Summer is over

Where did it go?  It hit me especially this morning as the wife was up bright and early and ready for her first day in the classroom with her new kindergarten students.  Then I heard the sounds of rain drops on the roof and turned on the news to find out it wasn’t even 70 degrees out.  Add to that the fact that my favorite time of the year is upon us (NFL Football) and it’s suddenly fall. 

This past weekend was a whirl wind of a final weekend to the summer.  For the second year in a row I entertained for the wonderful people at Willie Wonka Candies company picnic.  This is always a curve ball for me since I have to dress up in clown and I’m not a clown.  Now my wife might argue with that statement but that’s a whole different post all together.  Five straight hours of twisting while in what I have thrown together as a clown outfit.  It’s not really a clown outfit so much as my own tuxedo with a top hat, bit clown tuxedo shoes, and a few dots of makeup on my nose and around my eyes.  This year there were three of us in clown and we did pretty good considering that there must have been more than 1000 employees and their families at this event. 

After the makeup came off for the day it was time to shift into party mode since we had people coming up to stay with us to celebrate the wife’s birthday. 

As a side note, on Friday night I was up all but 2 hours cleaning in anticipation of house guests on Saturday.  So, needless to say after little sleep and entertaining children all day on Saturday I was dragging come Saturday evening. 

So, based on the reviews of my good friend tom (www.stupidtom.com) I finally gave 5 hour energy a shot to see if it was as good as Tom said.  Our first of 5 house guest arrived before I had even gotten all of the grease based makeup off my face and I quickly put the small bottle of energy down my throat as if I were doing a shot of liquor.  It tasted liquor like and within seconds it was gone. That was at 6:00pm. 

Everyone begun arriving and we all moved out to our deck where some of my home brewed beer was served for the guys and I opened wine for the wives.  We didn’t have long as it was time to round everyone up for dinner.  We were off to Blarney Island to celebrate. 

Since Blarney Island is an Island in the middle of the Chain of Lakes you can only get there via boat.  So we went to the restaurant owned by Blarney Island called “Port of Blarney” where we had dinner and boarded a shuttle boat out to the island. 

In all we had 16 people out with us when we finally got on the island.  Two of our friends each have their own boats so they each met us out there.  In the end the wife got drunk.  Drunker than I think I have ever seen.  I was thankful that she had a lot of girlfriends with her because they were pretty much dancing all night.  I kept my eyes on her as drunk ass after drunk ass would move in on all of our wives.  Occasionally one of the husbands would be dispatched to go down to the dance floor to tell some drunk guy to back off of our wives.  I kind of anticipated that as the whole group of women were all dolled up and a large majority of the dudes were there looking to hook up.  I didn’t imagine having to shield the women from another woman though as there was this one drunk woman who was a leech.  She wouldn’t keep her hands off the wives and kept telling girls in our group that she wanted to get it on with one of the wives.  That was a little over the top.  But that pretty much describes Blarney Island anyway. 

We got back home around 3am and I contemplated for just a moment about writing a letter to the 5 hour energy people suggesting they rename their product 10 hour energy because I wasn’t even remotely tired having only slept all of two hours during the previous 48.  Instead we played wii until 4:30 in the morning and I wrapped up my celebration with a beer on the deck while staring at the stars.  It was a pretty crazy day. 

Sunday was the 1st of 6 fantasy football drafts and the beginning of what just might be a wonderful fall.  Tonight I bottle my second batch of home brewed beer and i’m excited.  A hefeweizen beer that I added raspberries to during secondary fermentation. If it’s anything as good as the first batch of beer I just might be in heaven for the next few months. 

This is the second year I threw a pretty big bash for Jeanne’s birthday and it seems to be well recieved.  Not just because it’s her birthday, but I assume it has to do with the fact that her friends are mostly teachers and the day falls on the last weekend before school begins.  I’m thinking this is going to be an annual end of summer/birthday bash that I throw now.

Filed under: Birthday, beer, fantasy, wife

What are the odds

So last month while we were on the second leg of our travels we found ourselves unpacking our bags at the mountain house in W. Virginia in a rush to hop right back in the car to drive an hour to catch a minor league baseball game.  Every few years we make it out to the mountain house in Berkley Springs for a week and each year we plan a trip to go see the Hagerstown Suns. 

The night at the ball park is always a favorite of the trip as I love me some ball park food and baseball.  We strategically pick the night when we are in town where the promotion is “Feed your face Monday” which I have to assume took very little time in the marketing dept budget brainstorming a name for that promotion. 

Feed your face night should actually be called, “Come to the ball park to stand in line for food while missing the game Monday”.  The ticket cost to get to watch a ball game plus unlimited Hot dogs, fries, chicken nuggets, popcorn, pretzels, etc is a whopping 10 dollars.  I don’t have to explain how amazing a deal that is.  With my frame and stature (ie fattyness) I really make the executives re-think this deal when I come to town. 

