The Waffle House Chronicles...

Game off...

2008-12-04T04:04:00.003-06:00

Just want to get straight to the point...this will be my last blog post for a while. I feel like I've been selling everybody short on my blog the past few months and I really don't have much that I want to or am willing to talk about on here anymore. Lately the blog has appeared as more of a chore and less as something I want to keep up with so what fun is that? If you want updates on me, shoot me an e-mail or better yet, join Facebook (thinking of you Kelson and Jen!) which now hosts most of my pictures and is not only easier to update but I think it is the easiest and best way to communicate with friends, whether it be me, Jess or whomever. I do hope in the future I have better and more interesting things to write about. Thanks to all for reading; especially those who still check back in religously despite the sporadic updates.

To quote F Scott Fitzgerald: "A big man has no time really to do anything but just sit and be big."

Two more weeks...

2008-11-25T17:18:00.006-06:00

So another couple weeks have come and gone so I supposed I am due for another blog post. The week before last was relatively uneventful. Just been trying to get back into the flow of working out by swimming and taking a spin class. That weekend was pretty chill as well as I know we really didn’t do much. Saturday we watched the movie, Zack and Miri make a Porno. It was hilarious! Saturday night was super crazy though. Went to bed and at 2am an alarm went off in our room. Evidently we have a carbon monoxide detector in our bed room that is about the sound of an air-raid siren. We both freaked out as we didn’t know what was going on. Finally Jess realized what it was and it turns out that detector detected the presence of explosive gas. And I don’t think I really ate anything that bad that night. Well at this point neither of us could sleep so we decided to head over to Jess’ parents to try and finish out the night. Of course neither of us could sleep there either so I watched Office Space and she just laid down and didn’t sleep. Finally after about two hours of sleep, I called MG&E and met a guy at our house. He did all the testing and everything and concluded nothing was wrong, except our detector malfunctioned. It hasn’t went off since so we’ll see, I might buy another so we can test the two against each other if it ever goes off again. But on the plus side we know we don’t have any leaks or issues. That Sunday was rough, watched some Packers and ate some dinner and everything.

Monday was the big meat eating day (see below.) Good times! Jess has had a lot of meat since and I think she isn’t regretting her decision at all. The week was more of the same. Didn’t really do much although it seemed like we were really busy. Monday night we had dinner with Lola’s parents and had a good time. Tuesday we went to Dean’s to play Wii and hang out. The weekend came pretty quick which is always a nice thing. Friday night we went out to Red Robin for Dean’s Birthday. Played some games afterward and I know now that Ticket to Ride is a game I have to get. Saturday we decided to go out geocaching. We headed to Mt Vernon and found some of the sweetest caches ever. Here is us getting to the base of a little climb:

And then we actually had to climb; here is me on the way up:

The moss made it pretty slippery so Jess found an alternate slope, but we rejoined near the top and made it all the way...and found the cache!

We then went to a cache that was an even more difficult climb, but it sure was fun! Here is me about 2/3 of the way up to the rock:

It took a couple actual climbing maneuvers to make it up:
But success was had, at least climbingwise:
Jess made the climb too and the views were spectacular!
The bummer is that the cache that would’ve been the sweetest score remained unfound…we’ll be back in the spring though. Here is another little gap in the rocks:

We then went into the woods and found another cache before exploring the wetlands for some more cache. Unfortunately for us this stream was in the way and the log across was no longer across so we scrapped it early. We did see a huge trout and loved the long grasses:

Scenic!

We ended up only finding 3 caches in a 5 hour span on Saturday but it was the most memorable caching that I've had so far. Saturday night was Dean’s actual birthday and he hosted a poker tournament. It didn’t go very well for me (I had very few hands I could play and when I did play them I either played them wrong or just plain got beat.) But it was a fun time as usual which is what matters most and Jess did really well.

Sunday was more caching action. The first one was at this park with this sweet climbing toy!

Who knew Middleton had some sweet forest action!

