Land of no snow and no gators....??

Friday was an early morning with a 6:30 trip to the airport. A "snowstorm" was coming through the area the night before and early morning. Flights were cancelled by the dozens and all of Southwest's flights were cancelled on Thursday night. By the airport and by us, we got maybe two inches of snow...maybe. Far out west and to the north though, they got hit with 6-9". We thought we were going to be ok, especially after checking with the skycap who told us the flight was on-time still. Unfortunately, by the time we go to our gate, it was already delayed two hours. Nuts.

Then the news got worse: our plane hadn't left Buffalo yet. Those poor folks were on the tarmac for two hours while we at least were able to walk around the airport. Fortunately the flight was only delayed the two hours. LL and I had a discussion about how long we'd wait before we'd scrap the weekend and use the tickets another time. Eventually we agreed on sometime around noon would be our drop dead time. That would have put us at the airport for 5 hours and not get us to Florida until close to 5 probably their time, which would have cut out half a day of our two full and two half days. Fortunately we didn't come up against the deadline.

We took off and everything went smoothly. Our gracious host, Doug, was waiting for us at the airport and off we went. Doug spends three months or so in a community with decidedly older folks for the most part, though very nice people. Everyone has a golf cart and tools around on them. Of course the speed limit most places is an appalling 20 mph, but older people have slower reaction times, so it's probably for the best. It's a gated community too, so no strangers are running around.

Inside the gates though is a marina, a bar/restaurant and 27 holes of golf. Good stuff! Doug took us around to where manatees swim into the marina and hang out. Unfortunately with just my phone, I couldn't get pictures of them as they were basically the color of the water. Pretty cool to see. But all we saw was wildlife all weekend: an osprey flew within 3 or 4 feet of Doug and I while golfing, an egret swooped really close to me while golfing on day two, not to mention the blue herons and several huge turtles. The big prize though was a gator!!

So on to my very limited amount of pictures.

Here's Doug's bulletin board of Christmas cards and such, including our card!! Yay us! Doug's place has 3 bedrooms, two baths, a kitchen and living room. As you might expect, there's no basement, as is the case with most homes in Florida I think.

This is Doug's lanai. A pretty good sized, heated pool. There's a table to the right and a TV up in the corner. Very nice to sit out there and watch TV. It's also nice to sit out there in the nice weather without bugs getting at you.

This guy was a LOT closer than the picture makes the bird appear (an Anhinga-species courtesy of Back-to-baseball). It was right next to the cart path on the course and was really strutting around for some reason. I wasn't sure if it was strutting for females or if we were getting too close to its nest and it was trying to scare us off.

And here's the gator! He's across the pond from me here and is about 6-7' long. All of the water on the course is connected by drainage pipes, so he has access to everything. We saw an egret catch a fish and something in the water was moving towards it, but didn't attack. We thought it was the gator, but there's no way it wouldn't have gone after the fish and/or bird being as close as he was.

And here's our last shot of sunshine at the airport. Thought it was deserving of a picture.

So now we're home where there is no snow (awesome) and no gators (not so awesome).

Good Times

Tomorrow, Monday, we return from Florida. After 27 holes of golf and some time in the pool, it's going to be tough to return to the winter. I know why snow birds make this trip every year! Lots of things to talk about and some pictures too when I get back on my own computer. Hope you had a great weekend!

Off to warmer weather?

Hopefully, in the morning, we'll be off to Ft. Myers Florida. It's not like we don't have the tickets or anything, we do, but there's supposed to be 3-9" of snow tonight and Southwest has already cancelled flights for tonight and started on morning flights. Ugh. Nothing worse than a day at the airport. Already we can do is check with the airline and hope that we get to takeoff. Sitting on the tarmac would be the worst.

So either we'll be off to Florida tomorrow or not. I'm wondering if we'll go on Saturday if the flight gets cancelled. I'm guessing not since we'd come back on Monday. Though I'd be up for staying longer on the back end, LL has an important meeting on Tuesday (which I sort of chastised her for making) and we have guests coming into town the next weekend. Let's hope the snow gods let us head to Florida and sunny, 80 degree weather!!

