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.

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.

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 8x6x6; 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.