Hanging with Joe

Happy Valentine's Day!

2012-02-14T17:17:00.002-06:00

Short entry because of the holiday. Hope you're enjoying the day with someone special!!

I heard on the radio that Papa John's, the number 4 pizza company (behind Domino's, Little Caesar's and Pizza Hut), sells heart shaped pizzas on Valentine's Day. Now, these guys sponsored the Super Bowl. Huge company. How many heart shaped pizzas do you think they expect to sell today nationwide? This is the whole nation for the number 4 pizza chain. And they've been selling these pizzas for a few years now. Only 75,000. Seems like a pretty small number for a relatively good idea. Lots and lots of couples go out the day before or day after Valentine's Day which means pizza for dinner on V-Day seems to be fairly common. You'd think they'd sell more than that.

More than one way to skin a rat

2012-02-13T20:23:00.002-06:00

Ok, maybe "skinning" a rat is a little much, so how about killing a rat? As you recall, not too long ago I re-opened the war in Basra against my neighbors' rats. The little buggers started pushing the poison cubes and pellets out of the four holes they had dug, so I had to redeploy T-Rex. He took down two of them in the first three nights on the job and then found it a bit rough going. So I put out reinforcements: a brand new T-Rex right out of the box. BAM! Another kill that night and a few more followed over the next few nights. Then nothing. No movement. No nibbles.

A few days ago, after about a week of no activity, there was another kill. So I decided to fill in the rat holes and see which holes were still active. Much to my surprise, the holes remain filled with dirt! Nothing has left nor entered the rat holes and it's been 3-4 days. I may have won the short-term battle, despite knowing I can never win the war.

Made my rainbow trout with mushrooms and green/red peppers tonight for dinner. Just awesome. So happy!!

Saturday Guy Style

2012-02-12T17:07:00.005-06:00

First and foremost, I found the baby in the King Cake!! While I wasn't treated as a king for the day, I'm sure I'll be on the hook for the King Cake next year. Damn.

When guys go shopping, we don't really go shopping like women. We go to buy something. Saturday was a perfect example. As I've written, the HD on our DirecTV is up and running as it should be and it's pretty sweet. As such, I decided it was time to upgrade our kitchen/pool room television from it's current 27" status to something bigger. Unfortunately, the way the room is situated, hanging it on the wall per se wasn't going to be a great option. The smaller TVwas on a platform that hung off the wall and could rotate a bit. The DVR box sat on top of it and both were strapped to the platform. This all just meant that I was going to have to get creative to get something to work.

A local appliance store, ABT, was having it's annual sale, so I figured that was the place to go and I'd like the prices I had seen in their flier. So LL and I decided to get up on Saturday morning, drive about 45 minutes or so to a bagel shop for a nice breakfast sandwich and then loop back down Milwaukee Avenue to ABT on the way back home. By noon we were home with our new 46" LCD TV.

With the thinness of the new TV, it wouldn't just stand up on the same platform as the old TV. Realizing this was going to be a problem,we bought a TV with a stand. The stand is sufficient to keep the TV on the platform as long as we tied it down with some picture hanging wire. The only thing that was going to be a problem was where to put the DVR receiver. Unfortunately we didn't realize this until we were on our way home. After some discussion though, we came up with a pretty good solution: strap it to the BOTTOM of the platform. Which resulted in this look:

The TV is easily viewable from the cooking area or the table where we eat and has worked out awesomely. We couldn't be happier!

And, it was purchased, delivered and installed in the same day. That's the way guys do it.

Also on Saturday, I had my first softball game of the year in the dome in the burbs. Unfortunately, the game wasn't until 10:00 at night, which really means it wasn't going to start until about 10:30. Ugh. Plus, with the much colder temperatures we've been experiencing the last few days, it was pretty damn cold in the dome. Still, we had fun, won by the slaughter rule and I was 3-3. A good start.

Euro-cicle

2012-02-10T18:55:00.002-06:00

The other day I was watching on show on how the planet was made or something like that and they talked about something of particular interest to me: the next ice age. Scientist agree that the atmosphere is heating up and that the ice caps are melting. It's not debatable, but there is question as to why and what part of the warming is due to human actions and specifically burning fossil fuels. The why is what it is. The result however, means some very specific things.

In very simplified terms, here's what happens: first, the melting of the ice cap causes the water in the northern Atlantic ocean, off the coast of Europe, to be become less salty as more water dilutes the vast ocean. The resulting desalination causes the North Atlantic current, which brings warm water from the equator to the North Atlantic, to slow down. As less warm water is brought north, less heat is released into the North Atlantic region which would normally regulate the temperatures in the region. What should happen is that the slowing will actually cause another ice age in Europe! A good chunk of the region would actually become like mid to northern Canada. Here's an article that I found which also talks about the "conveyor" that is the North Atlantic current. It mentions that it would take 20 years of fresh water runoff to stop the conveyor, so the assumption is that a slowing down could happen much faster and result in the start of an ice age relatively quickly.

So maybe real estate in Europe is going to get a lot cheaper in our lifetime.

No baby from the King Cake yet!

2012-02-09T21:55:00.003-06:00

At some point in the future, a movie is going to be made about what is going on in Syria currently. It's absolutely awful and terrifying. Check out just a day or two from this guy who is one of the group being targeted by the government. I really don't know what I can do to help, but when you don't have water or bread AND you're getting bombed or shot at by snipers, it sees like I should be able to help somehow. But how? I don't want to be watching that movie and thinking: "Holy shit, THAT was going on? Where was I?"

Regarding my entry yesterday, yes, I'm fully aware of that a huge ass King Cake is NOT going to help in my weight loss in anyway. But I didn't go out and BUY the cake! It was a gift. Much like the leftover brownies and the pie were gifts for hosting the Super Bowl party. One of the better things to come out of that party was the leftover guacamole, which we've had on burgers the last two nights. Yes, I fired up the grill despite the 30 degree weather the last couple of days and made enough burgers for two dinners. Good eating!! We also realized that if we add this salsa (heavy on the tomatoes and onions) to the guacamole, it's even better! I'm thinking I might make a batch to help get the proportions right so it's ready for the next party or tailgate!

Ran my 3 miles today in just under 32 minutes and I didn't even feel all that great when I started the run. For my day off tomorrow I'm going to hit the batting cages, so SOME exercise, but not real strenuous stuff. Saturday is my first night of dome softball, so I'll actually have two days off and then hit the weights again on Sunday.

An Older, Better Joe?

2012-02-08T20:10:00.005-06:00

Today was my lifting day at the gym and if you recall, I was going to try to move up in weight. The gym was unusually crowded, though I arrived a little later than normal. The gym only has two bench press setups and both were occupied by people doing multiple sets. So I did my curls, some oblique exercises, my tricep exercise and then finally one of the benches freed up.

Even though my exercises were out of order, I thought I'd still try to up my bench press. After a warm up set and then a middle weight set, I sat down underneath the bar with more weight on it than I've ever attempted to bench and, coincidentally, is the weight I'm trying to get down to from a....weight perspective. Did that make sense? Anyway, as I got ready to bench the weight, I thought, if I can do ten pounds less eight times, then I should be able to do this weight at least once right? Even if I really struggle with it and can't push it up all the way, there's a place to rest the bar half way up. As it turns out, no problem! I did five reps and was jacked! After my max weight, I do another set at a lower weight and this time I added 10 pounds to that as well. Good stuff.

Since I'm stronger than I've ever been (at least from a bench press and curling standpoint) and I'm running three miles twice a week regularly, which I've never really done for any length of time, am I a stronger, if not older, Joe? Seems so. Am I better though? Well my right shoulder is better than ever, or at least since my 20's. My left shoulder is ok, but I do have that pinched nerve in my neck on that side. My weight is higher than I'd like, so that's a negative. All things considered, I'm in some of the best shape of my life. Gotta feel good about that!

Not sure if you know about King Cakes or not, but LL was sent one for her birthday from a friend in New Orleans. Boy is it tasty! It's not too dissimilar from the Christmas wreath dessert my mom makes. Inside this "cake" (it really is more like a braided wreath isn't it?), is a little plastic baby. If you get the piece of cake with the baby in it, you're "king" for the day and you're supposed to host the next party. Cool. Here are some pics:

No baby found yet. I've included a picture of the box in case you want to get one because these things are delicious.....and 'tis the season!

Heavy Lifting

2012-02-07T16:27:00.002-06:00

I seem to be at a loss for a topic today. Weather remains the same. Already talked about the Super Bowl. Work has been fine and steady. So what should I talk about?

As good as anything, I guess, is my weight and workout regimen. One of my longer term goals is to bench my weight, not just once but to workout with it (so a minimum of 4 times). To help achieve that goal I'm running (to reduce my weight thus making the goal easier) and sticking to my lifting routine (every third day). Now clearly the bench press is simply one measure of strength, but I'm hoping it helps in softball and golf as well as just keeping myself healthy.

So anyway, before the Super Bowl party, I did my (relatively) new lifting routine and benched my max weight 8 times! Normally when I hit 8 reps, I move up the weight the next time. Doing so now will get me probably within 5-10 pounds of my weight, depending on how much I move up. Actually, the new weight is my goal weight, so hopefully that's where the two will meet.

When I lift, I don't just do one set of bench presses though. There's actually a warm up set and then another set and a higher weight before I get to the max weight. Then I do another set at a lower weight to finish off the workout. So moving up this time will probably include an increase in the second set of reps and the fourth set as well, so who knows how I'll end up physically at the end of the workout. We'll see tomorrow!

The Rest of the Story

2012-02-06T17:35:00.000-06:00

When preparing for my Super Bowl party, I sort of figure that since the game isn't until 5:30, I can pretty much cook what I need to cook during the day and if I prep some stuff the day before, I'll have even more time available day of game. So in my email invitation, I said people can come anytime after 1:00, which is what I said last year and no one showed up until 4ish anyway. This year though I invited Markakis (AKA Nick), who is 20 something. The morning went by quicker than expected as I had to go to the storage locker to get a cooler and table and then the office to get extra chairs. As 1:00 rolled around I had still not yet made it to the gym for my scheduled day of lifting. After telling LL that I was going anyway, she said "Fine, but if anyone shows up, I'm not letting them in!". She was just kidding, but it did get me to thinking. So around 1:30 as I'm walking into the gym, I email Markakis and tell him to come after 3 instead of his projected time of 2:30 just to be safe. He texts me back, "You're killing me! I'm on the bus!" Doh! So I tell him not to sweat it because it would be kind of funny if he did show up and LL would have to entertain him while drying her hair. Instead though he turned around and went home and I picked him up after my workout. Plus Bill the Bear was arriving early, which I did not know, as his fiance is not interested in football and didn't want to come this year.

So I picked them up, apologized and we had plenty of beer and played pool while LL and I finished preparing some of the food. Good times.

Future Headline:

NFL changes key rule after Super Bowl

The NFL will have to change a rule that allows a team that is winning the game to play with ANY number of men on the field and only get penalized 5 yards for it. The trailing team would get 5 yards and the down over, but what they don't get back is the time it took to run the play.

This happened in the Super Bowl as the Patriots had the ball with about 20 seconds left and about 60 yards to go for a score. The Giants had 12 men on the field and were penalized for it, but they successfully defended the play leaving the Patriots 55 yards away from a score but only about 12 seconds left. Even at our party I said I'd put 14 guys out there for the next play!! As long as you stop the play, time runs down they only get 5 yards. The game can't end on a defensive penalty so you have to play with 11 guys for the last play of the game, but it's a serious loophole that has to be closed before it impacts the outcome of a meaningful game.

Super Bowl!

2012-02-05T22:47:00.002-06:00

The Super Bowl and our party celebrating it, is the reason why this post is going to be very limited.

Attendees were: Ricardo and Jodi, Bill the Bear (sans wifey who is not a football fan), Smitty and wife Beth, Markakis (AKA Nick), Naperville Greg with wife Kleveland Kim and a friend of Jodi's whom we know from mutual friend's parties and tailgating at Bears games.

Food on the menu was:

Chili with crescent rolls and/or whole grain bread

Guacamole

Salsa (courtesy of Nick)

Cheesy potatoes (courtesy of Kim)

Some venison sticks (courtesy of Greg)

Mushrooms stuffed with sausage (delicious!)

Brownies (Kim)

An angel food cake dessert (Jodi)

Cheese and crackers (Beth and Smitty)

Pepper crusted pork slices as well as pepperoni (Nick)

And lots of chips!

Bill also made some beer at home and brought it. It was great! For the first time I made Snake Bites at home (1/2 lager and 1/2 cider with some black currant liquor). They turned out great too! Lots of fun was had by all....but boy am I tired!

Tiring day

2012-02-02T22:39:00.002-06:00

Today I had to go see a client who had some year-end financial statement issues. Actually I didn't "have" to go see them, but a) I was pretty sure it would be more productive than trying to work through the data over the phone and b) it's a client which I particularly enjoy seeing. In fact, after I was done meeting with their bookkeeper, the principals asked me if I wanted to go to lunch. Good stuff: a fun, free lunch after helping out the client. Unfortunately even with me on site, we couldn't finish all that we needed to do so I'll be going back down next week.

When I got home though I was pretty tired and it's a lifting day for me. I was questioning whether I would be able to go to the gym at all and if I did, would it be productive? Well I did go to the gym and it was a pretty solid lifting effort. Tomorrow I'm back to running as scheduled. Today it was really all the thinking I had to do at the client's office that caused me to be tired I think. Some days you really have to put your thinking cap on and today was one of those days. That's good though. It's good to be challenged sometimes.

Birthday Dinner!

2012-02-01T17:42:00.000-06:00

Yesterday was LL's birthday and we decided to head south to the Maple Tree Inn for some cajun food with our good friends Terry and Sandie (who live about 20 minutes from the restaurant). I should have taken pictures of the food and festivities, but forgot as we enjoyed the company. To top it off, they paid for dinner!! It was sort of a combo birthday gift for Laura and thank you gift for taking Terry to a Bears game. So nice of them!!!

After every visit with Terry and Sandie we comment on how we need to get together with them more often. Hopefully that will happen this time! We're working on Hawks game and dinner. I also had the thought, since we were just trying to plan a trip up north for a boys weekend, that Terry would be a great fit with the group going up there: he smokes cigars (I don't but the other guys do), drinks whiskey (I don't but everyone else does) and loves to cook a good piece of meat. He'd be fun to hangout with up there. First I have to find a time when I can make it up there!!

Here's a picture of Terry and Sandie from down in Puerto Rico. I also have a bunch of pics from their annual Memorial Day party, but this pic is fine.

Unfortunately LL didn't get her big birthday gift yet. We decided to buy each other new iPads for our birthdays (mine is in March), but then I read that a NEW iPad is coming out at the end of this month or the beginning of March. Seems silly to buy old technology if we only have to wait a month. We'll stay updated on the new release and see if we have to breakdown and buy the iPad II instead due to delays. Hopefully not!

It was nice while it lasted

2012-01-30T18:40:00.002-06:00

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

2012-01-29T21:22:00.004-06:00

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

2012-01-27T19:07:00.002-06:00

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!

2012-01-26T17:08:00.003-06:00

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

2012-01-25T22:10:00.003-06:00

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

2012-01-24T12:11:00.003-06:00

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

2012-01-22T20:13:00.003-06:00

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

2012-01-20T16:20:00.002-06:00

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

2012-01-19T18:10:00.003-06:00

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

2012-01-18T19:30:00.002-06:00

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.

2012-01-17T18:32:00.004-06:00

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?

2012-01-16T22:05:00.002-06:00

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

2012-01-15T20:47:00.003-06:00

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?

2012-01-13T19:30:00.002-06:00

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.

2012-01-12T18:08:00.002-06:00

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?

