How Would You Like Your Steak… Large Please

Friday we took off for the PGA championship festivities up in Sheboygan. I thought the traffic would be awful but we were actually able to fly right up. I’ve been looking forward to this trip for at least a month and it’s not because the golf tourney, who care about golf, it was the steak. I’ve had my fair share of steaks at my fair share of restaurants and the world’s best (and cheapest) steak is right in my back yard. Schwarz’s in St. Anna (it’s a crossroad in the middle of nowhere, seriously, nowhere) has the best steak ever. Once you find the crossroad you come upon your typical crossroads town. A church, a couple bars, and some houses. This boonies town happens to also have Schwarz’s and it is always packed so be prepared to wait at least an hour. You can’t make reservations at the place, in fact the have a sign “If you want a reservation, you’re at the wrong place.” and the whole process isn’t like your normal supper club meal. The normal crowd (this time was no exception) has farmers who just finished their daily chores to dressed up businessmen in their beamers. Now when you walk in the door, or should I say squeeze in the door, you are greeted by a large bar and some waitresses with menus. You place your order at the bar and then sit there and suck ’em down until your table is ready. I ordered the porterhouse ($22) and Jocelyn got the petite NY strip ($13). So once our order was placed we sat at the bar, watched some golf, and sucked down some of their world famous $2.90 Old Fashions. A couple drinks later and our table was ready. The whole dinner part of the experience only lasts about thirty minutes. When you get to your table they have your salad sitting out for your and a veggie platter with bread. Once you get your salads done the waitress swoops in with your steak and you’re ready to go. When my steak came even I was amazed and I’ve been there a good amount of times. My porterhouse had a little umbilical cord that was attached to another steak that was bigger than Jocelyn’s NY strip. The steak had to be somewhere in the 35 oz. range. I dug right in and it was done perfectly and tasted great as usual. Their seasoning and melt in your mouth tenderness is something no other restaurant can compare to. I polished off the steak, felt gluttonous, and loved every second of it. I paid the bill, a whopping $38 and was once again able to bask in the glow of my meat high. Once we were done we headed back to Falls. It was the same old thing except this time everyone was wearing PGA Championship clothing instead of NASCAR and Packers gear. The O and Firehouse had a band so we checked both of those out. We pretty much did the Falls bar crawl and hit up all the fine establishments as well as the new bar across from the post office. It was a good time. We headed to my brothers a little before bar time and got some sleep.

Saturday was the 1st annual Murray family picnic. I haven’t seen a lot of my cousins in a long time so this was a fun time. We rented a park and set up shop. The day was full of drinking, eating WAY too much, and every lawn sport that you can think of. I played (and dominated) bocce ball, horseshoes, wiffle ball, and threw every kind of ball and saucer you can imagine. Really not much more to say other than it was a good time with the fam. My uncle Tommy did put on quite the show when he made his tacos on the grill and told his story and how he served in the military with Elvis, funny stuff. The picnic was over at about 8:30. We were planning on going out but we couldn’t get ourselves going, we were spent. So we staying in and watched the Olympics on Saturday night.

Tuesday we went to the Brewers v. Cubs game. Jocelyn’s dad and her sister came up from Peoria for the festivities. We grilled out in the parking lot before the game. Once we were in the game I met up with my cousin Steve who also came up from Chicago for the game. Steve came up with some of his buddies from work and a couple of guys from India that he works with, it was their first game. I sat with Steve and his buddies and booed the Cubs. I got heckled at my own stadium but I didn’t care because the Brewers won! Go Brewers! Wednesday we went to the game again but this time the outcome wasn’t as good. The Crew lost in 11. The one positive about this game is that I don’t have to see the damn Cub fans taking over our stadium any more this year. GO HOME CHUBS!

Congrats to by bro Randy and his wife Becky. They had a baby girl on the 16th so now I have someone to celebrate my birthday with!