This is a travel bug, this bug was a horse and wanted to travel as fast as possible from cache to cache so we sent him to our last cache of the day:

We even found some thin ice. Jess could stand on it (she didn't want to) but when I tried it cracked. Man am I getting fat.
We hit 7 caches that morning all around Middleton and now I've done a total of 30. I am hooked. The afternoon we chilled as Jess wasn't feeling great. I went to the dog park and then we went out to supper with her parents.

Monday came and thank god it was a short week. I feel robbed when the Packers don’t play on Sunday and especially robbed when I wait until Monday night and then they don’t even show up. Tuesday is almost down too so one day to go until the Holidays!!! Happy Birthday Hez! Thanksgiving will be a busy time as usual…probably need a vacation after the long weekend! Have a safe and happy Thanksgiving and may you all find success on Black Friday!

I know this is becoming a geo-caching blog and if this looks fun it's because it is. If you are looking for a fun thing to do as a couple or with a friend or even just looking for a good way to get out of the house, I recommend it highly. Put a handheld GPS on your Christmas list of buy one for your other. If you have questions let me know, I am a rookie but I can point you in the right directions. We are hoping to hide up to a half-dozen of our own next year too.

She's thinkin' Arbys!

2008-11-17T12:29:00.003-06:00

I know I haven't blogged in a week and I'll fill you in to what I am up to in the next few days. But today was a monumental day in our household.

-Mark, want to go out to lunch today? I think today might be they day I jump.

-Sure, anywhere you want to go.

We met just after noon to head out for some lunch. The decision? To hit the Arby's drive thru. I always knew Arby's would be the place. Here she is coming in the door. 4 Roast Beef sandwiches for $5. 3 for me, 1 for her. Huh? Yep, Jess wanted to try and not be a vegetarian anymore. Eating meat isn't her problem, she loves it. She just hasn't had it in over 16 years. Wow! And here we go.

First Bite:

More bites:

My first bite:
Yep, Jess is thinkin' Arbys!

So on our first real snow of the year, Jess now eats meat. Her body needs the protein and she needs to have little to no dairy now so this is her substitute. And I know it was hard for her but she really loved it. She isn't feeling ill yet, so hopefully her body will enjoy it! I think come February she'll be up to two steaks and two cakes! :)

So Pro...

2008-11-10T18:33:00.005-06:00

So I've been waiting to get a new bike frame since about May. Today that dream finally came true, the frame I've been waiting for arrived! Sweet carbon with integrated seatmast. I've got two different seatpost toppers so I'll have to decide which one will be better for me. Still figuring out the component spec, the only things I have for it are wheels, tires and saddle so I'll have a lot of new bike stuff soon. Here are the photos.

Frame:

Front:
Rear:

Profile Shot:
I haven't weighed the frameset yet and I'll keep you posted. For the bike geek, the headset has an oversized lower bearing so getting that will be a challenge and it has the new press in bottom bracket. Now I am just waiting for the pro contract to come in! :)

GT road bikes are back, I plan to do some Catch and Release this spring!

Can't wait to build it up and ride it. It might be a few months though. :( More pictures will follow in the months ahead.

Cache money...

2008-11-10T17:45:00.008-06:00

Well it's been like 2 weeks now since my last blog post...guh! I guess people still read this as I've had comments about not posting for a while.

Here's what we've been doing! Two weekends ago we drank some more wine. Didn't get these photos uploaded in time, but I like them! I really like wine in small doses like a Barriques wine tasting. You get like 2oz of 10 different wines, which makes it pretty fun! Plus you really can't beat the company.

The next week was pretty good. I signed up for a spinning class so I do that twice a week now. Man is that a good workout and it's probably the best way to get me on a bike now that it is cold. But it wasn't always cold. Jerry was in town for a long weekend to defend. I guess it went well because we have to call him Dr. Jerry now. Congrats! Went out to celebrate with him at the Dane as well. The next night was Halloween. Instead of handing out candy we decided since it was 65F out it was perfect geocaching weather. We hit two caches at dusk in the town of Madison, both were in a beautiful prarie/forest area, I loved it. We got back to the car right when it got actually dark, so it was time for our first night cache, Jess, I, two dogs in a dense forest. We assume the forest would have trails in it, but it basically was rough woods, we had to blaze our own trail. A series of clues, maps, reflectors and using our flashlight got us close. The last clue was the hardest and after about 20 minutes of searching we found the cache. That nighttime cache was reason enough for anyone to try caching, super cool!