2012-01-10T21:10:00.003-06:00

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

2012-01-09T17:08:00.002-06:00

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

2012-01-08T16:01:00.003-06:00

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!!

2012-01-07T18:14:00.002-06:00

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

2012-01-05T17:48:00.002-06:00

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

2012-01-04T17:51:00.004-06:00

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

2012-01-03T21:17:00.005-06:00

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!

Future Headlines

2011-12-29T20:45:00.003-06:00

It's December 29th and there's still no snow! Awesome. In fact, I went to the driving range and hit 100 balls in the slightly heated outdoor driving range a few blocks from our home. Working on my new swing will take time, so the more swings I put in now, the better I'll be come spring.

And the lack of snow led me to a "Future Headline", which is a new feature I'm going to add to my blog periodically. It came to me earlier in the week and I don't know how often I'll be able to write one, but we'll see what happens. This one is "No Snow Means Extra Cash". It'll be an article that details the budget windfall the city will receive from not having to salt the streets and use plows to remove feet of snow during the month of December. Actually, if you live in the Midwest, your city may have a similar story written about it. It's been really nice this year after a brutal winter last year. The "experts" had predicted a much worse winter than last year including more snow and colder weather, so far, fingers crossed, they are 0-2.

It's Joisey Ken's birthday today!!! Happy Birthday Buddy!!!

Ken and Ricardo.

Ken and my niece.

Ken and his wife Dawn.

Lighting it up!

2011-12-28T22:45:00.004-06:00

You'd think we'd take a night off after the long string of events, but NO! Tonight we were off to take advantage of free tickets to the Brookfield Zoo and to see their zoo lights. Brookfield Zoo is a much more elaborate (and expensive) zoo in the suburbs as opposed to the free Lincoln Park Zoo which also has zoo lights (which we went to last year). So I loaded up my flask.....oh, did I not mention that of course we're going to drink a little while walking around in the cold? Well we did, but actually I didn't know that they would have various hot toddy type drinks available for purchase otherwise I might not have brought the flask. Cider with some Captain Morgan in it is pretty tasty to be walking around with outside. So on to the pictures!

Part of the long entrance walk. It was $9 for parking and another fee for the zoo if you didn't have a free ticket. We got there around 4:30 as traffic downtown was worse than we thought it would be.

This tree is sponsored by people from LL's hometown of Shorewood. These trees were all over the zoo and were sponsored by different groups. The groups then got to decorate the trees. Cool.

The real attraction was the lights though. Here's a sample shot.

And one scene that I particularly liked.

They also had an ice carver working on huge blocks of ice. Here's a dragon he made.

And an elaborate swan. We was working on an image of Odie from the Garfield cartoon, kind of a let down after seeing these two completed works.

There were animals too!! Some indoor and some outdoor. These pics are all indoor shots though. Here's a monkey with a miniature hippo swimming underneath him.

Here's a mandril and two otters snuggling up because it's time for bed. As kids would squeal, the otters would pop up and look around to see what the commotion was about. Very cute.

And what zoo visit would be complete without a picture of a meerkat??

As a whole, we thought the light show at the Lincoln Park Zoo was BETTER than the zoo lights at Brookfield. We had to go to check it out though so that we could at least have an informed opinion.

Tomorrow: a light day of activities as we leave for DC on Friday!

Post Christmas Tale

2011-12-27T21:01:00.003-06:00

Are the holidays over yet?? Nope, not by a long shot in the Sutton household! Not even sure where to start regarding the weekend. There was family, food, friends. People you wanted to see...people you could do without seeing. Lots of gifts were received (including a new computer!) and given (I'm much better at giving gifts than receiving them). Food you could eat all day and food that does nothing but expand your waistline...and boy did it expand! Actually, as of Monday morning I was actually down a pound or two from where I was going into the weekend, so that was a nice surprise. On Monday night though, Naperville Greg and Kleveland Kim came over and we had cheese, sausage, crackers and then ordered Mexican food. Ugh. The evening was great, don't get me wrong, we hung out at home and talked for like four hours. We haven't seen them since the wedding (if you remember Greg played the guitar while I sang at the reception).

After being in Joliet for a night and Naperville for a day, we arrived at home late on Christmas Day (we left at halftime during the Bears game). Our paper was still on the doorstep and an envelope was stuck in our door. Inside the envelope was a gift card for a swanky restaurant to which I've never gone despite living in the neighborhood for 20 years. How swanky is this place? Well, inside the envelope was a $100 gift card and that didn't even cover dinner! We each had the lowest priced glass of wine (which was still tasty) an appetizer, an entree and we shared a side. The total for the two of us with taxes and tip? A paltry $160!!! Unbelievable. Forget about going there ESDNM. It was good, but I'm fairly sure I won't be darkening their doorstep again. Oh, the restaurant name is Boka.

And why did the neighbors leave us a $100 gift card? Well, they were heading out of town for the holidays and the card was expiring at the end of the year, so they gave it to us. Earlier in the year we had gone to an expensive restaurant with them called Gejas for fondue. I had a gift card for $100 and thought the four of us could eat for that, but I was sadly mistaken. Anyway, our food was good at Boka, but it's just crazy ass expensive.

Christmas was good with midnight mass at LL's family church this year (last year we came home on Christmas eve and went to my church). LL's father sings in the choir, so we enjoy going, plus they have a bell.....what...gaggle? No, not gaggle. A bell team? A group of ringers? I don't know what they call themselves, but people who play bells. Pretty cool.

Of the many gifts we gave this year, probably the most interesting (though LL may disagree) was a 6 month subscription to Ancestry.com that we got for my parents (mainly my dad, who turned 75 on Friday). It was the international edition of Ancestry.com too, so he wasn't limited to researching just in the U.S. Pretty cool and I'm glad I have my dad around to buy gifts for, but man it gets tougher and tougher every year!! For his birthday, we took my parents out to Rosebud in Naperville which they had never been to, but really enjoyed.

So if you're keeping track, that was: party at Ricardo's on Thursday, dinner with parents on Friday, dinner with LL's parents and family on Christmas eve, dinner with my family on Christmas day, Greg and Kim over on Monday and the very swank Boka tonight. Wow....that's a lot...even for me!

Merry Christmas!!

2011-12-23T17:31:00.005-06:00

Some more catch-up photos for your enjoyment. I am going to Joliet to LL's parents' house and then to my folks on Christmas Day, so I won't be writing again until Monday. Merry Christmas!!

From the last tailgate of the year. Let's see who all is here: Leah (girlfriend of Jack), Markakis (aka Nick), Blind Mender, Jack, Jack's brother Tim (also a softball teammate along with Jack), Marek (the son of a friend) and his girlfriend. Of course front and center is Mr. Heater!

Snapped this picture in a parking lot. Antlers....ha!! Today I saw a car with candy canes instead. Very fun.

Christmas tree pictures!!! In the natural light and lit up at night. Yes, there are TWO Bears ornaments....can you find them?

The Eastlake Studio crew at their company Christmas party. They are one of my clients and the party was at one of the owner's home (father of Marek from above). Can't remember why we had those on.....I'm sure there was a reason.

During the Yankee Gift Swap. It was pretty funny. Lots of crazy gifts.

One of the owners, Jon and his wife Stacey.

The owners opening their gifts from the staff....whatever they were they were not as good as iPads.

Christmas Meme

2011-12-21T14:53:00.004-06:00

It's been a while since I've had any meme's on my blog, but I read this one on Terri's blog the other day (she got it from someone else's blog) and I thought it was fun. So here we go:

1. The Christmas song I can listen to even in June is: two of them: Baby it's cold outside and I'm dreaming of a white Christmas. Sometimes I'll sing those to myself while playing softball or golf!

2. Hot chocolate, eggnog or mulled wine? Mulled wine is the tallest midget in this group. Not excited about any of them.

3. When do you put your Christmas decorations up? Whenever I damn well feel like it!! Sometimes just after Thanksgiving, sometimes a few weeks later. It all depends on my schedule during that time and I'm rarely in a hurry. No stress please!

4. What are you having for Christmas dinner? I'm guessing turkey, but it could be ham, or it could be both! Whatever it is, it will be delicious!

5. What’s your favorite Christmas tradition? Hmmm, well it USED to be being allowed to open stockings before my parents were awake and downstairs....that was fun. Also, opening a relative's gift the night before. Now I'm not sure what the tradition is/will be as it's all new with LL and our families.

6. Have you ever gone carol singing? I don't think so. Not that I remember at least. Not much of a caroler outside of church.

7. When did you discover the truth about Santa? Absolutely no idea.

8. How do you decorate your Christmas tree? Very minimally. Usually one color of light and 20-30 ornaments.

9. What’s the best thing about Christmas? People being nice to each other, except at the mall is one. Finding a really cool gift is another.

10. All I want for Christmas is: the pain from my pinched nerve to go away and to drop 10 pounds. Probably not going to get either!!

Catch up, not ketchup, though there are condiments today

2011-12-20T19:18:00.006-06:00

Sooo busy with the holidays, decorations, parties and such, that I could not write nor read any blogs yesterday. Here's a little catch up:

Saturday morning we awoke to snow all over the place! Aighhhh! There wasn't supposed to be snow yet. Well, there should be snow statistically speaking at this time, but there wasn't any predicted for this year at this time. I was very much enjoying that fact and love a good green Christmas. Fortunately the snow was only a minor annoyance as it didn't accumulate much on the sidewalks or streets and was pretty much relegated to the grass and trees. By Monday all of the snow was gone and all was right in the world again. That said, the snow was the impetus in LL and me staying inside most of the day on Saturday and working on Christmas cards and decorating the tree.

LL took one of her copious vacation days on Monday that she has left this year (while STILL carrying over 10 days into next year), but was a little disheartened to find out how much work I had to do. She would prefer that we just snuggle in bed or on the sofa or anywhere really and make a day of it. We did get to have lunch together though and our lunch of choice at home normally is PB and J with a few chips on the side: simple, some carbs, some protein, relatively light....good eating. Often LL will make the sandwiches but for whatever reason I was making them Monday. So I got out the jelly and the PB and started toasting the bread (oh yeah, we toast the bread first).

"Hey, this jelly is darker than normal. Did you get raspberry preserves like normal?"

"Yes I did."

Spreading jelly on the bread.

"Hmmmm, yep. Yes you did. My bad. Why is it darker than normal? Does it look darker than normal to you?"

"It does!"

Spreading peanut butter.

"It almost looks like it could be prune jelly or something. Odd. You just bought that right?"

"Nope. We had that one and the new one is in the pantry."

"Ohhhhhhh, I think I know what's up. Check that date on that bottle."

"December 1996!!! Ewwwwwwwww!!!!! I'm NOT eating that sandwich."

"Oh c'mon, it's probably fine."

"No. And you're not eating it either. We'll just make new sandwiches."

Then I remembered more fully that I "found" the jelly in the back of a shelf the other day and put it in the rotation for use. Whoops. Bad Joe. Remember to check dates!!!!

It's all over but the shouting

2011-12-18T22:11:00.002-06:00

A great weekend came to a somewhat horrific end when the Bears lost at home to the lowly Seattle Seahawks, 38-14. That, my friends, is an ass kicking. Not only did they lose, but their #1 wide receiver (well #1 according to everyone except the GM and head coach)got bent over backwards and has to have surgery to stabilize a vertebra. Ugh. So, in case you're reading this years from now, that's their QB, RB, WR, and #1 draft pick at right tackle all lost for the season at various points. So it's all over but the shouting for the Bears, plus it was the last home game so no more tailgating.

It's the week before Christmas!!! Aaaarrrrrgggggghhhhhh! I gotta get moving on a bunch of gifts still! Six days left....it's all over but the shouting!

Friday night we headed over to a good buddy and client's house for their company Christmas party. It was the fourth company party we've been to this year. Good fun! The employees were surprised when they opened their gifts and inside were new iPads! Pretty sweet gift!! They're pretty successful and have fewer than 10 employees, so it's not too huge of an expense, but still very nice.

On Saturday we trimmed our tree, Frazier, with lights and ornaments. Oh, did I not mention that we named our tree Frazier? He's a Fraser Fir of course, so the name was pretty much a given. Frazier is decked out now in white lights (a compromise) with red balls and other ornaments. But that wasn't all of our Christmas cheer for the weekend. Oh no. Most of the day was spent labeling and putting together Christmas cards. LL finished all of hers, but I had just about twice as many to send out, so I didn't quite finish.

Then Saturday night we went to dinner with my good friend Joe D and his wife Kendra. We drove up to Evanston and they drove down from Glencoe, so it was about half-way or so. Dinner was at the Celtic Knot where the food was pretty good and my snakebite was pretty tasty. If you haven't had a snakebite, look it up and order one the next time you're in a bar. They are awesome.

Much to do

2011-12-15T19:32:00.004-06:00

Busy day today doing non-work stuff. Had a dentist appointment in the morning out in Naperville.....yes, to the same dentist I went to as a kid. Over the years I've had a bunch of dentists downtown, but they've come and gone for one reason or another so I finally just went back to the guy who has been there for 30+ years. It was just a cleaning, but now that I'm insured again (thanks LL!), I'll go every 6 months.

Since I was out in the 'ville, I headed over to see my folks and take them to lunch. We went to OCB, Old Country Buffet for those of you not in the know. While my folks eat there quite often, $13 for two people!, I've never been and was hesitant due to unknown sodium content of the food. However, I was pleasantly surprised with their decent salad bar (including baby spinach, two kinds of lettuce mixes, garbanzo beans and egg)and baked chicken. They had fried chicken too, but I have to stay away from that. And while I was there, I was able to meet the employees who talk to my folks when they come in and generally treat them very well. Nice!

Got back home just before rush hour got bad, answered some emails and printed labels for our Christmas cards, which always takes longer than I think it should. Generally it's my fault as I keep the records in Excel and have to import them into Word AND into the appropriate template to match my labels. Still, it beats the hell out of writing them all out!!

Being Mrs. Sutton

2011-12-14T20:19:00.002-06:00

Still no snow in Chicago which is awesome. Every day that passes is another day closer to spring and another day to cross off the calendar with no snow on it! C'monnnnnn green Christmas!!!

It's tough to be Mrs. Sutton. You have to put up with a guy who plays softball, golf and goes to the gym a lot. Softball involves traveling too and tournaments on the weekend usually take up entire days. Golf means I'm gone for 4-6 hours at a stretch. And then there's the Turkey Bowl on Thanksgiving morning which seems to be cursed with bad weather.

Once you get past all of that, you get to deal with my wonderful physical issues including: allergies that result in gross symptoms like loud nose blowing, Meniere's disease that leads to vertigo episodes, a pinched nerve and whatever injury my sports endeavors lead to. The Meniere's means sodium limitation which have been well documented here. We try to keep our dinner sodium content pretty low in order to not trigger anything. Today LL made dinner (using our new crock pot for the first time) and put in a flavor packet which she thought was just 220 mg of sodium in total, but it was per serving and there were 8 servings in this tiny packet!! My ear started ringing shortly after dinner, not a good sign.

Yes, it's tough to be Mrs. Sutton because here she did a very good thing by making me dinner (she was working from home today) and it ends up inflaming a situation I was trying to reign in during the week. It was an honest mistake and I'm willing to risk too much sodium if she's willing to cook! With people over on Sunday and then going out on Monday, my sodium level was already too high and I wanted to use the week to detox essentially. Friday we have a party to attend and are going out to eat on Saturday with friends before another Bears game on Sunday. I'll just have to be extra careful the rest of the week.

Boyz night out!

2011-12-13T11:31:00.004-06:00

Last night was a Holiday Boyz Night Out. The Boyz involved were: me, Ricardo, Smitty, Bill the Bear and Markakis (aka Nick). Thanks to Smitty for pushing for us to get together, though at the time we made the plan, we didn't know we were going to get together on Sunday for the Bears game anyway. No biggee, two days/nights of drinking instead of one!

