It was nice while it lasted

Not sure what to write about today. The weather in this winter of fantasticness seems redundant, though it topped 50 degrees today with more awesomeness forecasted for the next few days.

Today Bill the Bear tried to schedule a weekend up at Ricardo's cabin in Wisconsin for our group of guy friends.Why would Bill be scheduling a weekend at Ricardo's cabin you might ask and you'd be just in asking such a question. The reason is that we would NEVER get up to Ricardo's cabin for a guys weekend if Ricardo was actually put in charge of scheduling. Ricardo is notoriously bad at communicating via email or vmail, so we either take charge of these types of events ourselves or include Ricardo's wife on emails so the message gets through.

The crazy thing is that while we're trying to schedule a snowy, winter fun weekend, which means prior to St. Patrick's Day, I only have two free weekends between now and then!! What's up with that? There's a trip we're taking to Ft. Myers, my mom's 75th birthday, Blackhawk tickets, VIP tickets to see Jim Gaffigan in Joliet and a softball tournament in St. Louis. That's a busy couple of months. Might not have the relaxing type of weekend that we just had for some time.

Tough week on the waistline coming up

Maybe it's the lack of snow this year, but the weekends seem much more relaxing this winter than they have been in the past. LL was living with me last year, so that's not it. Softball (on Saturday nights) starts next week and I never play in the first season (which ended two weeks ago) so that's not it. I don't think I can put my finger on it exactly, but our weekends are just more relaxed and less....eventful? I don't know. This weekend was a birthday party in the burbs for E-Money from my softball team on Saturday night and LL's parents came downtown tonight to take us out for LL's birthday which is Tuesday. Even with all that, it seemed like a relaxed weekend.

So yes, Tuesday is LL's birthday and we're going to dinner with our good friends Terry and Sandie from Mokena down at one of our favorite restaurants, The Maple Tree Inn. The food is southern style and they have big mardi gras celebrations, so this is a fun time to go down there. Plus we don't get to see Terry and Sandie as much as we'd like to so this is extra special. Next weekend we already have dinner plans with some friends of LL's and then Sunday is the Super Bowl! Good times!!

Friday night mixture

My birthday is coming up in two months and I was contacted by the State to renew my drivers license. This time though they told me I could renew through the mail because I had such a good record (makes sense as I'm fully aware that I'm a good driver and most people I see are idiots). But I was sort of surprised that they would do it through the mail. If you didn't have anything really change and you're fine with your picture, then it's a no-brainer. So I filled out the document and sent it in. Got my license in the mail yesterday and I'm good to go! No DMV for me!

By the way,if you're into watching the Super Bowl and want to buy a square, my softball team is doing a fundraiser for $20 a square. The payout is $250 a quarter with a $50 payout for the reverse winning numbers. The final score numbers payout $500 with $100 for the reverse numbers. Just let me know if you're interested.

Somebody tried to rain on my winter weather parade today by saying we are actually only a few inches below normal snowfall amounts so far this winter. On average, it appears, by now we have had about 20 inches of snow. While there's little to no snow to be found on the ground, we have had three big snow falls that probably accumulate about 15 inches. The big difference is that it has all melted! Plus one night it rained really hard. If that were snow, we'd easily be over the average and instead of melting the snow, it would have added to the base.

It's Christmas Card Time!

Well, it's not THE official Christmas card voting time yet, but it is time for me to select the best card I received this year. Lots more family cards this year than in the past, including one accordion type card that was very cool. A few lines of text accompanied each picture on the card. Another card was a pull out card that should get some mention just because of the detail involved.

But here are the finalists for best card:
This card has shiny little flecks that never show up in the scan, but is very pretty. It comes courtesy of my childhood babysitter of all people!






These two cards tickled my fancy as well. Frosty's card on the left came from friends of LL's in Michigan and the card on the right was courtesy of Smitty and wife.