This past trip it appeared that they were very unprepared for this promotion as the line for each concession stand was at the minimum 20 people deep.  There were more people in line for the free food than in the stands for the stadium.  Let me just say this.  If this promotion at this price were to be offered in the Chicagoland area, I would be handing tickets to monday night games to the homeless whenever I was asked for spare change.  A person with the right plan could stand in line the whole game and gather enough food to eat until the following home Monday game.  The caviat that I didn’t mention is of all the items you get for free, you can only ask for two items per person when you suffer through the 20 minute wait to the window.  AND, when you finally finish your journey to the window, you are asked “What can I get for you?” to which you might say, “I’ll take a hot dog and a Pretzel” with the response from them being “Were out of hot dogs and it will be another 15 minutes on the Pretzels” leading you to follow up that request with two other free items that they might have available.  “Doh” is a good sound effect as you are denied of the items you have waited so patiently for. 

So, you walk away from the concession stand with your two free items not being the two items you wanted so you see others walking away from other stands with said items so you literally go get in the other line and wait another 20 minutes never really getting back to your seat to enjoy the ball game until you have gone through this process no less than 7 or 8 times until you can’t image the thought of another colon cancer causing processed hotdog to come within an inch of your mouth. 

The craziness in this trip to the ball park didn’t come from the food, but from the parking.  We took 3 vehicles from the mountain house as there were a total of 13 of us.  There was room in the two Vans for the wife and I, but I desperately needed to return calls for pricing and availability requests for the balloon twisting business as the mountain house didn’t exactly provide quality cellular coverage.  So the wife and I drove seperately from our group in a move that annoyed the other adults as it appeared they had moved things in vans to make room for us only to be told after that we were driving in our own car.  In hindsight I can’t imagine that they would have enjoyed listening to me talk to several perspective customers for 45 minutes about having me twist balloons at their party. (www.iloveballoonanimals.com for those of you who don’t know what I am talking about) 

We arrived as the game started and found parking far away from the park.  The two vans pulled in to two spots and I pulled in to their left.  I felt uncomfortable parking near a ditch where kids were riding as fast as they could and launching themselves into the air in a very uncontrolled manor not more than five feet from my car.  The kids were as annoyed by my close proximity park job as I was by the thought of a kid landing out of control and ramming the side of our new SUV.  So, I backed out and found a parking spot farther away.  It was a good choice in my opinion but by me backing out, it left the next Van in our group exposed just as mine was.  Everyone got out of the cars and we walked the couple hundred yards to the gate.  The entire way, the owner of the van that had been exposed debated as to whether he should move his car as well.   The tickets at will call were in his name, so he tossed me the keys and asked if I could move his car.  So the owner of the other van and I walked back to the kids with bikes to pull out the vans and find better parking.  As we drove through the parking lots we were surprised to find plenty of prime parking available right near the gates to get into the park.  So, we parked the cars and proceeded in with smiles on our faces anticipating the first ball park hot dog. 

Fast forward to the 7th inning.  I am full of hotdogs, popcorn, and beer. They had 32 oz cups of beer for 4.00.   (that’s nearly three bottles worth of beer for 4.00 if you were curious) Does it get any better than that?  It was around inning 4 that we realized that the reason for the available parking right by the gates was because that was foul ball territory. I thought to myself, there is no chance that I could have been given keys to a friends car, and asked to move it out of fear that a kid might bump into it by bike only to park it close to the park and have it hit by a foul ball.  What would the odds be for something like that?  Like 1 in a 1000? 

Anytime a ball is hit over the 1st base  side bleachers into the parking lot,  a clown whistle sound effect would come on the speakers with a very loud glass breaking sound effect in an attempt to actually cover up the real sound of baseballs slamming into parked cars.  There was a married couple sitting in the very top row of the bleachers in the corner with a perfect view of the parking  lot.  Whenever the sound effect would come on many people would yell up to that couple asking what color was the car that just got nailed.  It was once again during the seventh inning that I began thinking maybe we could move the car and avoid any risk what so ever.  Within moments of this thought a pop up foul ball flys over us and comes down into the parking lot.  We even heard the sound of the ball hitting a car despite the attempted cover up of the silly clown sound effect.  Someone near us screamed up to the couple, “What Color Car” to which they  yelled back “Dark Blue Van”. 

I sat there for a moment trying to remember what color Eric’s van was that I moved.  Was it Dark Blue or Black?  So I walked up to the top of the bleachers and look down and it looks like a ball hit the top of his van.  But it didn’t look bad, just like a scuff maybe from up there.  So, we enjoy the rest of the game and proceeded to leave the park.  We get to the van, and sure enough Eric’s van was nailed just above the drivers side door on the actual frame of the vehicle. (the scuff turned out to be bird poop as Eric’s car must have been a popular target on this particular evening)  There was a 4 inch gash in the metal from where the baseball nailed the van. 