The Skipper Too… Was Wasted

Friday after work I went to state fair to do the whole eating thing. J picked me up and we parked outside of the grounds so we didn’t have to pay for parking. We got in to the fairgrounds for free too because you could use a Cubs v. Brewers ticket stub to get into the fair for free. Since we went to every Chub game we had a stockpile of free tickets so we got a couple for Deli and Steph and we met them at the fair. It was really crowded and we really didn’t do anything but eat. I had my pork chop sandwich (best food at the fair), a Swiss n’ rye, a big pickle, a couple glasses of flavored milk, and a couple ears of corn. We went into the main expo hall but I really didn’t feel like listening to all the Brits pitch their wonder mops. We also signed up for the dream home again so I have my fingers crossed on that one. We spent a majority of the night in the micro brew tent. They have different beers from the micro breweries in WI. If you kill a keg there you get a “keg killer” t-shirt with Paul Bunyan on it. J and I tried for about four hours to kill one last year but we didn’t get one. This year was different and she killed a keg on her second beer and received the coveted t-shirt. We hung out there until elevenish. My brother was there so it was a good time hand by all.

Saturday we took the Milwaukee microbrewery boat tour with Chad and Emily. For $18 you go to Rock Bottom, Lakefront, and the Milwaukee Ale House on a pontoon boat. The boat tour started at one at Rock Bottom. We had a good time sampling the brews and being stupid. A word of advice if you take the tour, don’t have the Ale House as your last stop. You only get one beer there and after having an unlimited source of brew up to this point it is tough to scale back to one beer an hour. Once we were done with the boat tour we headed back to my apt for a bit. After relaxing briefly we went over to Chappy’s apt and joined them for a cook out. I, being the manliest of all the men, took over the grill and cooked up the brats and chicken. We chowed down and played some darts. Chappy and his crew were going to hit up some of the bars but I didn’t feel like going out yet. So Chad, the girls and I headed back to my apt. We had some brews and watched Aqua Teen Hunger Force on DVD, funny stuff. Then Chad got a call from his brother Paul and he was at a house party just up the street from us. So we headed up there and spent the rest of the night there. It was a lot of fun being at a true house party again. We headed to Mykano’s at midnight, ate our gyro fry and called it a night.

It’s Where the Water Animals Play

I had a full week these past couple days. It started out on Tuesday with the buckethead game, Crew v. Cubs. I had gotten these tickets about a month ago and was looking forward to my first buckethead game of the year, boy was I disappointed. When we got to our seats I thought we would be in the only Chub free section in Miller Park, we were so wrong! Somehow the damn Cubs fans were even in the buckethead section so we still had to put up with the stuck up, no baseball intellect, snobs. The game was awful too. Ben Sheets was pitching and got shelled the first couple innings. We were down 6-0 in the sixth and I was sick of hearing cheers for Chicago so I did the unthinkable and actually left the game early. This is unlike me but when you’re essentially in an away stadium it is no fun watching the other fans gloat. Cubs fans are by far the biggest gloaters and biggest whiners in the majors so I was out. No fun, even worse game. Something has to be done about these Cubs games to get the Cubs fans out of OUR home park.

Thursday was Jazz in the Park. J and I hadn’t been there in a while so we decided we really needed to make an appearance. We went a little later than usual so we weren’t able to get our regular spot at stage left. We managed to find a spot stage right and we plunked our chairs down and got one of our four bottles of Jazz in the Park wine. Later on L and his girlie showed up so we had someone friends to hang out with and take in some good tunes.