Even Chili had a great time!

The next day was the day we had planned our big bike cache trip. 30 miles or riding, another 1 or so of hiking and 10 caches! We found the first four with ease, even this little nano-cache (yes there is a little log book in there.)
Jess found cache 4 on some public lands. We even got a prize!

We had to ride our bikes on grass to get to and from it though.

The 5th one was on part of the Ice Age trail and proved to be a challenge as there are like 20 different branches of the trail and all we had was a compass pointer to navagate the trail system. Caches 6 and 7 went poorly. We couldn't find cache 6 and I even went back last Saturday. I have some clues now so I'll have to try again. Cache 7 hasn't been seen in months so people think it's missing (it's in Paoli.) We then rode to Basco and on to the Badger Trail and took that to two more caches before riding back on the road. The 10th and final (and 8th found one) was also near the Badger Trail towards town. A nice long day of caching. Of course we left a very small amount of time to get ready for the Irbys' party, so little our food item sucked and we forgot to bring a ghetto sixer. What we did bring was a couple of fabulous costumes courtesy of Jess! I'll post all the pictures I have of Tracy as well since she is one of the 5 people I know that reads this. She went as the Devil Dog (her boxer Dari.) But the most original costume I have seen in a while were the Yip Yips (You Tube Yip Yips to spur your memory.) Way to go Hez and Tad. I forgot to take photos of other peoples' costumes. The party was spectacular as the Irbys always put on a show. We did a blindfolded apple race, a pumpkin hunt, Devon's Halloween trivia and played lots of games. I even won Teen Wolf and Teen Wolf 2 on DVD! Sweet! Thanks again!

The next morning was 40 and drizzling so I bailed on Jerry's ride. Which was good because he ended up racing and winning a race since I wasn't there to slow down the ride. A succesful trip for Jerry.

The next week was pretty interesting at work. Went out with some friends for wings on Wednesday which was a good time as well. I found out however that I have achillies tendonitis (as a result from my ankle injury) so now I get to rehab that and not play sports. I am getting fat not being able to work out much. I did ride my bike outside a couple times and spin class a couple times. Jess and I also played alot of Little Big Planet on the PS3. The weekend brought more fun and excitement. Game night on Friday went well and was a great time as always! Saturday I watched the movie Made instead of playing basketball. Good flick. We also babysat another boxer (Lola) for the weekend and I took the goofs to the bark park.

It was sad though as there was snow on the ground in places. :( After that I took a nice nap and watched football and got a haircut. Then we went out for some more dusk caching (although this time it was like 38F out.) We went 4 for 5 although we plan to go back for the 5th some other day. This time the dogs stayed home. Here is cache 3 for the day, they come in all shapes and sizes! Cache 4 was a Trek waterbottle, black bottles are hard to find at night without a flashlight. Thanks to some stickers however it is partially a Schwinn waterbottle now! :) The reward for a hard cold day of caching was a nice carmel latte! Fortunately for us (and unfortunately for her) Tracy was working Saturday night and was able to provide us said drink (and a bowl of soup and a cookie) for a nominal charge. The rest of the night was spent with college football, PS3 and house hunters.

Sunday came and it was all about the football! Watched alot of TV, did some housework and hung out with friends and family alike. A nice Sunday. Now it's Monday and another week is upon us. Perhaps I should blog more often...all I care about now is weekend weather good enough to do yardwork...not...good enough to get some more geocaches. 19 and counting...

Catchin' up

2008-10-26T15:43:00.006-05:00

Been a busy last couple of weeks!

Last Friday we went to the Saris Gala, which is a fundraiser for the Wisconsin Bike Federation. Free drinks and food made for a good time for all! We even kicked it old school and hit the Perkins with a group on our way home. That's the way to roll (or unroll an omelet!)