I feel and felt horrible.  It couldn’t have hit the other van where the other owner parked his own vehicle.  Just had to hit the one that I parked.  I would guess that I apologized no less than 50 times to which Eric told me not to worry about it since he asked me to move his car but I still feel bad. 

As a side note of what some might call karma or irony, 4 years ago while the wife and I were visiting with Eric and his family in Indy, Eric backed his car out of their drive way right into my wife’s car causing a huge basketball sized dent in the rear quarter panel.  He offered to pay for the repair back then but we never asked for the money nor did we ever have it repaired.   So, with that looming over the whole situation you can’t help but feel that we might be even in some strange sort of way.

Filed under: Car, Vacation, balloon, balls, beer, memories, weird

Too long

Apologies for the lack of posts over the past month.  If the first weekend of summer is any indicator as to how busy it will be, I should dig in and prepare for battle. 

A few highlights from the past few weeks of my life. 

My best friend got married.  I was the best man in what I can only describe as one of the most amazing weddings ever.   The wedding was held at Medinah Country Club, and anyone that lives in the Chicagoland area knows that you only get married at Medinah if you are either family of a  Medinah member or you have a very good friend that belongs to the club.  In this instance the father of the bride just happened to be close with a club member.  I could write a book about the night but I will try and keep it short. 

1. I gave the best man speech.  Chris and I had been at a few weddings together after he asked me to be his best man and after each best man speech he would comment to me about how unhearfelt they were coming from someone reading off of a piece of paper.  So, I kept it brief and from the heart.  I had 5 or 6 quick points to mention before I toasted to them and I made it through the toast.  I didn’t write a single thing down, and I didn’t rehearse it.  I won’t say I nailed it, but I am pretty sure that everyone enjoyed what I had to say in the 6-8 minutes that I talked. 

2. After my speech was over I got wasted.  I made a point to drink minimally before the speech but once my official best man duties were over, it was on. 

3. I learned that when I get really drunk I like to smack asses and kiss people on the cheek for photos.  I don’t know where the smacking asses thing came from but I was told by not only my wife, but many of my friends that I either smacked their ass or grabbed it throughout the night.  Guys and girls apparently.  I don’t really know what this says about me, but I’m not going to dwell on it. 

4. I looked at the photos on my digital camera from the post reception party that went until 2am and then the post post reception party that went until 5am and I don’t remember much of anything.  While scrolling through photos, the look of horror on the faces of those who I pulled in for the photo does tell me that maybe I was a bit out of control. 

5. In a monday morning meeting I had a flashback where when I stopped in my hotel room between after parties and grabbed a bottle of beer that I had been icing down.  I tried to pop the top off by wedging it onto the marble bathroom counter and proceeded to break of the entire top of the glass bottle.  I remember my wife having to remove the broken bottle from my hands as I was attempting to drink the beer without cutting my lips. 

6. They had a photo booth at the reception.  This is hands down the greatest thing you can do for a wedding reception. The booth is large enough to where 6-8 people can fit in it and take private photos.  When you mix an open bar with private photos, fun ensues towards the end of the night.  I’ll leave it at that.  The only thing keeping it from getting totally out of control is the simple fact that each set of 4 photos goes into a photo album with a personalized message that goes to the bride and groom. 

7.  I will never again book a balloon twisting event in the afternoon after an open bar wedding reception.  I had to twist balloons for 3 hours at a festival on the Sunday after the reception and I didn’t feel so well. 

That’s all that jumps out at me.  I can’t reiterate enough that next to my wedding this was truly one of the most enjoyable days of my life.  I am really happy for my best friend and hope that I didn’t do anything throughout the reception that might prevent him from ever wanting to talk to me again when he returns back from their 3 week honeymoon.

That’s about it.  I went boating on Saturday at the chain o lakes and ended up on Blarney Island.  I was out in the sun from 7am until the sun went down and my flesh will begin falling off of me in another 2 or 3 days.  I am redder than a lobster right now even though I applied some major sunblock. 

An observation in my life:  Many of my friends are becoming more responsible and partying less.  I have found myself in a role reversal lately where I am usually the responsible one who doesn’t get drunk and has to deal with friends that are bombed.  I have been cutting loose lately when I have had no responsibilities for driving only to be disappointed when those who usually go crazy are subdued.  I am still waiting for the perfect storm of friends and beer.  I don’t know when that’s going to happen, but hopefully soon. 

That’s it for today.  I’ll put more up soon!

Filed under: balloon, beer, drunk, weekend, wife

Jack & Grill

Before I hammer on my Jack & Grill experience this past week while in Denver, let me just say that the name of the new theme I am using for this blog is “Fresh Bananas”.  I chose this theme purely because of the name and had no interest in even seeing if it would appeal (yes, pun intended) to me.  Speaking of Fresh Bananas, have any of you ever tried eating a green banana?  I did a few weeks back and I’m not gonna lie.  It sucks.  Don’t do it.  It tastes like you are eating a slightly flavored root.  I took two bites and spit it out.  The banana peel would have tasted better.  I have a new found fascination with bananas after that experience.  I buy them green at the store and over the course of 24-48 hours they transform from banana flavored root to something soft and glorious.   …back to Jack & Grill. 

