Traffic sucks the life out of you.

Today, in an effort to AVOID traffic, I tried to leave my house at 3 to get out to Naperville so I could take my parents out to dinner. Unfortunately, due to Manual Labor Mike's hangover and late start, I couldn't leave the house until 3:30. The impact? It took me two hours to get out to my folk's place. Ugh. How the hell do people do that on a regular basis?

Sunday I drove back from Champaign, almost three hours. Today it was two hours to Naperville (then back home). Now tomorrow my softball team wants me to go to Glen Ellyn for a double-header, another hour plus drive. That's too much time in the car for me.

Found out today that my parents are going up to their cottage for a month! The only weekend that I don't have a softball tournament is the weekend that my sister is already going to see them. Crap. Maybe I'll go during the week or....gasp....miss a tournament.

People often ask me about investments and stocks in particular. Well, today I bought shares is a company called Fastenal (ticker: FAST). What do they do? They make fasteners. All sorts of fasteners. You couldn't get a more boring business. However, they are profitable and have a lock, pardon the pun, on the market. Morningstar uses a lot of factors to determine a good price to buy and a good price to sell based on current information including current estimates of future earnings. Based on these machinations, Morningstar says you should buy this stock up to about $53 a share with a fair value of $63 and consider selling it around $83 a share. The current price? Under $42 a share. Seems like a good bet. There you go. Don't say I never gave you anything!!

Experiences, not possessions, make the memories.

Sorry for the hiatus from writing the last couple of days. My softball team was playing down in Champaign-Urbana on Saturday, so I drove down Friday night to ensure that I was well rested for the tournament to be played in 90+ degree heat. As it turned out, the rest of the team drove down Saturday morning, a 2 1/2-3 hour drive depending on traffic. The $100 for an extra night in a hotel made everyone but me opt for the Saturday morning drive.

Well rested, fed, stretched out and hydrated is definitely the way to go into a tournament let me tell you. We ended up playing six games in eight hours and going 4-2 while finishing in second place. Our first loss didn't come until the semi-final game and we tied that game in the bottom of the seventh against Burton's Drywall and went into extra innings before losing. In a double elimination tournament, if you make it to the semi-final game, the loser (us) plays the winner of the losers bracket (teams with one loss already). We won the game against the loser bracket winner and then went back to play the team that had just beaten us. Down by five runs in the bottom of the last inning once again, this time we scored six runs to win and force yet another game against Burton's Drywall. In our third game against them on the day however, we were just a little too tired and couldn't get it done. Still, all in all, a good tournament and I hit pretty well. Not sure what my OBP was, but I'll find out.

Saw an article while reading the Chicago Tribune that talked about experiences, not possessions, being the stuff that memories are made of. In essence saying you should spend money on DOING things instead of BUYING things. Granted, the story was in the travel section of the paper and I've had tons of memorable experiences due to my big-ass tv, but I get the point. Travel has indeed created some fine memories for me, but I don't think it's limited to just travel and the article doesn't say that it's limited just to travel. Doing positive activities of any kind, not just travel, lend more memories than buying a lamp or computer. Still, you need that lamp and computer.

In honor of blogger Alexis, I make special note of this interesting article regarding biking in Amsterdam. I found it fascinating that there are 800,000 bikes a year stolen in Amsterdam. Yikes!

Hope you dad's out there had a great Father's Day!!!

Slow start to the day....worse finish.

This morning came early as I had to get up at 6:00 a.m. to drive out to the burbs for a day long seminar. Woody Allen said, "half of life is just showing up" and that's what I was doing today. And guess what? He was right.

I arrived at the breakfast before the conference, sat down at a table with a few guys at it and struck up conversation. Turns out one of the guys is a speaker later in the day and the other guy is from Detroit (my hometown if you didn't know). Shortly thereafter two other guys sat down; another speaker who was from Michigan and a guy who has recently done a large amount of business with Morningstar. Too ironic.

A year ago last summer, I had the great fortune of having dinner with Ernie Harwell, the long-time Detroit Tiger's announcer. To people who are baseball fans or who lived in Michigan, this is a pretty huge deal. The breakfast table was enthralled with the story, which led to more questions about what I do ("other than dine with famous baseball figures"). Suddenly I was networking. Half of life is just showing up.