Saturday was Jess' birthday...she turned the big three-oh. It was a nice day though, we started out going to the dog park and then to the cross race at Badger Prairie. We also started out new hobby, geo-caching. We failed that day though as we weren't quite sure how to use the GPS equipment. We got home in time to clean up and change and then out to the Botham Vineyards with a few of our friends. We downed some good wine and had a great time hanging out on the terrace.
That night we had some friends over for some drinks and games to celebrate. Woo hoo!

A good time was had by all!

Sunday- Packers/Colts, didn't get to go this year as I was leaving early Monday for Providence and needed a day to chill. And a day to chill, it was! We did go out and get our first ever successful geo-cache with Jess' parents! Sweet! Packers dominated and then out to dinner for Jess' birthday! Good times!

Monday- 6am flight to Providence. Got there but my luggage did not (until late on Tuesday.) So after getting lunch and checking in we went to the park to set-up our tent for the east coast dirt demo. The park was beautiful with the fall colors. After set-up we had lots of time so I got to go shopping for some new clothes to make it through to the next day. Wal-Mart and JC Penneys worked. Then we went to the beach, nothing like a dip in the Atlantic in October.

And a beautiful sunset to boot! :) Went out for pizza and then played guitar hero and Mario Kart, it felt just like my youth hockey days!

Tuesday I got up and it was 30F. Went to Wal-Mart for some gloves and long underwear and to Dunkin Donuts for some breakfast. The show was a good time! Got to ride a little bit in my work clothes. We gave out alot of test rides and the show was a moderate success. We were a bit overstaffed but that's better than being understaffed! Here's me with Mr. Potato Head. Jess and I went to this park 3 years ago and Jess had to scale the fence to see him. This time the park wasn't open either but they were doing maintanence. That night we went down to Newport as a coworker lives there. We went to a cool bar (Back Alley Pub) and had a great time.

Wednesday I woke up with more donuts. Headed to the park and it was alot less busy. Which meant I got to test ride products (ours and competitors.) I rode 10 miles or so on the Roubaix. I liked it.

Then I went out on our road bike (GTR Pro with integrated seat mast) and that bike was super racy, I like it and look forward to getting one! After 15 miles on road it was time to go off road. I rode about 10 miles on the cross bike the day before and they had the perfect cross trails (in the fall with fall colors, almost perfect.) I took out a Cannondale Rize though and it was awesome. Rode probably 10 miles looking for anything I could ride. 2 stair cases and one jump and then a bunch of trails made for cross bikes. Here's a nice timer shot I did.

And here is another one, coming off of an island. You had to ride these sticks to get over and back. After all this riding, it started to rain and sleet. I went on a donut run and also got hot chocolate for everyone. Then we closed up early and headed back to the hotel. That night it cleared up and we headed into Providence, checking out the town and the Brown University campus. A beautiful night in a beautiful city.

Thursday was pretty blah. Headed home via LaGuardia. Flight in was nice as we taxied over Manhattan.
Got back home and then to work and then back home, to catch up on TV. Had lots of donuts and lattes out east, I lived the East Coast life! :)

Friday was catch-up day at work. That was about it. Went to Chilis at night and did some shopping and nothing too exciting.

Saturday was geocache and hang out with friends day. Three geocaches was the goal (big bark park, Ice Age Trail and Badger Prairie.) I started my day with some basketball...my achillies is messed. Oh well. Then out to the big dog park, the dogs were excited! We found the first cache in the park about 2/3 of the way through a lap. Sweet! We then hit the Ice Age trail for some more action. The Ice Age is beautiful and it was a great hike! Chili actually found the cache for us! Here's the cache.
If anyone wants to try it, let us know! Popeye was a fan!

Then we finalized the trifecta at Badger Prairie, a big success! Hit some Taco Bell and watched the Badgers. Then went out with the Irbys and Mundys to see the movie Pride and Glory. It was pretty darn good. Then to Noodles for some supper and then to Barriques for a wine tasting, which was a great time! 10 wines was enough to make everyone blush!

Today was laid back with no Packers and crappy weather. In fact we have snow flurries right now. My parents are here on their way to Florida so I best spend some time with them. Thanks for reading!