We started off at Gale Street Inn, like we did for my 41st birthday (see Bill, I told you!). It wasn't just dinner though; it was a relaxing, long, drink and dinner event spanning a few hours. Very fun. No trip to Martini's this time though. We did however go a store front or two down the street to another bar with an Old Style sign in front of it.

Many beverages later it was midnight and time to head home to what would undoubtedly be an unproductive Tuesday.

Here's a picture of the ribs at Gale Street. Two half slabs stacked on top of each other. On Mondays they are $5 off. Yum!

Here are the da Boyz!! Markakis on the left, Smitty (prone), Bill behind him and Ricardo giving me the bird. Nice.

Our bartender for the evening, from Romania, Monique. She was very nice and even bought Ricardo a drink! She didn't get upset when Nick and I decided to play a game of "see who can get popcorn in the cash register". Ha! Good fun.

A catch-up picture: our Christmas tree. Not decorated yet, but we have the decorations ready to go.

And a picture of the common sink area between two bathrooms at a Korean barbecue restaurant of all places. The women's bathroom is to the left and the men's is to the right, but out of the picture.

Oh, and yesterday was the anniversary of the Metrodome roof collapsing. Fortunately there's no snow yet in Chicago and none in the forecast for the next week. Yay!!!

Busy 5 days! Looking forward to relaxing a bit on Monday

2011-12-11T20:36:00.003-06:00

Tree hunting was a success, but not what we really wanted to do. When we got up Saturday morning to take ESDNM to the airport prior to going tree hunting, it was a balmy 15 degrees....too damn cold for wandering around trying to find a good tree. Hell, we ended up going to Home Depot on the way home and it was too cold to stand outside there and look at the trees that were already cut and bagged! Still, it was LL's first real tree and OUR first tree, so it was special nonetheless. Next up: decorating the tree.

It was a busy end of the week with ESDNM in town and long days of planning meetings with our clients. We started at 8 and ended around 5, one day til 6, with difficult meetings for 2 hours at a crack. It was tough, but good for the clients and good for project planning for next year.

One of the clients had their Christmas party on Friday night to which we were invited. The company isn't huge in terms of employees, maybe 20 or so and probably 35-40 with spouses. Good fun though and I normally don't get to spend much time with anyone on the staff other than the C-suite folks and the owner, so it was good to talk to some of the other employees. Plus the food and drinks were great!

On Sunday we had five folks over to watch the Bears debacle in Denver. Ricardo and Jodi, Bill the bear (wife Nadine was sick...get better Nadine!!), Smitty and wife Beth were the gang and we had fun cheering and swearing together. What an awful loss. A ten point lead with 4 minutes left and a three point lead with the ball and two minutes left and they had the ball on Denver's 35 in overtime and they couldn't win. Just awful. Marion Barber was once again the goat. This time he went out of bounds instead of falling down in bounds and keeping the clock running and then fumbled the ball in overtime while they were in field goal position.

Busy, busy, busy. --Hermey

2011-12-08T21:22:00.002-06:00

Lots of work since ESDNM came to town and it finishes up tomorrow, followed by a client Christmas party in the evening.

Nothing great to say other than we might go Christmas tree hunting on Saturday! First time for LL even PICKING OUT a Christmas tree. First time for me going to a tree farm to cut down a tree. Should be fun!

Random Picture Day

2011-12-06T20:39:00.004-06:00

The next three days are pretty packed with ESDNM in town and mucho client work to do. So with my mind stuck on work things, here are some pictures:

The Punke clan at the bowling alley for their company party. L to R is: Jonathon, Jessica, Sara, Doug Jr. and Doug Sr. They sit next to me at the Bears games and we tailgate together.

Another Punke picture but this one has Jr's best man in the picture and their friend Ted (far right). Ted's a little odd and sang "My Ding-a-Ling" during the karaoke portion of the evening. Sr got a kick out of me saying that he could NOT sing that song in my neighborhood. No sir.

LL bowling on lane one. She was a good sport about the long drive and ended up having fun!

This past weekend at the tailgate were: Andy (AKA Sausage), Blind Mender (sporting his www.conversextion.com t-shirt) and Nick (AKA Markakis or dumb dego.....his last name is not Markakis but he is Italian.....it's complicated). Oh and Mr. Heater. We didn't need the heater to start, but it got pretty chilly later on!

It was Jessica's birthday and Sr asked me to get a cake. Instead of that, I had a local restaurant owner make me "Birthday Cupcakes" instead! One letter per cupcake and in Bears colors. Awesome.

Our first party of the holiday season! Very swank!

The old-timey club ceiling.

An odd picture. It's not a Fibonacci sequence, but I enjoyed it. Look it up.

A recently posted picture of our opening day tailgate. I'm going to look back at this in January too. Wow was the weather nice!!!

Offseason Ugliness

2011-12-05T10:53:00.002-06:00

The Bears lost yesterday, at home, against the 4-7 Chiefs 10-3. The only touchdown came on a hail Mary pass at the end of the first half which Urlacher knocked down right into the hands of a Chiefs runningback. Unbelievable. Roy Williams made his presence known at WR again by dropping a pass on the goal line, right into the hands of a Chiefs player. Just ridiculous. His explanation was even worse: I make my cut at the goal line and there's this "big brown thing" coming right at me so I put my hands up to at least try to grab it.

Seriously?? Did you really just say that? You're a wide receiver in the NFL, during a game, in a route that's called for you and you're surprised that the ball is coming at you? You em effing idiot.

Earlier this season our #1 draft pick, Carimi, went out with a knee injury because the guy next to him, Spencer, got blown up by the defensive lineman and Carimi tripped on him. This game our other offseason acquisition, Matt Spaeth, whiffed on a block and the lineman put his helmet right on Matt Forte's knee, giving him a sprained MCL and putting him out 2-6 weeks. Nice job on those offseason moves. Anymore pickups like those and we might as well not even play!!

Fortunately for the Bears, their wildcard opposition (NY Giants, Atlanta and Detroit) also lost and they did not lose ground in the playoff race. Still, it's a game they should have won and won easily. It also brings into question how they are going to beat the likes of Denver and Minnesota on the road. Those teams aren't any worse than the Chiefs. Could be a tough end to the year.

Random Perfection

2011-12-02T13:17:00.004-06:00

The December party train has left the station! Last night was actually a two party night for us, but we opted to attend only one. Last year, and again this year, my church and a law firm I like both had their parties on the same night. The church party starts earlier, so last year we attended it and then went to the lawyers' party. That seemed a bit much for us this year, so we just drove down for the dress-up-like-a-big-boy party. They always have great food and of course a multitude of drinks which are all free and it's held at swanky club where the firm picks up the tab on the valet service. Nice!

And I came up with another perfect moment that was special to me and you can do it to! It was probably 10 years ago and I was working for Morningstar making a good chunk of money and my company stock options just got valued at A LOT of money. But that's money that's "at risk" still, so it's not like I had the cash in hand. However, I felt pretty wealthy and was very happy. That night, I went to an Indian restaurant (that's now closed) where you could get a solid Indian meal for two for like $20-$25. Ok, it wasn't the NICEST place in the world, but it was consistent and always filling.

Anyway, while I sat across the table from my significant other at the time, I noticed another couple not too far away at another table. They seemed very nice, younger, casually dressed, chatting with each other and being courteous to others as well. So as we finished our meal, I asked the waiter to bring me their check as well. It wasn't that much money to me, but I had a feeling it was to them. They stopped us as we walked out to thank us and see if they knew us. I said, "No, you don't know me, but you seem really nice. Have a great night!" And that was it. A perfectly random act of kindness. Those are the best.

More Perfect Moments

2011-11-30T17:19:00.002-06:00

Actually I'm going to start this entry by removing one perfect moment. Though it was a great afternoon, shooting par was not a perfect moment per se. During the round I had some perfect moments that I remember clearly though, two in fact, the first after hitting a shot onto the green and near the stick which prompted me to think "this is how the pros feel all the time" as I just knew I was going to hit the shot where I hit it and executed the shot as good as possible for me. Then on the last hole I stood over a 8 foot putt that I needed to sink for birdie and a par 72 and I just knew I was going to roll it in and I did.

Alexis asked about perfect business moments and their noticeable absence. After pondering that statement (see, I read the comments!), I drew the conclusion that it's hard for me to have perfect moments in business because of the nature of what I do and did. Almost every decision has had a longer term payoff and the payoffs were almost always from a decision made some time previously. For instance, hiring someone. I made plenty of good hires, but you don't know that at the time and you're not "in the moment" and lucid about the action and outcome. Does that make sense? You don't the hire is a good one until much later. You don't know an investment decision is good until much later. So nothing really stands out from a work perspective.

Here's something that does stand out: getting sick in high school. Time to weave something magical to get this to work right? Actually it's not too difficult. I was a freshman, always a tough time, and it was the Fall semester so it was still very new. After struggling to get to school because I didn't feel well, I really started to feel it as I closed my locker and headed towards my first class. Then it hit me; I was definitely going to throw up. I calmly walked over to a drinking fountain, one of the big old ones that are embedded into the side a wall not the free standing metal boxes, and hurled. It was a nice, controlled, matter of fact hurling with no extra dry heaves or spillage. Hardly anyone even noticed and I felt AWESOME afterwards. After rinsing out my mouth and getting some gum, I headed off to class and didn't even go home.

Finally, for this entry at least, was a perfect moment involving the law. It was a few years ago, maybe 8 or so, and I was headed to a Cubs game. As I was walking down the street which connected to Clark street (which runs to Wrigley Field), I saw a guy running away from the stadium and heading down an alley. It looked really suspicious so I ran after him, just what the police want you to do right? When I got to the alley, he wasn't in sight, so I headed down relatively quietly. As far as he knew, I wasn't there. After a few minutes I saw him behind some garbage cans next to a garage. I ran around the cans, grabbed him and bent his arm behind his back so his hand was moving up towards his head (standard move for disabling people). I said, "I don't know what the hell you did or who you're running from, but we're going to go find out." As we got to the entrance to the alley, a plain clothes cop came running up to us with handcuffs and his badge on display. "I'll take it from here." he said. "Thanks man." Turns out he sold someone fake tickets and took off running. And that was it.

Perfect Moments

2011-11-28T20:20:00.002-06:00

Saturday morning, a lazy day after the late night in Dwight, became a defacto movie day. A day actually turns out to be very long when started with a movie, followed by another movie and then a third. The weather wasn't very pleasant so staying inside was pretty easy.

The first movie we watched was called "Super" with Rainn Wilson. It wasn't LL's favorite as there were some graphic scenes (one character gets half their face blown off), but I enjoyed it. Early in the movie Rainn's character, a short order cook at a greasy spoon, looks at two drawings that he hung up on his wall that were of "Perfect Moments" in his life. He had only two: his wedding day (to his soon to be lost to drugs new wife) and the second was of him on the street telling a policeman which way a suspect went as he passed Rainn. That was it, but they were his perfect moments in his life where he took action and everything was clear, happy and....well, perfect. At the end of the movie, the walls of his room are covered with drawings of perfect moments.

This made me think of perfect moments in my life. These moments just jump out clearly in my mind. Now, many OTHER moments that aren't perfect jump out in my mind as well. So what are some of my perfect moments? My wedding day without a doubt and singing to LL has to top the list. That was absolutely perfect.

There were two golf related perfect moments: shooting a par 72 and hitting a hole-in-one, after hitting my first shot into the water so really it was a hole-in-three.

There's a few softball moments that seemed perfect to me as well. The first one happened down in Florida in about the third or fourth game of a tournament. There were runners at first and third in the last inning and we were up by a run after the opponents had mounted a comeback. With two outs and the heat of Florida beating down on us, I knew the hitter was going to try to pull it past me at third. And he did.....try at least. I dove to my left, snagged the ball and threw to second from my knees to Andy (aka sausage) to end the game.

Another perfect moment was also a softball play was on the fields at Disney in Orlando. Before the game started, I checked out how much room I had between third base and the fence by the dugout. It's good to know these things when you're playing on a new field as there can be holes, slopes, rocks, patches of cement or just about anything preventing a potential catch. Here however, there were no issues. In the second inning, a hitter popped a ball up foul towards the third base dugout and I raced over, slid and made the catch while sliding into the fence. It was the third out of the inning and then I led off the next inning. Our team had yet to get a hit due, in part, to sun issues and bad approaches, but I singled to center to get us rolling.

Finally, at least of what I'm recalling currently, I collected baseball cards that my dad had collected when he was 13 years old and had sold in the '70's for some much needed money for the family, and then gave them to him as a Christmas gift. There wasn't a dry eye that Christmas. Here's my first blog entry about it.

Any perfect moments that you'd care to share?

Some Sunday Pictures

2011-11-27T18:21:00.003-06:00

Spent the day, after church, watching football and specifically the Bears. A tough loss, but without Cutler at QB, it was to be expected. One play before half cost created a 10 point difference as we were denied a TD and they returned an interception to our 10 yard line that ended up in 3 pts for them. Stupid pass play that was squarely on Martz, the offensive coordinator.

Friday night we made our second trip of the year to Dwight, IL, about 90 minutes away to visit our friends The Punkes (Punk-ees). They sit next to me at the Bears game and we went to Jr.'s wedding in September. The reason for this trip was an office party for Sr.'s company held at a bowling alley. Food, drink and bowling....awesome fun.

Here is the Punke clan: Jr., Sr., Jessica and Johnathon.

The bar in the bowling alley had a granite counter top. If you pay enough, not sure how much, they will play Ring of Fire and drizzle vodka around the horseshoe shaped counter and light it on fire. Pretty cool. You can't get that in Chicago. The cops would close that down in heartbeat.

I realized that I hadn't posted these pics on my blog yet. These are pics of me practicing for the singing element of the reception with Naperville Greg.

Here, I'm drawing the layout of the reception so Greg knows what to expect. We were in the office and the marker board helped here.

In this picture, I drew a woman's head and used the guitar case as her body and pretended it was LL. It gave me a visual for practice.

And here's Greg on the guitar. He really drove the need to practice. I really didn't think it was all THAT important, though I wanted to but we couldn't get together for several weeks due to scheduling. We finally did get together the week before I left for the wedding and it really was helpful. We were all ready to go after about 90 minutes or so. It must have been good enough since we pulled it off at the reception.

The Turkey Bowl

2011-11-26T14:18:00.004-06:00

As I mentioned, I participate in a Turkey Bowl (flag football game) every Thanksgiving morning for the last four years. Normally we play in the back of a school in a big open field, but this year we were able to play on an actual football field. Where we play is in Matteson, IL, about an hour plus away from me without traffic, which is normally the case on Thanksgiving morning. Last year it was rainy and cold, but this year was supposed to be nice and in the 50's. Unfortunately, it was actually in the 40's with a windchill in the 30's. LL was in the stands the whole time as the only fan to weather the cold the entire game. The other fans (sisters, wives, etc) gave up after three quarters and headed to their cars.

A little history of this particular game. This year was the fourth year of the event....at least I think so as it was the fourth year I've played in it. The guys with whom I play, or at least organize it, sit near me at the Bears games and/or are friends/relatives of theirs. The first year we had about 6-8 people per side and the team I was on won by a huge margin led by me at quarterback. The second year, I was a captain for picking teams, had probably 10 people per side and my team lost by a ton as I threw 5 or 6 interceptions. Just awful. So last year, with that game as a recent memory, I was chosen last (or close to it) and quarterbacked our team to a rout where I was named the offensive MVP (by my team's captain, so it's official!).