After a long day of seminars, I stopped by the house before heading over to a client's open house for more networking, or more appropriately client contact. As you know, I'm replacing the baseboards and doors throughout the house. Upon entering my humble abode, I was welcomed to this site:





It used to be neatly painted and NOT have holes in the wall. Ugh. Turns out the job of removing the trim was much more complicated than it first appeared as the remodelers from twenty years ago decided to nail the hell out of the baseboard to the point where the wall was actually moving while Manual Labor Mike was removing the baseboard. Plus it took much longer than he expected, so the other stuff he was supposed to have done was delayed.







Fine, on to the client's open house, where both clients and their employees were having cocktails and hors d'oeuvres. A bunch of the client's employees were in from out of town and I was able to meet the new COO. And then, as if the day wasn't long enough, I was off to meet a date.

Well, I should have quit while I was ahead (or possibly I was already behind). While this young lady showed promise (we've had several very positive dates), surprisingly tonight was the last. Back to the drawing board!

Joe the prognosticator!!

Ok, maybe not a prognosticator, but lately I've had a knack for seeing people just before it becomes very difficult to see them again. In the past, it's been with baseball players who then die (yes, a little morbid I know). A few years ago I decided to try to get the oldest living negro league player's autograph, so it was skewed sample. Ted "Double Duty" Radcliffe (just "Duty" to his friends) was the first unknowing victim. Ted passed away shortly after I almost got his autograph. He was followed up by poor Buck O'Neil, who passed away right after I got his autograph. And now I see General Peter Pace speak, just before he doesn't get reappointed as Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff; the first such non-appointment since the LBJ administration. So next time you want to have a meeting with me, make sure you're healthy, avoid motorcycles and lengthy trips. Watch out Mr. Navarro.

Tonight I'm heading out to see the Cubs game with Naperville Greg and his wife Kleveland Kim. Should be fun! Tomorrow I have an all-day seminar followed by a client's open house for their new office. So if I miss posting tomorrow, please excuse me!!

Much less expensive day today.

After the trip to the hardware store yesterday, I was looking forward to a more laid back kind of day which included golfing and then dinner with some ex-coworkers. Dinner was canceled though due to the need for one of my mates to attend a wake, so I opted to fill in at softball. A very athletic day. "If you can't be an athlete, be an athletic supporter!" (Name the character and movie.)

All I wanted to focus on in golf today was to hit fairways with my drives. Sounds like an obvious thing, but it's not always obvious and it's a little harder than it sounds. You will use a driver or long iron on 14 of the 18 holes. Normally I hit about 7 fairways, or 50%. Today I really wanted to hit 10 fairways and see how that might impact my score. More fairways means I should hit more greens in regulation (second or third stroke) and then let my putting take over. Well, after four holes I had only five putts as I was chipping and putting well. Unfortunately, I only hit 2 fairways for the entire day!! TWO!! Good Lord. Not a good start to my day, but it was a beautiful day for golf.

Oh, and the cicadas!! They were everywhere!! Twice they flew at my face as I was preparing to hit. The sound of the cicadas was like a constant car alarm, but lower in pitch and slightly quieter. It was pretty cool. I was playing just north of where I was playing the other Sunday and where I heard all the cicadas.

Then it was home for a few hours before heading to softball. Due to the Cubs game, it took a while to get out of my neighborhood and almost an hour to get to the fields in Itasca (a suburb past O'Hare). The reason I wasn't going to play initially is that it's so far to drive and we only had one game. My effort was rewarded by our team getting hammered when the other team scored 14 runs in the fourth to go up 18-4. Ugh. We didn't score in the fifth (despite my second hit in three at bats) and the game was called early due to slaughter. Back in the car and another long drive home.

So not the best athletic day, but at least I didn't spend nearly as much money as yesterday!!

Expensive Morning.

What a morning today. I set my alarm for the plum-early time of 7:30 (shut up!) to get a jump start on the day and have breakfast on my back porch. Unfortunately, my body just wouldn't get out of bed until 8. The delay meant I could still have breakfast on the back porch, but I only had time to read the front page of the newspaper and the front and back page of the sports page. Why? Where did Joe have to be?

Well, I was meeting my contractor, Manual-Labor Mike, at 9:30 at my local hardware store (a large regional chain) to buy more baseboard and order closet doors. My closet doors are bi-fold doors and upstairs they are 8' high instead of the traditional 7'. That meant that I needed to get the doors custom made. Ca-ching! In keeping with the style of regular doors in my condo, I'm making them six panel oak as well. They should look fantastic when they are done, but the cost.......well, I dropped $2,000 today on doors and baseboard and they still have to be stained and installed. Unfreakin' believable. It wasn't even 10:30 yet.