Good eats

2008-10-16T07:07:00.002-05:00

So yesterday Kyle invited me on a lunch date. Of course being stubborn I told him it had to be Taco Bell and not Culver's and he obliged. Great decision. We walk in and some girl stops us and asks us if we'd like to try a potential new Taco Bell product and take a survey about it. Little did she know, she made my dream come true as I often feel I should be a product tester for fast food restaurants...especially Taco Bell. So Kyle and I sat down to fill out our survey. It appears they are considering a new premium steak line and we got to try the new steak taco (premium steak, cheese, salsa roja, red sauce and lettuce.) It tasted great and the new steak was awesome. That being said judging by the survey the product will be priced at $2.29 which is pricey because it wasn't very filling. But if people are into premier items, this one is a winner. Anyways it delayed my first ever trying of the new triple steak burrito they are promoting as I didn't feel up for triple steak after I just had premium steak.

Although in even bigger Madison fast food news, check this out! Awesome! It's less than a mile from the Riz (does Sonic know it's demographic or what?) Opening a drive-in in Madison in January might not be that great for employees but that will just make my java chiller that much cooler!

Not sure what I think about this. I am sure Kelson would love it. I'll have to get some, if nothing else it would be a good burger seasoning. I often wondered why some burger place hasn't put bacon inside a burger (or grind bacon chunks into the meat.) Perhaps sometime next summer we'll have to have the 1st annual burger cook-off! I know Tracy can make a mean burger...but I've got a couple creations that people might also enjoy.

Sorry for the photoless blog post. I did see two deer in my neighbor's yard a couple mornings ago but I didn't have a camera. Oh well, hopefully the next post will have more. Thanks for reading.

A-Maze-ing

2008-10-13T06:15:00.003-05:00

So in the couple weeks I've been back from Vegas I haven't really been up to much. One thing I did forget to post in my Vegas post however is how awesome I am. I've been working on this Sudoku off and on for a year or so and finally on my way to Vegas I finished it off. It was a pretty good feeling.

Not much else has been going on. Watching some sports, movies and new TV shows, playing some PS3 and going to the dog park has been my life. I rode my bike a few times last week as well. Even went for a cross ride to Badger Prairie last Friday which was a good time. Last weekend I cleaned out our whole garage so now we are ready for winter (and can park our cars in the garage.) Also went to a fun birthday party for Beth last Saturday night.

This weekend was good and laid back. Started out with some dog park and then dinner with some friends. Crashed really early on Friday night, I couldn't stay awake. Saturday came early as well and did some grocery shopping (ankle still can't play basketball.) Went to the dog park and then it was yardwork time. I picked up dog poop and pulled weeds for two hours (we had tons of weeds, 3 38 gallon garbage bags full) and then I worked on the yard itself. It needed to be bagged as there was so much dead grass and leaves so I went ahead and did that. Finally I moved our wood pile (we've got lots of wood this year so we can have some nice fires.) I had a late lunch and cleaned up and basically rested for the later part of the afternoon. That evening we had dinner and movies at the Irbys. Dinner was spectacular as usual and we watched Office Space on the projection screen. Good times! We left before the second movie so we could watch the second half of the Badger game, what a waste that was.

Sunday we got up and chilled (I am reading the book Boys Will Be Boys which is excellent.) Went to the Y to do my physical therapy and then we headed off to our annual cornmaze tradition which is always a good time. We stopped by Barriques to fuel up with some molasses cookies, thanks Tracy! Then we headed to Lodi. The maze has 7 checkpoints and then randomly they hid 8 stampers. The objective is to go from one checkpoint to the next as they give you a chunk of the map at each one. The bonus objective is to find the 8 stampers, not located on the map. We dominated, geting the whole map and all 8 stampers (are first time for getting all 8) and we were rewarded with a certificate and our names are in a drawing for a VIP party out there. Good times! Yes we are both Official Maze Masters

We got home and then went to Jess' parents house for the Packers game. Finally a good football game for the Wisconsin faithful! Yesterday was weird, I didn't have a single meal, just about 6 small ones (and by meals I mean snacks.)