Friday was quite the day. Jocelyn had planned this getaway weekend for my birthday (not to late for you to send presents). She had me pack a back the night before and said that we were going somewhere a half hour away. I kept telling her to just tell me where we’re going because there is no place a half hour from Milwaukee that I want to spend the night. No matter how much I begged she wouldn’t tell me so I had to wait until after work. She picked me up after work and we were on our way. This whole surprise thing really put me in a bad mood and I was straight pissed for the entire ride. Finally we got to my bud Delahunt’s house and the secret was finally revealed, we were going to the Dells with D and Steph to celebrate the men’s birthdays. The reason Jocelyn said a half hour away was because I actually guessed where we were going the week before. So we packed up the Montero and we were off to WI-Dells. A couple hours later we arrived and checked into our motel just off the downtown strip. We had a couple adult beverages in our rooms and hung out. Then we met a group of guys in another room from Manitowoc. They asked us if we wanted to go by the pool and play some drinking Jenga and of course we said yes. So we sat around the pool until about nine when we decided to go get a bit to eat. We went to the Riverwalk bar that was right by our motel. It was a nice new lodge-type place. We ordered some drinks and got some grub. The food and drink were both cheap and very good, we would be back. After a couple games of darts and some jager bombs we went up to Nig’s on the strip. We sat there, had a couple and talked dumb. As part of my b-day present J got me a “I Had A Swig At Nig’s” shirt. D and I were getting antsy at Nig’s so we took off to go a different bar while the girls finished their drinks. D and I went to the Sandbar and had a beer there and shot some pool. We ran into a couple locals and shot the breeze with them for a bit. Then we realized we should probably go to the bar that we told the girls we would meet them at. So we headed to the Showboat and met the ladies. Not only were the ladies there but the group of guys from the motel were there too so we all had some drinks and sang karaoke. D and Steph went home at about one but I had to stay and sing “Ring of Fire” so we stayed until twoish and then headed back.

Saturday we woke up at about eight and got ready for Noah’s Ark. We arrived at the park about ten which I guess is the ideal time to go to NA. The longest line that we stood in was maybe fifteen minutes. The weather was sunny and in the mid-80s so we had a perfect day. We got to go on all the slides we wanted to before noon and then we had lunch in the parking lot. We ate our sandwiches and headed back in but the park got really crowded and the lines turned into an hour fifteen wait time. We didn’t feel like standing in line so we headed to the lazy river and floated around for an hour. Once we were done with that we decided to call it a day at NA. We dried off and decided to take a ride on the army ducks. We took the hour tour. It had been a long time since I’ve taken the tour so it was fun to see the rock formations and cruise around on the duck. It was fun but the end was lame when the driver tried to sell us postcards and asked for tips. Then they tried to peddle a $17 dollar picture to us. That really stunk considering we just paid $20 to go on an hour ride. It was a small hiccup in an otherwise perfect weekend. After the ducks we went back to the motel and showered up and took a nap. We woke up around seven and took one of our eighty acquired Moose Jaw Pizza coupons and went to go get some dinner. It was crowded so we had to wait at the bar. While there I thought I would make the most of it so I ordered their 10 point buck sampler which was 10 – 5 oz. samples of their brews. We had some pizza and my sampler and it was all very good. From there we headed back to the motel to relax some more. We decided to go bar to the Riverwalk bar and play it low key. Once we got there we all hit a brick wall and we just couldn’t stay out. We ended up heading home around 10:30 and calling it a night. We all had too much excitement for one day.

Sunday we got up early again and checked out of the motel. From there we went to Paul Bunyan’s all-u-can-eat family style breakfast. The breakfast was only about $8 a person and was tasty for being served in army mess hall fashion. From there we cruised back to MKE and went to the Brewers game to wrap up the day. We got free tickets from Craig and the weather was perfect so what better way to wrap up our weekend. The Crew won in the bottom of the 9th and the weekend was officially demeaned perfect. Thanks to J and Steph for the planning and thanks to Mother Nature for summer, finally!