While lamenting my purchases, I sat down with coffee to watch some television and continue to seethe from the horribly unsatisfying ending to The Sopranos. Don't even get me started. Anyway, while watching television, I saw a commercial that really puzzled me. It was for the Ford Escape. Their slogan was, "The mileage of a sedan; the excitement of an SUV." Really? The mileage of a sedan is a good thing? Now I have what is technically called a sedan, but no one riding it in would call it a sedan. And I don't get tremendous mileage, maybe 28 mpg? And then "the excitement of an SUV"?? Since when are SUV's "exciting"? Motorcycles are exciting. Only crazy people drive them, but they are exciting. A 1960's Mustang, that's exciting. A Porsche, exciting. An SUV? That's the new soccer mom car. Hardly exciting. Boo Ford.

Weeding.....Therapy or the Beginning of Senility?

Not as many people read my blog on Saturday (or Sunday for that matter), but don't miss yesterday's entry. It was pretty useful and, hopefully, interesting.

Yesterday afternoon I was feeling kind of blah, probably from drinking too much on Friday and then getting up early on Saturday and actually having to think. Still having a desire to be productive, but not wanting to think, my options regarding activities were somewhat limited. One alternative was to weed the front garden area which had become, essentially, a few old rose bushes and a bunch of weeds. As I found out, there was 1/2 of a city garbage can of weeds in there. Tell you what though, I felt better after I finished.

Rented Borat last night to round out the day. I'm thinking the DVD was better than the actual movie because of the extra scenes and the whole presentation. The DVD itself looks like a bootleg with just "Borat" written in black marker across the disc. Pretty funny. The movie, itself had me really laughing out loud probably two or three times. It was mostly just mildly entertaining. The "wedding sack" was pretty good and the description of his family was relatively funny. The black whore friend on the electric bull was funny. The real funny stuff was the unplanned scenes: chasing the guy in a blue suit through the streets of NY trying to hug him and the churchgoers in Texas or New Mexico who were at some crazy-ass freak church and were running across the sanctuary periodically as "the spirit moved them". All-in-all it was a decent rental.

Investing and hedge funds

The last 24 hours have been a whirlwind so to speak. Not so much because of the gusty winds, which thankfully have subsided, but due to one of my investments: a hedge fund run by an ex-coworker and good friend of mine. The Sellers Fund is named after the manager, Mark Sellers. Today he had their second annual meeting in downtown Chicago. Yesterday though, events were held geared towards out of town investors.

First we took a tour of the CBOE. It was fun to see and then we took a short class before going down to the pits to "trade" puts and calls on a fictitious stock. It was really pretty cool. There was a trader handling the public "book of orders" and then other traders helping us out. It's a simulated session that they've run before, so they know where the stock is moving (it had some wild fluctuations over 30 minutes or so). We started with a position in both puts and calls and were supposed to end the day closed out. We could just close out our positions right away, or add other positions and close them all out later. The traders were having fun helping us (mostly helping the more attractive women in the group....hmmmmm) and then would get on each other about crazy-ass bids they were making and such. It really was neat to see, but also pretty confusing at times.

We headed back to the hotel which was the main base for a change of clothes before heading off to the Sox/Astros game. I knew people who were going to be tailgating, so instead of taking the bus with the other investors (a ride that took about an hour), I hopped on the Red Line at Lake Street and got to 35th street in 9 minutes flat. Nice. That allowed me about an hour of drinking and eating before heading into the game where the other investors were sitting.

This morning was the annual meeting starting with breakfast at 7:30. The meeting actually started at 8:30. Our fund is invested in about 5 stocks right now, that's right FIVE, with about 50% of the $100 million in assets invested in one stock: Contango Oil and Gas. Is that risky? Why yes, it is. But Mark has a great track record so far being up about 35% annually for the last 5 years. Smartly, he started off with the current year's performance which was up 25% net of fees through June 1. That's outstanding!!!

