Whatta Weekend

Spacebee's Birthday Hat

It was quite a celebratory weekend here in Madison; we pretty much partied straight through from Friday at 5pm when we set out for a fondue dinner of epic proportions.  Three hours later I was filled with tiny bits of boiled meat, veggies, and chocolate-covered rice krispies.  We met a few pals and then dove into more celebrations, and long story short I woke up Saturday morning not feeling the greatest.

A Spacebee coworker was retiring and had a bash at the Hilldale Great Dane on Saturday.  Free beer from 4pm until 7pm started things off, and I hilariously fell asleep at wwhazz’s with a beer in hand around midnight.  Hey: two consecutive party nights don’t agree with my 31 year old bones.  So sue me.

Alas, I think the Iowa trip has been delayed.  Consolations to belly for her loss, and hope everything goes well next weekend.  Diamond Jo will always be there, and I’ll be ready to stick my finger in the small of his back and whisper “gimme everything you got.”

I’m super behind on TNG on my DVR… need to sit down and catch up. I saw that Time’ Arrow is on there and excitement can’t describe my feelings.  HELP A FORTY NINER! HE’S GOT A BAD COUGH! OH NOES, AN ALIEN STOLED HIS LIFE FORCE! GUINAN, HALP! TIME WARP! PICARD IS A DANDY FOP! DATA IS A FRENCHMAN! SAMUEL CLEMENS OF THE 24TH CENTURY!

What’s Up, Dirty Dawgs?

Cah-razy weekend: Friday “80 Degreez” Night we walked over to the Stadium Bar and had fun onna bun with wwhazz, belly, and the ILL Connection.  Woke up a tad under the weather on Saturday morning for Cah-razylegs to a bit of thunderstormin’ and rainin’.  Instead of doing a 5K walk, we found ourselves back in the Stadium Bar for Bloody Marys and a gigantic plate of nachos.

Saturday afternoon: nap time and a DVD viewing of the Rescuers Down Under.

Saturday night was the 80s Party at Spacebee’s coworker’s house.  It was a really fun time: wwhazz and his coterie were there, they had High Life on tap, and we rolled craps in a dusty garage for almost the duration.  I think I ended up owing wwhazz some skrills, but I can’t remember how much at this time.  We alkso spent the early portion of the party eagerly following the Brewers/Astros game via an iPhone screen.  Once Timmer arrived with his Premium service we were also able to catch Uecker’s call of the game ending out.  Hurray, Brewers went 5-4 on the road!  Wwhazz left at the end of the night with Spyder’s right-hand man in tow.  I think he has the guy chained in his basement to extract info now.  Spacebee has pictures, and once they’re on her computer I’ll throw a few on Flickr.

Sunday was just your average Hungover Day: made homemade hashed brown potatoes and scrambled easies and watched the Brewers lay an egg in the Asrtos finale, but it was fun all around.  My friend Jay came over with Sonic’s Ultimate Genesis Collection for the Xbox 360.  It was great: Golden Axe 1, 2, and 3, Streets of Rage 1, 2, and 3, Altered Beast, and tons more (Phantasy Star 2, 3, and 4!)  I’m definitely picking this game up: $30 for tons of nostalgia.  Fuck, it even has Ecco the Dolphin for you weirdos that like that stuff.

HOLLLARIT!

Halloween 2007

California was pretty great last week, if hectic. Between work meetings, social get-togethers, and the Monterey Bay Aquarium spacebee and I went from hither to yon and back from Thursday to Sunday. Saturday night our very own madd scientits came up to have dinner with fuddruckus, manders, spacebee, and I at the Fahrenheit Ultra Lounge. The dinner was great, and we stayed afterward to dance to odd 80s-dance-pop-fusion and slurp down $9 crown ‘n’ cokes. We followed that up on Sunday by going to meet some of my old work friends at the Oktoberfest festivities in Campbell (near scientist’s old homestead: pRUNEYARD!)

