• Three entries into the $20,000 or 2008 Chevy Malibu LTZ
• Two entries into the $3,000 vacation package (or cash) Firemen’s Raffle
• Upwards of a dozen entries into the Elburn Basketball 30″ JVC Flat Screen raffle

As of press time I have not heard that I won any of them.  A man can dream.

Tim and I played bingo for about an hour today and I BINGO’d one time, butso did another guy and I only won $25.  One lady won after 4 numbers were drawn (horizontal across the middle).

We ran the Elburn Days 5K on Saturday morning (after staying in the beer tent late on Friday night).  I limped in with an embarassing 33:30, which I suppose isn’t bad considering that my ‘training’ was to run 1.5 miles on Tuesday, Wednesday, and Thursday of last week.  Say lah vee.

No segue: if you have an XBox 360 I highly reccommend the games Braid and Geometry Wars 2.  Also: Too Human comes out this week.  I got the demo last week and that game is damn awesome; I’m definitely picking it up.

No segue again: Wednesday is the semi’s and finals for our summer volleyball league.  We’re seeded second and our first game starts at 7pm (champeenship at 9pm).  We played kinda like garbage last week, so it’ll be interesting to see if we can finish off what was a pretty good season.

One: From their ‘about us‘ page:

The idea for a modern American, Irish, Scottish and English sports pub was the brain child of successful restaurateur Mark DiMartino. Wanting to impress Harrah’s hotel executives, Mark dressed in his finest T-shirt, ripped Levi’s and well-worn Chuck Taylor sneakers and pitched his idea of a contemporary, Celtic theme sports pub staffed with beautiful servers. And guess what the uniforms would be… knee-high socks and short, sexy plaid kilts with matching plaid halter tops under white shirts tantalizingly tied to show off the midriff.

There really is a lot of backslapping going on here when the idea boils down to: Hooters + Less Orange Shit.  Don’t try to sell me that this is the idea of the millenium.

Two: They’re using the Vegas Showgirl-Style of employee management.  All of the employees are called ‘cast members’.  From the Kilt Kareers (?) page:

The Tilted Kilt is always looking for talented and service-oriented cast members. We’re casting the rolls of: Tilted Kilt Girl, Tilted Kilt Host and Tilted Kilt Bartender in new and existing sports pubs now.

Bottom line: we don’t have to abide by any equal opportunity loaws because we are casting a role not hirin– fuck it NO UGGOS ALLOWED!  Dude, unless I’m at dinner theater I don’t want a ‘cast member’ serving me food.  No, fuck that, even at a dinner theater I don’t want a fucking cast member serving my food.  You (pointing at actor), act. You (pointing at waitress), serve food.  Don’t want to eat there… unless they show Pay per views, I guess.

First things first: I signed up for that Facebook shit. You on there? Hit me up.

Next things next: I’m coming to Seattle on Thursday, August 28th until Sunday, August 31st.  I don’t have a place to stay on Thursday night– can I crash with you, maddddddddddddddddd? We could go out and play Golden Tee and errythang.

Last things last: Wwhazz, are we having any sort of poker/dice/bags game tonight?  Will it just be me and you watching the PPV?  Sceizzer, get over here to watch Brock LesNAR do a 360° spinning piledriver.  Anyone else that wants to come over for booze, UFC, and gambling… you know where I’m at.

Check this out: Bernie Mac died today. Sad.

Space. Bear. Summer Report!

I could swear that’s Atmosphere.

MILWAUKEE—The Brewers’ playoff push has run afoul of an unusual distraction, as sources close to the organization confirm that newly acquired husky starting pitcher C.C. Sabathia and sizable power-hitting first baseman Prince Fielder continue to visualize one another as a 6′7″ chili cheese dog and a 260-pound hamburger with all the trimmings, respectively.

So– I’m out in California and I can’t see Brewers games anymore.  I just get off of work, look at the scoreboard online, and see that we’re kicking the shit out of Team X.  I can handle that.

Btw– fuddruckus and manders had Baby Two this week.  Grace-o has a baby sister.  Her whazzmaster name?  Hmmmmm.  Either maven or ant; I haven’t decided.  Why doesn’t everyone congratulate them on this joyous occasion!  Huzzah!

Hey Cal– you wanna do something this weekend? Sunday in the City?  Eh?  Hollllar back, youngin.