Regretably I don’t have pictures to support this visit.  When we finally got back into Denver after four hours on the road, I was in no mood to unpack my camera so the only image of anything from Jack & Grill was taken by Chris’s cellphone. 

Jack & Grill is in the Jefferson Park area of Denver’s inner city.  I had first learned about Jack & Grill while watching Man vs. Food a few weeks before the trip.  They did a segment on Jack & Grills breakfast burrito challenge.  It’s a Jack & Grill where they offer a 7 pound breakfast burrito.  Being a fan of breakfasts and a bigger fan of burritos, I immediately added a visit to this restaurant to the agenda for Thursday morning while only four of us were in town.  The deal with this 7 pound burrito is, if you eat it, your photo goes up on the wall.  Here is the burrito in all it’s glory:

 

This picture doesn’t even do it justice.  A man at a table next to us ordered it, and you have to see it to believe.  It is 7 pounds of breakfasty goodness.  Filled with grilled potatoes, eggs, ham, cheese, onions, chiles, and smothered in a spicy flavorful chile sauce.  I’m drooling right now thinking about it. 

Did I try the 7 pound challenge?  Hell no.  Unfortunately each of my days in Denver called for drinking lots of beer, and I doubt after putting 7 pounds of anything in my body that I will likely be able to function for the remainder of the day.  I did however try the smaller version of it that was offered as well.  The smaller version is 1/4 the size and still weighs in at roughly 1 and 3/4 pounds.  Childs play right?  Wrong.  One of the guys in our group couldn’t even finish the smaller one.  I think on a good day, I could put down two of the smaller versions, but by the time I was done with just one I was full. 

What surprised me the most was actually how unbelievably delicious the burrito was.    It was the perfect blend of breakfast and spice.  I love spicy food and it was perfect.  I am truly jealous of Denver.  From what I saw while I was there, their burgers are ridiculously sized as well.  If I lived in Denver, I would frequent that place if not weekly, monthly.  For 12 dollars, you can’t get a better deal. 

I’ll stop now, while I am hungry.  It’s the second to last Friday in Lent, and I don’t know what it is about not eating meat on Friday’s that make me want it that much more.  I’m hoping that Jack & Grill sticks around for many years, because it will definitely be one of my destinations next time I find myself in Denver for a few days. 

Have a great weekend!

Filed under: Fatty, bachelor party, barf, beer , Denver, Jack & Grill

Red Lion and FTD

To wrap up the Vail portion of my trip (see last post to get caught up), we had drank our fair shar of beer in the hot tub at the Marriott and it was time to get ready and head off to dinner. 

Let me quickly say that still to this moment in life, I don’t think there is a better drinking environment than an outdoor hot tub with snow falling down staring up at the mountains.  That moment borderlines in my mind close to sitting on a beach with the sun setting and a nice cold corona.  I digress…

We were supposed to do dinner at The dusty boot in Beaver Creek.  From what I was told, that is a cool place to hang out after skiing.  But, due to the amount of alcohol drank at this point, we decided to do Red Lion for dinner.  We called The Red Lion and charged 150.00 to the credit card so that we could get a table right in front of Phil Long who I was told is the reason to go to Red Lion.  Having never been there, I didn’t really know what to expect.  The 150.00 would be credited to our bill and with four of us going there surely wouldn’t be an issue spending that much on dinner and drinks. 

When we arrived, I was a little surprised to find out that The Red Lion is seriously just a bar that offers food.  I didn’t get what the appeal was until 9:30 when Phil Long presented himself to our table.  We explained that Chris was celebrating a bachelor party and were surprised when Phil immediately ordered our table 8 shots to start off the performance.  I don’t really know the whole Red Lion Story, but what I was told is Phil Long used to be just an entertainer that starred at the Red Lion.  Eventually the owners wanted out so knowing it was a virtual gold mine, he bought in with another partner.  Essentially Phil Long is The Red Lion.  Without him it would be just another pub in downtown Vail. 

So Phil performs.  He is great.  He plays the guitar, sings some great songs and the cougars dance.  That is the Red Lion.  You throw a wadded up dollar into his tip bucket from a far distance and he orders your table 24 shots to be taken by yourself and everyone around you.  It’s a great atmosphere.  As the evening was winding down, we decided to get the check and call it an amazing day.  Phil saw me with the Bill in my hand and immediately stopped mid song and called us out.  The whole bar boo’d and Phil ordered each of us a shot and a beer so we would be forced to stick around.  Within an hour Chris was up on stage with Phil singing.  2 hours later we closed down the bar and ended up in a pizza place.  I don’t remember much after that other than waking up in my swimming suit in a stairwell hoping to get back into the hot tub even though it closed at 10pm.  Security was outside and apparently I thought the stairwell would be a good place to hide out until security left.  When I woke up I decided to give up on my aspirations to continue the party in the hot water, I headed back up to the room and passed out. 