That brings us to Halloween 2007. For all the pictures, see my Flickr set.

Blammo!

We had some friends over for an evening of Ultimate Fighter marathon, Guitar Hero II, and some beers at the Main Depot. We didn’t end up heading down to State St., in part because we didn’t want to wait in line and pay $7 each in order to walk up and down a street, but mostly because my costume involved going shirtless and it was goddamned cold outside Saturday night. At the Depot, an incredibly drunk man insinuated that I was not man enough (or perhaps, too much man [i'm fat]) to be the boyfriend of a classy dame like spacebee. I whispered in his ear, “Psst, I’m not really a wrestler.” His response, “You think?” Later on he attempted to paw at bellygirl from the bathroom doorway as we left and ended up falling down. He also knocked down a dancing machine while being drunk and almost got his ass whomped. All in all, there was no need for me to do or say anything to this dude: he was gonna get the holy shit beat out of him before the night was over anyways. I hear tell later on of wwhazz and bellygirl at bartime seeing an incredibly drunk man on stilts take 3 giant wobbly steps and then eat concrete. Oh Halloween!

Black Cat Fever

Pretty good Packer game last night, too. Spacebee and I watched it at scubby’s new house out in Middleton, on the Ultra High Def TV. Man, watching Favre throw million-yard touchdowns in high def was sweeter than watching it on my dumb ol’ cable. So what if I’m out of the suicide pool, I hedged against a Packer loss so that I’d be happy either way. Say lah vee, there’s always next year, and all that rigamarole.

Man of Mysterio

Birthday Bingo

So it is that early October is here. GMX, peterstiffly, todder, and myself (possibly more?) all celebrate birthdays this week. As for myself, verily I declare that I am NOT a good friend anymore. I am a thoughtless homunculus, riding the winds of terrible selfishness. Really though, I’m a dick for not calling GMX. I will rectify that… now. Hmm, he answered the phone and then hung up on me. Hope it was an accident.

So, er, on with the show? There aren’t many plans for Number 29. Surprise dinner somewhere, and Spacebee is making me lunch. That’s fine by me; sounds effing delightful.

Peterstiffly, I’m not sure what you’re doing this weekend for your birthday, but maybe we could hook up for the Badgers and/or Packers game. I’ve got no plans to speak of, so HOLLLARIT.

The Bakersfield Wastelands

AND lo, unto the hellscape of Bakersfield there was delivered a couple. AND that couple didst live in squalor amongst roaches, big-ass bugs, and team players. THE men and women of the hovel did not yet know their betters were upon them…

And so on and so forth. Hey everyone, it’s nice to be back. I was in Racine on Sunday for a trio of birthdays: my niece, my soon-to-be sister-in-law, and my grandmother. We had a gay old time eating delicious risotto and marinaded beef tenderloin. Then we had a Speed Party: eat cake, pinata crash, open presents in 30 or less minutes. Spacebee and I rode dirty down to Racine, spent about 3 hours there, and then headed back up. Our driving time equaled the time we were there, but it was worth it to see so many family members’ birthdays in one shot!

There’s also crazy news on the Racine front: my parents are moving to… Door County. My father accepted a position as the president and CEO of the visitor’s bureau up yonder, and so by the end of the year they will have (hopefully, in this housing market) sold their house and moved up there. My brosef and seestor are moving out soon or have moved out already, and so they won’t be going with. I know I’m still digesting the news… but I am looking forward to going up there to visit.

Now, as anyone in Madison can attest to, I’ve been going buck fucking crazy on a cookbook I received from my dad recently.