This year, as every year, there were some new players and a lot of the regulars. The captains were chosen and I was chosen first.....a questionable choice, but probably based on last year's performance. The other team's captain was my good buddy Doug and I was really hoping we could play together like last year, but he lost the coin flip and had the second pick. New to the game this year, unknown to most of the people, was a Robert Morris College football player who runs a 4.4 -40, basically the fastest guy we've seen who is not on TV. He went to the other team and played QB for them, but had a very different style than me. While I prefer to get as many people involved as possible (a holdover mandate from my co-ed football days), he ran the ball himself probably 75% of the time.

That included a play midway through the first quarter where he ran 50 yards for a score, though we stopped the extra point. On our first possession, we drove the ball down the field eating up most of the clock in the first half. It's just what you should do when the other team has an explosive player: be methodical, don't take chances, keep the ball out of his hands. Textbook ball control offense. Unfortunately I threw an interception in the endzone to kill the drive. It wouldn't be my last either. Also along the way, my teammates dropped probably five passes, several of which could have changed the course of events. No excuses though, just foreshadowing.

As the half wound down, their QB threw a pass that was actually completed down to the 3 yard line, but time expired and we went into halftime down 6-0. A couple of more players showed up late, so now we had 8 a side starting the second half and we started with the ball. On the second play, I hit one of the new guys on a stop-and-go down the sideline with a perfect pass that he caught in stride to tie the game at 6-6. Our extra point failed as well, so it was back to defense.

On their next possession, their QB ran the ball down the field and scored quickly, including the extra point where he jumped into the endzone from the 3, to go up 13-6. We marched the ball on our next drive, despite more drops, and had first down around the 10. Twice I made bad throws to wide open receivers in the endzone, two of my worst throws of the day. On third down, I hit my receiver right in the chest on the goal line, and the ball popped up in the air....got tipped by a defender.....into another of my teammates hands for a tying score. The extra point failed again and we were down 13-12.

As the fourth quarter rolled on, we stopped them with an interception and now had the ball in our hands with only about 2 minutes left. We had to drive down the field and score and there wasn't much time. On the second play, I threw a deep ball, into the wind and it was intercepted by....yes, their QB. He ran it all the way back for a touchdown. A pick 6 that's called. Ugh. Fortunately we stopped the extra point conversion, but were down 19-12 and only about 75 seconds left to play.

One of our speedy guys, who had hands of stone, caught the kickoff and ran it back to midfield before being tackled (yes tackled) by the other team. After the 15 yard penalty was marked off, we had the ball around their 40. After hitting a receiver for a short gain in bounds, I twice found a soft spot in their zone on the left side of the field for 15 yard gains. We got the ball down to their ten and I spiked the ball to stop the clock with 16 seconds left. On the next play, I scrambled right, came back left and threw over the middle hitting our team captain right in the chest in the endzone with the ball....and he dropped it. He was crushed, with his head hanging. He's only in his late teens, early 20's at most, so I went over to him and told him to shake it off because we still needed his head in the game. Now there was only 6 seconds left....last play. Again I scrambled right, avoided a three man rush, came back left and there was the team captain open in the exact same spot as the last play. I delivered another strike and this time he caught it for six points. We were down 19-18 and were faced with a decision, do we go for the tie or for the win?

I looked over to the stands to see LL there all alone and looking very cold and told my teammates we were going to man-up, go for two and win the game. The snap came from the 15 yard line and I rolled right before avoiding the rush and going back left again. As I approached the middle of the field, I stopped, planted and delivered a strike to the right side of the endzone to the same guy who caught our first touchdown pass in stride to start the half. He grabbed and the game was over! 20-19 victory and the best Turkey Bowl of the bunch. There were lots of high-fives and chest bumps on our side, drooped heads and shrugging shoulders on the other side. We lined up to shake hands as we do each year and this year there were as many hugs as high fives.

Though I was very happy for our win, I felt bad for the other team's players, other than the QB. As I mentioned, he ran the ball probably 75% of the time which means most of the guys on their team had a chance at one, maybe two passes and that's it. The players on my team, most of them at least, had the ball thrown to them 4-6 times each and probably had a better time even if we hadn't won.

Offensive MVP for the game? Well, their QB had 2 TD runs and an interception return for a TD and threw one pick. I threw 2 picks and 3 TD's. If it were Heisman voting, I don't think I'd stand a chance, but I'm 3-1 in Turkey Bowls!

Thanksgiving weekend

2011-11-24T21:27:00.003-06:00

The Thanksgiving celebration started Wednesday as LL had the day off (using up vacation days before the end of the year). Even though I did work during the day, nobody really expects all that much to get done so I tried to meet those expectations.

Wednesday evening was a gathering at Bill the Bear's house with his wife to be, Nadine, where all I had to bring was some booze. Since Smitty was out of town, it was just six of us including Ricardo and Jodi. Bill and Nadine made all sorts of great "south of the border" food including soup, dips, salad and geez, I don't know what all else. It was all good though. Of course there were also margarita's, beer, wine and sangria, of which I had all but the margarita. A great kickoff to the holidays!

We left at a fairly reasonable hour of 11 or so, gave Ricardo and Jodi a lift home and got into bed by a little after midnight. Reveille was at 7 a.m. as our annual Turkey Bowl flag football game was an hour drive away and starts at 9:30. More on the game tomorrow.

We arrived in Naperville around 12:30 and the appetizers came out immediately, though I had to hit the shower first.

Here's a fun little display next to the table. Very holidayish.

And we had the real plates out for Turkey Day! Yay! All the food was really tasty. The new food item this year was peapods in some sort of seasoning. Good stuff. We ended up eating around 4 or so and left around 7. We brought pumpkin cheesecake that we bought from our favorite sushi place and it was as delicious as it was at the restaurant. Yes, you read that right, cheesecake from a sushi restaurant. They bought it from a bakery but ordered another one and sold it to us (cut into 24 pieces) at cost. Nice!!

And then we got home to our dog who had been home alone for 12 hours and didn't go to the bathroom in the house!! An added bonus.

"I want to party all the time, party all the time, parrrrttttyyy all the time!"

2011-11-22T22:47:00.004-06:00

This time of year is awesome. While I work, expectations are extremely low....just the way I like it. Very little stress. That said, I'm actually getting work done. I think I work best under little pressure......nah, that's not right.

LOTS of parties planned for the next month or so! Tomorrow we go to Bill the Bear's house, then Turkey Day, possibly another party on Friday down in Dwight, IL. Come December, we have 8 parties that we've been invited to....eight!! Good Lord.....we're not that much fun. Then for NYE we are going to D.C. to see LL's sister and bro-in-law which is nothing but a party!!

So this video is of us signing the marriage license, traditionally done in front of the guests in Puerto Rico.

In the next week or two, I'll post more videos from the wedding in no particular order.

Happy Engage-a-versary!

2011-11-21T14:40:00.006-06:00

One year again today, tonight actually, I presented a ring to LL at the Paris hotel restaurant in Las Vegas and asked her to marry me. What a year it has been! Couldn't be happier.

The Bears game yesterday was an exciting one, but it came with a cost as our QB broke his thumb and is having season ending surgery. There is a chance he'll be able to play in the playoffs (or possibly even a week sooner), but I'm not holding my breath. Does this impact my thoughts on the Bears making the playoffs? Not much, no. They have a tough task on the road in Oakland next weekend, who have been resurgent with the acquisition of QB Carson Palmer mid season, but then they have "soft games" against KC, Denver and Seattle before finishing with Green Bay and the Vikings. According to an ESPN poll, 89% of Chicago fans believe the Bears will win 3 or more games with their backup QB. The biggest issue in my mind is can they win on the road against a playoff team with the backup if Cutler hasn't returned. They will definitely be going on the road if they make the playoffs as they will be a wildcard team with the Packers winning the division and currently undefeated.

Had a great tailgate yesterday with Ricardo and wife Jodi joining us, in addition to E-Money and his girlfriend, her twin sister and the sister's husband, plus others. Good fun. Mr. Heater debuted and worked great taking the edge off the plunging temperatures. The windchill was still in the 30's, which we'll love to see in a month I'm sure, but it was a bit of a shock to the system after such nice weather.

An actual pic! Looks cold doesn't it?

And I realized that I'm an idiot for serving brats and Italian sausages. Hamburgers are just as acceptable as far as grilling out goes and they have virtually NO SODIUM. What am I thinking?? Even though I have chili, it's tough to have a chili-dog because you need a huge bun and that's too much bread. Dan, the husband of the twin sister (and whose house we went to for Halloween) brought bacon wrapped jalapeno poppers. He smoked them and holy crap were they good! He even made some with lower sodium bacon for me!! What a guy.

And lastly, here's another clip from the wedding! This is entitled: The Procession.

Here it is!!

2011-11-18T16:53:00.002-06:00

Whoa! I haven't made an entry since Tuesday....well, I guess that's just two missed days, but it's unacceptable. The culprit? Wine......and my lovely wife. Sometimes it's just tough to get to the computer or better that you don't after a certain time and/or amount of wine!

Fun weekend coming up with the Bears playing at home again and Ricardo and Jodi joining us for the game. It'll be another 11-8 tailgating day and should be good fun with our usual suspects as well.

Saturday night is a birthday party for a buddy of mine with whom I used to work, but on the way we're going to hang out with Smitty and Beth for a bit since they live on the way to the party.

And now, for those of you who waited, you get a special treat! Here's me singing "I want to grow old with you" to LL as a surprise instead of our first dance. The video is a little dark, but the sound is pretty good. Naperville Greg is on guitar and is strumming as LL and I walk up to the front of the room, that's where the video starts. Ricardo and Joisey Ken are off to the sides, but I don't think you can see them. Also when I start talking I say, "You're probably wondering why someone who has already broken down twice would grab the microphone." I was making reference to the fact that my voice broke up both during our vows and during my welcome "speech", not my finer public speaking moments, but obviously this was a little more emotional than relaying financial information to a company!

My last note is a reminder that I was seriously physically ill leading up to this scene. I couldn't eat, I was sweating up a STORM and had the chills. There was a huge question as to whether or not I was even going to be able to stay for the reception much less attempt to sing.

Friends and Resolutions.

2011-11-15T20:52:00.002-06:00

As we approach the holiday season, I urge those of you who make New Year's resolutions to consider making them before Thanksgiving. Now, I'm not a big fan of New Year's resolutions as I think you should make improvements whenever you think of them during the year, but if you ARE a person who makes New Year's resolutions then why not get a 45 day head start on them? You can thank me in mid-January.

Over the last few days I've been thinking about what a good time it is in my life. Not only do I have a lovely bride, but I have a shit-load of awesome friends. In fact, we can't even hook up with all the great people we know as often as we like. For instance, LL couldn't make the Bears game on Sunday due to her training for work. In her place I invited my buddy Mokena Terry, of Memorial Day party fame. We had a great time!! But it reminded me that I'd really like to see Terry and his wife Sandi, more often. We actually tried another time, but they had a wedding to attend. On Saturday, while LL was in training, I went over to our friends John and Carol who have a six week old baby. We've had a baby gift for them from before our wedding, but have only saw them once, at softball, and didn't know that Carol and their baby was going to be there. It was a nice 2 hour visit which included Jack's first...um....poop... in two days, so it was quite the event. Anyway, it seems like we have a bunch of couples we'd love to hook up with more often that we do which is great but also unfortunate.

Bears Victory Monday

2011-11-14T11:12:00.003-06:00

The day after any Bears game is an "off" day for me, in that chances are I'm not going to get much work done because I'm tired and probably a little mentally foggy. I do what I can, but I usually watch the game which I always record and try to get ready for work on Tuesday. When you work for yourself you have that luxury.

But when it's a Bears WIN, thennnnnn you can count on me doing even less than normal! That's what I'm faced with today as the Bears crushed the 6-2 Lions 37-13. The Lions humiliated us on a Monday night game in Detroit as our team self-destructed.....well, so maybe we humiliated ourselves. Anyway, this game was moved from noon to 3:15 local time to accommodate a national audience so it was great to get some revenge. The Bears had 6 takeaways including two interceptions returned for touchdowns and a punt return for a touchdown.

The Bears are now 6-3 and are headed for the playoffs, though obviously that's not for sure yet. The Lions are 6-3 and we hold several tie-breakers over them already, though it won't be necessary as the Lions have at least 3 losses lined up in their much harder second half of the season, while the Bears have 1 or maybe 2 losses left on their schedule.

If you remember two weeks ago, I wrote that we needed to win 2 of the next 3 games and we have won the first two. Next week we play San Diego as part of four in a row against the AFC West, where we should go at least 3-1 if not 4-0. That puts us at 10-3 or 9-4, not too shabby.

Even though the game was at 3:15, I got to the parking lot by 11:00 and had some food prep work to do before I left as well as loading the car by myself, so I was up at 7 a.m. That was a problem because I was drinking the night before with my buddy Andy (aka Sausage) at a local establishment as we watched the big fight which meant that I didn't get to bed until 12:30 and then had that bad quality drunk sleep for 6 1/2 hours. Last night I made up for it though by sleeping for 10 hours!!

Finally, just so I can publicly go on record as saying this, Tillman had a great game for the Bears yesterday. I've called him overrated and "not able to cover my mother" and numbers expletives, but he was up against one of the best receivers in football and he kept him under wraps. Nicely done.

Back it up...beep...beep...beep

2011-11-10T22:37:00.002-06:00

Actually two interesting "back up" things to mention today. Well, at least I think they are interesting. First, if you're not backing up your main computer (pc or laptop or whatever you use) to an external hard drive somewhere, why not take the time this weekend to do it? It's cheap insurance against a huge headache. I decided to backup my files today just in case.

On my way to a client today (in which I drove), I saw a car almost run over two people and then hit my car. What fun! The dummy tried to turn left from the turn lane after the light changed, but was too slow so he got caught in the middle. Then he had to back up to get out of the way of turning traffic. Unfortunately, he didn't remember that he was still in reverse. Now I could SEE his reverse lights on, but there's no unwritten driving rule about how to notify people that they are in reverse instead of drive. So of course I'm ready to take some sort of evasive action and/or honk if he comes at me when the light changes. Then, as if on cue, two people decide to run across the street between his car and mine just before the light was changing back. The driver of course failed to realize their car was in reverse and fortunately did not lay on the pedal as you might expect. The runners darted towards my car and hit his car with their hands at which point the driver changed gears and started moving forward. Crisis averted.

Saw some snow today, but it didn't make it to the ground or accumulate or anything. Seems a BIT early for that kind of crappy weather.

Springy legs, not springy weather

2011-11-09T19:08:00.003-06:00

After the last few trips to the gym to lift weights, not the running trips, I've showered and headed to my car and noticed that I had a spring in my step. That's right...a spring. A spring defined as sort of light, effortless jaunt. It felt like I could go running if need be. It's a nice feeling and lasts about 30 minutes or so when my legs resort back to their normal anchor like weights extending from my hips. I'm not sure exactly WHY this happens, but I'm guessing it has to do with either adrenaline or endorphins or something chemical. Whatever the reason, it's a nice feeling.

What wasn't nice is when I came out of the gym to 40 degree temperatures at 5:00 with a windchill of 30 degrees. Seriously? A windchill? Yep. Not pleasant. It's supposed to warm up everyday through the weekend, so I'm not too concerned about the Bears game on Sunday. It's going to be a long day with tailgating starting at 11 a.m., the game at 3:15 and then more tailgating afterwards. Yowza....it's going to be like a 9 or 10 hour outdoor day!!

Tonight, in part because of the nasty weather, we opted for this beautiful morsel:

Yes, it's the McRib!! Combined with fries, it's about half of the RDA of sodium and about what I consume all day on a regular basis....if not more. Fortunately for me, the McRib is available only through something like November 14th. LL and I both wanted to have one before it goes away. Check!