Now it is Monday morning, another exciting week. Work seems to be starting to get less busy (we took more than double the call volume this past September as we had in any other September in recorded history) so that's good. This weekend is Jess' birthday and the Saris Bike Federation Gala so it should be another fun weekend. Take care!

Vegas Blues…

2008-09-30T06:13:00.004-05:00

So this past week was my first pilgrimage to the Sin City, Las Vegas, NV. I’ve never been in Vegas before (or Nevada for that matter) so this was going to be quite the experience. To make matters worse I am trying to limit my caffeine intake, not drink, I had to share a hotel room, and I had to work long days.

First things first though, last weekend was pretty relaxing. It was nice to be home and since my ankle is still injured I couldn't do much. Watched lots of football and baseball and generally just hung out all weekend. Friday night we played some games which is always a blast! Monday and Tuesday were catch-up days at work and Tuesday night I went out to JT Whitney's with Jess' dad.

Wednesday morning showed up way to early and I was on my way to the airport by 4:45am (central time.) Flights went smoothly and got into Vegas and they were still serving breakfast…you know you’re early. Got some Subway, checked into our hotel (Treasure Island) and then went to work. Interbike was pretty cool although in the Internet age (and the fact we are already a few months into our 2009 selling season as well as everyone else) it takes the luster off of it. Wednesday I was a zombie though working at the booth until after 6pm (which was after 8pm Madison time) and then having to go to a banquet which lasted after 9pm local time. By that point it was time to crash. Of course after a restless day like that I had a restless night so it was more zombieness on Thursday. Thursday Brent and I had to go pick up some rental vans for our outdoor electric bike demo. We got dropped off at the airport at around 7:45. Of course they only had one van so they had to track another one down. I waitied until almost 9:30 for another van. Stopped by Raisin' Canes for some of their legendary chicken fingers (I recommend this place.) I really wanted some In N Out Burger (everyone there Tuesday went to one and was telling me how awesome it was and it was #1 on my list to try as well) but it never did happen as I only saw one and we were over a mile from it and had just eaten. Got back to the hotel to drop off the van and saw Todd Wells riding through a casino. Funny! I got to walk through this nice area on my way to lunch!Got to the show and it was our most important day. Met lots of my customers and potential customers. Got to meet Beijing silver medalist Mike Day and touch his medal. Saw lots of other famous people as well (Eddy, Tyler Hamilton, Christian Vande Velde, Jill Kitner, Mike Spinner, etc.) It's cool for a bike junkie! That night we went out with one of our biggest customers who happens to be an action sports superstar and X Games gold medalist (Scotty Cranmer.) I don't think I've ever met a more down to earth 20 year old kid, he's definitely worth being a fan of. Was still tired that night so I went to bed early (not before blowing $40 in 5 hands of blackjack, guh!) Friday was a day for me somewhat. Went and walked the strip before the show. It was pretty cool. Even at 6:30 am there were prostitutes out. Got some breakfast (Burger King is so underrated) and then got back to the hotel and show. Friday is kind of a dead day for the show so I got to explore. Wasn't all that much to see but I did see a couple cool bikes.

This company had tubes sitting out too. I got to jump up and down on one and it wouldn't flex at all. Not sure how comfy this bike is but I know it is stiff:

Also got to mess around with the new electric Dura Ace shifting (sweet) and Campy 11 speed (nothing special, just another gear.) The biggest trend seems to be the lightening of 5-6" travel mountain bikes. And bold colors.

Friday after the show we packed up (went fast except it took forever for our truck to get there) and then headed back to the hotel. Watched the end of the Brewers game and then headed out with Crowley, David Pietz and Maggie. Except Maggie wouldn't leave the poker table so we had to leave her behind. The three of us at my request went down to Mandalay Bay to the Burger Bar as I saw an awesome kobe beef burger in a magazine (and I had an expense account.) We got there and they had boobs in the wall, motorboat!