6:30 rolls around (only a few hours after I hit the bed) and we decided that if we were going to have any chance on getting back to Denver, we would have to leave by 7:30am since there was a blizzard heading to Denver and they would surely close the pass and we would be stuck in Vail.  By the time I got out of the shower I was still a wreck, but it was off to Denver.  The two hour ride turned into 4 hour and we decided to have breakfast at The Jack & Grill, which in itself is a completely seperate post.  I’ll stop here for this part of the trip and pick back up with Jack & Grill tomorrow.

FTD is dead to me.  While I was off partying the days away in Colorado, my wife was doing some crazy partying of her own in Las Vegas.  That as well will be its own post also, but once again I digress. 

When we arrive back home I decided that I wanted to send my wife some flowers to her school on Monday.  Apparently at 9:30am in the monring, it’s not that easy to have flowers delivered in the afternoon, so I settle on a huge bouquet of yellow roses from FTD to be delivered on Tuesday.  I saw on FTD’s site that they now offer to send flowers in a box or through a local florist.  Not wanting my wife to have to assemble the flowers in her classroom, I made sure to pick a bouquet that would be delivered already arranged.  Tuesday rolls around and I get a call from my wife at 4pm thanking me for sending flowers.  She didn’t sound the way she normally does when I send flowers having sent them dozens of times. 

“I thought you might want to know that the flowers were delivered in a box…”

“What?” was my response. 

“I also thought you might want to know that the flowers are dead…”

“Are you kidding me?”  I yelled.  

She replied with the whole don’t get upset, since it’s the thought that counts.  If it’s the thought that counts, then I would have cut out a picture of flowers and sent them and  saved myself 80 bucks.  She said that she had never recieved boxed flowers before and maybe the magical powder they send with the flowers will bring them back to life after she gave them water and assembled the dead flowers in the vase.  Not likely, I thought. 

So, I called FTD and was pleasantly greeted with the typical 6 dollar an hour 2nd grade education customer service person.  After 45 minutes of arguing with this woman, her only offer to make me happy was to send the same arrangement in a box.  Anything different I would have to pay more money.  So, I must have committed the cardinal sin of customer service spinning my wheels with someone that did not have the power to say yes to my request, so I finally asked for one of her bosses.  level 2 if you will.  After waiting on hold for a few minutes another woman came on the line who identified herself as a senior customer care representative, which I assume meant that she had been there longer than a month.  I once again expressed my displeasure and we quickly were able to set up something from a local florist to be delivered already arranged in a vase that wasn’t dead.  I was happy with that.  They would not refund the money since another bouquet was on the way.  Since yellow roses apparently are hard to come by, I finally just asked for some red ones to be sent and it was finished.  After the second round of flowers were delivered to my wife yesterday, everyone at her school now thinks that I must have done something seriously wrong on my bachelor party.  Nothing could be farther from the truth. 

FTD is dead to me now.  Shame on me for not dropping my money on  a local florist that needs the business to stay open in this economic shit storm that we are currently in.  I say stay away from FTD.  Even if you order something that is supposed to go through a local florist, they will send dead flowers in a box.  If you ask them why they will respond saying that you should have read all of the fine print.  Who reads fine print when ordering flowers?  Not this guy.

Filed under: Vacation, Vegas, asspain, bachelor party, beer, liar, romance, wife

Bachelizzard recap

I was back at work yesterday and with good reason, didn’t even for a moment thing about posting yesterday due to the obscene amount of email waiting for me when I returned to the office.  My only saving grace was that I worked periodically while I was in Denver so some of the more critical items had already been handled. 

In all I have very mixed feelings about the bachelor party.  It was awesome.  I will say that.  It was a ton of fun.  We did run into issues with the weather, though.  For the weeks before our trip to Denver, it was Sunny in the 50’s and 60’s.  When we arrived, it was cold.  No big deal right?  Well, on Tuesday they said that Denver was in line for some snow on Thursday.  Then on Wednesday they bumped up the scattered snow storms to a full on Blizzard.  12-24 inches on Thursday, white out conditions, wind gusts at 50 plus mph.  Awesome. 

The bachelor party officially started at 6:30am on Tuesday when I bought him our first bloody mary.  90 minutes later as we were boarding our flight we were already buzzed hard.   Being the best man, it was essentially my financial duty to ensure that the groom to be was drunk at almost every hour of this trip.   So, the groom to be and I got into Denver early on Tuesday.     We picked up the rental with no issues and proceeded to begin our drive to the bachelor’s sisters house.  She lives in the extremely tall building downtown called the glass house and has an amazing 900 square foot balcony on the 15th floor overlooking downtown Denver.  We dropped off our bags and headed out to begin our adventure.  Met up with his sister for lunch and then headed over to Earl’s to scope out the restaurant that would host our group of 18 on Friday night.  Had a beer there and sat out of the balcony in the sun.  It had to have been around 55-60 degrees, but the sun made it feel like it was 75.  We then began the walk over to Falling Rock.  Chris has talked about this place since they have something like 70 different beers on tap at all times.  We enjoyed a few more beers there and then headed back to his sisters house to clean up for dinner. 