Big Monday, not so big Tuesday

2011-11-08T21:58:00.005-06:00

The Bears had a great victory last night (hence no blog entry) and are now 5-3 with the divisional rival 6-2 Lions coming to town on Sunday afternoon. It's a key game because they beat us already (on the first Monday night game in Detroit in like 20 years). With green bay being unbeatable (they are 8-0), the Bears are fighting for one of two wild card spots. They have beaten several teams with whom they will be in competition for one of those special spots. They should still be able to go 11-5 even if they lose this weekend, but if two other teams, including the Lions, go 11-5, we could miss out on the playoffs. So the victory last night over Michael Vick and the Eagles really just makes next week that much more important!

I watched the game with Bill the bear and Ricardo up at a place called Brickhouse near Bill's house. It's a pretty awesome sports bar (and a national chain) and it was packed. Interestingly, Ricardo left at half-time like many of the patrons. Bill and I stayed until the end though and had a pretty good time cheering on the Bears and generally being obnoxious......well, it was mostly me being obnoxious.

Can't tell you how awesome our wedding gifts are to use everyday. The glasses, bowls, plates, pots and pans with which I cook are outstanding. The knives are great and sharp and the silverware is substantial. Every once in a while I just remember how awesome that stuff is.

LL is in the middle of a Sunday to Sunday training session which means she's got to be in the office at 8 a.m. and stays there until close to 7 or later which means she leaves by 7 a.m. and gets home closer to 8 p.m. That's a long day. So today I cook dinner for her and made one of her favorite desserts: sweet ripe plantains in a brown sugar sauce over ice cream. Just delicious. Just trying to make her day a little more pleasant.

And we have communication from Benny Baseball!! His email correspondence was limited, but did let us know that he'll be re-entering society sometime in the next month or so. Yay for those of us who count him as a friend.

What happened to Thursday and Friday??

2011-11-06T19:39:00.002-06:00

Though I knew I didn't post on Friday, I really thought I posted on Thursday. Odd. Anyway the primary reason was me cooking.....and too much wine! Yeah, I cooked steak with that blue cheese topping again on Thursday and then made ribs on Friday (a 4-5 hour process) and I think we had wine afterwards on both nights. Yum.

Saturday was a fun day where LL and I drove out to Joliet to drop off our sick dog (Molly was given some-a very little bit!-of the steak leftovers by yours truly and she got sick) with LL's parents and then drove over to my parents. We had lunch there before heading west to Aurora to drop off LL's wedding dress to be cleaned. She showed them pictures from the wedding and they loved them (obviously those involving the dress in particular) and may use them to display the dress as an option for future brides. If you remember, LL combined two dresses to make her dress.

Then I dropped LL off at a Starbucks so she could study for a Sunday-Sunday training session this week and I headed over to a golf course to hit some balls with my new swing. Oh, that's right on Thursday I went over for a 30 minute helper session with Gabriel at Golftec. The consistency is still not there, as you might expect, but I'm getting closer. Two more 30 minute sessions left to get it right. Actually I can buy more time of course, I'd just prefer to not have to buy more.

Then I stopped by Benny Baseball's house to see if he was around and ok. Still no word from him since someone else stopped by on a Saturday morning. It was late afternoon when I stopped over and either he wasn't home or not interested in talking. His car is in the drive way with two of the windows open about an inch or so and a flat front tire. The inside looked like a mess too, but that's standard operating procedure for Benny. :-)

After my non-visit, I picked up LL and we headed out to her folks place to get some dinner. A friend of LL's family who could not make the wedding, took a bunch of pictures from the wedding and made a 20 minute video montage. It's awesome.

In other wedding news, I'm now in possession of the recording of me singing to LL. Haven't decided if I'll post it or not, but I'm leaning towards posting it, either here or on Youtube.

How awesome is the first day of daylight savings time?? Freaking awesome!

Trout with Mushrooms

2011-11-02T10:29:00.005-05:00

Tonight I made this recipe, trout and mushrooms, though I used bread crumbs instead of flour and it was delicious.

And Super Closet 2.0 is done! Here are some pictures:

Ha! Tricked you. First is me, back lit I know, in my barista costume and actually in a Starbucks!

Here's the bifold closet door that leads into SC2.0. The door on the right leaves the room.

And here is LL in SC2.o with Molly.

Here are the shelves to the left of the door.

And this is inside to the right, where LL was standing in the picture above.

And here's our decorative turtle pull chain! So cute!!

Now to figure out what goes into the various closets and how we're going to rotate stuff around. Sounds like a weekend project.

Super Freak and Super Closet

2011-11-01T21:53:00.002-05:00

Didn't post much in the way of Halloween pictures, so I'm catching up.

Here's LL wearing the outfit we made. I looked the same, but not as cute.

I pulled this picture off of Facebook as it was too dark at the party for pictures. Emoney had the best costume I think, dressed as Mayhem from the insurance commercials. And not just any of the characters, specifically the raccoon in the attic character. He has wire around his neck and insulation in his pockets. Not to mention the raccoon eyes. Very funny.

Also at the party were Homer and Marge. Can you believe that I had no idea who Marge was for like half the party? It finally hit me when I saw her next to her fiance. Who else could she have been?? Who has hair like that? Sometimes I'm clueless.

Super closet 2.0 is getting finished today! Here's a status picture. If you don't know the room that it's in, it might not make much sense, but you can see how big the closet is. Very happy!! More pictures tomorrow!

Recipe for the Playoffs

2011-10-31T11:37:00.004-05:00

Terri asked for my blue cheese and garlic encrusted steak recipe a few days ago and I'm hesitant to give her the details on how I normally prepare it because I think this recipe would turn out much better! That said, all I do is tenderize the steak a bit (don't go crazy), brush on some A-1 steak sauce ( your choice of flavors) and then brush on some minced garlic. After the final turn on the grill, I put blue cheese on top of the steak so it melts. It's tasty, but not truly "encrusted".

(update: I tried the Ruth Chris recipe tonight and it was awesome!)

By the way, I read that meat marinated before grilling accumulates something dramatic, like 75% or so, fewer carcinogens, so make sure you marinate your meat before you grill!!

The Bears have to play another Monday night road game, which seems a bit unfair. It's undeniable that the home team on Monday night has a bigger than normal advantage. Now we have to play Philly after they destroyed Dallas at home. It's ok though. After Philly we play Detroit and San Diego at home. If we win two of the three games, we will be 6-4 going into the last six games which are against mostly sub-par opponents. Over that stretch we should go 5-1 or 4-2 at worst, so we should be 11-5 or 10-6 and either record should be good enough to get into the playoffs. This Philly game will be a tough one, but don't lose hope!!

The Bye Week

2011-10-30T21:20:00.003-05:00

It's a bye week for the Bears, so what does a Joe do when there's no game to attend or prepare for? Well, Friday night was a nice night in where LL made baked chicken as part of a delicious dinner. She also made a pan full of iced pumpkin bars which are fantastic! We watched some shows which we missed while ESDNM was in town and had a nice evening.

Friday was also the day that construction began on Super Closet 2.0. The new closet we added downstairs was quickly dubbed Super Closet 1.o after the idea for a walk-in closet in the same room came to fruition. Adding the closet really just made use of some wasted space outside of an existing rather large closet. Now that room will have two big closets and a big bathroom with a shower and a jacuzzi tub. Sweet (suite)! I'm not doing the work myself of course. Normally I hire Manual Labor Mike, but this time I hired a drywaller and painter who came up with the idea for Super Closet 2.0 and did the work on Super Closet 1.0. His work isn't as good as MLM, but he worked on Saturday as well as Sunday!

Friday I got a good workout in too, which came into play on Saturday. As Saturday was a pretty nice day, though slightly on the cooler side, and we had the afternoon free, I decided to see if LL wanted to go for a run down by the lake. She did and so we did, for about a mile south and then a mile back. Normally she goes further on her own, but my legs really started to ache as I realized the err of my ways with working on Friday first. Oh well, it was fun anyway and a little exercise beats no exercise!!

Saturday night brought a Halloween party at a friend's house in Elgin, which is about an hour away with no traffic, 2 days during rush hour. LL and I dressed up as Starbucks baristas and the costume was generally liked pretty well. The party hosts went all out with decorations and lights, which had the unfortunate side effect of making my phone camera useless. Someone came through with a flash though and took a bunch of pictures, so if I find them I'll re-post them. We didn't get to the party until 9:30 so we stayed until midnight and ended up sleeping in late on Sunday to recover.

After a slow start, we had a solid breakfast and then headed to the local hardware store to pick up shelving supplies for the new closet. Afterwards, and after some afternoon football, LL made dinner which was a delicious combination of pears, apples and cinnamon over pork chops along with a sweet potato. Delicious!!

We rented a movie, a scary-type movie for a change to go more in line with the season, called Priest. It's out at Redbox and we thought it was decent. A pretty great weekend!!

Further over indulgence courtesy of ESDNM

2011-10-28T19:52:00.002-05:00

Ok, maybe he's not SOLELY to blame, but I think he's mostly to blame. Dinner on Thursday was at our favorite sushi because 1) I'm not sure if ESDNM has been there 2) it's BYOB and 3) it's good sushi!! Minnie and Eric are the hosts and they were there with their added help, Harry, who is just as nice as they are.

Unfortunately the pictures aren't all that great:

We went with two bottles of wine for the three of us and ESDNM forced me to finish one of the bottles with him. LL had maybe a fourth of the other bottle. We brought the rest of that bottle home for drinking tonight!

See what I mean by not great pictures? I kind of forgot until all the food was gone!!! Doh! Thought the empty plates left the food up to your imagination at least.

And I forgot this picture from Irazu, the Costa Rican restaurant we went to on Wednesday. They only take cash!! A vital piece of info if you're in the Logan Square hood and want to eat there.

Happy Anniversary!!!

2011-10-27T17:37:00.003-05:00

It's the two month anniversary of my marriage to LL!!! Actually, right around now the ceremony was ending and.....oh wait, that was EASTERN time, so I guess it wouldn't have started yet. Anyway, today is the day and it was clearly the best thing I've done with my otherwise marginal life. :-)

Since the reconstruction of our downstairs has been completed, we've been able to move stuff back downstairs and then cleaned out old items to be replaced by wedding gifts (and in some cases just got rid of old stuff). I have to tell ya, it's nice to have new pots, pans, knives and glasses. This week I also started using our new bath towels. Awesome. Interestingly enough to my readers I'm sure is that I was really excited to use our new iron! And use it I did this week. Good stuff. Very happy with it!! Last night I told ESDNM about using all the new stuff and he said I should get married again!! Hmmmmm, nah.

We still haven't even put all of the gifts away yet, much less spent the gift card money. We're hoping to get those things done over the next month so our house is going to be even more awesome!!!

Preemptive strike

2011-10-26T21:05:00.002-05:00

Rarely do I think of my blog as a weapon, but when ESDNM shows up in town, you have to be ready to go guns-a-blazin' lest you get blamed for gastronomical events that are not your fault. To wit, this evening was dinner at Irazu, a Costa Rican restaurant which turns out to be right down the street from Ricardo. ESDNM saw Irazu being covered on some cooking show, but forgot the name. Fortunately, when you google Costa Rican food and Chicago, one restaurant shows up. Turns out the inside is very small and cramp, but their outdoor patio area is fairly spacious.....seems like a simple remodeling job would fix that, but who am I to say? So we sat out on the patio, even though it was in the 50's and huddled near a heater. The food was pretty tasty and was declared a "double" on the baseball analogy rating system. ESDNM's last discovered restaurant was Sun-Wah, a Chinese bbq place and was rated a home run.

LL and ESDNM surveying the very small print on the menu. Low light and small print was not helpful. Look at that cool heater right behind LL. I made sure she had that seat so she wasn't cold.

Here's a picture of one of the heaters by itself.

Dinner! Those are empenadas in the middle while LL and I had similar dishes (meat with onions, peppers and some other stuff grilled together) with Costa Rican rice (dirty rice and black beans) and sweet plantains. Yum!

Oh, did I mention it was BYOB? The entire bill for three including appetizers taxes and tip was $73. Not bad.

Money out, money in

2011-10-25T09:03:00.002-05:00

Yesterday was an exhausting day, though for no traditionally good reasons. Sunday night with nothing really good on TV (the football game was a 62-7 blowout of teams we don't care about and the baseball game is.....baseball, which unless you're a huge sports fan or live in the city of one of the teams playing, is unwatchable anymore), we decided to rent a movie at about 8:30 which didn't finish until about 11:30 and it about another hour before we got to bed.

The next morning started early, 6 a.m., for both of us, leading to my exhaustion. The reason I had to get up was to take my car into "my guy" Dave because my brakes needed work and I wanted him to check out the suspension on my car. Turns out I needed new struts, which isn't unexpected on a car with 120,000 miles on it. Since I bought my Toyota before their company went to hell in a handbasket, it could probably go for another 50,000 miles if I treat it right. The prospect of a car payment makes me bristle, so I was happy to part with the $1,400 to get the car in good working order again. A trip to "my guy" without my car involves walking 6-8 blocks to a train and then walking another 5 blocks or so Dave's garage. It's not bad when the weather is good which is why I wanted to get the work done sooner rather than later. When it gets cold outside, it's an unpleasant trip, especially if you're paying money to do it!!

On the other side of the ledger, I went to the grocery store to get food for dinner and saw a sign that said "$25 gift card with flu shot". Now, I've been wanting to get my flu shot but the timing hasn't been great with how busy I've been (I don't want a weak immune system when I get the shot), but I've been pricing them out at various stores and they run you about $25-$30. So I meandered back to the pharmacy and said "is this deal for real?". Sure enough, though the pharmacist could barely believe it herself, it was a net $4 for the shot! So I got shot up and then the pharmacist says that I can submit the bill to Blue Cross and they'll reimburse me! Outstanding!!

Dinner was porterhouse steaks encrusted with garlic and blue cheese. Those and a bottle of wine is also why I didn't get my entry done last night!!

Morning entry

2011-10-24T22:49:00.001-05:00

Just too tired to write it tonight. Look for it in the morning!

Recap

2011-10-23T20:13:00.002-05:00

Boy am I terrible at writing recently. Why might you ask? Well, a combination of a lot of work, work on the condo, Ken's visit and......I'm not sure what other reasons.

Yesterday I did play softball though! First time playing in about a month or so. It was fun as we had sort of a reunion with guys who played on the team 5+ years ago. We went 1-2 for the day, obviously not good, but had fun. Our first game hinged on two plays: one of our outfielders went back on a fly ball and had it hit off his glove and go over the fence for a 3-run, 4 base error, and the second play was a one out bases loaded double play hit into by one of our best players. We ended up losing 16-11 and those two plays were at least 5 runs.

We crushed our second team 26-6 and lost the third game something like 18-15 or something. For the day I believe I was 8-10 getting on base (2-3, 3-4 and 3-3), so I had a good day at the plate.

Even though I told LL she in no way had to come out for the games, much less the mid 40's start to the day at 8 a.m., she did indeed come out like a trooper and fortunately the temperature got up to almost 70 for her comfort. Awesomely, there were about 6 or 7 wife/girlfriend fans there along with a few of their kids too! Good stuff.

LL has been on an unprecedented cooking streak!! This week she cooked a great chicken dish and followed it up with stuffed peppers, which we ate two nights in a row. Tonight she topped it all off with glazed pork chops and a side dish of apples, pears and brussel sprouts in a sweet sauce. They were all very good!! She was a little hesitant about the peppers after I told her that I loved stuffed peppers and that my mom cooked them all the time growing up. LL's were delicious too!!

ESDNM comes into town this week for work, so that means over eating and over drinking....basically over consuming. Bad ESDNM....bad!!