[Backstory] As some of you may know, my dad used to work for Visit Milwaukee, the convention and visitor’s bureau for the area. As the VP of Sales, it was his job to sell the city to various large conventions so they would come and buy up a bunch of hotel rooms and spend tourist money like ‘whoa.’ So they have these conventions where people representing large conventions come and get wined and dined and look at booths by various cities in order to hold their convention there. My dad worked hard to set up a dinner for under a hundred people at the home of Art Smith, Oprah’s personal chef. So a bunch of people went to his house in Chicago and had some great food and (I hear) raved about it to others at the convention the next day. As the guests left, Art Smith signed copies of his newest cookbook for the them, and my dad snagged a copy for me as well. [/Backstory]

Now, I had paged through the cookbook and found a few good recipes, but I hadn’t actually taken a step to cook anything until last week. I went to Whole Foods and bought all the ingredients to make 4 dinners from the book on consecutive nights. Many of them involved brining and long-lead prep work, so I set up a schedule where I would be cooking one night’s dinner while prepping for the next night’s dinner. Long story short: these things went four-for-four. Each one was goddamned tasty (which can be attested to by those on whazzmaster who tried them, I believe).

All this to mention that the fourth night of Back to the Family-inspired dinners happened to fall on Saturday: college football during the day, Badger football at night, free UFC ‘pay-per-view’ (I’ll let wwhazz expound on that one), and Brewers and Cubs baseball. Mississippi Chicken and Rice with homemade cornbread turned out to be the perfect compliment to 6+ hours of various sports. By the way, GMX, the cornbread we made was straight outta Good Ol’ J.R.’s Country Homemade Cookbook you got me. So now I have two signed cookbooks: one from Oprah’s personal chef, and one from the WWE’s lead announcer. The cornbread was made in a cast-iron skillet, which got ultra-high marks from me. Anything made in a cast-iron pan is going to taste twenty to thirty times better.

Finally, Wisconsin sports are looking good, if shaky. Badgers are 2-0. Packers are 1-0. Brewers are back atop the division (for the moment). And wwhazz is winning Peterstiffly’s Whazzmaster NFL Pool. Incredibly.

HOLLLARIT Bakersfield.

Yo Ho Hello There Go To Racine And Do A Show There

Hey everyone! Wiggity wiggity wiggity! It’s your old pal whazzmaster and have I got a deal for YOU!  Get this whazzers: I’m gonna be out of town next weekend! Wheee!  Spacebee and I are going down to Elburn Days… hmm, where did I put that link… here? Hmm, no.  Aha, here it is.  I’m gonna eat me a big ol’ thing of sweet corn.  Then I’m gonna ride the Tilt-A-Whirl, slap some money down on the Meat Raffle, and probably contract salmonella.  All in a days work, my friends.

Plus, on Tuesday I’m delivering a new computer to my parents, and I’ll probably hook up with my brother again for some old fashioned Ray-Seen golf action.  Will we play Johnson’s Park, where sonuvabitch rangers yell at you no matter how fast or slow you play?  Or will we play at Ives Grove, where the gale force winds blow your tee shot out into a random cornfield in Union Grove? We won’t know until Wednesday, so stay tuned!

Also, I recently made some trip plans to travel out to the Valley in October.  I’ll be in San Heezy (For Sheezy) Oct 16th through the 22nd, and as an Extra! Surprise! spacebee will be joining me on the weekend.

This past weekend was relaxing, and I even got to play some golf with Scubby out at Bridges.  I lost about a dozen balls on the back nine and stopped keeping score, but the front was pretty good; I shot a 43.

That’s about it for now, I’m sure this week will be full of tales of Rogue Bartending by wwhazz.  Also, scientist, I ask you a direct question: how’s it going out in San Diego? Are you guys planning on doing a few more rotations out there? Gonna move to LA proper so you can heckle the Live at the Bike dudes… live?  Or are you planning on moving to Atlanta, GA?  You know (from first hand stories) they gots some good strip clubs there…

Say lah vee, whazzmaster.

Come On Down!

Spacebee is triumphantly moving into my place this weekend, so my attention will likely be elsewhere.  Cal: it’s good to know that you are no longer suffering from measles, mumps, and/or rubella.  Arlo stayed over at my place on Wednesday night and on Thursday morning we went and had a good game of tennis.  Cal, my shit is off the heezy, you can’t win.  I joined Tennis-league.com (free local tennis ladders) but there’s only one other guy from Madison on there.  I suppose we can have the world series of tennis, but I’d to find some more competition.