For pre dinner Chris and I met up with one of his child hood friends at a bar with his wife and 2 month old baby.  Had a few more beers there before his sister and brother in law joined us.  After a few hours we began our walk to the italian restaurant and had probably one of the best meals of the trip.  Wish I remembered the restaurant name.  After dinner the four of us went off to play some shuffleboard at a brewery that apparently the mayor of Denver owns, and finished with one last beer for the day.  At this point it had been 38 hours since I last got a wink of sleep so I was dead tired. 

Woke up Wednesday morning and picked up Dan and Stefan from the airport and we were off to Vail.  The drive was around 2 hours and it was truly beautiful.  We went from bright and sunny and as we climbed the mountains to Vail everything was beginning to get covered with snow.  I saw my first skiing mountain and I was horrified since in a few hours I would try my own hand at skiing for the first time. 

Vail was/is amazing.  A whole town essentially built around skiing and drinking.  I am sure there is more to it than that, but those were the only two sides I saw.  My vail experience would break down to three chapters.  1. skiing 2. hot tub 3. red lion

Vail Chapter 1.  Skiing.  We picked up our Rental skis and lift tickets and were off to the mountain.  Funny moment number 1 was when Chris was approached by a stranger to buy his lift ticket.  I knew it was a shady transaction when the seller said “I’ll leave my gloves over there and you put the money in the glove after I walk away.”  awesome.  We haven’t even been on the mountain yet and I have heard my first hillarious quote of the day. 

We rode the gondola up to what seemed to me to be the top of the mountain.  We went down what appeared to be an easy trail and it didn’t take me long to wipe out for the first time.  With this being my first skiing experience on a mountain, I expected to fall.  And I did.  A lot.  Turning isn’t as easy as I thought it would be.  The issue I ran into frequently was the inability to stop.  I would pick up speed too fast and wipeout.  After the first run, I told Chris and Stefan to go on without me because every time I fell it would take me longer and longer to get back up.  At that point, in my eyes, skiing really sucked.  In the end, I had fallen around 20 times and debated as to whether I would be able to walk once I finally got off the mountain.  My injuries included a pulled bicep, possibly torn and dislocated shoulder, and legs that felt like Jello.  After returning our gear and heading back to the hotel, I spied an outdoor hot tub and with all of the aches and pains that my body was feeling, the hot tub was without a doubt my immediate destination. 

Vail Chapter 2.  The hot tub.  We thought we would only want a few beers each so we drank one on our way down and carried a six pack.  When we got in, there were a few couples as well as some children.  The four of us began drinking and realized that the beer tasted all too good in a warm hot tub with the cold vail air surrounding us.  We quickly finished all of the beer we had and were left with one question:  Which of the four of us would get out of the hot tub and walk the two blocks to the liquor store to buy more?  Why me, of course.  That job screams best man right?  I took one for the team.  By the time I was out of the hot tub in my wet swim shorts and t-shirt with flip flops, it was snowing out.  I walked the few blocks there and back as fast as possible and dodged funny looks by the locals as they all thought,  ”What a dumb ass!”

The highlight of the hot tub was talking to another guy for a good 45 minutes before finding out that it was the GM for the Chicago Wolves, Kevin Cheveldayoff.  The following hour was filled with questions about the team.  My favorite part was hearing his daugter tell us that she has a Calder cup championship ring.  She couldn’t be more than 10 years old and she has a hockey championship ring.  Awesome.  I bet that makes for good show and tell time.  By the time we were ready to get out and head to the red lion, the four of us had polished off a case of beer.  Nothing like getting drunk in a hot tub while snow is falling. 

Chapter 3: The Red Lion.  I will post on this tomorrow since this post has gone on waaaay too long.

Filed under: bachelor party, beer , skiing, Vail

I can not finish a post

Seriously.  I have begun like 10 and every time I try and wrap it up, I get sidetracked and end up saving it for later without revisiting.

I have like 10 drafts just sitting there with some of them having expired due to being yesterday’s news. 

Today I am suffering from what I guess could only be described as what I felt when I had Senioritis.  You know where you are at work, and it’s nice out side, and you don’t want to be at work, so you try and work but all sorts of non work things are running through your mind?  Yep, that’s me today.  Add to that a small basketball tournament, and I have pretty much checked out. 

I am less than a week out from my trip to Denver, and I can’t wait.  I have prepared what I hope will be the best bachelor party yet with our group of guys.  This will be the 7th destination bachelor party for this group but it’s the first non Vegas trip and the first where I am serving as Best Man. 

