A wedding

Posting remains difficult as I mentioned in my last post, but now the fans and dehumidifier are gone so I'm hoping that the slight improvement will help with my desire and ability to post.

The condo building's insurance adjuster showed up today and evaluated our building's damage and what they would cover and wouldn't cover. Sounds like they'll cover the drywall work and the drying out, but not the carpet removal or replacement. That liability falls on the home owner policy. The adjuster for my home owner's policy will come out tomorrow to look at the damage and determine what they will cover. Looks like I'll be out the $500 deductible as the carpet alone costs about $3,000 to tear out and replace.

It looks like the status of disarray will continue until we leave for Puerto Rico for the wedding. That's unfortunate, but there's not much we can do. These things take time.

Yesterday, my buddy "Sausage", with whom I go to the Bears games quite often, got married in downtown Chicago. Our wedding would have been fairly similar had we not opted for a destination wedding: 275-300 people and the wedding and reception not far from each other. We've been staunchly against having a big lull between the ceremony and the start of the reception though and this wedding had a two hour break (presumably for pictures). Seems to kill the momentum of the day to some degree to me.

At the reception, we were at table 19 (my number in softball) and it was called the Soldier Field table (where the Bears play). At our table were John and Carol (I played softball with John until his retirement this year), Benny Baseball and Blind Mender, two couples I didn't know, and Tim and Amanda (with whom I also played softball until this year). I took a few pics:

The reception was at The University Club in one of their many halls.

A very blurry first dance.

John and Carol on the far left, Benny Baseball in the middle and Mender on the right.

Me and LL as well as me and Amanda, Tim's wife. Tim took the second pic.

And Tim took this picture of me and LL. Maybe a little too much flash, but not bad.

Making Progress

It's been tough to post this last week as my "office" downstairs was flooded and is now drying out. Drying out means five commercial fans blowing air into previous wet areas and a huge dehumidifier. Actually I can only run three of the fans before I start tripping circuit breakers, but it's plenty loud. Having the TV on in the background is completely out of the question.

Along with those problems, I'm still fighting unknown viruses on my computer. It seems like the anti-virus programs hog all of the memory and then stall out the computer. Or that's what the virus is doing and the three anti-virus programs I've tried haven't been able to kill it. Not sure.

Fortunately I do have an office to go to, which I did today, and I also have operational wireless thanks to constant nagging by ESDNM to get it hooked up so he could do "work" while he's staying at Chateau Sutton. So it's not awful, but it is being reinforced in my mind that I need a new laptop for doing just basic stuff, nothing hardcore. Time to hit the store I think.

Wedding plans are coming along despite the weather god's best efforts to....wait for it.....dampen them. Ha! Responses keep coming in, as do gifts, and we are diligently logging them and sending thank you notes the next day. It looks like we're going to have around 70 people there, one of whom will NOT be Bill the Bear.

Yesterday afternoon I went golfing with Bill the Bear as well as Nick and reminded Bill on several occasions that he was not coming to the wedding with comments like: "So how are those home renovations coming that are keeping you from coming to the wedding?" Little jabs like that kept me entertained most of the round. By the way, we finished a full round for the first time this year (or at least the first time for me with the boyz in our after work league). Though I played poorly on the front, I shot a 3 over 39 on the back. Not bad.

Jersey Shore is a Pariah

Yesterday I was riding my bike to the gym, it's about a mile I think, and I see these two late-teen, early 20's fat women walking down the street. Now I know what you're thinking: Joe, isn't fat a bit harsh? Or rude? Hey, I'm calling a spade a spade and it's relevant so "fat" it is. They were all accessorized from earrings to belts and whatnot. Mind you, I only saw them for about 15 seconds as I rode by, but they made an impression on me: why is this acceptable for a young person (notice I did not say "women" here) in their late teens/early twenties to be in this physical shape and accepting of it? I'm pretty sure they weren't moms, so they don't have that to fall back on. They could have been from Wisconsin, in which case they were behind the eight ball from the start of their lives.....from the looks of things a large eight ball.

My issue is mostly with how obviously accepting of their appearance they were. They sort of looked like Snooki and carried themselves in that same way. That got me to thinking about what a pariah on our youth Jersey Shore has been. What is at all redeeming about that show (that I admittedly have only watched once)? Here are the messages that I see coming from it:

1) It's ok to be an idiot.