The stock concentration issue led Mark to talk about mutual funds in general. Most funds, he contends and I agree, do not have an incentive to significantly BEAT their benchmark (usually the S&P 500 or some other such index). They are incented to only slightly outperform their benchmark or really just not UNDER PERFORM. If they take a big risk and it doesn't pay off, people will leave their fund and the management team's pay will drop. If a fund has $500 million in assets and they charge 1.2% in fees each year, they bring in $6 million a year in fees. Why put that at risk if your benchmark is the S&P 500 and all you have to do is buy those stocks and be right on one smaller bet which puts you ahead of the benchmark? Why hold less than 100 or so stocks if you don't have too? There's no incentive. Probably 80% of the fund companies operate this way, but they don't want you to know it.

And for a lot of investors, it's not a terrible way to go. If I've ever worked with you on mutual fund selection, you'll recall some points that I will make are that you don't want to buy load funds (funds that charge you money just for the privilege of buying them), you want funds with low expenses (typically under 1%) and you want funds that have outperformed other funds in their category, not funds that have necessarily outperformed their index. So what I look at is how those funds have done compared to funds trying to achieve the same investment allocation goal. That way you have a better chance of ending up with funds that outperform like funds at a lower cost. Win-win!!

Warning: Sports Entry and Bears QB bitching!

The NFL draft makes much more sense now than it did a month ago. If you recall, Brady Quinn was expected to go no later than #9 to the Miami Dolphins. When the Dolphins passed on him for Tedd Ginn, Jr. ( a huge stretch at #9 by all accounts), Brady entered a free fall that lasted hours and became the subject of much drama and many articles.

Why wouldn't Miami, who had a fairly obvious need at quarterback, take Brady? Well, as I had indicated here on my blog, Miami was looking at Trent Green from KC which would free up Daunte Culpepper (whom I thought would land with the Raiders who would trade out of the #1 pick or select Calvin Johnson and leave JaMarcus Russell for the Lions at #2 with Brady Quinn going to Cleveland at #3). Well, that didn't happen. The Raiders stood pat and took their QB of the future leaving the Lions with yet another first round wide receiver.

And now, finally, the Dolphins have acquired Trent Green from KC and will release Culpepper tomorrow. Soooooo, can anyone think of a team that could use a 6'5" 270 l.b. quarterback with 5 full years of playing experience and 129 TD's and 75 picks in though seasons? Sure, he's been banged up the last two seasons and had knee surgery. Culpepper on crutches is better than Grossman 100% healthy. But who is looking at him now? Baltimore with Steve McNair, Kyle Boller and Troy Smith. Maybe we can get one of their castoffs as any of the three would probably be better than Grossman in 2007!!

A whole lot of nuthin'

Geesh, no wonder people with full-time jobs don't blog as often as others....nuthin' happens if you're working! The last two days I've gone into the office with Ricardo to get some work done. It's been good, but it keeps me from my creative inspirations for my blog. That's not entirely true of course, but it does occupy my mind.

In Anderson Cooper's blog, which I don't normally read, it is mentioned that some scientists believe the answer to global warming is a pandemic. At first, the thought seems crazy. Slowly though, it seems to make sense. Fewer people, by millions, tens of millions, means fewer everything that contribute to greenhouse gases. Is this the way Mother Nature might take care of herself? It's an interesting theory, but it seems like it would only make a dent in the problem, not fix it.

Still no cicada grubs. No rat stories to talk about. I got nuthin'.

Getting that stroke back.

Cicada watch in downtown has turned up nothing, yet again. I'm not really sure what the deal is, though I guess it's just a week or two off from what was predicted. Seems like they should be showing up though. Tonight I was heading out to Itasca (about 40 minutes west) to play softball so I figured I'd see plenty of cicadas out there. Heck, they might even hinder our game!

However I was disappointed yet again. No cicada sightings at all.

For the last month or so, I've been really struggling hitting. Occasionally I would have a good day, but most days my on base average was down in the .300-.400 range. When I have my stroke, my on base average (OBA) is closer to .700 if not over. Well, when you're 41 and playing with mostly twenty-somethings, you need to excel at SOMETHING to keep your spot on the field. Those areas include: speed, hitting, fielding, throwing and being versatile to play various positions. I was never blessed with speed, so I always worked on the other four areas. Last year though, we added some new players who admittedly had similar if not better fielding skills and arms. So that left me with hitting and being able to play several positions, but hitting is the real key for me.

Even without good speed, I've batted near the top of the order because I find a way to get on base for the people behind me so they can knock me in. If my OBA is .300-.400 though, I'm getting on base (by any means in our OBA calculation) half as much as I was previously. Even for players who don't pay attention to stats, my absence from the base paths has been noticeable.