Sundance, Pus, and The Cubs

First: The Bad News.  I went for a wisdom teeth follow-up check-up yesterday and the doc informed me I have two abscesses.  He informed me that if antibiotics don’t clear it up then he’ll have to go in and re-open the area and clean it out which would be me back at the beginning of the healing process.  Ugh.  Please let the antibiotics work.

While picking up my meds, however, I checked out the new Sundance 608 theater/cafe/restaurant/bar over at Hilldale Mall.  I heard that they were serving Peet’s Coffee (my favorite from my California days) and wanted to check out the digs.  Man, really nice indeed.  The interior is really… comfy, I guess, is how I’d describe it.  Leather chairs, nice lighting.  It made me really want to drive back to my house, get my laptop, and camp out there for a day writing code.  I liked it so much I went and got wwhazz and brought him back there for more coffee and newspaper-reading.

Finally, next week is the second (and final) Cubs @ Brewers series for the season.  I’ve got tickets for Monday, Tuesday, and Wednesday.  Monday is spacebee and I, Tuesday is wwhazz and I, and Wednesday is me, spacebee, wwhazz, and bellygirl.  Of course, there’ll be pictures when all is said and done.

Carcassonne, WORT Festival, and Smells

Well, the weekend is over.  And when all is said and done we incurred about 80,000 calories, a progressive music festival out side my window, an epic bocce ball tournament metldown, at least 84 cans of Miller High Life, two and a half bottles of scotch, a Brewers shit-pile, and one dog complaint by my “downstairs neighbors” (i.e., jerks).  I hate to be nudge, but could we get this story started? I’m leaving to go camping in a few hours…

Wwhazz and parker got here on Friday afternoon.   Timmer was already here on Thursday, so all of us (and o’neil) left at 4pm-ish to go to the Brewers game against the Minnesota (rrr!) Twins.  We picked up whitehouse in Waukesha on the way in.  We also did it durrty-style this time: parked in a neighborhood off Bluemound and hit the liquor store for Mini-Miller Lite 6 packs and boner beers (plastic bottles like the ones they use in the stadium).  Then we went to a bar with a free shuttle, had a bottle of beer, and got down to Miller Park with about 15-20 to go before game time.  After slamming 100 8 ox Miller Lite, we each put a boner beer down our pants and went to collect our Paul Molitor bobblehead.  Oh yeah.

The game kinda sucked (Brewers Lost) but we had a good time with our obstructed-view seats in the right field (behind the foul pole).  Our section was a batch of Milwaukee’s Finest salt-of-the-earth-folk mixed with yuppies with 18 kids or yuppies with skater0punk kids dressed in beige and dark green.  I had a fine time sitting behind a 6- and 8-year-old screaming “fuckin brewers!” while sloshing my beer all over the place.  The family came in the 4th inning and left in the 7th inning.  I’m sure they had a fine time; I scavenged one of their leftover PB&J’s for later on.

We were about to start walking back to the bar area when Wwhazz sighted the Fiesta Garibaldia shuttle.  We hopped on that thing and hit the party back at the bar.  Free taco bar, free chips and salsa, two hot chicks dressed as slutty referees: they had it all.  Lawman designated drove us back to Madison, where we passed out for the night.

Our only plan for Saturday was to cook up a homemade fish fry with the 15-20 bluegills, crappe, and perch that lawman caught on opening weekend .  We had lunch at the Old Fashioned, and then decided to give the bocce court in my complex’s courtyard a test drive.  Result: we will be starting a bocce league this summer.  It was awesome, especially since so much booze was involved.  The inaugural best-of-five series saw lawman and wwhazz coming back from a 10-1 deficit to stave off elimination, then to go on to win it while whazzmaster and timmer were 3/4 in the bag on scotch.  I cannot stress how fun bocce at my house is.