2) Women treat men like shit and it's ok.

3) Men treat women like something worse than shit and it's more than ok, it's to be applauded.

4) You don't have to work to be successful.

5) You never have on too much makeup.

6) Violence and screaming are the only ways to deal with problems.

7) Drama queens get the guys.

8) You can look like an oompa-loompa, not take care of yourself, get drunk on a consistent basis and as long as you put out, guys will like you.

I don't know, I kind of went all over the place in this entry but the two main themes are:

1) our youth are too fat and they shouldn't be happy about it and,

2) Jersey Shore is awful.

We interrupt your regularly scheduled life......

Busy, busy, busy. Friday we were finally able to hook up with Naperville Greg and Kleveland Kim for pizza (Pequod's) and a movie (Horrible Bosses which was awesome). After months of trying to hook up, we went out, had fun and I was finally able to ask Greg to be in the wedding, which he happily accepted. We were running out of time for the invite!!!

It was late when we got home so it was off to bed, but storms were on the horizon and our dog, Molly, does not like storms. LL was sitting up with her around 2 a.m. when she noticed a darkish spot on the rug. She thought Molly had peed on the carpet, but when she stood up, she realize we were being flooded. The damn which I had set up outside the downstairs door held like a champ, but there was so much water (5-6") in an hour, that the main sewer lines were backing up and water started coming up my shower drain as well as in from the boiler room (I think).

So the relaxing weekend which was supposed to start with dinner and movie, followed by golf and end with two softball games Sunday, all got rained out (except for the dinner of course). Yep, they even closed the golf course!!! Crap.

Fortunately LL's parents came to lend a hand moving stuff and sucking up the water. By the time we finished, we had deposited 50-60 gallons of water outside and that was just so it wouldn't slosh up around your shoes when you walked.

Calls to Service Master, Service Pro, and Paul Davis Restoration, all went unanswered but a smaller local guy came through called Ironside Restoration. They do everything from mitigation to replacement. As I sit in my dry basement right now, there is no carpeting or padding and the furniture is moved around but still usable. They also took the first two feet of dry wall off to help prevent mold from growing.

The last step seems over dramatic, but insurance is going to pay for it! Since the water came in from a backed up drain (as opposed to straight from outside) they will pay for the repairs and/or replacements. Nice! It looks like our wedding is also going to be a much needed relaxing vacation as it may take a few weeks to get paid by insurance after everything drys out.

Damn FIFA!!!

Yeah, that's right, I'm ranting against FIFA today. Why? Because they cost me money today. I'm not even sure how much money, but ANY money is going to make me mad. It's just a matter of how mad. Unfortunately there's nothing I can do about it now and I have no recourse against FIFA. Bastards.

Yesterday I finished watching my TIVO of the USA's womens world cup game against Japan. Unfortunately, the recording stopped just before the shootout. Damnit!!! So I went online to find a recording of just the shootout. Unfortunately, freaking FIFA made Youtube pull all of the videos of the shootout off their site!!! Arrrrgggghhhhhh. Some of the videos though had a link imbedded to another site that had it available. That site however required a download of a player, which I would not do since they can trick you into downloading a virus. Well, the trick was already played in the initial link and so I picked up a virus that promises to "protect your computer" against viruses. Damnit.

So that's why I had no post last night and why FIFA is now on my shit list. The video on FIFA's site, of course, only shows the winning goal by Japan, not the rest of the shootout. Dopes. So now my computer is getting debugged at the computer place around the corner.

Unexpected drinking

Geesh, I thought I had made an entry today already! WTH??

Anyway, it was an unexceptional day but for a notice on Facebook that a long ago co-worker who has since moved to the Detroit area (not far from where I lived until I was 7). She and her husband were at a bar about a block and a half away! So I at around 5:30 or so, I set out to the bar and LL joined me when she got home around 7. Good fun.

Though LL had her bachelorette party this weekend, I've been the beneficiary of some tasty food left-overs. One of the events was a chef who came over to teach them how to cook various dishes. They made a risotto with butternut squash, chicken and mushrooms along with a Caesar salad dressing. Then there are tons of left-over fruit to munch on. Not too shabby.