And this year's winner! My sister Bee sent it and even wrote inside that it was going to be this year's winner, though I think she meant my the winner of my parents' competition. Having had a bull dog in the past, I'm partial to the subject matter! Congrats Bee!!

My buddy Chrizzo sent me this card via email as a joke. He thought it might make the list....and it did! Ha!

Another fantastic day in Chicago. Upper 30's, low 40's, and I was able to walk down the street in sneakers and my hoodie. Just awesome!!

Running with the Hawks

Last night we headed to the Hawks game for the first time this year. We have three sets of tickets this year and the other two games are in March. Even though we watch almost every game at home, even more so now with the HD hookup being fully functioning, we haven't actually gone to a game yet. It's tough now that they sellout every game. After about eight tries, I was able to take this picture.

That's my Patrick Kane Olympic jersey. LL has on her autographed Patrick Sharp jersey. Good times!

Future headline: Dow Jones tops 13,500 for first time since December of 2007.

This headline I thought of today as I considered the market and the current economy and where the Dow is currently (12,757). The fed also said they saw low interest rates through 2014. The combo seems to point upwards for the stock market. Now some of you, who might be marginally talented at math, might say "Hey, that's only 743 points higher from where it is now." True, and it's only 5.8% higher from this level. All true. The psychological impact of just crossing 13,000 is going to be a tough nut to crack. Tack another 500 points on top of that, plus the election year mudslinging that will be going on over the summer and it's a pretty iffy headline.

Today was a tough running day. My legs just didn't have it....maybe it was because of the Hawks game...I don't know. BUT, I powered through! Yes, I ran for 30 minutes, about 2 3/4 miles and finished off the last 1/4 mile with a brisk walk. When I run I have a dual goal: run for 30 minutes and do 3 miles. On Sunday I was able to to run both for 30 minutes AND 3 miles. Today though it just wasn't going to happen. Still, I was proud of myself putting in the effort. Yay me!

Monday Night Project

So the snow came over the weekend and then it rained like a banshee on Sunday night and melted most of it away again. Outstanding. This is my kind of winter!!

There was no post yesterday for no reason in particular. Laura went to her office and had dinner plans with a friend so I was on my own all day and evening. By the time she got home, I was immersed in a project that kept me occupied until bed time, which was earlier than usual for Laura as she had trouble sleeping the night before. Why? Molly, our 13 year old dog, didn't like the thunder storm we had. Yes, thunder....in January. Awesome! But not awesome that it kept Molly up and going crazy until we were able to give her a doggie sedative.

The project I was working on involves.....wait for it....baseball cards! Yes, I'm an avid collector and have complete sets dating back to the mid 60's. While migrating files from one computer to another I ran across an excel file that listed cards I needed from 1967, a set which I thought I had finished. After taking a look at the list and the cards I had, I came to the realization that the list was old and inaccurate. However I also realized that some of the cards in my set were not in the greatest condition and that I should replace them with better cards if possible. As with any collectible, the condition of the card is paramount. So after reviewing the entire 660 card set, I made another much shorter list of cards I wanted to replace and went on ebay to check them out. So yes, it was a busy night!

Tonight we have Blackhawks tickets so we're very excited!!

Also, my softball team is raising money by selling Super Bowl squares. $20 a square with a payout of $250 a quarter and $50 for the reverse numbers and $500 for the final score with $100 for the reverse final score numbers. Let me know if you're interested!!

Working it

First, on the food front, we had oven fried chicken tonight (really baked but it tastes fried) and spinach. Delicious. That was tonight and over the weekend we ate leftover lasagna and leftover stuffed peppers. It was an eating fest all weekend and I still lost weight! How could that be you might ask? Well, I started a workout regimen that follows a certain pattern: lift weights day one, run day two and rest day three. So in any seven day period I'll workout 5 days, but in any calendar week, it could be 5 days or 4.

