Sunday, March 16, 2008

Gettin' My Drink On

Hope everyone had a great St. Patty's Day!! Observed on Saturday due to the 17th falling during Holy Week, St. Patrick's Day is a huge event here in Chicago. You see people out at 8 a.m. wearing green and carrying a beer. There's definitely a different energy on this particularly day.

For instance, while riding a pretty crowded train into town, three fine young and very drunk 20 somethings decided it would be a good idea to relieve themselves between the train cars while the train was moving! Yep, you can walk between the cars, but you're obviously not supposed to do it, much less take a leak while it's moving. Unbelievable.

So now that you have THAT visual in your head, I can tell you the rest of the day was much more enjoyable. I hooked up with Ricardo and his posse to start with at D4, a new bar east of Michigan Avenue on Ohio. I was only there for about 45 minutes before we headed to Howl at The Moon around 2:00. Here are some pics:





Ricardo up close. The flash was supposed to go off, but it didn't. Damnit.












Ricardo and some of his posse....actually everyone in this picture is part of the posse. A pretty good sized crew. Most of them remembered me from last year and I, uh, well you know me an my memory.....









The bartenders at Howl At The Moon. Apparently the chick in the foreground has long brown hair....nice job hiding it though!










Gratuitous butt picture of the shot girl. Clearly her best feature.....trust me. Yikes.










Me with Beverly from Windsor Ontario! She's a black jack dealer at the casino there (which I've been to by the way). I told her I was there for a bachelor party and that maybe she dealt me black jack. She said, "No, I would have remembered you." Nice!! I'm a big hit with the middle-aged female population north of the border.







After leaving Howl (and Beverly and her friends), we headed up to the new Harry Carray's which opened where High Tops used to be. Here are four of the lovely Irish women out and about. No stories, the picture was on my camera though.








Finally, after leaving Ricardo and his posse, I hooked up with JC and his gal Carol as well as Dejesus Freak (who was getting over a nasty bout of flu) at Johnny O'Hagans. Once a very ethnic and smokey, smokey bar, it's now just a nice ethnic Irish bar! Yay no smoke!!! Not sure why I took this picture since nobody I know is in it. Of course, I think I was in hour 8 of drinking at this point. Only had another hour left in me.



Sunday morning came pretty early, but since I stopped drinking at about 9:30 or so, I wasn't too bad off, just tired. After Palm Sunday mass at the under renovation St. Alphonsus Church, I came home and chilled in front of the tv for a bit to regroup. Oh, there was some excitement during mass as one of the servers passed out and fell over up on the altar. I guess she's going to be ok though. Must have had 20 people run up there from all of the church. My head was down in thoughtful prayer, so I didn't even know what happened. Then I thought, ok, 15 people are already up there, what the hell are you last 5 people doing?? You're just going to get in the way.

Anyway, after I got my energy back, I decided to tackle the bathroom ceiling again. That stucco old ceiling needed to come down and it was a bit harrowing in getting it down. It was about 4 to 5 feet long and 2 feet wide at least. Turns out it's also almost a full inch think. Ugh. It was heavy and wanted to come down in one piece. I'm glad I got it down though....despite all the nasty debris that came down with it. Here are some more pictures:






This one is a shot of the ceiling above the shower that had some of the old, old ceiling and debris before I cleared it away today.













This is what is ABOVE the old, old ceiling. So there was the ceiling of the bathroom, which I took down and then there was a stucco/plaster ceiling above it (see the pictures here). So now THIS is what is above the stucco ceiling. Crimeny. It's never ending. At least I got that RC Cola can and crap down. By the way, it was from the time when RC used to put baseball players pictures and stats on the can. Unfortunately, the 'Star' on my can was Dave LaRoche. Even in mint condition, which this one wasn't, it doesn't seem to be worth much.










So, as you can see, I still have a bit more of debris to clear away before the ceiling is where I want it to be. Getting there though....slowly but surely.

1 comment:

Anonymous said...

The scary thing that most people wouldn't recognize is that's what Ricardo looks like most of the time.