Short entry

We finished third out of twenty teams at the NSA State C tournament this weekend. One of the 3 teams we beat on Saturday came back and beat us on Sunday morning and took second place. The team that won first was a team we beat last weekend, though apparently they didn't have all their players there last week. Anyway, it was a good time and we did well getting a trophy and everything.

Unfortunately for me personally, it was one of my worst performances in some time. Saturday I was 4-10 with a couple of line outs and Sunday I was 3-6 with another couple of line outs, but also a double play. Ugh. Defensively it wasn't much better, though it's tougher to get a good glove on balls in NSA for various reasons than it is in say USSSA. No need to bore you with the details, but I need to be better.

Week day catch up!!

Holy crap have I really not posted since Tuesday?? Good Lord.

Part of the reason for not posting was ESDNM was in town so it was busy, busy, busy running around calling on clients and potential clients. In general the meetings were pretty successful as we continue to do good work for our clients. And our clients seem to be doing pretty well in general as well. It's still a tough environment, but with our help, they are making progress.

Then there's the over-eating which I put squarely on ESDNM. Monday night we hit Sapori Trattoria, one of my favorite Italian places in Chicago. Monday night is a family style special so you get lots of good food for very reasonable prices.

Tuesday was LL's shower, so she didn't join us and it was a busy day, so ESDNM decided he wanted pizza (actually he wanted it on Monday, but we had a better option). So I asked him if he wanted thin or deep dish and he said thin. Off I went to look up the number for Pequod's, the best thin/regular crust in town. Then he changed his mind and said he wanted to go outside his comfort zone and do deep dish, so I changed gears for Gino's East. Good stuff.

Since my throat was still ailing (much better now thanks!), I laid off the alcohol until Wednesday night when I was starting to feel better (meaning I could blow my nose without my throat hurting). Wednesday night was Sun-Wah, Chinese bbq. I've written about it before and it's just plum tasty. We had duck, Mongolian beef, shrimp stuffed eggplant slices and some green veggie thing that I was ripping on ESDNM for ordering but it turned out to be pretty tasty. Ricardo joined us for the evening (along with LL of course) and it was a great evening. Afterwards we went to The Green Mill, a pretty famous Chicago bar of the speakeasy era which has all sorts of eclectic music playing live.

It was going to be an early evening because as the bouncer was checking I.D.'s of the couple in front of us, he told them to keep their voices down so people could hear the music. Uh oh. First off, Ricardo ESDNM and myself all have at least SOME trouble hearing. Not a good start. Second, my voice can carry in a football stadium much less a hushed, relatively small bar, so that's strike two. Third, I was on my third Belgian beer since I hadn't been able to drink in about a week and hadn't seen Ricardo in forever. Not a good combination. I was doing pretty well though, but we had to tell ESDNM to "try whispering" because his volume knob was clearly not functioning. Good times.

Working the web

Interesting goings on pretty much everyday now at the house. Either wedding invitation responses or gifts show up and today there were plenty of both!!! Yowza!! And yes, we are indeed now aware (and not happy) that there is no spot to mark "sorry, we can't make it". How can that NOT be on a response card?? It is fun though as people make notes explaining why they can't make it (and are also ordering dinners to be mailed to them as well.....yes, those are my friends), so maybe it's not the worst thing.

Tonight is LL's shower, thrown by her mother and her mother's friends, down in Joliet. Then this weekend is her bachelorette party, so it's a big week for her!! As I mentioned yesterday, I'm heading out of town to the wonderful city of Pekin, IL which is near....nothing. Ok, it's actually near Peoria where I took and passed my CPA exam once upon a time.

Funny how things link on the web these days. Here's something that I literally just went through:

-looked at my hotel location in Pekin, IL on Google maps to see what restaurants are nearby

-found a place called Kouri's Pub, which serves pizza

-remembered a guy I knew in college who was from Peoria (near Pekin) whose family owned Italian restaurants in the area named Kouri

-I visited him and his wife in Minneapolis after college as I knew both him and his wife

-searched Facebook for him and his wife and came up empty

-searched the web for both and got a hit on his wife's maiden name, which also had her married name as "Couri" not Kouri.

-searched the web again for the husband with the new spelling and find out he has a law firm in St. Michael, MN with another guy from college and whose brother I was friends with and was trying to find (fruitlessly) a few months ago.

-went to their website, confirmed that the picture was the right guy, got his email from the site and sent him a message.