Saturday morning we played disc golf out at Elver Park.  I’d like to do it again, so anytime anyone wants to toss some discs hit me up.  I also played golf on Tuesday at University Ridge with Scubby and down in Racine yesterday with my brother and JOEY~!  Yo wwhazz, my bro said he was going to have a poker tourney at his new house for his birthday this year– reserve August 23rd or 24th.

Finally: C.C. Sabathia.  I’m of mixed thoughts about it.  On one hand I hate to see them deal LaPorta; I would have rather them dealt Prince now and brought LaPorta up.  But I see why they did what they did– in a push for the division they’d rather have a known arm AND a known bat rather than take a chance on bringing up LaPorta in the heat of a pennant race.  However- I’m seriously concerned about next year at this point.  Sheets will be gone, CC will be gone, our top prospect is gone, Cameron is gone.  At a cookout the other day when someone broached the idea of dealing Prince I was shocked at first, but the idea makes a lot of sense.  He hasn’t really shown consistency, and his leadership seems (from afar) more like bullying.  If someone else wants a guy who hits 50 homers one season and 25 the next, and wants to deal us an arm for him I say go for it.  More and more in retrospect I like the Braun deal.

So, overall I’m concerned that they’ve mortgaged the future to make one final push in the division.  I suppose that’s pretty much the only way a small-town team can do it these days.  But if the Cubs keep surging and the Brewers fizzle out– *shrug* there may not be much to look forward to next season.  I’ll stay optimistic for now, though.  This is the first time the Brewers have won a mid-season pickup sweepstakes in… well, ever?

So I’ve had a week off for vacation, and what a week it was! Wisconsin got hit by a hojillion tornados, Lake Goddamned Delton was wiped off the map, spacebee and I were in Door County during all of this, and *SURPRISE!* the Brewers still suck balls on the road.

We were camping at Peninsula State Park and had prepared ourselves for a wet outing. In an eruption of sheer genius, Lawman offered his screen tent thing in case we had to sit around in the rain for a few hours(days). We arrived Wednesday evening and got things setup ok, played some beer pong and made dinner. Scads of June Bugs and hundreds of thousands of mosquitos drove us into our tent tent pretty early in the night. Thursday we awoke to the patter-patter of rain on the tent, and I had to run to the toilets in the pouring rain in flip-flops. The running was less about the rain and more about the sounds coming from my bowels. The rain continued more or less until the late afternoon so we didn’t get to do a whole lotta stuff we’d planned like rent bikes or go hiking. Meh.

Friday was very nice but we spent most of the prime time (daylight) looking at various houses my parents were interested in buying. As many of you know, they’ve had trouble selling their house in Racine and need somewhere to live now that they’ve both moved to Door County. In the end they decided to rent a (very nice!) farmhouse in Egg Harbor until the Racine house sells. Personally, I think it’s a great decision given the uncertainty of the market right now– they wouldn’t want to get stuck with two mortgages for the next two years. I’ve included a few pictures of the place they’re renting below. You can see more pictures at the appropriate Flickr set.

On Saturday we packed up and left the campground and stayed with my parents for a few days at the house they’re about to leave in Sturgeon Bay. We drove up the peninsula and took the ferry across to Washington Island, which was pretty kick-ass. The absolute greatest part of the trip to the island was when we had wine and appetizers at the Washington Hotel. If you are ever up on the island, I can’t recommend that place enough. Even better, they have a Coffee Room in Madison (right across Monona Bay!) that serves all the baked goods and coffees that you can get up there. On a bike ride around Lake Monona yesterday spacebee and I stopped there for a muffin and some coffee and it was a great place. Additionally, the owner of the Washington Hotel is a (co-?)owner of Death’s Door Spirits, which has a distillery here in Madison that uses Washington Island wheat to make various booze. They recently started making whisky and while up there I got 3 bottles of the un-aged first batch. It’s pretty good, come over and try it some time.

By the way, all of our camping photos can be found at my Flickr site.

One other weekend shout-out: Hot Tamales in Sturgeon Bay was some of the best Mexican food I’ve had since moving back to Wisconsin. They have great service, terrific food, and some hot hot hot salsa verde. I suggest the wet burrito or the hash brown sandwich (like an omelet, but made with goddamned delicious hash browns).

Last night I had a Brewers nervous breakdown. I yelled swear words at the TV for a minute and then turned it off in disgust. And that was BEFORE they allowed the 3 run triple. Barf.

Lastly, if you haven’t seen this YouTube of a house being washed into Lake Delton in Wisconsin Dells, it is goddamned wild.