Floored

I wish I could start off my new round of journal posts with a more interesting post but this weekend wasn’t the most exciting. I spent the weekend putting polyurethane on the floors in our dining room and living room. Jocelyn and I were banished from the TV for the weekend because we couldn’t walk on the floors while they were drying. So to celebrate our new floors we had some steaks in the basement and watched COPS on our 13” TV in the basement with the Christmas decorations. Next weekend will be more exciting because it’s our annual Memorial Day BBQ which is guaranteed to bring some stories.

I’m Back… Again!!!

It’s been quite the hiatus but hopefully I can get a quick summation post up in the next couple days. I want to get the new theme buttoned up and everything imported so it will look like it did before I got lazy. I hope to get you loyal readers back, glad to be back!

Tour de ‘Boygan III

This Saturday Jocelyn and I biked to Falls for our close to annual Tour de ‘Boygan. This was the first year that we both had road bikes for the trip. I thought we would bomb up there in no time but a month and a half of not biking and ten mile an hour headwind made for a slow five hour bike. It was way more brutal than I was expecting. Once to Randy’s house we showered up and met my mom and cousin Terri for dinner at Firehouse. The pizza was delicious as always and I ate way too much. After dinner my mom dropped J and I off at Hops Haven. We watched the first half of the Badgers game there. Since they had a live that was going to start during the second half we walked to The Skybox to watch the game in a better atmosphere. After the game was over Randy picked us up and dropped us off in Falls. We hung out at the O and caused a ruckus until bar time. Sunday, too sore to think about biking home, we had Rich drive us back. Sunday we watched in amazement as the Packers beat San Diego to start 3-0, amazing!

Football and Fall

We went to the Brewers game on Friday. We skipped happy hour this week. The game stunk, the Brewers were down five after the first inning. Sheets is a bum. After the game we went to The Pub for a couple burgers. We hadn’t been there in a while and they scratched an itch I’ve had for a while.

Saturday was a gorgeous day. You can tell Fall is right around the corner. I’ve missed the last two Badgers games since I was in Canada so I wasn’t about to miss this one. I headed out to Luedke’s parents’ house to watch the game in their media room. A bunch of the guys went out there. We had a couple beers and watched the Badgers struggle to beat Citadel. I haven’t been overly impressed with their play so far this year. At least we’re not Notre Dame. After the football game we headed to Adam’s for Chappy’s bachelor party. There were about twenty guys there. Everyone played cards but I wasn’t overly interested in playing so I watched football and drank beer. We played some drinking games, at some pizza and smoked some cigars. It was a good time. Chappy’s single life is quickly melting away.

Take this Job and Shove It

This past Wednesday was my last day at ASQ. I quit on a Wednesday so I could have a little free time before starting my new job. Thursday was the first night of the fair so I headed up to Plymouth. Both my brothers’ families went. I had some fried cheese and some beers. We watched the tractor pulls and talked to some friends. After the fair we stopped at Antonio’s for a nightcap before heading back to Rich’s.

I tried to sleep most of the day on Friday. We were taking off for Canada when J finished work. I didn’t get nearly as much sleep as I wanted. It’s hard to sleep during the day when you don’t have blackout curtains. J got home about four and we packed up the car and started the drive to Canada.

I’m Back!!!

Hey hey, looks who’s back! Wow have I been a lazy goon. I upgraded to Windows Vista and never bothered to get my server set up again. Since my electricity bill is also out of control I really didn’t want my desktop running all day just so I can get one hit a day to my website. Well, I’m still lazy, but I found the time to get the basic server setup again on a really neat low power, low noise, low heat, low everything computer. The decTOP is what I’ve been looking for a while and it’s now my dedicated server. The little hand size server isn’t the fastest in the world but it does the job for a low traffic site. I had to dust off my Linux skills and learn command line again so that inhibited the process. So barring some sort of new problem you can look for my weekly musing once again! Good to be back!!!

Buy Me Some Peanuts …and Diamond Earrings

It was Good Friday this week and there is no better way to honor the day than a Brewers game.  I met Luedke and Hand at Dukes to have some happy hour brew before heading to the game.  We bussed it to the stadium. It was a dreaded Brewers v. Cubs game.  Luedke had the tickets and they were awesome seats but we were losing the whole game and dealing with Chub fans in that environment is a form of torture.  L still had a ticket left and we called J to come meet us which she did.  We stayed at the game for about five innings and then went to My Office for a few.

Saturday Jocelyn and I went out to celebrate our one year anniversary.  It was a perfect one year celebration with my perfect woman.  We went to Devon Seafood in the new Bayshore Town Centre.  It was a crisp night but only being a couple blocks away we didn’t have be outside long.  The food at the Devon was outstanding!  I got an amazing cioppino which is a like a thick, spicy bouillabaisse. After dinner was over I gave J a pair of diamond earrings for our anniversary.  I may have shot myself in the foot and overachieved for a first anniversary present but J is worth every penny.  I got the earrings at a going out of business sale and have been holding on to them for four months which is impossible for me to do, especially with something like this.  I was able to wait though.  She loved them and the night was perfect.  We headed home, had some champagne and called it a night.