How crazy is that??

It's Viral

This morning I called my doctor to see what she thought about my throat issues. Unfortunately, she agrees with LL and I that it's probably viral and that there's not much to be done about it. Just nurse the symptoms and wait for it to go away. Crap.

Speaking of viral, I've introduced LL to this phenomenon. She's not extremely happy, but did enjoy this version from Family Guy. Actually we've been having fun with it around the house and in the car.

ESDNM is in town this week so it'll be a bit of work the next few days. Thursday is golf and then I have to leave the house for LL's bachelorette party. Fortunately there's an out of town softball tournament, so I'll be otherwise occupied anyway.

Softball weekend (again!)

Our softball team won our third tournament in a row this weekend going 3-0 and run-ruling our competition in two of the games. I wasn't there for the first win, but it sounded like there was only one other good team in a small tournament. The second win didn't have much talent either, so we took care of business pretty easily. This Saturday though, while there was only six teams in the tournament, four of them were pretty good and two of them had beaten us already this year in other tournaments. So all in all it was a good Saturday. From a hitting perspective, I was only 5-8 which is .625, under my goal and current average of .700. Two of the three outs were awful: a called third strike and a tap back to the pitcher with the bases loaded! Ugh. Fortunately, after tapping the ball back to the pitcher, I hustled down the first base line and allowed myself to get hit with the throw from the catcher. The ball bounced away and the guy who was on second was able to score and I was safe....the best of a bad situation I guess. In the last game though I was 2-2 including a 2-run, 2 out double. I think we won the game 11-1 and I had three RBI. Not bad.

Tonight I'm filling in on the over 40 team despite a tender back as they are short guys. It's not my favorite thing to be doing, but I feel obligated.

Lots of wedding stuff going on everyday, but not stressful stuff. Just plugging along and making progress. Only 48 more days!!

Planking....Salmon Style

So have you heard of this phenomenon called "planking"? It's pretty stupid, but it's all the rage in certain circles.....I'm guessing pretty bored and/or stupid circles. Yesterday I saw a squirrel planking on my fence in the backyard, but couldn't get my phone camera before the dog barked and scared the squirrel away.

For dinner tonight I cooked a maple glazed salmon and on a whim bought a wood plank at the store on which to cook it. I've heard that you can cook a salmon this way, but I've never actually tried it. The guy at the fish counter told me to soak it in water before tossing it on the grill with the salmon on top.

My neighbors were eating out on the back porch while I was cooking and I asked them if they had ever cooked with a plank. They had indeed so I asked if they put the plank on the top rack or bottom rack, thinking that the bottom rack would make the most sense. They agreed, bottom rack, and so let the cooking begin!

The salmon was on the grill while I was preparing the side dishes and after a few minutes there was a soft knock on the back door. It was my neighbor. "What's up?" "I think you have fire going in your grill. Just thought you should know." Doh!! The grill was smoking away, but no fire yet. Thankfully. The plank did get charred underneath though and I guess they only last 2-3 cookings anyway, so I wasn't too surprised.

But the salmon turned out very nicely cooked and the maple glaze was delicious. LL mentioned that we could probably use the glaze on chicken and pork chops too. What a great idea. I definitely think my first planking experience was a positive one.

This and that

The irony story of the year. It's almost too perfect.

Have you seen this commercial yet? Has to be the most.....normal or real commercial I've seen in some time. "Enjoy the go"...ha!

The weather in Chicago has been pretty awesome lately with crystal blue skies and balmy temperatures. Sadly the summer doesn't last long enough. Sigh.....

On the opposite side of things, I offer this time lapse video of Phoenix. Crazy!!!

While my ear ringing has continued to be at a minimum, though a bit worst than a month ago, something is going on in my throat as it's really sore and hurts when I try to blow my nose. It's not that I feel bad, it's just sore and I'm not sure why. Sometimes I get blisters of sorts on the back of my throat, but it's been a while so I'm not sure if this the same thing or not. As long as it doesn't keep me down, I can deal with the pain.

Seriously? 5 a.m.??

It's 5 a.m. and there's a whole bunch of things I'd rather be doing that writing my blog, and sleep is right there at the top of the list. It's pointless to just lie in bed though when you're wide awake. I'm not sure I want writing my blog to put me to sleep on a regular basis, but today it would be nice.