All Warm and Fuzzy

2011-10-19T18:06:00.000-05:00

On our Columbus Day shopping excursion, Eddie Bauer was a big hit and particularly this fleece lined hoodie. This bad boy made the trip to the Bears game as the temperature dipped to 50 during the evening. It was awesomely warm. Very happy to have acquired it and for just about half price.

A friend of LL's contacted me a few weeks ago to talk about some ringing that she had in her ears. It seemed like her basic symptoms were pretty similar to mine, as far as the tinnitis goes at least. People with Meniere's all have tinnitis, but not everyone with tinnitis has Meniere's. Turns out she has a benign tumor pressing on a nerve in her ear that's causing the ringing sensation. Operating on the tumor could cause permanent hearing loss in the ear or possibly facial muscle issues as it's a tricky operation with different nerves and such around the tumor.

Before you get all out of sorts, I've had two MRI's of my noggin, several years apart and there are no tumors up there (even less hair too). Seems like the tumor possibility must be the first thing on the physicians list of things to check for when someone comes with ringing in their ears and Meniere's is really far down that list. Maybe it's because they don't have a cure for Meniere's but can operate on tumors.

Lastly, I'm reevaluating my TV, internet and phone providers. There are companies with deals for bundling, most notably Comcast and Xfinity (same company basically), but I've heard nothing good about them. Currently I'm using ATT for internet and phone and DirecTv for TV. I'd like to move away from satellite so when the weather is bad I could still actually watch TV (snow, rain and wind can limit your satellite signal provided viewing). Anyone in the Chicago area with good info to report? There have been some people switching to RCN, but not for an entire bundled package.

Joisey Ken hits the town!

2011-10-17T16:37:00.002-05:00

Joisey Ken made his annual pilgrimage to Chicago to pay homage to his Vikings (and maybe to spend some time with me too). Arriving before noon on Friday allowed us to get in two rounds of golf this weekend. Friday afternoon we played Old Orchard Country Club, which sounds and looks nicer than it really is. This summer we went to a wedding there and I remembered how awesome the course looked with big, old trees and nice greens. While those are both true, the course wasn't as nice as I had hoped and there were some rough spots. Oh well, live and learn. We had fun anyway battling the wind and the temperature to some degree. Still, for October, it was nice, just not as nice as it has been the last three weeks or so.

We played about as can be expected with Ken not having played in 6 weeks and me using a new grip, stance and swing. We got back into the city in time for dinner at Sapori Trattoria though and were joined by LL and Smitty. Smitty was going to the Ohio State/Illinois game on Saturday, otherwise he may have joined us for golf. Dinner was great though, despite our first sub-par waiter at one of our favorite restaurants. The manager made up for it though by giving us two free deserts and each a glass of Moscato. Nice save.

Being stuffed and tired from golfing in the cold and wind, it was an early night. Saturday was a relaxing morning and then off to Springbrook Golf Course in my home town of Naperville for our second round. The wind was even worse, gusting to 35-40 mph as near as we could figure. Again though, we had fun and I even finished with birdie-par-par. Not too shabby considering the weather and my swing changes.

Saturday dinner was back at Gale Street Inn for ribs. I say back at because we went there last year when Ken was in town and he wanted to go back there this year. Unfortunately they don't take reservations so we got there and put our name on the list and were told it would be 30-45 minutes. Forty-five minutes later we were the only people in the bar area who hadn't been seated. Apparently the hostess accidentally crossed our name out and they forgot about us!! We were just chatting away and enjoying a beer, so we barely noticed anyway. The manager gave us a free appetizer to make up for it, so we were ok. Dinner was great too as we all had ribs and enjoyed them very much! Gale Street is actually rehabbing its old bar area, so we'll have to go back again and see how the changes look.

Sunday morning brought another relaxing start to the day before shopping for the tailgate. It was raining, so I'm glad we didn't try to fit in a third round of golf. The tailgating started when we left at 3, even though the game didn't start until 7:30. Good fun was had by all as we had probably 12 people there including some of the usuals: Sausage Andy and E-Money, along with my buddies Fedor, JC and Jimmy White Trash. Good stuff. Chili, brats, guacamole and bacon wrapped shrimps and dates were on the menu. For my good buddy Doug though, it was porterhouse steak! Yep, I cooked him a porterhouse steak on the grill and it turned out pretty well!! He joked around when I said 6 weeks ago or so that I would bring all of the food for the tailgate, that he wanted a porterhouse. Ever since then he asks every week where his steak is. So I finally got that monkey off my back!

Ken brought our wedding gift with him and he went along with what I did for his wedding gift: a certificate to Golfsmith for him and a certificate for Nordstrom's for his wife. I figure that way they both get something just for themselves while everyone else has given them something for their house basically. Ken and Dawn were very generous and continue to show what great friends they are.

This morning was not too rushed, but I got Ken to the airport by 9:45 and he was all set for his flight. He's returned safely and back to his wife and daughter a little heavier, but no worse for wear!

Just a reminder of where we went....the neon sign didn't show up on my iphone.

Joisey Ken and a crazy vikings fan at the tailgate. This dude was all done up and has tattoos for every team that Randy Moss, and ex-Viking now, caught multiple touchdowns in a game against. That's dedication.....and more than a little insane.

Here we are in our seats with Doug, still full from eating his porterhouse I'm sure! Yes, the temperatures dropped a bit, down to around 50 by the second half.

This didn't show up well either, but it was a 3/4 moon and it was orange on the horizon. Very cool....at least in my mind if not on film!

Weather and Golf

2011-10-12T21:09:00.002-05:00

Since just about the beginning of October, the weather in Chicago has been awesome. If I'm not mistaken, I read the other day that we had 10 or 11 consecutive days of cloudless skies....cloudless!! They were awesome days let me tell you. It was the longest streak in 75 years or something ridiculous. Couldn't have been happier!

Last week, I took a golf lesson courtesy of a Christmas gift from LL. I've taken lessons before, several in fact. Over the years I've had a video tape lesson with a pro from a country club to which I belonged. I also took a three day videotaped lesson out in San Diego where I hit about 1,200 balls. It was fun and my swing was broken down at that time. Well, in the 5 or 6 years, since that weekend, I've really regressed apparently. I shouldn't say that actually as this pro, Gabe at Golf-tec, started with my grip, specifically my left hand. In all of my other lessons, I've only worked on my right had and how it held the club, so this was interesting. The video lesson was even more hi-tech than in the past (as you might expect from 5 years ago) and my swing had issues on top of my bad grip.

My alignment was all pointed left (shoulders and feet mostly) and my grip and swing plane were pointing right. The result was relative inconsistency, especially with my driver, but it was disguised by swing adjustments that I would make through athleticism, not proper form. So when I inevitably got tired, or started off tired, my shots would go astray. Gabe said in ten years when I was less athletic, I would barely be able to play the game with my current swing. We'll see how I do after this weekend when Joisey Ken comes into town and we golf at least twice. It could be a big mess, but there's some of that to be expected anytime you change your swing. Regardless, I'll be golfing and hanging with Ken, so it's all good!!

Surprise!

2011-10-11T19:22:00.002-05:00

It's a surprise sports entry!

Even though last night was the Bears/Lions Monday Night Football game, I'm going to start with the Blackhawks. Why would I do that if the season only just started (two games in)? Well, because after the first month or so last year, the Blackhawks had played 5 more games than the rest of their competition (like 15 games while everyone else had played only 10). It doesn't seem like it's a big deal because they all play the same amount of games, but it was a huge deal for the Hawks as they culled about 40% of their roster from the Stanley Cup winning team the previous year in order to fit under the salary cap. So instead of a lot of practice time and getting used to playing with each other, they had to play actual games that counted. This year they again had significant turnover, but are on par with other teams having played last Friday and Saturday and then had off until this Thursday. Much better and more conducive to winning. Through the end of the month, most NHL teams will have played 11 games, including the Hawks, so at least they aren't behind the eight ball this year. Last year they barely made the playoffs having to get help from another team on the last day of the season.

Now to the Bears. As a nationally televised game, you may have seen the debacle. But I would contend things aren't as bad as they seem. They are 2-3 and not looking awesome, but if you look at their schedule, they've played some tough teams in tough situations. All of the teams they've played thus far are averaging 30+ points a game. If you look forward on the schedule, it would surprise few football folks if they won their next four games to go to 6-3. They could then win four of their last 5 pretty easily and go 10-6 or even 11-5. No need to panic folks!!!

Almost as controversial

2011-10-09T21:20:00.003-05:00

Boy do I LOVE three day weekends! Sooooo nice. After a tough week of work and getting up early, it was nice to have these days off.

Friday we celebrated LL's mother's birthday by taking her and her husband to our favorite local sushi restaurant, Roll-a-Palooza. While her mom likes sushi, her dad is not a fan. However, we ordered stuff he could try (shrimp tempura and such), but he also tried some of the nigiri and claimed to have enjoyed it. The food there is soooo good and the owners are so nice, it makes it an easy call when we're in the mood for sushi.

Saturday brought a day of shopping where I ended up buying all the stuff! LL didn't buy anything, but she enjoyed shopping. After going to a few of "my" stores, I hit the driving range to try out my new golf swing and grip, which resulted from a lesson earlier in the week. Then I went back and shopped a bit more with LL. It was an exhausting day!

Sunday brought church and then a trip to The Maple Tree Inn in Blue Island for their annual softshell-crab fest. It was pretty fantastic and we were joined by our friends Tom and Lynn. A good time and good meal was had by all.

From our wedding left to right: Dave, Mary, Tom and Lynn.

Whoops I did it again

2011-10-06T21:18:00.006-05:00

Ok, Steve Jobs died (publicly inappropriate alarms should be going off). The superficial outpouring on Facebook has been somewhat sickening. First, I'd bet virtually none of those people who said things like

"I wish I could just stay in bed and lay around with all of my apple products." or

"My hats off to you, Mr Jobs, for being the greatest visionary of our time."

have ever met him, know anything about his personal life or what kind of person he was or even heard him speak in person! They just have an image of him and it's not his miserable failure with NEXT computers. I do because I was subjected to a bunch of artsy prima donnas who didn't care that the systems were cost prohibitive and impractical. They also decide to ignore Steve Wozniak's contributions to Apple. Am I happy he died? OF COURSE NOT. Is it sad? Yes, any time a 56 year old dies it's unfortunate and sad. Did he turn around a company years after he had helped run it into the ground, yep. Was he a great visionary? Hardly. He simply was heading up a company poised to take advantage of modern technology and probably had a slightly greater customer focus than his competitors. I applaud him for that.

Been a busy couple of days with work and an economic conference that discussed the impact of our current economic crisis on the "middle market", which turns out to be generally defined as a little bit bigger than our normal client. It was interesting though and the main speaker, Diana Swonk, chief economist from Mesirow Financial, is a pretty dynamic speaker. For the record, she blames our congress in part for the budget mess and believes the economy will edge upward slowly over the next few years, but with jerks both up and down.

Guacamole Monday

2011-10-04T18:46:00.001-05:00

When the weather is nice (meaning relative warm) on Bear's Sundays, I (or LL in the case of last weekend) make guacamole. You can't really have "dipping" dishes when it's cold and everyone has gloves on for obvious reasons. So we make guacamole and it's delicious. We also make WAY too much of it, but you just never know right? Neither of us are people who would just throw things away, so now we have this leftover guac and needed a use. The answer: guacamole burger Mondays. It's as simple as it sounds: you cook a burger and dump a bunch of guac on it. Outstanding! We've only had them two weeks in a row, but they are delicious. I fear we'll miss them next week when the Bears play out of town.

Commensurate with the start of the football season and excess sodium consumption, my ear has started ringing. It's not too bad right now, but noticeable. It started about a week ago when we went out to dinner with LL's parents at Cheddar's (a chain like Chilis or Applebees). Instead of doing something smart like getting a steak or something in which it's really hard to secretly add sodium, I got a pasta dish with sausage and some sauce. It was good, don't get me wrong, just loaded with sodium. So I have no one to blame but myself. The tailgate food, while usually not HIGH in sodium, is not LOW in sodium either. Well, maybe it is high, but I can put up with some ear ringing for my fun and tasty tailgates!!

Foxy Knoxy

2011-10-03T22:42:00.002-05:00

If you don't know the subject of my title, you have to be living under a rock. Today Amanda Knox was freed in an Italian court after an earlier judgment against her was overturned. So let's just say she didn't kill her roommate 4+ years ago. She's not in her apartment when the corpse is found and Amanda is then ushered to the police station and then jail. That was 4 years ago.....four years....in jail for a crime you didn't commit. What could possibly go through your head every day that you're sitting there being incarcerated unjustly? Ugh. Just awful. And then the jubilation you must feel today after finally being released (though her conviction of defamation against another person was upheld, but it carried a sentence of 3 years (really, 3 years!?!?) so she had credit for time served).

I can't even fathom the range of emotions.

On a completely different topic, I always have pen and paper next to my bed. For some reason, I constantly come up with good ideas or tasks or things to remember, while I'm laying in bed just before going to sleep. Sometimes I think, "Oh, that's too big to forget." and then I do. So last night after the lights were out and before I fell asleep, I thought of and wrote down 10 things to do on Monday. TEN! That's just crazy. Tell you what though, I got eight of them done! The one big thing that I couldn't remember even moments after I thought of it, I actually remembered mid-morning and got it done as well. So many things going on.....

Now that the basement is carpeted and some of the furniture is back in place, it's time to move stuff back downstairs from upstairs. It also means it's time to get rid of some more things as you inevitably do when you move stuff around so dramatically. So we have much work to do around the house over the next week or so with moving and reorganizing all sorts of things. Joisey Ken arrives in two weeks!!

The Bears are who we thought they were!

2011-10-02T20:38:00.004-05:00

The title today is courtesy of LL. It's been a busy few days and I didn't know where to start, so I thought I'd start with today and the Bears. It was a gorgeous day for our tailgate, but the alarm clock went off very, very early. We loaded the car up though and headed to the parking lot to see the Punke clan and a bunch of my friends including Smitty and Bill the Bear who were sitting in our other seats as well as E-money, Jack and Blind Mender. Good fun! We started cooking by 8:30 and had some good food....courtesy of LL. Yep, she did all the prep work on Saturday while I was out golfing with Nick, Smitty and Bill. She made the bacon wrapped shrimp, the guacamole and the peppers/onions mix for the brats. It was awesome because I left for golf at 11 on Saturday and didn't get home until around 9 and the prospect of cooking and doing prep work that late was not appealing.

The Bears won and are 2-2, which is where I thought they needed to be to have a chance to make the playoffs this year. Their competition was stiff the first three games and we could have gone 0-3, but started off with a big win over Atlanta. So at 2-2 with our win over Carolina today, we're in decent shape 1/4 of the way through the season. I could see us going 2-2 in our next four games as well. Then we could go 6-2 in our last 8, which would put us at 10-6 and potentially in the playoffs. We'll see!

Continuing to go back in time, our downstairs carpeting was installed on Wednesday and Thursday. If you've ever had carpet installed, it's very similar to moving: you have to box everything up, put it somewhere else, and then move it back. All of your electronics have to be unplugged, moved, put back and then reconnected. So most of Friday, that's what we ended up doing; moving stuff around. It's a pain, but it was great to have carpeting downstairs again. It's great and we're very happy. We're also adding a closet in the back room, so LL is VERY happy. That project should start later this week and only take a few days to put up.

And an update to the Benny Baseball situation: one of my teammates from last year finally hunted him down at his house on Saturday morning and established contact. Turns out that he's ok, just depressed a bit and down on his luck, but otherwise healthy and such. Avoiding tough conversations, event potentially embarrassing ones, is no way to go through life. Face your problems head on....and with the help of your friends and family.