Tonight though, I focused on a few things: take more pitches, keep my hands back and hit the ball where it is pitched (outside then to right, inside then to left). As a lead-off hitter, which I am not lately, I would take pitches and work the count to make the pitcher throw me a pitch where I wanted it. Then I could just hit it to whichever field was appropriate. As I've dropped out of the lead-off spot though, I find myself up with people on base and trying to hit behind the runner, even if the pitch dictates otherwise. Plus I wasn't taking as many pitches (for no particular reason), so more often I was hitting the pitcher's pitch instead of a pitch to my liking.

The result tonight was 4 for 7, a .570 clip, no walks, an another hard hit ball on which the centerfielder made a diving catch. That one diving catch kept me from being over .700, so in my mind at least, I hit the ball well and feel like I have my head around this thing now. The big test will be the week after next when we have a tournament in Champaign-Urbana.....my alma mater!!

Well sure, I COULD do that, but that would be easy.

As you know, I have sink problems. What has made the problem worse is that I'm willing to pay the money to get it fixed, but no one can help me. Yesterday I received a phone call from Sue and Joe, the hairless salon owner (HSO). They were right outside my condo with their two kids. After going out to talk to them, I invited them in to see my new doors (and kitchen...it's been a while since they came over!). While explaining my dilemma with the sink, I mentioned that there isn't any name on the sink. Sue said are you sure? I said yeah, it just has this on it "C-Tech-1". She says, "Why don't you Google it and see what comes up?" Yeah dumb-ass Joe, why don't you? Ugh. Of course I was able to find the manufacturer with little problem and the drain is on its way. Sometimes you just need someone to point out the trees through the forest.

While doing laundry yesterday, I realized I had a pair of pants that are dry clean only. Unfortunately, I realized this AFTER I had washed the pants. No sweat, just need to take them to the cleaners and so today I did. Not really exciting, but even though I've been going to this dry cleaner for a decade, they changed systems recently and needed my information. Though it is a stereotypical Chinese managed dry cleaner, the person waiting on me seemed Asian but not Chinese or Japanese. In any case, she didn't speak English very well. So she asks for my phone number and give it to her, leaving off the area code. I mean, she doesn't need that right? I live right around the corner. There are probably 5 dry cleaners within in four to five blocks of my condo if not more. Within my area code, I can't even imagine how many dry cleaners operate. Not getting my area code first though completely threw her off and we spent, literally, three minutes just trying to get my phone number into her computer. I almost jumped across the counter to enter it all myself!! Is there anyone in the free world (or even the enslaved world!) who has to leave their area code to find a dry cleaner? That's just ridiculous. Cell phones might be the reason, but it's still a little crazy.

Finally, I watched the MTV Movie Awards show. The show was pretty ho-hum except for one puzzling category: Best Movie You Haven't Seen Yet. So these are movies that the audience has only seen commercials for: Transformers, Simpsons The Movie and others. HOW is this appealing? Is it really just for drumming up interest in these movies? C'mon, that's pretty weak.

Any golf is good golf, but can you stop the putting green from spinning?

What a busy, busy weekend. I hope you enjoyed yours!

Saturday we had our softball tournament and we decided to go with a split squad (entered two teams). Most of our tournament starters were on one team though, but we just weren't hitting well. I'm as much to blame as anyone as my bat has gone ice cold the last few weeks. I'm working on ways to get out of it though.

After the tournament, I met Ricardo and his wife up in Lincoln Square for Mayfest, again. This time though it didn't rain. Since I knew I had to get up at 5 a.m. to make a golfing tee time up in Winnetka with a client, I opted to take a few precautions against drinking too much. One precaution was to buy the smaller mug for getting refills instead of the bigger mug which holds probably three of the little beers. Small mug, check. Then I wanted to make sure that I had plenty to eat while at the festival. Food, check. Avoid being out with Ricardo because it always ends up with me being drunk somewhere. Avoid Ricardo....uh oh. Missed on that one and it was the biggee. Then my "Thuringer Dinner" didn't have a bun with the sandwich portion of the meal and I was counting on it soaking up some serious alcohol. I did try to substitute a pretzel though, but apparently that wasn't enough. And the small cup would have worked......if I hadn't gone back for refills 3 times as often!!