The trip is ridiculously packed with drinking. The highlight of the trip being a surprise microbrewery pub crawl next Saturday that has a 26 person stretch SUV limo picking the 18 of us up from the hotel and taking us on an 8 hour 200 mile round trip tour of 14 different micro breweries.  We will also be skiing in Vail and Winter Park, which should be interesting since I have skied all of once in my life. 

I would like to mention that I believe that nothing happens without a reason, and it’s very sad to hear the news about Natasha Richardson last night.  Until yesterday, I had no clue who she was.  She is an actress and after scanning her body of work (no pun intended) I understood why I have never seen anything she has been in.  The closest I have ever come to seeing any of her movies was Maid in Manhattan since that was a movie they played on an airplane as we flew to Vegas once.  I didn’t listen to the movie, but did notice Jennfer Lopez’s badonkadonk in a few scenes.  She is the wife of Liam Neeson who I am a fan of.  Natasha had a skiing accident up in Canada a few days ago.  It was first reported that she just bumped her head.  Now she is dead.  She fell during a skiing lesson on a beginner hill.  She wasn’t wearing a helmet.  

Well guess what I just added to my list of items I shall be investing in when I rent skiing equipment next week?  A helmet.  Know what else?  I doubt now that I do anything overly aggressive since I have never had a lesson.  I have no interest in dying, so I shall be a bit more cautious as I give it my first go around of skiing on a mountain. 

On a completely sepearate note, I began a post that I will wrap up about my gym.  I am struggling with all of the naked people.  I don’t know what it is, but dudes like to hang out in my locker room naked.  It is my opinion that the locker room at my gym is a hotbed of gayness and I am thinking about cancelling my membership for purely this reason.  I am in the process of exploring “old school” options such as these:

That way, when I am in the locker room my vision will be blocked as the 75 year old guy walks around with the towell in his hand and not covering his twig and berries.  I know I might be breaking guy code here, but come on!  This isn’t a matter of insecurity, just a very high level of discomfort on my part.  I asked the wife if that’s the way it is in the women’s locker room hoping to verify everything I have ever dreamed of since I was 12 years old, but she claims it isn’t.  I guess I will never know…

In other gym news, I am still baffled by the number of people that drive around the parking lot and actually wait in an aisle for several minutes so that they can get a parking spot closer to the door.  Dude.  You are going to work out.  You will be running 2 miles or lifting weights in a matter of minutes.  Is that extra 15-20 steps going to kill you?  I hate it when I walk out to my car and cars will stalk you hoping that you are occupying a closer spot.  Sadly I have found humor in fucking with these people on occasion when I am in no rush until they get pissed and gun it past me.  The timing threshold is around 2-3 minutes after I get into my vehicle. 

That’s about it.  I’m going to click publish now before something esle comes up and I this gets saved for another day as well.  Happy March Madness!

Filed under: Exercise, asspain, bachelor party, beer, stupid

When the cats away…the mice will…clean?

I don’t know what to do.  Yesterday afternoon my wife left town with her sister for the weekend to visit an aunt in Detroit.   I have gone on trips without my wife, mostly to Vegas, but it’s been a couple of years since she has left me for any more than a day at home by myself. 

Immediately I begun to think of the crazy things I could do that I wouldn’t otherwise if she was home.  What would I do at home if she wasn’t around…hmmm…  Walk around in my underwear? I do that already.  Sleep on the couch without reprecussion?  That’s a gimme.  I live all the way out near Wisconsin and all of my friends are in the city, so a party is out of the question.  So, my backup plan was to put the feelers out and see which of my peeps are getting their drink on.

Last night I celebrated my new found temporary freedom.  In an unexpected move our pool league night ended unusually early. Typically after the matches end we play for money, but not last night.  With the knowledge that my wife was out of town, a funny comment was thrown out about going to a casino since there would be no question as to the time I arrived home from my weekly pool night.  We kind of laughed but the wheels inside were turning.  I followed up the half assed suggestion with a follow up question…

“Where is the nearest casino from here?”  to which my friend replied “Potawatomi casino in Milwaukee is only about an hour away.”  “I’m in” I replied.  Within five minutes we were finishing our drinks and packing our cues to hit the road. 

I had never been to Potawatomi, so I was eager to put another casino notch on my belt.  Sure enough, within the hour of that half hearted suggestion, we were standing on the escalator descending upon fields of slot machines and gaming tables.  This is definitely something that I wouldn’t be caught dead doing if my wife were home waiting for me after pool league.  As a matter of fact, I haven’t even told her yet since this idea was spawned after our good night-sweet dreams-i love you-will talk to you in the morning call.  