Color Me Exhausted

I believe I left off on the Tuesday of ‘fest. Tuesday J and I were going to go see the Midwest Operas stirring rendition of Pink Floyd’s The Wall and then go to see Kenny Wayne Shepard. We made it down to the fest ground in plenty of time and got a good seat for what we thought was going to be a cover band doing Floyd. Instead it was absolutely the worst thing I’ve seen in my life. We weren’t the only ones that thought that this “rock opera” was going to be worth watching because there were tons of hippies waiting to see them as well. Since the hippies had their senses dulled/heightened they couldn’t process how much this rock opera sucked. J and I as well as handful of people were able to determine how awful they were in about two minutes. So we left which really threw a wrench into our plans because now we had 3 hours to kill before KWS. So we decided to walk to get a beer and I ran into my good pal Gregory. He and his woman were down for the night. In the process of getting the beer we learned that you didn’t need a wristband to get into the main stage. J and Greg’s woman both loved Jessica Simpson so we did what any whipped man would do, take them to their free concert and then hold it over their head that we went to the JS concert. We sat there for a couple hours and watched the concert. I think Greg and I were watching different things on stage than the rest of the audience so we were able to block out the music and prepubescent screaming. After that was over we headed on home.

Thursday was our next day and was going to be the last. I biked down to the grounds and got wristbands to see The Bodeans and Steve Miller. We headed down to grounds pretty early and grabbed a bite to eat before the show. We went in and got some pretty good seats for the show. The Bodeans put on a really good show. I’ve seen then a couple times at Lakefest in Sheboygan but I can honestly say I don’t “remember” seeing them there. We then stayed for a handful of the Steve Miller songs. It was getting late so we headed out of the concert. On our way out we got to check out Paul Oakenfold. We watched him for a bit, admired the trance scene and glow sticks, and then started home again. On the way home we ran into another stage and heard Peter Frampton doing “Do You Feel Like We Do.” No true rock n’ roll fan could pass that up so we had to stop and listen to that. Finally we got out of there and made it home.

Friday I went to a house warming party at my buddy Chappy’s new place. It was going to be a “couple beers” night. Then we got playing darts, drinking beers, and talking stupid so I ended up going to Rosie’s with the entire crew. We got to check out some crazy dude with wings on that was completely out of place in the Rosie’s. I guess that are no real good bars in Milwaukee where you can walk around and wear your wings.

Saturday J and I woke up early. We had to drive to Rockford for my college roomie Harv’s wedding. We got to Rockford and the weather was just awful. Lucky for us the wedding was outside. We dropped our stuff off in the hotel and met up with the rest of the clan who was also staying there. We all hung out in the hotel room for a couple hours and had a couple CCs. Once we got ready, gathered the group and got going we realized we were going to be a little late. Lucky for us a humongous thunderstorm delayed the whole wedding. The wedding was supposed to be in a botanical gardens area but instead it was held in a tent. Lucky for us we all got poured on and got to sit through the entire wedding drenched to our nether regions. The wedding was nice but none of us could hear any of it because the rain was hitting so hard on the top of tent. After the wedding was over and we were on our way out, it cleared up, of course. The whole crew headed to Oscar’s Sports bar for a drink before the reception. After that drink we all headed to the reception. It was a nice reception, small, but nice. The meal was also very different than most weddings. The meal was six different types of pasta dishes. They were very good. Not as good as the merlot though. I myself accounted for at least three empty bottles of merlot, one of those glasses being on the front of my shirt. Towards the end we tried to get some shots of Jameson for the ol’ college buddies to salute our fallen soldier. The damn place wouldn’t sell any shots so instead we got a couple tumblers of whiskey and some cups (it wasn’t that easy but for the sake of me typing it it was). So we had a toast to Harv our man, congrats buddy! From there some of us went back to Oscar’s while some of us went to Culvers (a whole story behind that one but I want to keep it PG). We then all eventually made it to Oscar’s. A couple people were only there in person and really don’t remember it, I was not one. We had a good time. Drank some liters of beer and acted dumb in our dress clothes. From there we headed back to the hotel. I know we were up late but I really don’t know what we did there. I remember Adam jumping on the aerobed from a chair. Actually I remember pushing him off the chair onto the aerobed. I know we acted like rockstars until 4:30 in the morning and the hotel room looked like it when we woke up. It was so much fun though. It was great to hang out with the old college roomies again. We woke up Sunday and drove home.