Now, I'm not saying I'm completely without blame as it relates to Ricardo, but he and his wife are a lot of fun and usually there is alcohol around which, in turn, leads to a lot of drinking. Plus he has friends who are big drinkers, other than me. Well, long story short, I'm stumbling down Lincoln Avenue at 12:30 trying to find a cab with a million other drunk people. Great. When I finally get home, I have just enough time to set my alarm clock, strip down and hop into bed.

For future reference, golf is best played on more than four hours sleep. Plus, the client I was shooting with likes to walk the course and I don't even know if they have gas carts. Needless to say, I had a lot going against me, but I still shot reasonably well (85) which included two triple-bogeys on the back nine when I was even more tired.

One definite positive for the round was the number of cicadas that I saw!! They were everywhere. The client hit a tree, on purpose, with his club and the cicadas just flew everywhere. Tons of them!! Oddly though, just a few trees away would be a really old tree that had no cicadas on it at all. How strange is that? Still no cicadas downtown though, so who knows what to think.

What is it with me and rain/water?

An eventful day today that started with taking el supremo de NM to the airport at 7:30, the heart of rush hour. Fortunately, for whatever reason, traffic wasn't unbearable as I would expect.

Being up and about, I decided to hit the gym upon my return (instead of going back to bed!). Because the Cubs game was at home at 1:20, I opted to ride my bike to the gym for the first time this year....which meant I had to put some air in my tires. After having the same problem last year, I opted to purchase a hand held pump and it came in handy (pardon the pun) today.

Feeling rather proud of myself for working out and conquering my bike, I headed for the Cubs game with a client and two of his guests. One of the two guests was an attractive woman who showed up at Goose Island a little bit late. Not 10 minutes after sitting down, she said, "Do people tell you that you look like someone famous?"
Ugh. "Yes.....they do....far too often."
"Who do they say you look like?"
"Well, now they say I look like Chris Elliott."
"THAT'S who I was thinking too!!"
"Great....really great."

I mean really, what the heck am I supposed to say? "Thanks for saying I look like a balding, overweight slob"? She even pulled the "You also look like Paul Giamatti." Fucking wonderful. I'm not sure he's any better.....has a little more acting talent though.

There was a chance of rain for the game, so I wore tennis shoes instead of sandals because I hate walking in sandals in the rain. Nothing but bright sunshine during the game though. Afterwards we went to Murphy's Bleachers and met some of the guests' coworkers and, coincidentally enough, some people with whom I had previously worked while at Morningstar! It's a small world.

After leaving the bar and getting my afternoon coffee, I took my THIRD shower of the day before heading to Lincoln Square for German May Fest. This time I wore sandals instead of tennis shoes. Guess what happened? Yep, it rained. Damnit!! I did briefly hook up with el supremo's daughter Alexis though before the rains forced everyone under two tented areas. The place was packed! Unfortunately, Alexis and I were separated after the rain started as her an her girlfriend were looking for someone. I saw some old Morningstar people and talked to them briefly, again before the rain forced everyone inside.

Unable to find Alexis again and having a break in the rain clouds, I headed home, via train. I'm happy to say that I did not get rained on during the walk home. I have to say though, I felt a little like I was wearing a Cubs hat!

Another long night.....of drinking....ugh.

Yes, it's nearly midnight and I'm writing my blog intoxicated once again. It el supremo de NM's fault once again due to a combination of events: he took me out for a great dinner last night with his family, we had a breakfast meeting this morning where we ate too much food which led me to eating only an apple for lunch before heading over to Just Grapes for wine tasting at 4:30. Nothing but wine and crackers for 2 1/2 hours!! Not ideal. More food and booze at Alhambra idea courtesy of Ricardo. I love Ricardo and his wife so them with el supremo and the boss of Ricardo's wife made it a great evening!!

While drinking at Just Grapes, I started setting aside bottles of wine that I liked. At the end of the evening, I had a case of wine. Since it was all on sale though, 12 bottles cost me $110 including tax. Not bad!!! Tonight was the first time that I really bought wines at Just Grapes. Normally I just drink and eat crackers!

Still no Cicadas. Damn them all!!

Ummmmmm, what else? I thought I had other ideas, but I'm drawing blanks. Tomorrow I have to get up early and take el supremo to the airport, then a client invited me to the Cubs game. If I'm still away, Alexis (from Amsterdam) will be up in Lincoln Square for German May Fest. Saturday is a softball tournament and Sunday is golf at 6:45!!! Yikes.

