ask for the BBQ sauce on the side), and we also ordered the chicken schnitzel and beer braised pork chop sandwich. We rode a few rides, then I took Ben over to Snoopy Land while Leslie and Ted went to ride a few coasters before calling it a day. One note is Ben finally rode the Viking Ship and loved it. That was one of my favorite rides as a little one too.

I did notice the new shade tent in front of the Carousel. That’s a good add. Kings Island really needed some more shaded seating. I didn’t see many other changes in the Park. I know they’ve been doing a lot of maintenance on rides. I hear a lot of negative comments on social media about Kings Island becoming more Six Flags than Cedar Fair, which troubles me. I didn’t notice that as much, other than a lot of supervisors were working ride operations, which you typically don’t see. That can mean a staff reduction or inability to keep that front line worker group.

Other Updates

I made some Hatch green Chile sauce. Our local Kroger’s will get them in stock during this time of year and I will buy a few bags and try my hand at making this sauce, famous from New Mexico. It requires that you blister the peppers and steam them in a wrapped bowl to peel the plastic like casing. I find it easier to pop off the tops at this point and pull out the seeds before grilling them so I can handle the peppers less for the next stage. After you peel them, you toss them into a blender with a grilled onion, garlic, salt, and Mexican tomato broth packets and grind it all up. The goal here is not to make a puree, you want it to have some body to it. Serve it on eggs or just eat it as salsa with tortilla chips. It is delicious on smoked pork butt also!

The boys are heading back to school soon. I’m reflecting on my summer and how it went. First, I will miss seeing the boys everyday during lunchtime, as well as seeing Leslie. The school year will start and I will be up in the morning again taking Ben into school for drop-off. I didn’t quite hit all of the goals this summer I hoped to do. When everyone here starts staying up later, I do too, even though I do not want to do it. My original plan was to spend my flex Friday morning riding a bike at Lunken, I also wanted to utilize not taking the boys into school to workout more in the morning. That never materialized. I did workout most mornings, but only for an hour, which I do during the school year also. I did hope to work remotely at some point, and the summer is the only time to do it. I do work remotely, as I don’t go into an office, but I’ve spent every moment of the last five years at home working in front of my computer, in my office, at home, except for one week for a family vacation that I mostly missed because I had to work. I also did not do as much lap swimming. Our pool does long course during the summer and I really hate long course, then they close for three weeks to clean. I could have swam in the morning at the outdoor pool but I just didn’t get up in the time.

MBA class is wrapping up. I will have an exam and paper to do next weekend. There is so much work to do in a five week class, with a full week of homework and reading on top of the final paper and final exam. Right now I can get an 85 on both finals and still get an A in the class, so the pressure is off, but I don’t like half measures so I’ll most likely put a ton of time into it.