Today was a running day and I ran 3 miles doing roughly 10 minute miles and was on the treadmill for 35 minutes total. It was a good workout and the run was easier than past runs over the last few weeks as you might think. Saturday was a good workout as well where I've tried something new. Instead of just doing my reps in any one exercise, I've been mixing them up. For instance, I'll do a set of bench presses and then do a set of curls. As long as the muscles are different, it's fine to go this route. But not only is just mixing them up, it feels like going this route is actually making me stronger. Good stuff.

The day of rest seems like maybe it's not necessary as we all know people who run almost every day. Maybe I can work my way up to that, but until I drop some weight, every day running seems unlikely.

Snowy Conditions

The snow has arrived and in force again. There will probably be 5-8 inches by the time it stops snowing this time. It was sort of nice that the snow from the last storm all melted! Hopefully the same thing happens with this stuff, but it looks like it's going to be around for a while. Ugh. I'm just not a fan of the snow. It makes people drive and act like idiots and it makes walking more difficult. Great for skiing, but I'm not skiing so I say snow be damned!!

HD is wonderful!! I've had HD televisions and was supposed to be receiving HD channels from DirctTv, but the reality was that most of the HD stations did not come in and if there was rain, snow or even a little wind some times, there would be no reception on even the primary HD channels. Ugh. So when I got a second HD compatible TV, I had little interest in getting an HD hookup for it. Last week though I called DirectTv and had them come out to fix the HD. They changed a bunch of the connections up on the roof with the dish and my HD was awesome again! Every channel worked! Sweet!!

So yesterday I called them up and said that a competitor of theirs was willing to come hook up ALL of my televisions to HD DVR's for nothing and I was thinking of switching. They passed me along the line, just twice I guess, and boom! I had free HD DVR upgrades and that new room-to-room viewing where you can watch anything on one room's DVR in another room! Sweet! Plus I got the ondemand upgratde too! And it's snowing like heck and my HD is still working just fine. Awesome!!!

The Dinner List

As many of you know who cook on a regular basis, it's sometimes tough to figure out what to cook on any given night. When did I last make that? Do I have the ingredients to make that dish? What can I cook that we haven't had in a while? Well, being tired of thumbing through pages of recipes in a folder, I decided to put them all down on an Excel spreadsheet. Laura helped round out the list and reminded me of certain dishes. In addition to the main courses, we included some veggies as well. So without further adieu, here's that list!

	Main Dish
Red meat
	Steak with blue cheese crust
	Hamburgers with seasoning
	Tacos
	Stuffed Peppers
Fish
	Trout with mushrooms/peppers
	Breaded Catfish
	Maple glazed salmon
	Shrimp scampi
	Crab legs
	Scallops
Pork
	Ribs
	Chops in rub
	Dijon chops
Chicken
	Grilled and barbecued
	Baked with pesto
	Oven fried chicken
	Marinated grilled breasts
	Cashew chicken
Stir fry peanut sauce with chicken or meat
Butternut Squash risotto

Vegetables

Acorn Squash

Butternut squash

Steamed broccoli

Baked broccoli

Garlic and herb green beans

Sugar snap peas

Roasted brussel spouts

Cider brussel sprouts

Sauteed spinach

Sliced potatoes with parm

Sweet potato

Sweet potato fries

Plantains

Corn on the cob

Bagged corn

Back to Basra

As the U.S. pulls its troops off of foreign soil, I have had to redeploy T-Rex into Basra. Funny thing, the poison I was putting out previously worked like a charm and the rats only came back after I stopped putting it out (aren't I already doing their landlord's job?). More recently though, I put out the same brick shaped poison (well, put it down the rat holes really), only to have the rats push it out of the hole instead of taking it further in to the hole to eat it!! That's a problem.

Fortunately, T-Rex is ready and waiting. Baited with peanut butter, Skippy Chunky in case you're interested, T-Rex was deployed and brought home the bacon......or rat bacon....or whatever. The first night I thought something went awry as I didn't see T-Rex while walking down to Starbucks for my morning cup of coffee. That turned out to not be the case though as T-Rex was not only successful, he killed with such ferocity that after snapping shut it threw itself and the rat down the stairs upon which it was perched. Ha! Cleaned, locked and loaded on day two, T-Rex came up empty. Night three though brought another kill. Both were big sized rats as far as rats go.