For the record, Potawatomi is the closest thing to an actual vegas casino.  It is hands done 100 times better than any gambling boat that Illinois has.  We each left at the right time up not a tremendous amount but enough to make the trip worth while.  It’s always a good feeling knowing that everyone you went to a casino with left a winner.  I had a blast and am struggling at this moment knowing that I didn’t fall asleep until well after 3am with a pretty important vendor facing meeting this morning at 8am sharp.  There’s nothing like a Friday morning meeting hangover on 3 hours sleep. 

The weekend is already pretty busy for me.  I twist balloons tonight until 9pm at the pizza place in Algonquin.  I will also be the featured entertainer at three birthday parties this weekend (www.iloveballoonanimals.com) as well that will keep me going.  It’s not often that I have a Saturday night to do whatever I want…and all I can think of doing is cleaning the garage and relaxing around the house.  I’m not sure but I think that my signify that I am getting older.

Filed under: balloon, beer, weekend, weird, wife

Soreness

It’s been almost two full days since we did the Chicago Indoor Racing, and I am sad to admit that I am still sore.  Muscles that I never knew existed are convulsing today.  Did you know that you have a muscle in your stomach below your belly button?  I didn’t, but thanks to Chicago Indoor Racing, I do now! 

For the record, it was a blast.  I just wish that I hadn’t drank so much the night before so that I could have enjoyed the two hours of open bar after the racing.

Out of twenty racers, I qualified for the final 30 lap race and eventually finished 5th.  For a fat guy, that isn’t so bad.  The carts are fast as shit and if I could ever be organized enough to round up 20 friends for a night of fun, it would definitely begin with Chicago Indoor Racing.  What amazes me the most is the technology involved.  You would expect simple go-kart racing that you would get at any old festival or race track.  But these machines are so fine tuned and fast.  While you are not racing you can track what friend is in what cart and their position and how many seconds they are ahead or behind. (runon? Who cares) The coolest part of the whole evening was before I even got out of the racing suit and upstairs to grab my first beer, I was handed a printout that showed my lap splits for all four of my races which highlighted my fastest lap and average lap time.  It also created charts as to what position I began the race vs where I finished, highlighting who I past, or who past me.  Some of our guys had top lap times for the week amongst all racers, which was pretty damn cool. 

After racing we had some incredible food, good drinks, and finished it off with free video games.  I don’t know how much it was per person, but I have to believe that we were around 100.00 per person.  If so, it was so worth it since our team still can’t stop talking about it.  If you ever get a chance to strap yourself in to one of the carts, I recommend it. 

The funniest part of the evening is when you finally decide to leave.  As you walk through the glass door you notice a sign that says “The racing’s now over, be safe as you drive home.” or something to that effect.  I didn’t think about it until I was in my car driving and I had to hold back from cutting corners and swerving around people to get position for the next corner.  

I am looking forward to my next visit. 

After a softball game Monday night, Racing on Tuesday, and another Softball game last night, I am waking like an 80 year old man hoping that it will eventually recover for one of my favorite golf outings of the year tomorrow.

I get to join my dear friend www.stupidtom.com tomorrow for a day of debauchery on the golf course.  My only issue is that I was buttonhooked into twisting balloons at the church ice cream social following the outing, so I have to lay off the hard stuff while I golf.  BoOOOooo.  This outing is traditionally a drunk sprint and I have to wonder how much fun I will have while sipping on a can of beer the whole afternoon.  Oh well.  I can’t recall the exact saying but i’m thinking that a sober day at the golf course beats a drunk day at work…or something like that. 

Filed under: Car, Fatty, Racing, alli, balloon, beer, body, drunk, pain, sore, weird, work

Gots no time

That’s my overall theme lately.  This past weekend was as big a trainwreck as ever experienced.  I can’t go too much into it, but it did involve open bar/friends wedding.  Some scary shit took place that I regret, and I have created a rule for myself where if I have access to open bar that I will only truly enjoy it if my wife is present to take care of me.  I never liked my liver anyway. 

I scared the crap out of my wife.  There is something about me vomiting in the shower after a night of drinking that she doesn’t agree with so much.  You know how I know I scared the bejeezus out of my wife?  She didn’t talk to me yesterday.  At all.  I sat in a vegatative state trying to recover and prep for Wednesday, and she never said anything to me about what took place the night before. 

Tomorrow is the big day.  I will be performing in front of a total of between 1800-2000 throughout three different performances.  If I don’t screw up and get arrested by the Vernon Hills Police Dept for sucking (they are the ones who hired me) then I have one final performance on Thursday morning.  This date has been looming over my head for the past 5 months.  Every time I have thought about it since they hired me, I would get knots and butterflies in my stomach.  I will truly celebrate (not like this weekend, but emotionally) come Thursday afternoon.  

Wish me luck!  Kill em tiger!  Break a leg!  Whatever they say.  Hopefully tomorrow afternoon I will be able to say that it went as well as I have dreamed.  I will post some pictures after it’s done of my handiwork with balloons. 

 

Filed under: Captain, Cops, balloon, beer, drunk, scared, shower, stupid, train wreck, vomit, weekend, weird, wife, work