Writing at the 'Bucks

2011-09-28T11:03:00.003-05:00

As we recover from the flood of 6 weeks ago....wow, has it been that long already?...I've been displaced to the Starbucks for internet access. Today we're getting the carpeting after the drywall has been finished. Today should be it for the carpet and then we move to building a new closet for LL and painting the ceiling. There just wasn't enough time to get all of that done before the carpet came, but that's ok. THEN we can start putting everything away and sorting through our wedding gifts and finding places for those things. Very exciting, but also a bit of work.

So this year, in addition to being married, the Fall is a little different than in the past. For one, I have very little softball on the calendar. So much weekend free time!! On the other side of things though, we're fortunate to have a bundle of good people as friends, most of whom want to have dinner with us. That's awesome, don't get me wrong and I wouldn't have it any other way, but scheduling folks can be time consuming. What a great problem to have!!

This week is flying by with all the work in the condo being done and some longer phone calls (one was 4 1/2 hours!), which is not good as I haven't been able to do stuff that I need to get done. I won't let it interfere with golf though which is scheduled for tomorrow afternoon as well as Saturday. Sunday is the Bears game and Smitty and Bill the Bear will be joining LL and me. Should be fun.

The following weekend I was supposed to have a softball tournament in Vegas, but our team sort of fell apart. Benny Baseball has been MIA for several weeks now and nobody is really sure what he's up to or how he's doing. He's not returning calls or emails and people just want to know if he's ok! His birthday is 9/11 which was the Bears home opener and not only did he bail on that game, he missed the Packer game as well! We're pretty concerned about him and have even had people stop by his house. No luck so far. I'll keep you posted.

Recovering from Bears game

2011-09-26T11:09:00.002-05:00

I'm recovering from an upsetting loss to the much hated Green Bay Packers, so my post is delayed. Plus there's mucho work to do!! I'll be back at it tomorrow.

Back to normal?

2011-09-20T11:01:00.002-05:00

Not much else to say about the wedding events and the time in Puerto Rico. Now it's back to the reality of day-to-day living and crazy temperature swings in Chicago, at least crazy relative to the stable temps in Puerto Rico.

Our downstairs area is still torn up, but things are looking up. While in PR, we had Manual Labor Mike put in two curbs to block future overflowing drains from flooding the basement. The one we had MLM do previously, held tight during the flood. The two curbs we added were in the entryway to the boiler room and in the downstairs shower. There was already a smaller curb in the shower as you would expect, but now it's a super structure!

The rest of the replacement work starts today, but in earnest tomorrow. The drywaller is coming in to begin replacing the drywall and then the carpet, which has already been ordered, will be installed. Hopefully the drywall can be finished by early next week and the carpet laid by the end of the week. We'll see.

Last night we had dinner with a very pregnant friend, Carol and her husband John, with whom I played softball up to last year. Carol is ready to pop at any minute....ANY minute. Next Monday they go in and take the little fellar out if he doesn't come out naturally by then. Unfortunately, at the end of the evening, LL got really sick. We headed home quickly and she was in bed within minutes. She's doing a little better today, which is good news.

Kayaking and Ziplining

2011-09-18T16:07:00.007-05:00

This weekend we headed to Muncie Indiana, about 4+ hours away for a softball tournament in which we needed to participate in order to qualify for Vegas next month. Mission accomplished, but we weren't as successful with a somewhat depleted team, as we would have liked. We went 1-2 and had an early exit. Personally I struggled to get my swing down the first two games, going 3-7 and not really making good contact at all. Before the third game though, I bought a new bat, slightly heavier than the one I've used this year and went 3-4 including a triple and a double. I need to do more of that when we get to Vegas.

Some more pictures post-wedding:

On Monday afternoon we went ziplining at this park.

All geared up, mid-way through the 11 runs we did.

Pictures of LL and I on one of the platforms and a shot of one of the platforms from which we would launch ourselves.

Here's LL displaying good form on the zipline! She was not really jacked about doing this, nor was her mother, but the group had a blast!

This view is from our room at the resort to which we moved on Tuesday. This bay is where we started our bio-bay tour on Sunday night. The picture on the left shows the entrance to the mangrove water-way is on the right side and the bio-bay itself is on the left. So we had to kayak for probably 30 minutes or so to get to the bio-bay. Once there, the water sparkled with life. It was truly amazing. When you disturb the water, with your hand or paddle, the little organisms in the water glow green. It's really cool.

This is the view upon leaving the hotel lobby at the El Conquistador Resort. Pretty nice.

We had lunch down by the ocean one day and had this view. Very pleasant.

One day we went over to Palomino Island, the private island for the hotel to which they run a ferry every 20 minutes or so. We were only going to go for the morning, but we liked it so much we stayed all day! There's a restaurant and plenty of water activities if you choose to partake. We chose to lounge.

We went to an Asian restaurant in the hotel and found a way to beat their ridiculously priced entrees: get an appetizer and split one entree. They have a captive audience as it costs at least $15 to grab a cab off the premises, so they inflated their prices a tad. We never went hungry though and couldn't even finish one entree at the Italian restaurant we visited. Score one for us!

I finally got to go golfing while in Puerto Rico and actually played the course twice. Good fun.

This tree is on the golf course. That's a termite nest on the tree with pathways for the termites to follow up and down and all around the tree. Pretty cool.

I snapped this picture on my way back from golf one day. I believe it's a ginger blossom and was very pretty in the sunlight.

This picture was actually from Old San Juan and it's funny because it's raining outside (this was the day after we got down there I believe) and the cat is taking shelter. We were also taking shelter, huddled under umbrellas and trying to get cell reception nearby. Not the highlight of the trip by any stretch.

My Wife Comes Home Tomorrow

2011-09-14T23:21:00.002-05:00

Still getting used to that...my wife. It's nice! Late this afternoon I went golfing with Bill the Bear and Nick the Greek, who is really Italian but looks Greek. The upshot of that information is that we went out for food and beer afterwards and now it's late so no post-wedding pictures today.

Anyway, LL comes home from Hong Kong tomorrow afternoon. Yay!!

I'll try to post some post wedding pictures. We went ziplining and on a kayak trip and then the honeymoon! All good stuff to come.

It's Reception Time!

2011-09-13T22:01:00.013-05:00

I'll just jump into the pictures as it's really late tonight:

This was a low-rise table setting. We also had taller displays on every other table.

Here's the room setup. The table in the middle is actually four round tables and held the wedding party. We decided it was better to be able to see the better men and matron of honor instead of being in a long table where we couldn't talk.

The cakes! The flavors were vanilla, vanilla/chocolate swirl and red velvet.

Wedding cake topping close up.

One of the taller flower arrangements. The ginger is beautiful.

Eating the cake....oh no! It was mostly chocolate from the swirl. We wanted it to be vanilla. Damn. Hence the smirk on our faces.

LL's dad, sister, niece and my niece practicing the hokey pokey in the back room before the reception officially started.

We did walk around and say hi to all the tables early in the evening. Since we saw most everyone for a few days before the wedding, and after, this wasn't a huge focus for us. Here though we're visiting with my dad.

Here's LL parents, Don and Mary. They were integral to the whole wedding both financially and in man hours (or woman hours) of various tasks.

This was from the father/daughter and mother/son dance. It was At Last by Etta James.

Here's LL kicking it up with her nephew Ben.

Instead of going up for our first dance, the announcement of the first dance set in motion my posse: Naperville Greg to the guitar, Joisey Ken to set up a chair on the two stair stage for LL and Ricardo to position the microphones. LL had no idea what was being planned, but she does not like to be the center of attention to any great degree. I thought she'd like this though.

Here's Greg all set up.

To what end? Joe is about to sing to her! That's right. Instead of dancing to "I want to grow old with you" by Adam Sandler (aka Robbie Hart) from The Wedding Singer, Greg played the guitar while I sang the song. Even after breaking up during our vows and my welcome speech, I nailed the song.

And LL loved it.

Greg was pretty proud of me too!

And our real first dance, to Unforgettable by Natalie and Nat King Cole.

Now for the rest of the story. As we sat down to dinner and the Better Men and Matron of Honor gave their speeches, I quickly became very, very ill. I was sweating profusely, had the chills and couldn't eat any of the delicious dinner we had picked out. It was a no brainer to me that I had food poisoning or was getting a Meniere's attack and was not long for the party. LL was very concerned for me, but I really wanted to at least get through singing the song before leaving. The question was, could I make it to and then through the song?? Well, it turns out that it was just nerves! That may have seemed obvious to you, but I've spoken in front of groups as large as 600 people before, so being nervous was never a consideration for me. Maybe I'd forget the words or break down while singing, but I wasn't going to be nervous.

Well, it must have been the nerves because I felt 100% better as soon as the song was over and was very thankful that we decided to have snack food brought out around 10:00 or so as that became my dinner. It wouldn't have been another day of the wedding without some kind of drama!!

The Sutton, Davis and Kulinski Families.

Ok, here are some more pics

2011-09-12T17:46:00.009-05:00

The wedding day finally arrived and the weather was finally nice with no threat of rain. After a breakfast of Mallorca-egg-cheese-bacon sandwich and Puerto Rican coffee, I lazily went up to the sitting area where the honor bar was located as well as a few computers. Much to my surprise, there was LL!! Oh no!! No, not to worry, apparently seeing the bride before the wedding only counts if she's in her dress, which she wasn't. It was still 5 hours before the wedding and 3 hours until pictures, so she was still in the process of being "made up".

Shortly thereafter, the power went out...again. Arrrrrggghhhhh!! NO WAY!! Yep. But fortunately it only went out for about 15 minutes and then popped back on. No delay in LL getting ready or anything like that. It wouldn't have been our wedding day if the power hadn't gone off!

As the hour approached, I was huddled in a room with my two Better Men, the ushers and readers. It was a nice posse! Other people have a best man, but I had two Better Men (Ricardo and Joisey Ken). Why two and why Better? Two because why do I have to choose? Just because some ancient convention says so? Crap to that. And Better men because my best men are better than your best man and I think of them as better than me in many ways. Just seemed natural to me.

As the time to go out arrived, I wasn't nervous at all. What did I have to be nervous about? LL is awesome and I'm a lucky guy. So here are the pictures. I'll write tomorrow about the ceremony and reception.

This canopy would serve as the backdrop for our vows. The table underneath is where we lit the unity candle and signed our marriage license, in front of everyone as is the custom in Puerto Rico.

Here's the view above the canopy.

Here's a picture of where the 75 guests sat for the ceremony.

The flower girl and ring bearer. LL's sister and Matron of Honor, Linda.

Joisey Ken and Ricardo, probably trying to figure out what they did with the rings.

A great picture of Ken cracking up after I turned to him and said, "You and Rich have been a huge disappointment." No idea what I meant by that, but pretty much anything would have been funny at that moment.

And there's my gorgeous wife-to-be! Obviously she's getting ready to walk down the aisle.

A close-up of LL and her bouquet.

Here LL is saying her vows. She started crying during my vows, which caused me to break down as well. I'm a softie....I know.

Lighting the unity candle and the happy couple being introduced.

Yay us!!!

The table which held the names and table assignments greeted the guests. That leads us to the reception, which I'll cover tomorrow.

So where are the wedding pictures already?

2011-09-11T22:25:00.002-05:00

Ok, here's the deal, it was a bears home game today (the season opener in fact) which meant tailgating. Which meant yesterday(Saturday) was spent preparing for the tailgate, which I had to do all by myself since LL is in Hong Kong.

Oh, did I not mention that? Yeah, LL bailed on her new husband and headed to Hong Kong for a meeting. Granted, I could have gone with her, but she was flying business class so I would have had to shell out who knows how much money for a ticket AND miss the home opener. Plus we would have stayed longer than just until Thursday and we were already gone for two weeks recently if you recall.

In addition to doing all the shopping, cooking and car loading and unloading by myself on Saturday, I had an electrician in to fix a nagging problem down stairs. For my 900 square foot plus basement, one outlet was on one circuit breaker and everything else was on another circuit breaker. This meant that whenever LL used the hairdryer while the television and computer were on, the circuit would trip and cut power. Not good. So a sub contractor for a friend of mine spent 8 hours with an assistant running wires and rewiring breakers, which meant no computer for Joe. Now we have the outlets on four breakers and all should be good once he comes back to finish the final touches (he left at 8 p.m.). It took a few hours just to figure out where all of the lines were splitting off from and it turned out to be an electrical box buried in the ceiling, which resulted from sub standard work done by non-licensed contractors (who were inexpensive).

ON TOP OF ALL OF THAT, LL and I went to a wedding on Friday evening of my good friend and Bears co-fan, Doug. His father has the seats right next to mine at Soldier Field and we've become good friends over the years. Doug's bachelor party was up in Wisconsin a few weeks ago and I attended.

So anyway, it's been a busy few days and I'll work on uploading the pictures tomorrow!

2011-09-08T20:47:00.010-05:00

A little more time tonight than last night as we went out to see the in-laws for dinner. It was a nice visit but we got home late.

So where did I leave off? Let me check...ahhhh, wedding day! This is going to be good!

The day really started where Friday ended, with Ricardo dragging me, the Cliffords and my brother-in-law Greg, to the bar across the street where I ended up playing some non-English speaking, toothless, potentially homeless Puerto Rican in pool. It was supposed to be Ricardo, but next thing you know I'm playing this guy. After one game and a beer, we left. My memory is fuzzy as to what happened next, whether we went back to the pool or whether I went to my room. Yes, it was just MY room as LL worked out in our contract that she would get the bridal suite for both Friday AND Saturday night so we would sleep apart on Friday night. Yours truly was none to happy about that idea, but I acquiesced. Plus she was getting her hair done and all sorts of girlie things were going to happen early in the morning.

You know what? I just looked at the photo sharing site we have set up and there are now 607 pictures up! I'm going to copy some of them from the rehearsal and rehearsal dinner first and get to the wedding tomorrow. What a tease!!!

Obviously LL and me and then my mom and me as I practice walking her down the aisle.

Joisey Ken walking LL's sister Linda and Ricardo walking with my niece, Sommer.

LL's father practicing giving away LL.

Taking instructions from the minister we used.

Rehearsing the vows.

Rehearsal dinner time!

LL's uncle, aunt and cousins. No, the uncle doesn't ever smile.

LL and her mom. Her mom did a great job helping out.

LL's sister and bro in-law. My cousin Mike and his wife Kendal, who took a ton of pics too!

My sister Lori and my mom.

Me and my sister Bee.

Me with Smitty and his wife Beth. We had a great time with them!

Laura with one of her best friends Nicole and her husband Ben.

The Groom's Cake! Yep, that's Homer! It was carrot cake and it was delicious.

Those are mojitos and yes they were delicious and they led to......

....surprise, surprise....Ricardo leading me in a dance after the Flamenco dancers took off after a brief appearance. You can see how this night was going to end up the way it did!

Just Pictures Today

2011-09-07T22:53:00.001-05:00

I'm a little tired today to write, so I'm just posting some pics from the wedding......you're welcome. This is just a random sampling. We're accumulating pictures from people on Kodak's site and downloading them periodically.

The Sutton side of the family

Me and my wife!

One of the FOUR cakes.

Laura and her dad about to walk down the aisle.

The Matron of Honor and Junior Bridesmaid.

The very old church across the street from Hotel El Convento.

My dad and his cousin Jean Ann....which is my second cousin if I'm not mistaken.

The Guests Arrive

2011-09-06T18:57:00.000-05:00

We we last left our lovely couple, there was no power in the hotel (and much of Old San Juan), it was raining on and off for most of the day and flooding was rampant. On top of that, the guests started arriving! The first part of the week was supposed to be just for relaxing and doing some final prep work for the wedding (getting the license, meeting with the minister, taking "engagement" photos, etc). Unfortunately, with all the aforementioned problems, none of those things happened until Thursday (for the license), Friday for the meeting and not at all for the engagement pictures.