Then the snows came so putting out T-Rex when he'd get buried was pointless. Tonight he was redeployed though as the war wages on!!! I will not make any promises as to when the troops will come home. The bait of choice was changed to Peter Pan Creamy by the way.

Port Authority doing their job extremely well.

Today I had a long meeting, basically from 10ish until about 5, not all just the meeting but socializing before and after. So, instead of my usual gripping blog entry, I'm providing you with but one link. Please read the story associated with this link and see if you're as outraged as I am.

If you do nothing else tonight, read this story.

Skydiving?

Something I've always wanted to try is skydiving. Maybe I'll like it, but maybe not. Either way, I'd really enjoy giving it a shot. The problem? Now that I'm married, the decision isn't all my own. Apparently about 30 people a year die from skydiving annually. That sounds like a lot, but there are about 3,000,000 jumps a year so it turns out to be 1 in 100,000. Unfortunately I haven't seen data on how many of those deaths are first time jumpers. A first time jumper, and several jumps after that, have to be a tandem jump. The mortality rate for tandem jumps is one in every 420,000 as of 2002. In just the US however, the rate is even lower with one death for every 540,000 jumps over a three year period!

From data in 1998, bee stings were responsible for 46 deaths, snakes, lizards, and spiders killed 5 people, and 15 Americans died after being bitten by dogs. Those numbers don't even include the number of kids killed every year by digging holes at the beach.

That all said, I have to consider the wishes of my wife, LL, who, God forbid, I do die in a freak accident, will have to live without my company. While many people would consider this a reason to drive me to the airfield and push me on the plane, LL thinks it's a terrible idea. Skydiving is not completely out of the question, but it's on life support!

Ranting in the New Year

It's been a while since I've gone off on a rant, so why not the Sunday before MLK Day? Sounds good to me too!

My hatred for people who try to save their shoveled out parking spaces has been well documented on my blog and I'm happy to say that I haven't had to toss anyone's buckets/chairs/boards into the garbage or parkway as I walk, or drive, by. Yes, I've actually stopped my car, gotten out, picked up the material being used to save their spot and disposed of it. If they pass a law that says I can annex the street for my personal use as I see fit, then fine, I'll let someone save their spot in winter. If I can do it summer, they can do it in the winter. Until then, no dice.

And I have some sports rants too. If my team is up by 30 in the fourth quarter and I want to pass, guess what? I'm going to pass. If you have a problem with it, play some damn defense and stop me. Same deal with stealing bases when up by 7+ runs late in the game. If you have a problem with me stealing to stay out of the double play, tell your wuss armed catcher to make a throw or your dense pitcher to hold on my runners a bit better.

Another baseball "unwritten rule" is not bunting to break up a no-hitter. Guess what? You don't want me to bunt, don't play your third baseman in short left field! Play him on the edge of the grass and take the bunt away. Otherwise, screw you and your no-hitter if I beat it out. And furthermore, I've seen one play open the floodgates for a big rally (do you remember Bartman?).

So that's my rant for today. The only other thing I have to say is thank the Good Lord that Tebow loss. Just imagine if he was giving thanks to something else that he worshiped every time he was being interviewed? Let's say it's a bagel* or something more objectionable like.....some dead murderer. "I just want to thank my Lord and savior, John Wayne Gacy. Not so great then huh? Just keep it to yourself.

*The obvious choice here for an analogy would be Allah, but Jews, Christians and Muslims all stem from the same "father of the faith", Abraham, so that's not really enough of a distinction from what he does now. Many people even believe all three religions even have the same God, but have different messengers and messages: Christ or Muhammad for example.

Will things change?

A rare Friday night post. There are a bunch of topics that I want to discuss, but let's go with a discussion I had with a buddy of mine.