Mardi Gras

ESDNM was in town from Monday afternoon until this morning and Tuesday night we went out to dinner (with LL) to The Gale Street Inn for dinner as he had a hankering for chicken. Interestingly, that's actually a difficult request to fulfill for me. When we have chicken, we usually prepare it at home. I don't remember the last time I ordered chicken out when it wasn't a sandwich for lunch. And ESDNM doesn't JUST want chicken. Nooooo. It's got to be chicken on the bone. A little bit tougher to think of places now huh?

Anyway, Ash Wednesday and Fat Tuesday both snuck up on me and it never really occurred to me that it might be a busy night at some restaurants. The Gale Street Inn was no exception. If the name sounds familiar, it should as we went there with Joisey Ken the last two years and the fellas and I went there before going drinking for our holiday night out. It's a solid place to go for ribs especially, but the chicken and steak are good as well. It's a very....ethnic type of place, but by ethnic I mean old school neighborhoody. It's one of those places that you KNOW some people have been going to for like 40 years or something (in fact I just looked up when it opened and it opened in 1963). Cops go there in massive numbers I'm sure. You know the kind of place if you're from Chicago.

So it was packed, but we got a seat after waiting for about 20 minutes or so.







Here's a close up of some of the mardi gras decorations. There scary dudes were everywhere!

My dinner seems sparse, a half rack and spinach, both delicious, but we had already had gumbo as well as catfish tacos from the special mardi gras menu. Good eating!!

LL had ribs as well, but here's ESDNM with his chicken. Doesn't he look happy? You'd think he'd at least look happier with his chicken.

While ESDNM was here, he opined on my pb&j sandwich that I was having for lunch. His comment "doesn't peanut butter have a lot of fat?", was met with incredulity. Noooo, high protein and if there is fat, it's the good fat. So that's partially true, there's no transfat and it's almost all non-saturated fat, but it still has 17 grams of fat per serving. That's 25% of your daily allowance if you're NOT trying to lose weight. Ugh. Even the low fat pb has 12 grams of fat. Way to go ESDNM. Ruin another thing I like. Now what the hell am I supposed to have for lunch??

Happy Fat Tuesday! (or Ash Wednesday by the time you read this)

Work day today with ESDNM in town, so we called on three clients and had lengthy meetings with two of them. Then it was off to The Gale Street Inn for dinner.

Pictures and more to come tomorrow. I'm beat!

Happy President's Day!!

A day off here, or partial for me at least, so I extended my weekend by another day. And a busy weekend it was!!

As I mentioned, I had a flat tire on Friday, which though I inflated it, was flat again Saturday morning. Fortunately, since I bought my tires at Pep Boys, there fixed it for free! Nice. Since I had wanted to get an oil change last week anyway, I had them do that while they had the car up on the rack. Everything went smoothly and the car was ready to go for my trip to the burbs on Saturday night.

Sunday was card picking day at my parents' house. We do this every year: get the family together and vote on the best card my parents receive for Christmas that year. The winner is often a card purchased from the National Wildlife Organization or the National Wildlife Federation, with probably 5 or 6 winners so far. The winning card is framed and gets hung in the hallway of my parents' house. Even though the card we sent this year was clearly the best, it had 7 pictures from our wedding on it, it was disqualified for having writing on the front, a risk I knew when creating the card.

The final two cards, both NWF cards, were from each of my sisters. I didn't know for SURE that they were from them, but I had little doubt. As it turned out, I was right and both were from my sisters. It was a close vote and I believe the winner this year was my sister Lori with a cute bear cub card.

Here's the winner

And here's the runner up. Both good cards.

Flat day

Missed posting yesterday as it was a busy, busy day. After a meeting with a client downtown, I went to a routine doctor's appointment and then to the gym (where I benched my max weight 6 times...pretty solid already!). Then came dinner (steaks with blue cheese crust) and the great Thursday night shows along with a Blackhawks' game (started at 6:00). We ended up going to bed at 10 or 10:30, so there wasn't any time to write.