"Shut up. It's ok, I'm a girl."

Picked up el supremo de NM at O'Hare today...in record time I might add. From my door, it took less than 30 minutes to get to the massive airport. With relatively easy traffic, we were able to grab a bite for lunch prior to heading to our first client.

After a successful meeting, we briefly stopped at home before heading to dinner at our new favorite restaurant, Scylla. Joining us for dinner was Alexis (of the blog Alexis in Amsterdam), fellow blogger (and sister) Motherrocker, John the Armenian (MR's hubby) and his parents Sourdough Al and Sandy (they specialize in putting together great cruise packages, so check them out if you're interested). We had a great time swapping tales as well as food. We sat upstairs, which was a first for me, but we had Alex as our waiter, a Scylla favorite. Chef Stephanie was there as well and even sent out some complimentary appetizers to us. What a great night!! In addition to the great food, I had a few Quebec beers called Maudite. Really tasty stuff let me tell you. For dessert, Motherrocker decided to order a Frangelico. She must have thought I was going to say something demeaning, because she made the quote which I used as the title of the blog today. Mind you, I didn't even know what Frangelico was, so clearly I couldn't make fun of her!!

Still no Cicadas anywhere near me downtown, but I've heard they are even up in Winnetka now. So now they are north, south and west (can't be east because of the lake). What the hell?
Show yourselves already!!

Finally, a baby binturong was born in Sydney's zoo. Here's a picture of the really cute "bear cat", the first born in captivity in Sydney.

Ice Cream and Cicadas

Here's what I was expecting to see by now Re: the Cicadas:








Piling up around a suburban tree.












Crawling all over a plant.









What I have actually seen, downtown at least, is bupkis, squat, nada. "Well, we're waiting." --Judge Smails, Caddyshack.

Read today that the number one cause of accidental deaths for children ages 1-4 is the same cause as the number two cause of accidental deaths for children ages 1-14. Any idea what it is? Sure it's not a cheery topic, but hey, life isn't always a bowl of cherries. Check the bottom of yesterday's post for the answer.

A sure sign of summer? Joe going for ice cream. I don't eat a lot of ice cream...just the opposite in fact, but it's hard for me to resist a nice walk to an ice cream shoppe. Now I don't go hogwild or anything, but a single scoop in a sugar cone is just the answer many a day in Chicago in the summer. Today, after lunch, Ricardo and I went to a little spot called Margie's at Armitage and Western. The place is old and the women working there are even older. However, the ice cream hit the spot and they have a special that I'm going to have to get another time. It's a sundae with several scoops of ice cream, a banana, whip cream and I think chocolate sauce for something like $4. That's a pretty good deal since these scoops were pretty large.

Traveling to see Cicadas.

I promised that I would post a picture of the first grubs I see and here they are:





Unfortunately they were not in Chicago, but in Lombard where I spent part of Memorial Day Sunday.












Here's a cool picture of a Cicada hatching! I've never actually seen this in person until yesterday. Again, it was in Lombard.









It was really a tale of two parties. The first was hosted by a softball teammate, 25ish, living with his parents currently. There was a keg, Sloppy Joes and beef sandwiches. For entertainment, there was a "bags" tournament. I find it funny that Wikipedia calls the game "cornhole" as I've only heard people refer to it while reporting on it in the media. No guy I know would ever say they were going to play cornhole! Here's some pics from the first party:





People staying out of the sun. It wasn't even all that warm! Wussies.














View from inside the garage. That table in the left center of the picture is the "spread".












The cornhole tournament in the front yard.












The second party I went to was an hour south of the first in the rural town of Mokena. Since the area was mostly farmland 17 years ago, there were no cicadas in the development of my friends Terry and Sandie. In stark contrast to the first party, here's the spread at Terry's:






Let's see if I can list the food: four different salads (pasta, spinach, potato and broccoli), hamburgers, sausage, tacos, sloppy Joes, orange chicken (Chinese) and that didn't even include dessert!




It was a great day!

The answer to tomorrow's quiz: Drowning!

Water, water, water....oh, and when you get home, some more water.

Had a tournament today out in Arlington Heights. It was a nine team tournament where we were again playing with some teams a level above us. This time though, we also were playing with six of our regular players out for the holiday and only one extra player, which we were going to lose to a bachelor party at some point in the afternoon. Not bloody ideal. On top of all of that, it rained last night as well as this morning. I really didn't even think we were going to be able to play, but they did a bunch of work on the fields and started the tournament with just an hour delay.