Some background first: the guy who sits next to me at the Bears games, Doug, (and has 10 tickets around the stadium) has a winter home down in Florida. He's invited us down to visit whenever we like. He's only had the place for the last two or three years, so I haven't taken him up on it.

Doug's son turns 21 in early February and their whole family is going to Vegas for the son's birthday, which will be over Super Bowl weekend, February 4th. We were invited to join them, but they roll pretty heavy and don't really gamble, so I'm thinking lots of expensive dinners, shows and not much gambling which is pretty much the opposite of what I like to do in Vegas.

So we decided to take a pass on the Vegas trip, but go down and visit him for a long weekend over Presidents' Day weekend. The other day though, I got a text from a buddy who sits near us at the games and knows Doug as well. He wanted to know if we were going to Vegas and I said no, but said we were going down later in the month. He said, "Cool! I can use a guys' weekend. Sounds awesome. Let me know which weekend."

He just made the assumption that LL wasn't going with me, which is odd since she was going to be going to Vegas had we gone. So I told him that Laura was going too, so it wouldn't be a guys weekend. He apologized for jumping the gun and wrote that he forgot I was newly married and that after umpteen years of marriage, he doesn't mind a get out of jail free card every once in a while. I texted that I'd rather vacation with LL than without her.

Certainly absence can make the heart grow fonder, but I'm not there yet!!

Let it snow, let it snow, let it snow.

Today we finally got the first snow of the year that is sticking. We're supposed to get 5-8 inches before the storm is done some time tomorrow morning.




Here's a picture of my street this morning on the way to my Starbucks. Notice the lack of snow.

And this is what it looked like on my way to the Starbucks this afternoon. It's only gotten worse since then. Oh well, winter is now upon us.

LL and I had a nice dinner for our three year dating anniversary at our favorite sushi place, Roll-la-Palooza. It's byob, so we brought our favorite wine and had a great meal. The owners, Eric and Minnie, were as wonderful as ever and since it was a little slower, they were able to come out and sit with us for a few minutes. They also sent over a wonderful dish, gratis, to help us celebrate. Such good folks!!

It's been a busy couple of days as I had to head into the office to prepare for a meeting next Tuesday. It's all good, but just busier than normal!

Whose chicken to make chicken?

Another beautiful day in Chicago led me to both hit the driving range and to decide to grill out while the weather was still good. But what to grill? For some reason I really wanted to grill some barbecue chicken. The crazy thing about that: I've never grilled barbecue chicken. Sure, I've grilled boneless chicken breasts, but never legs and thighs and pieces with bone in them. So why not try it today?

First, I looked up on the interwebs how I needed to prep and what temperature and any miscellaneous tips. The site I ended up on recommended a rub that was not very different from the rub I use on my ribs, so I just used that recipe, cooked them on the grill for about 30+ minutes and applying sauce for the last 10-15 minutes or so. The chicken turned out delicious!!! LL couldn't have been happier.

A little note about tomorrow: I'm probably going to miss my Wednesday blog entry as tomorrow is our 3 year dating anniversary! Yep, three years ago tomorrow, we met for coffee and then went to brunch (it was a Sunday). Almost two years later we were engaged and were married within the year after that. Yay us!!

Good and Bad

Ok, so my future headline from yesterday now seems HIGHLY unlikely. Maybe I jumped the gun a bit. Why the change of heart? One of the few people I actually respect and listen to as far as their opinion on things is Fareed Zakaria (when it comes to the Middle East at least). I read his article today that provided a little more color to the situation in Iran. I tell ya, God willing, if I'm ever President, I'm going to FORCE Fareed to work with me as an ambassador to the Middle East or something. Can I do that as President?

Had a great run today at the gym. It's my third time back running (Wedesday, Friday and now today) and this was the best of the bunch. I was able to run for 2.75 miles and walked for another third of a mile or so in about 35 minutes or so. As a bonus, I did 5 10-minute mile minutes that were spread out during the 11 minute miles I was doing. Good stuff. Then I went to the weight room and did some leg exercises before heading home. Wednesday I'll run and lift some weights.