Here's the Punke family with whom I went to the Cubs game on Sunday. It was my first visit to the Stadium Club there (down the first base line) and that's where this picture was taken. It was one of the cross town Cub/Sox games and as you can see, they are mostly Cubs fans. Two other folks hadn't made it up to the club when I took the picture and one of them was a Sox fan too along with Sara on the left.

So yesterday was the Fourth of July and we really didn't have anything planned except to sleep in and catch some fireworks somewhere. The leading fireworks options were Ribfest in Naperville or watching neighborhood fireworks from Ricardo's roof in Logan Square. The bonus with going to Ribfest would be, of course, ribs. As you know, we're big fans. So after a slow start to the day which included a visit to greasy spoon breakfast place called The Hamburger King (they sell Korean food as well as a mean Texas omelet), we decided to head out to Naperville.

Traffic was light and we pulled into my parents' driveway around 5:45 (my folks aren't home as they like to spend the Fourth up north at their place in Michigan). By 6:00 we were entering the fairgrounds which had dramatically expanded to almost double the size of last year. The split up where the 8-10 rib vendors were into two sets and one set was right near our entrance, so we set up camp there and got in line.

The standout this year (of the three we tried) was Sweet Baby Ray's. We prefer their sauce, but they also had the meatiest ribs. Behind them was Pigfoot with a pretty good rib and sauce that LL liked better than Ray's, but which I thought was just ok. They did have an appleicious sauce that was pretty tasty though. In third was Mojo's and the only reason we went there was because they had the shortest line when we arrived and we were hungry. I would have preferred to visit Sgt. Oinks or Two Fat Guys BBQ, but the lines were too long. Ray's won third place best ribs this year, but I can't see how someone (other than myself) could beat them. A ribber named Johnson won both best ribs and best sauce, but they were with the other set of vendors so we didn't even see them.

At 7:30 at Ribfest, they open the gates and it's free admission and the fireworks start at 9:30ish. Unfortunately that leads to two problems, getting ribs becomes tougher and tougher and leaving takes longer and longer. So we opted to head home a little after 7 and see if we could catch fireworks at home. No word from Ricardo, so we headed to Belmont Harbor where three set of fireworks were on display! Nicely done folks!

In the foreground you can see the start of one set of fireworks going off which we were mainly watching and in the background we could see the fireworks from Navy Pier. Chicago cut out their own fireworks due to budget issues.

Here's the third set of fireworks right outside the harbor. Not a bad picture for an Iphone.

So we had a happy Fourth and I hope you did too!

Long, fun weekend!!

Oh man Saturday's weather was tough: 90+ degrees with 75+% humidity. Tough, tough day to be outside. We had a softball tournament, so I was out there at 8:30 in the a.m. to start it off and was there until 6. We had a four game guarantee against lesser competition with the top two teams playing for money, about 2x the entrance fee. It wasn't too tough for us and we closed it out by the slaughter rule. Still, it was hot and we were tired from playing 5 games in a day, but most of the guys got at least one game off. I was 4-4 in the opener to continue my tournament opening game streak, and went 7-10 on the day. Good stuff.

On Sunday, I went to the Cubs/Sox game courtesy of the Punke family, the people who sit next to me at the Bears games. We had a great time and afterwards we hit the Nisei Lounge and then went to my house for a bunch of pool playing and drinking. Good times.

Now I'm just trying to sober up!!

What a storm!

Last night a huge storm raged through the Chicago area wreaking havoc on trees and clogged drains. All the while I was golfing with the Boyz (Bill the Bear, Smitty and Nick) up in Glencoe and while we saw the storm on the horizon and even had the lightning horn go off twice (which means you should leave the course or play at your own risk), it never rained on us or even got really close until we were on our last hole (due to darkness). Then we hit the bar for a few beers and headed home to a neighborhood of branches and trees on the ground with crazy amounts of rain and hail having come through. Wow!

Another storm blew through my blog yesterday! No matter how I try to preface a fairly innocuous observation, I've been hit with a shit storm of comments from all sides. So I thought I'd just reprint it here and see if I could possibly better explain what I was thinking.

How women are turning our country lazy...or why I don't like Europe

Ok, that's a pretty interesting title I think. Pretty good hook.