Today I was blessed with a flat tire. Well, I wasn't blessed exactly. In fact, it pissed me off a little because I'm pretty sure it was a valet that ran over something causing the flat. Fortunately, the car was right outside our condo. Unfortunately, not one but two cans of Fix-A-Flat failed to actually work because they were too cold. Damn! So I was going to put on the spare, but of course, the lug nuts were nearly rusted on. So the first thing I did was get some WD-40 on the lug nuts to loosen them up. In the interim, I remembered that I received this really cool emergency battery jumper/outlet/tire inflator for Christmas a year ago. After hooking up the inflator, I flipped it on and amazingly, it started inflating the tire!! It got up to about 30 PSI which is all I needed to get to the Shell around the corner. Once there I filled it up further and was able to drive myself to the gym, fully aware that there was a good chance that the tire would be flat when I came out. After running my 3 miles, I came back out and it was still inflated! We'll see whether it is in the morning or not.

The Dow is closing in on my future headline entry, though I guess it's still about 4% under. Still, progress is being made. The Greece debt debacle has lingered a bit longer than I thought

(I mean really, you're out of money and people are willing to bail you out but you have to cut spending, how hard is that to agree to??). Still, here's a CNNMoney headline today:

Dow at highest point since 2008

V-Day Pictures!

How could I let the big V-Day go undocumented? I couldn't. Despite Terri Terri's entry, SOME people are still romantic and care about Valentine's Day. So here are some pictures of the night, which is the restaurant we went to for our first and third Valentine's Day dinner. We went elsewhere for the second one and weren't all that thrilled.

Yes, it's a swanky restaurant and just two blocks away!

They don't have a permanent menu, I think it changes weekly, so having a custom one for Valentine's Day is normal.

Here's my beautiful date who I forced to stand in front of roses for a pre-meal picture. Sooooo pretty! You can't see her earrings which were great as well.

The menu from which we chose our delicious meals. It was prix fixe so we had an appetizer, entree and dessert.

We both opted for the tuna carpaccio, which was delicious.

For the second big meal out, I opted for the braised short ribs and for the second big meal in a row, I was shocked at the lack of actual meat with the dish. LL ordered the duck and had a generous portion. Odd.

And for dessert, a nice little sponge cake with berry ream topping and a chocolate dipped strawberry. Not bad, but not great.

Overall, a wonderful night out with my valentine, but the food was a bit of a let down this year (LL's duck was great and what there was of my ribs was good as well) so we'll see about maybe trying another place next year.

Happy Valentine's Day!

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

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

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

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!

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?

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

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

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!

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

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!

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

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

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

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

Tough week on the waistline coming up

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

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

Friday night mixture

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

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

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

It's Christmas Card Time!

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

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






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

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

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

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

Running with the Hawks

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

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

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

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

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

Monday Night Project

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

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

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

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

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

Working it

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

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

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

Snowy Conditions

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

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

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

The Dinner List

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

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

Vegetables

Acorn Squash

Butternut squash

Steamed broccoli

Baked broccoli

Garlic and herb green beans

Sugar snap peas

Roasted brussel spouts

Cider brussel sprouts

Sauteed spinach

Sliced potatoes with parm

Sweet potato

Sweet potato fries

Plantains

Corn on the cob

Bagged corn

Back to Basra

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

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

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

Port Authority doing their job extremely well.

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

If you do nothing else tonight, read this story.

Skydiving?

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

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

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

Ranting in the New Year

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

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

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

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

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

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

Will things change?

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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




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

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

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

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

Whose chicken to make chicken?

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

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

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

Good and Bad

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

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

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

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

Good Weekend

Future Headlines:

Oil tops $120 a barrel on Strait of Hormuz agitations

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

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

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

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

Awesome weather still!!

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

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

Quick entry

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

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

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

The Caiprinha Bowl

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Finally a New Year's Post

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Future Headlines

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.