Tomorrow should be another gorgeous day here in Chicago, in the 50's, so I'll head to the driving range one last time. We'll see if the swing improves any.

Last night I made my usual trout with mushroom dish (you can easily find it on All Recipes) but I added some green peppers to the mixture. It turned out great!! Vegetables are good.

Good Weekend

Future Headlines:

Oil tops $120 a barrel on Strait of Hormuz agitations

That's actually a tough one because it's an election year. If oil does go that high, it's going to hurt the voting public and could lose Obama the election. That might cause him to dip into the strategic oil reserves to keep the prices down.

Busy couple of days around the Sutton house. Saturday was recovering from a party a Smitty's house on Friday night and getting my computer closer to up and running 100% by installing software. Migrating files from computer to computer is pretty easy, but few programs allow you to migrate actual programs. So I had to install things like TurboTax and Skype. I also hooked up an automatic backup system that I got for Christmas from LL that is about the size of my wallet and holds a terabyte of data! Nice. The printer wasn't hooked up either, so I got that taken care of. In the end I now have two external hard drive systems, an external camera and transfer cables, which I no longer need. I'm sure I'll figure out something to do with them though.

The computer LL bought me for Christmas is also a Touchsmart computer, so I can do all sorts of things with the screen by touching it if I like, sort of like a ginormous IPad. Pretty cool.

We took down the ornaments on Saturday and after going to church on Sunday, we took the tree to the recycling center. It was a productive trip as we then took our ornaments and stand to our storage unit. Solid afternoon of running errands. Tough to see our tree, Fraser, go though. He still smelled good and the needles weren't dropping off yet.

Awesome weather still!!

Today I read that in December we only had 1.7 inches of snow, about 19 inches less than last December. There have also been 31 days of above average temperatures since December 1, compared to something like 14 or so last year over the same time period. Let's hope the trend continues!

At the end of the year, I always recommend that people review their investments and consider if they are appropriate going forward. As my statements from my various funds have come in, I've started the process of evaluating my performance. Of course to evaluate performance, you need some kind of benchmark for comparison. One of the more popular benchmarks? The S&P 500 right? So what was the performance of the S&P 500 last year? Without dividends, it was 0%. That's right, a big goose egg. So if you could muster any old type of return, you beat the market!! Congratulations!! We'll see what my return turns out to be on my portfolio, but it's looking good so far. New investments and reallocations are on the docket for 2012.

Quick entry

It's January 5th and there's still no snow in Chicago and it was in the upper 40's. Awesome. It was so nice today that I was able to go hit more balls at the driving range as I try to get my new swing in order. Each trip out, I hit a few more good shots, but the majority are still bad shots or at least not what I intended to do. A work in progress without a doubt.

Future Headline: Dow crosses 13,000 for first time since January 2008. Is the market overbought??

How long are you keeping up your Christmas tree? Some people have already taken theirs down and seem proud of it. Those are the same people who put it up the day after Thanksgiving. We're keeping ours up until this weekend at least. My church believes they should stay up until January 6th, which is Three Kings Day or the Epiphany, though it will be celebrated the next Sunday which is the 8th. This weekend will be fine though.

The Caiprinha Bowl

Since LL has been spending the last four NYE's or so with her sister and brother-in-law and I've spent the last two with them, I decided it was time to start another tradition. And what is better to start traditions around than family? Not much, but I'll take my chances with football! So how to work football into the weekend? Well, I thought it would be fun to list out a bunch of bowl games, with point spreads, and the Bears game, and have everyone pick the winners against the spread.

But the winner should get more than bragging rights......what though? Some sort of obnoxious trophy! Yeah, that's the ticket! So when LL and her sis went shopping, I asked them to send me some pictures of possible trophies. They did and there were some good ones: a giraffe, a green glass owl, and some other crazy stuff. I didn't respond in time though so they didn't pick anything up.