Sunday was our actual one year anniversary but since we had celebrated it the night before it was low key.  Sunday was also Easter.  The only thing we really did was eat our cake top that Becky had air locked and freezed for us.  It actually wasn’t that bad.  Nothing much else happened.  I made a ham so we had some sandwiches and took it easy.

Steak, Drinks, Chili, Perfection?

This coming week is both of my parents’ birthdays.  What is becoming tradition is taking my parents out to St. Ann’s for a birthday dinner.  J and drove up Saturday night and took them out for some good eats.  My brothers and their fams showed up too.  I’d repeat the whole St. Ann’s experience for the 100^th time but it would be a broken record; fabulous porterhouse and delicious Old Fashioneds.  On this trip to St. Ann’s I did run into Justin Richardson who was also enjoying the buttery steaks.  When dinner was over I requested a cake for my mom and dad which was fun.  After dropping off my parents we headed back to WFB.

Sunday was the annual chili cook off.  We didn’t have the Wians’ with us this year but J and I went anyway.  The weather was rainy as is always the case for the chili cook-off.  The cook off was again a hit.  They need to move it back to the Lakefront brewery because the downtown room is too hot and cramped.  Either way you can’t go wrong eating ten samples of chili. Great way to end a weekend.

I Be Pubbin’

This weekend was the long awaited Riverwest Pub Crawl.  The weekend started with a Friday night fish fry at the Pub.  We’ve had countless burgers there but this was our first fish fry and it didn’t disappoint.  We’ve given other area places a chance but I think that the Pub is going to become our go to fish fry on Friday nights.  After dinner we went home to watch a movie and slept dreaming of the festivities to come.

The pub crawl didn’t start until one.  I left the house a little earlier to meet Luedke and Anna and give them their tickets.  J stayed behind and waited for Arianne since she was running a little late.  I met L at the Gig which was this years’ launching point.  We had our first beer and moved along to the next bar to get in front of the crowd.  We met J and Arianne two bars later and commenced the crawl as a group from there.  The weather was nice, I would say B weather.  I could list off the eighteen bars that we went to but instead I’ll just give you this years’ top highlight.  Arianne and I were sitting on the curb taking a breather from the craziness and making fun of this busted up Chevy Celebrity that was parked across the street.  It was an old dented piece of junk.  While we were sitting there talking about this car a dude with his huge gut hanging out and no shirt on came out of one nowhere and opened the trunk of this car.  He started talking to us and as he was talking to us he grabbed deodorant from the trunk and then grabbed a turtleneck and put it on.  I can’t even recall what he was saying because the whole time I was hoping that he didn’t hear what we were saying about his car.   Then just like that the dude disappeared back into a house on the block.  I guess he wasn’t homeless but many of the signs pointed that he was pretty close.  There was tons of other fun had and the Riverwest Pub Crawl lived up to its expectations again.  After we finished the crawl we took the bus back to WFB.  Of course our wonderful timing got us on a bus that didn’t complete the whole WFB route so we got dropped off far from our destination.  We walked to the Pub and got a hamburger to top off the night.  We headed home after the Pub, chugged some water, and went to bed.

On Sunday we got a summer day in March.  It was eighty degrees and sunny.  I took a walk to the store and picked up some stuff to grill out.  We grilled out for dinner and enjoyed the warm air for the couple of days until it retreats back into early spring.  Another pub crawl weekend in the books.

Bar Hoppin’, Wicked Hoppin’

It’s the official start of spring, the NCAA tourney.  I skipped out of work a couple hours early to catch Bucky play his first round game versus Texas Tech something or other.  I met Luedke and Matzek at the Ale House.  It appeared that we weren’t the only ones skipping out of work a bit early to catch the game because the Ale House was packed.  It was a very quiet Ale House the first half.  The Badgers got their butts handed to them.  They were down by double digits almost the entire time and were able to whittle it down to six by half.  The second half was all Badgers.  They dominated the entire half and scored almost sixty points in one half which is unheard of for the Badgers.  After the game everyone took off and I waited for Jocelyn to come pick me up.  That was it for the night since we had to get geared up for St. Patty’s the next day.

Erin go braugh! Ah, St. Patty’s, and on a Saturday!  We took the bus downtown and went to Chappy and Katie’s where they were throwing a party.  It was just before eleven when we arrived.  We came with Jocelyn’s frittata in hand.  We hung out at Chappy’s getting our early shine on until about noon.  After we left Chappy’s we bounced from bar to bar.  Most of our time was spent at Flannery’s.  J, Steph and I branched off from the group for a bit to go get a piece of the world’s biggest Rueben at The Wicked Hop.  It didn’t disappoint either.  For the second year in a row five dollars got you’re a piece of rueben that measures 8×6x6; it’s a lot of food.  After struggling to down the whole thing we got a fluorescent green beer to wash it down.  From the Hop we hit a couple other bars and ended up meeting everyone back at Flannery’s.  Apparently they tried to go to other bars but they sucked and came back to Flannery’s.  I gathered up a couple volunteers to go to My Office where we ended up the night.  We cabbed it back home with Todd and Steph and called it St. Patty’s.