Ok, first and foremost, I am not picking out any individuals in this post nor do I plan on upsetting anyone in particular. It may happen just because of the nature of the post, but not something I'm planning on.

I'm not sure anyone actually took my entry as a personal attack, though some did take it personally because they may have been more closely related to the subject matter than others (working women for instance).

So while I was doing something yesterday, not sure what, I started thinking of how many guys I've seen lately that are dressed casually and whom it appears that are working from home. Now I work from home, but I'm an exception in some regards, you'll see what I mean (I hope). There is nothing wrong with working from home, but no one will convince me that you can ever be as productive at home as you are in an office. Granted there are commuting issues and some office distractions, but working from home has many more, though there is no commute.

Fairly innocuous paragraph, but I think many people overlooked the word "guys". I'm actually referring to males here and they are really the subject of the post. I never really got around to saying why I'm an exception, but I had to leave for golf so I had to cut the entry short. If you know my financial position, then you understand what I meant. Productivity at home versus the office is disputed, but it's my opinion and since it's my blog, I'm running with it. If you Google productivity at home, you end up with a ton of ways to INCREASE your productivity at home, which means, to me at least, that there is a lot demand for ways to increase home productivity, which wouldn't be necessary unless there's a problem.

So what's my issue? Well, I'm thinking guys in our country are becoming more like Europeans...lazy and whiny. Europeans, at least the French, rioted when the work week was extended from 35 to 37 hours. Then they rioted again when the retirement age went from 60 to 62. Poor babies. It's pretty universally accepted that Europeans don't have as good a work ethic as Americans. Yeah, yeah, I can hear you saying "They just have a better work/life balance!" well that's B.S. They don't work as much because it's part of their culture not to have as strong a work ethic. Fine, I really don't have a problem with that actually, unless I have to do work with them and then it's painful.

Again, my point is that GUYS are becoming less productive (measured by the subjective term "work ethic"). I like to pick on the French and use them to represent Europeans as a whole, which is slightly unfair, but they represent the point well enough. So I'm setting up a scale with Americans higher than Europeans on a subjective work ethic scale. Am I going to go out and conduct a study to verify this? No. It's just a blog and my opinion, but I'd bet it's not far off.

But my point is that it seems men in our country are working less and less and that our work ethic has dissipated. No not because of the recession, this has been going on for the last 20 years during boom times as well as bust.

I should have said working more and more from home instead of working less or made a productivity comment. It's not work ethic relative to the rest of the world. It's work ethic versus our level in the past.

So why is this happening? Women. Yep, women. "C'mon Joe how can you blame women for a drop in productivity in guys?"

Now we're getting to the meat of the issue. It should be obvious I'm a bit tongue in cheek here for effect.

Well, my thinking goes like this, women over the last 50 years have made tremendous strides into and up through the workforce. Undeniable point. While they made strides, corporations realized the need for maternity leave where none existed before (or little existed) and it has in fact became law.

Pretty much just facts here.

Then the computer happened along and corporations realized that women could raise their kids AND work from home at least part-time and corporations don't have to go through the expense of hiring a replacement.

Yep. Nothing anyone in business could argue with here.

But then guys demanded "equal rights" as well, though more subtly and not through any legal channels because we're above that (ok actually it's because we're running the corporations mostly still and making the laws mostly still so it's just accepted as opposed to needing a law change). Anyway, now you have more and more men working from home because companies can't discriminate against men as they allow women to work from home.

Are men still mostly running corporations? Yep, I'm not even going to bother looking up the facts there. If they are letting women work from home, you have to let men work from home.

And so now we're becoming more and more European in our work ethic and it's all women's fault. We'd still be number one in the world if not for your equal rights and workplace evolution!! At least that's the thought that tore through my head yesterday.

Ok, maybe the use of "all women's fault" could be taken incorrectly here since I was trying to be a bit facetious, as I tend to be. It's just partially their fault. Yes computers came into being and I acknowledged that above and they contributed to people working from home significantly. Longer commutes in some areas as people moved further and further from big cities to live also probably contributed. There are a bunch of things and I'm saying the impact of women in the workplace is another one.

Obviously I don't even know if we are number one or two or twelve in the world in work ethic or productivity, as any study would have inherent subjective flaws by it's very nature (someone who is productive may not have a great work ethic, just better tools or fewer distractions or a larger bladder or no desire to eat).