Playing on a wet field is a mixed bag for us. While the wet field slows down the ball for our infield (aging and playing out of position infield today), it also slows down our ground ball hits which the majority of our team tends to hit (key in our offense at our level of play).

Since we were short-handed, I moved from third over to shortstop. Our other third baseman played second. One of our first basemen played third. Our first string shortstop played outfield. And to top it all off, our mostly blind coach (really, he is) was our designated pinch runner. It was crazy!!

However, despite all that adversity, we played a team at our level and beat them handily in the first game. Then we played a team that sometimes plays a level higher than us, depending on the organization rules. About a month ago, they slaughter ruled us.....which is not good (they stop the game early if your team is losing by a certain amount of runs after 5 innings). Well, it was a tough game, but we ended up winning 9-7. Even without our full team and a 41-year old shortstop!!

Then came a three hour wait for our next game against a long-time foe: Precision (that's their team name). We went to Chilis for lunch and the rains continued the entire time we were at the restaurant. Confident that we would not be playing anymore games today, several team members decided to imbibe a little bit. Unfortunately, despite the poor field commissions, we did play. Towards the end of the game, there was standing water on the infield. Precision ended up slaughter ruling us by scoring eight runs in the bottom of the fourth to take a 10 run lead which they held through the fifth and won 17-7. Our game ended up being the last of the tournament and we tied for third I believe.

After changing clothes, I headed home and brought all my wet gear into the house to dry out. While preparing dinner, I noted the smell of my nemeses: the smell of something musty. As I checked under the sink, I discovered a pipe and threading directly below the sink had been knocked loose. Ugh. Most of the water continued down the drain, but some was spilling out the side. I tried to reattach the pipe and threading (as I do have some plumbing experience), but failed. I'm not sure how it even stayed in place this long!! So instead of going out to grab a drink at the local pub, I had to dry out the area under the sink and all of the cleaning supplies that were now, ironically, soiled. Hopefully, with the help of the internet, I'll be able to figure out how to fix the pipe.

Here's some holiday fun that I stole from another blogger. #44 and 43 are my favorites! Though I really like 24 and #11 is a classic. 8 is from a great movie too!

Somebody Got Hit

Barely getting the blog in on Friday and now most people won't read it because of the big holiday weekend. No sweat though. I had dinner with a female friend (she truly is as we talked about her out-of-town-boyfriend issues for most of dinner......I'm not a big fan of being that guy by the way) and then dropped her off and went to see one of my favorite bands play, Fly Williams.

Now Fly Williams (FW) hasn't played in almost a year, so it was a surprise to many of us loyal followers to find out that they were even still together. Once again though, they put on a good show.....they even honored my request for the last song Somebody Got Hit which has some really good lyrics. They reference U2's Pride in the Name of Love and have a refrain of "somebody got hit, somebody must be doing something right." It's an awesome song and I'm not a big fan of live music normally. It might be out there in cyberspace, but they lost their URL so I don't know for sure where it is. (By the way, URL stands for Uniform Resource Locator. Thank you Wikipedia.)

So why would I go see this relatively obscure band if I'm not a fan of live music. Two connections keep me going back. First, an ex-ex-girlfriend was really good friends with the lead singer so that's how I was introduced to them. I've seen them so many times now that they know me fairly well. In case you didn't know, I'm always there at the end of the set of live music to offer my thoughts (positive and negative). If you want my opinion, it's there for the taking. If you don't, avoid me at all costs.

I found out tonight that my ex-ex-girlfriend moved to Houston after NOT marrying a less attractive version of me (he was overweight, smoked, didn't have the personality, but shared similar facial features). Good for her. I thought that was a bad move on her part anyway.

The other connection with FW is that they are the band I went to see after speaking to the Finance Club from Central Michigan several years ago. One of the people in the club was the daughter of my long-time babysitter and current friend of the family, which is why I agreed to talk to them. After my speech and a tour of the Exchange, we hooked up to go see FW at The Elbow Room. Now that young lady and her live-in boyfriend live less than a mile away and we always go see FW together. Oddly enough, a friend of theirs now plays saxophone for FW. They met him independently of the band and found out later that he played for them. Too funny! It's a small world.....but I'd hate to paint it.