So after that we reloaded our booze and took off for lawman’s pad to make our epic dinner.  While lawman prepared the coating and got things ready, I was deep in the zone of potater-preparation.  The idea: potatoes au-gratin with ramps.  Somehow.  We ended up boiling some Yukon Golds (not too soft, though), then slicing them and laying them in a glass baking dish.  Then we sauteed the ramps, some green onions, and a regular white onion down.  We cooked some half-and-half with about half a block of shredded cheddar, and then combined that mixture with the saute and spooned it over the po-taters.  Cooked that in the over til the top was crispy, and voila.  It was tasty, but not as tasty as the delicious panfish lawman fried up.  We garnished things with fresh veggies, summer sausage, and High Life.

Oh yeah, and Springer was there.  That’s right; he came, he saw, he took our money in poker, he departed.

Sunday was a Day of Rest: games of all sorts were played.  We started things off with a breakfast of leftover fried bluegill, scrambled eggs, leftover po-tater au-gratin, sausage patties, donuts, and bread.  We basically went back and forth all day between the NES emulator on the Xbox, the new board game I got wwhazz for Xmas (Carcassonne), and another bocce tournament.  Things were made… odder by the fact that WORT was staging a street music festival about 20 yards from my window.  We found a SNES game in my ROMS folder called Vegas Stakes, and spent many hours running our $1000 buy-in up to $1.2 million.  You can play craps, roulette, blackjack, slots, and 7 card stud (spread limit) poker.  We had some early luck when a zombie-man offered to wipe our shirt off, and to thank us he gave us a lottery ticket that won us $80,000, which became our nest egg.  We ran that $80K to about $400K in poker by breaking off this poor schmoe named ‘Johnny’, and then took the $400K to over a million in high stakes craps.  We ended up betting $1.2 million on the odds behind our point (5) in a no-limit craps game, and busted out.  We will be more careful next time; Johnny is easy money.

The second bocce tournament saw another epic collapse by Timmer and whazzmaster.  This was just a best-of-three set, but they came from behind in the third game to put us down.

Sadly, the pounds and pounds of fried food, eggs, coffee, scotch, and High Life made hay of our buttholes; it smelled constantly like farts all day on Sunday.

On the upside, though, we are starting to get good at Carcassonne, which is probably the funnest board game I’ve played since Thunder Road.  Knowing Scientist’s love of Dice Wars, I’d be interested to see his reaction to this game.

So, that’s about it.  This morning spacebee and I leave to go camping up near The Dells.  We’ll be gone until Thursday or Friday, so be good you little scamps.  I’d love to see a discussion of Carcassonne strategy, or barring that maybe just some plans for our bocce league this summer.  Man, this is gonna be fun.

Tick Tock, Never the Glock

The weekend was uneventful, perhaps a calm before the impending WirksuStorm (being tracked in realtime by our Doppler9000 Storm Track team).  On Saturday evening Spacebee and I did a late dinner at Tornado Room, and then hit the hookah at The Casbah for awhile before meeting Meg at The Main Depot.  Curiously, the Depot was packed to the brim with older, alumni-looking folks.  Also, Bret Bielama.  That makes 4 times.  It was one of those nights where I wish I had a camera in my house to capture myself at 2am.  I’m pretty sure I was speaking fucking Sputnik.

Yesterday morning we had brunch at the Westside Businessmen’s Club with spacebee’s family, which prompted my over and over question of “Can Eastside Businessmen join this club, or what?”  Later in the day, we drove down to Racine to have dinner with my family as well.  Dad made a risotto with chicken stock, grated Parmesan cheese, asparagus tips, and julienned prosciutto.  Holy moses it was good.

And that, as they say, is that.  This week will be one spent in quiet seclusion leading up to Friday’s Brewer Game and The Weekend Where Wirkus Comes To Madison.  Should be fun.  Er, on a bun.