We got home Sunday and it was going to be a nothing day. Sleep, sleep, and more sleep. I had Monday off for the holiday so I was going to recoop from the craziness of ‘fest. So when we got home I was biking to Chipotle to pick up burritos (it was closed for the dumb holiday) when I happened to run into the old Evans Scholars. For those of you who don’t know the scholars I can describe them as this. Golf Caddies who got full rides through college; they live the frat lifestyle when they aren’t in an “actual” frat; they’re all drunks; they travel in large packs; I always run into them, even in different states, and I’m an honorary member. So on my way to get a burrito I ran into them once again a block from my house drinking and partying. My relaxing day went from sleeping to getting drunk again. I went home dropped off my bike and went down by the scholars. I spent the better part of four hours playing lawn darts, drinking beer, doing jello shots, and acting stupid. Most of the scholars were heading down to the last day of ‘fest to see Tim McGraw. I not being a country music fan took the scholars’ fearless leader Boyd and we went down to ‘fest to see Pat McCurdy. So once we got down there there was one little problem. McCurdy plays every day of Summerfest but the last one. So we just sat around and watched the water video show which was actually very cool and amazed the amazing Boyd. Finally it was late and I was too tired so we headed home. J and Boyd met the other scholars for a drink but I went home to lay down and actually rest a bit. The weekend was finally over. Little did I know I had three Brewers games to go to the next three days, but more on that later.

Big Gig I

Well the ‘fest is here again. This year we took our Big Gig cards and headed down to the grounds on the opening Thursday. J and I went down there fairly early so we could get in for free. We thought that we were going to have four hours of boredom while we waited for the Big Wu to start things off at eleven but we ran into some of my old college buddies, Steven Herman and Kyle Barton. I guess they always meet at the same spot at the Miller Oasis and I was just lucky enough to stumble across them. We had a couple beers and caught up with each other. It was good to see them again. Then around nine we decided to take a lap around the fest. Once we made it around the huge line of people waiting to get into Prince we were able to double back to our stage and see the ekoostik hookah. ek was, eh, and they played up until the fireworks. After the big bang we did the hippie bounce to the Wu and felt old until midnight and went home.

Friday the acts at ‘fest weren’t that good but more importantly I wasn’t able to get my wristband so I couldn’t get in for free. Instead of spending tons of cash at Summerfest I decided to meet J after work at the Wicked Hop and spend tons of cash there. We had a slew of different beers and some food. We sample beers there until eleven and then swayed home to get some sleep for Kondofest on Sat.

Saturday was the annual Kondofest party. I have to admit that overall you can see that the ol’ wreckin’ crew is getting older and a little more docile. Don’t get me wrong here, the day still had the usual yard nomads wandering around playing boce ball, 3 hours of volleyball, and some quarters. It also lacked the beer bong and casual chug off that in the past made barrels, plural, evaporate. It could be that in their old age people just prefer the mixers and that’s why only one barrel was enough for the crew. Either way, I still had a good time and got to head butt a girl in the face while putting my Swisher Sweet out on her cheek. That’s what she get for trying to D up the big dog on the blacktop. Once Kondofest was finished everyone headed downtown as usual. This year I split from the group because everyone and their mother were going to see O.A.R. and I wasn’t going to deal with the massive crowd. After stopping for some unneeded liquor at the store Marti, Graham and I went back to my place. While there we proceeded to drink Captain and Captains as well as Gin and Gin drinks. We played some Euchre listened to some tunes and got ready to go to the Metro. This unnecessary trip turned out to be a haze so I have to stop my story here. I know we met up with Delahunt and some other people from the party but that’s all I can tell you. I know there was a heated political discussion and a hefty charge on my credit card so it must’ve been fun.

Sunday, rest and relaxation. Monday since J had to work I went to ‘fest solo to see Dark Star Orchestra. They jammed as usual and nothing beats free! Part II soon!