So now we were dealing with those issues as well as trying to line up the guests who had arrived so that we could spend time with them as well. Only about 5 or so people came on Wednesday, but by Thursday afternoon there were about 40 guests or so. Wednesday we had a relatively intimate dinner at Cafe Puerto Rico with our good friends the Cliffords, of Mokena fame who host a Memorial Day party every year, my cousins from D.C. and a friend of Laura's. It was really nice to be able to sit down with our guests and what we hoped would happen with our destination wedding. On Thursday we had 30 people for dinner at another great restaurant, Barrachino, purported to be home of the pina colada. We also had lunch and breakfast with various folks as well (breakfast usually at Bombonera a place known for their Mallorca sandwiches).

Thursday was also the crazy marriage license registration day which took up about 5 hours of our day. Ugh. But we had power in the hotel so life was good. Friday was highlighted by the rehearsal dinner at Pizza e Birra, a restaurant attached to the hotel and owned by Ernesto and Andrea, two of our wedding guests. It was great fun, even though the power went out, and I was kept up way too late by one Ricardo....surprise, surprise.

Most of the nights ended up in the hotel jacuzzi tub and plunge pool and Ricardo was usually leading the charge. The highlight had to be when he, out of the blue, stood on the edge of the small plunge pool, spread his arms and yelled "belly flop!". Not good. What followed was a tsunami that engulfed those around the pool, which included LL and myself and our drinks. We called Ricardo "Tsu" for most of the weekend after that. My good buddy Joe DeMarco was there for the "flop" as were Smitty and his wife Beth. Apparently, later on in the morning, Ricardo, DeMarco and Smitty all did belly flops in the pool at the same time. Mind you, this pool is only about 5-6' wide. Not good. Smitty tore up his leg and DeMarco hurt his arm. Tsu was in the middle and was unscathed.

Tomorrow: Wedding Day!!

Partial Wedding Recap

2011-09-05T11:38:00.002-05:00

Our wedding trip to Puerto Rico was awesome, but it's good to be home. Let me do a little pre-wedding recap and toss some pictures your way. From there I'll have another entry about the wedding day and then another for post wedding events. All good stuff, but I like shorter entries.

We took off on Monday morning at 8 a.m., 9 a.m. Puerto Rico time. Unbeknownst to us, the San Juan airport didn't even open until 11 local time, about halfway through our flight! I wonder what plan B was if they didn't open up for our landing at 1?? Guess that's why the pilot bothered to mention that we were carrying "A LOT" of fuel at takeoff. But we landed just fine, if not a little bumpy and a little too quickly for my liking.

Though they lost power over 60% of the island when Irene came through the evening prior, they didn't get a ton of water...at least initially. Monday night into Tuesday though, the rains came and stayed dumping I don't know how much water on the island and flooding a good chunk of the main roads. We know that because when we switched hotels to one with power, our taxi had to drive up on the median of a four lane highway just to get through!

While we were at the Marriott on Isla Verde on Tuesday night, the power went out there too! Right in the middle of a hand of blackjack. Fortunately our hands weren't good and we were able to take back our bets. About 15 minutes later the power went back on and you wouldn't believe the number of people willing to head to the elevators!! Yikes! I asked where the stairs were (we were on the 4th floor) and the worker at the front desk just said, "Oh, the elevators are working now. You don't have to take the stairs." Yeah, right. About 20 minutes later the power went out again, albeit briefly.

LL was concerned that we wouldn't be able to get BACK to our hotel the next day due to the flooding, but I wasn't concerned and it proved to not be a problem. The rain did continue to be a problem just in general though and we never went anywhere without an umbrella.

One of the issues with the power being out was that we couldn't get our marriage license as the office was closed! It finally opened up on Thursday and we spent about five hours in total trying to get the license. They do EVERYTHING by hand down there and have just one person doing it so it's incredibly inefficient and a little crazy. You aren't going to become the 51st State by doing legal stuff by hand. Anyway, one of the issues we had was that they require a letter from our doctor indicating we are healthy, even though they are supposed to only require what our home county requires which is basically that: you're alive, not too closely related and at least 18.

In PR they required a document proving that my divorce was legal and that it had a raised seal on the document. Well, my divorce was over 15 years ago so any documents on file in Cook County have long since been stored and probably transferred to an electronic media. Our wedding planner thought that the copy I had would be fine. Just in case though, I was on the phone with a lawyer friend of mine to see if she could be ready to go down to the county office to get SOMETHING if needed. Because of the power outages, our cell phones didn't have great reception so we had to go to the edge of this fort on the side of the bay to get reception. Unfortunately that's where we were most exposed to the wind and rain. It was sort of comical to be out there holding an umbrella and trying to send emails, texts and make calls. Not fun and it just added to the building stress.

As it turns out, the document would take at least a week to produce but the registrar's office in PR was fine with what I had anyway. They weren't fine with us not having a letter from our doctor though so we had to go visit a local quack who took our pulse, blood pressure, asked us some questions and then gave us the documents we needed (all for only $55...which isn't bad really). In the waiting room he had Ghostbusters 2 running on a continuous loop and when he came out periodically, he'd just stare up at the screen...very weird. And he looked a bit like Martin Landau which didn't help the entire odd scene.

Ok, that's enough story for today. Here are some pictures:

My niece Sommer and I at dinner on Thursday.

My sister Brenda and my dad at the same dinner (at Barrachino if you ever make it to Old San Juan). The restaurant was supposed to have been the birthplace of the pina colada. I'm not sure if that's true, but they were delicious.

LL and I cutting the cake.

Here are two pictures of us after we were just introduced. LL was true to her name!

Getting Married Tomorrow!

2011-08-26T10:22:00.002-05:00

The big day is almost here! The weather in Puerto Rico is as expected, no remnants of Irene. The power has been on at the hotel since Wednesday night, so the guests were not inconvenienced at all. The destination wedding continues to reinforce itself as the way to go:

Wednesday evening, the 5 guests, LL and I went to dinner together at Cafe Puerto Rico, which sounds like it would be lame but they have awesome food. It's really a must if you hit Old San Juan. Before we were seated, we went to Aqua Viva and visited the bartender, Mikey, who took care of us in May when we visited. He made great drinks again and gave us some free calamari appetizers. Can't beat Mikey!

Thursday about half the guests arrived in the afternoon and 30 of us went to dinner at Barachina, one of the few places where 30 people wouldn't fill the entire restaurant. They also claim to be home to the pina coloda, that may be true or not, but they make an awesome one!! It was great to just hang out with everyone and visit and catch up. Afterwards, we continued hanging out at the hotel in an open air area near the honor bar. Around 11:30 we called it a night as many folks had been traveling that day.

Today a group of 12 of us went to breakfast at Bonbonerra. They serve an egg, bacon and cheese sandwich on a grilled Mallorca roll that is unbelievable. Rachel Ray and Andrew Zimmerman both have given it a big thumbs up. Another must eat place.

A bunch of the gals went to get a mani-pedi and are happily catching up I'm sure.

So instead of just spending a few minutes with each of the guests, we've already had 2 or 3 meals with many of them and drinks with just about everyone. THAT'S what we were hoping our wedding weekend would be like!

Still Alive!!

2011-08-23T18:38:00.002-05:00

Where to start? First, it's all good. We're wet, but that's about it.

We left O'Hare Monday morning at 8:00 as scheduled and little did we know that the airport in San Juan wouldn't even open for 3 hours!!! The flight is a little over 4 hours, so they must have known or at least been pretty damn sure that the airport was going to open when we took off. The ride was smooth until we had to descend through the clouds for our landing when it got a little choppy until we cleared the clouds.

We met our driver for the week, James, who is as responsive a guy as you could hope for in a cabby. Unfortunately when we got to our hotel we found that there was no power in the rooms, just the common areas and one kitchen all of which was being supported by a generator. Then the kitchen closed until 6, still 3 hours a way, and we were starving. The only two restaurants with power in Old San Juan? Wendy's and Subway....and we LOVE Wendy's (I used to work there, but that's a story for another time).

Our cell phones had sporadic reception at best...mostly no reception actually, so we had to go to the end of the street over looking the bay to get even periodic coverage. It's kind of funny to picture: LL and I on the top of an old fort wall, holding an umbrella and our cell phones, either texting or emailing or talking and then the signal dropping and we would have to wait to pick it up again. Pretty crazy, but a little funny.

The night in a powerless room was fine for me because I had some booze, Benadryl and earplugs. LL didn't use either of the latter, so she had some trouble sleeping. Then the phone, which was a cordless but whose battery would get charged by the station, started running low on power and started beeping. I couldn't hear it but it was driving her crazy. She couldn't determine where the beeping was coming from so she tried to call the front desk and then realized it was the phone itself! She took it, wrapped it in a towel and put it in a closet. Ha! It worked though.

With the prospect of another warm night and not being in touch with civilization, we got credit for a night at our hotel and went to a Marriott not to far away (20 minutes) which has power. A/C, computers (which I'm on now), cell reception, and television....not to mention a casino. Very nice.

So that's my update. Our trip to get the license has been delayed until tomorrow because the demographics office is without power. Everything else will be alright though as long as the power comes back on in short order. We really just want it back on for our guests!!!

Six Days and Counting

2011-08-21T17:52:00.002-05:00

Only six more days to the wedding and most of the planning is done. Of course that does not mean there are not things to be concerned over! First and foremost is Irene. If you're not up on the weather, tropical storm Irene may be upgraded to a hurricane and is going to go just south of Puerto Rico tomorrow morning.....just after our flight is supposed to depart from Chicago. Ugh. Will they update the departure status or anything before we leave the house? Probably not. Could be a long day of traveling. Oh yeah, the weather service is preparing to upgrade Irene from a tropical storm to a hurricane. Excellent. Hey, better now than on the weekend right?

Quotes are coming in on the drywall reconstruction and the carpet replacement. It looks like we'll use the same guys we used before on the carpeting and the drywall is still up in the air. After we get back from the honeymoon, LL is home for about a week and then goes to Hong Kong, so I'm hoping I can have everything back in place by the time she gets back from that trip. Seems doable.

Ok, back to packing! I hope to catch up on blogs while I'm down in PR!

Golf Equals Less Stress

2011-08-18T21:51:00.002-05:00

Earlier this week it was getting pretty stressful around the house, but we entered a trough and have rebounded strongly having had lunch together yesterday and then picking up our wedding rings. All seemed good again, though we're both a bit tired.

Today I went golfing with Jumpin' Joe DeMarco who is joining us in Puerto Rico and doing a reading at the ceremony. He's part of a group that are small business advocates and everyone is really into networking and doing things like remembering each other's names and stuff. Yeah, that's not really my bag. I know what I'm good at and what I'm not good at. Networking, like that at least, and remembering names from people I see every 6 months or so is not my forte. Golf was fun though, even though I played pretty poorly most of the day.

So tomorrow (Friday) morning, I'm driving 4 1/2 hours up north to golf and celebrate the bachelorhood of my fellow Bears fan, Doug Jr. Because we leave on Monday though, I'm only staying over night and coming back home Saturday morning. Another Bears fan, Gar (pronounced like the fish), is driving up with me. Normally I'm not a big fan of driving with people other than LL, but this should be fun. See you on the other side!!

Plans coming together

2011-08-16T20:58:00.002-05:00

Have to admit, getting a little stressed out with wedding planning and tension is running above....well, I guess tension exists where it normally doesn't around the house. Cleansing breaths and one day at a time. Plus maybe some sleep for us both would be good. Sleep cures all ills.

In addition, with the basement still torn up (but I received a promising quote finally!) and the wifi not working, it seems like there's everything is out of sorts. My bachelor party weekend last weekend probably didn't help that feeling, but what can you do?

Thursday I have a fund raiser golf outing with my buddy Joe D. who is coming to the wedding. I went to Joe's wedding in Sarasota back in 2007 and had a good time. It's probably what made me suggest the idea to LL (who already had her own positive thoughts about them). Anyway, after Thursday, I'm probably going to a bachelor party for one of my Bear's fans which is about 4 1/2 hours north in Arkdale, WI. Good Lord that's a long trip. I'll come back Saturday morning though so it's just an over-nighter. Then packing and such for the wedding!! Busy, busy, busy!!

Computer back up and running

2011-08-15T13:29:00.002-05:00

Hello all!!

After much ado and a basic wiping of my computer, it's back up and running. A ton of things have been going on over the last week, but I'll only be able to hit the highlights as time is precious.

It looks like the guest count for our wedding in San Juan will be 71, a very nice turnout!! Lots of stuff to still organize, but nothing we can't handle.

We've been receiving a lot of gifts from our wonderful friends and relatives and the owners of our local sushi restaurant. That's right, from our favorite sushi place! The owners are the waitress and chef and the space is not big, so we talk to them whenever we go and have a good time. In fact, the chef is also a golfer so we may go golfing after the wedding. It pays to stop and talk to people some times and even pay them a compliment.

Let me elaborate on that last point. We have several sushi restaurants around us and several choices that are BYOB. One place, Kanok, is where we decided to go for the quality of the food. The service was always suspect though. I mean it was "fine", but the waitress seemed to never be happy or smile or warm AT ALL. Then Roll-a-Palooza opened up, so we tried it. Minnie is the Korean waitress/owner and she's just a treat: smiling, happy, warm, friendly and always ready to offer a suggestion or her opinion on a dish if you're not sure what to get. So when we came back for the second time and had the same experience, I told her, "We used to go to another place, but we came back here SPECIFICALLY because you're so nice." The food is at least comparable to the other place if not better, but it's also a little more expensive. Minnie couldn't have been more gracious about receiving the compliment and beams every time we show up now. After our last visit, she asked where we were registered and sent us a very nice gift. But the best part is that we have very cool business owners right down the street with whom we enjoy hanging out and having a meal.

No progress on the flooded basement yet as I'm obtaining dry walling quotes and will probably have the work done after we get back from the honeymoon. We have received our insurance checks from both my personal insurance company and the building's insurance company, so the money is there to get everything replaced once we start. It'll be nice to have a downstairs again!!

Computer hostage day 5/week 3

2011-08-10T13:21:00.002-05:00

The virus my computer got is apparently something fairly virulent as they've had my computer for five days and have been working on it for three. They called me today and said they still need two more days....crap!!!

My wireless isn't working, but I'm going to try to address that problem either right after this entry or tomorrow. I was waiting to get my desktop computer back, but LL needs it to work at home so I'm going to try and getting it running and then see what happens when the computer is fixed.

Have you ever gone out for fondue? Last year I got a $100 gift certificate to a fondue restaurant here called Gejas (gay-hoz) and it expires this month, so LL and I decided to take my neighbors (who were also flooded) out for the night (after Ricardo screwed up our plans to go with him and Jodi). This place was very expensive!! It was $45-$52 per person for salad, some fruit and bread to dip in cheese and entrees of meat/shrimp/scallops/chicken and veggies to cook in oil and then some fruit and such to dip in chocolate. It's not that much food and you do all the cooking! Many, many better options in the city for food than this place. And the service was brutal. They were very attentive, but they kept trying to serve all four of us from over one person's shoulder and reaching across the table instead of walking around. Anytime they brought something or took it away (which was constantly!) a waiter was reaching in front of you. I hate that.

At the end of the meal I went to get the certificate out of the envelope in which I received it, and it wasn't there. Ugh. I had taken it out to "make sure" I didn't forget it. So I had to leave LL with our neighbors and dive home to get it and drive back. Fortunately the restaurant is only about 10 minutes away.

Thus came to an end what should have been a much nicer meal and evening which I guess is a fitting cap to a particularly frustrating week.