The next day Greg and I were going shopping for ribs and some other ingredients for dinner (as well as more limes!), so we headed over to Safeway and Marshall's to find something. We found a big pink pig bank (really big and fuzzy), a moose puppet and some other good options. However we settled on this baby:

Pretty sweet huh? It's actually a candle holder. We wanted something bowl-like to commemorate the bowl games going on over the holiday. Unfortunately I've been banned from drinking from it due to the possibly toxic interior. Such is the life of being married to a nurse!

Anyway, we all made our picks and after day one it was hotly contested. I decided to change one of my games for day two, which I promptly lost. Ugh. Going into the second to last game of the weekend, that was the only game I had lost! The Stanford/Oklahoma St. game stood between me and a 9-1 record.

I had OSU and was giving 4 points, which seemed like a losing bet as Stanford pushed the game into overtime. Somehow I would need OSU to score a TD without Stanford scoring or some similar combination resulting in a four point win. Just to get to OT I needed the Stanford kicker to miss a short field goal, which he did. Stanford started with the ball in OT and the kicker missed ANOTHER field goal! When OSU had the ball they completed a pass over the middle to a wide open receiver who dove into the endzone for a touchdown to win by six and I was 9-1!!!! Awesome!! The players stormed the field. Fans came on the field. It was mayhem. Then the referees decided to review the play and called him down at the half yard line! Ugh!! After clearing everyone from the field, there was still a chance if they tried to run it in, but noooooo, they just moved the ball to the middle of the field to set up for a field goal. Arrrrrggghhhh! So I ended up 8-2 against the spread with my only two losses being a game I changed and the crazy ending to the OSU game.

As it turns out, my competition went all 5-5 so I ran away with it! So yes, that's my mantle upon which The Caipirinha Bowl trophy sits!! Sweet!

Finally a New Year's Post

Way too much to even try to catch up on, so I'll do it over a few days. The BIG thing though was our trip to see LL's sister and brother-in-law, Linda and Greg. Both are really nice people and Linda was LL's matron of honor and Greg did a reading (only because I was full on guys already with Rich and Ken).

On NYE last year and this year, we have flown out to D.C./Maryland and relax while watching football and eating. A lot. We go to Fogo de Chao in dowtown D.C. on NYE and Greg makes fresh caipirinhas for us to suck down pretty much all day. If you don't know what a caipirinhas is, it uses Brazilian rum (think gasoline) and then you toss in limes (which are muddled) and a bunch of sugar (or in my case a bunch of Splenda.....9 packets per glass!!). Yeah, you read that right. And they are delicious!!! I could drink them all night and I wish I had one right now. Just awesome.

So in addition to Fogo on NYE, we went to a Mexican restaurant the day we arrived, I made ribs on Monday (which were awesome!), for breakfast I cooked chorizo omelets twice and Linda made French toast another morning. When I say we ate, I mean it!! Lots of "snack" cheese and crackers were consumed too.

So here are some pictures. More on the weekend tomorrow.

The sign of deliciousness. Green disk means bring the food! Flip it to red to get a break.

Our wonderful hosts for the extended weekend, Linda and Greg. Oh, did I mention that we were going to come home on Monday, but then I realized because New Years was on a Sunday (an NFL Sunday) that the bowl games were on Monday. We changed our flight so we could stay an extra day and watch the games.....and make ribs, which would have been too much on Sunday after Fogo on Saturday.

A very blurry phone picture of the capital building. See? We were there!

THE caipirinha station. Yep, it requires it's own station for the four day excursion to drunky land. Fresh limes, Splenda, sugar and cachaca, the Brazilian rum. Wonderful.

Mind you, while Greg and I were drinking and eating, LL and Linda were shopping, going to the movies, watching some football and socializing. Greg and I mostly just watched football and drank. No wonder I was looking forward to it since September!