We got to the Burger Bar and I ordered one of the best burgers I've ever had!It was a $23 plate but so awesome! Dave loved his kobe burger as well, I recommend trying it (there's much less tasty ways to lose $23 in Vegas anyways...) We washed it down by sharing a dessert burger (chocolate burger on a donut with fixins.) We then decided to walk the strip back to the Treasure Island. On the way we got sidetracked and hit this roller coaster (this photo was from a couple days ago but I haven't figured out how to take nighttime photos in a place like Vegas.) Went on the coaster twice with Dave, once in the back and then once in the front (the front is worth the wait!) Got done and headed back up the strip. Got back to the hotel after midnight and had to be up by 3:30 to make my 6am flight. 3 hours of sleep was rough but I was able to function (better than Brent who got less than 2 hours of sleep.) Flew home (the girl next to me on the flight to Dallas passed out drunk and was bobbing all over and almost puked...good times!) Chilled in Dallas for a couple hours (finally a Dunkin Donut) and then to Madison just in time for the Badgers and Brewers games. Not sure which one was a bigger train wreck (that's a lie, the Badgers were) and then I basicially owned the couch the rest of the night.

Sunday came and I saw a computer in the Best Buy ad that I should buy so we had to head to the east side store to get it. They were out when I got there but I got it ordered so it will come later this week, so that'll be nice, mine is at least 6-1/2 years old (Pentium 4.) Watched the Packers stink it up and wondered if Wisconsin sports could do anything. But then the Brewers won and the Mets imploded and it made up for all the disappointment from the other games! Yeah Brewers! Finished off the weekend with another pasta bowl and then it was back to work!

Hope all is well!!! Vegas, it seems like a fun place to visit but not so great a place to work. Thanks for reading.

One more Colorado Post

2008-09-19T06:20:00.004-05:00

We had a really nice last day in Colorado. With the exception of snow in the highest of elevations the weather was perfect (low 70's every day!) The last day was pretty laid back. We went to the outlet mall and checked some stuff out (you could try on Pearl Izumi stuff!) Also watched some people fly fish. We then headed back down to Breckenridge, 'cause when in doubt just go to Breck. Got to Breck and had some sweet slices of pizza! Good eats! We then explored as last time we were there I stumbled upon this crazy ropes course that I couldn't find when I wasn't on my bike. We finally found it this time and even saw some other cool stuff. Jess and I both tried it (bum ankle and all, oh well.) Went back up and found this beautiful resevoir which had tons of trout (you could see several anywhere you looked.) Then I went to ice my foot in the stream again, doesn't get any more perfect then the park in downtown Breck. Once that was done we were kind of at a loss for anything to do. Jess had wanted to go on a gold mine tour but they were closed on Mondays and Tuesdays so that sucked. But I told her we'd drive up to it and check it out. We went to it and the road looked cool so we went on and on. Pretty soon it was pretty much like a 1-lane road maintained for AWD cars, but the Avalon is never scared. We ended up climbing a mountain pass and came upon the Sally Barber mine. We couldn't go in anything but it was really neat. We found lots of (probably fools) gold up there. It was sweet! The drive back to town was even more sketchy but no worries, we made it down good. Got back to Breck and headed back to Dillon. Packed some stuff up and chilled. We then went to Ruby Tuesday's. I highly recommend the Triple Prime burger (sorry, forgot the camera) as it might be the new number 3 burger. Really good. Watched the movie Get Shorty (good flick) while we packed up. Then to bed.

Got up super early so we could get out before Denver rush hour. Made great time out and had Taco Bell for brunch. Our plan was for an early supper at Dave & Busters in Omaha at about 3. Of course they don't open until 4:30 so we drove on to Des Moines for some pasta bowl instead. We had a hotel in Des Moines that night and we watched Jerry Maquire. What an excellent movie, I forgot how good it was. Thursday we had some things to take care of in Des Moines quick, washed that all down with some Sonic and headed back to Madison. Got here about 1 and was at work by 1:45. :( Worked until almost 7 and headed home. I got Grand Theft Auto 4 for PS3 (ebayed it before I left, waiting when I got home) and played that for a while before bedtime. Now I get to not play basketball this morning (or tomorrow morning) so the weekend will be laid back!

Another Colorado Post

2008-09-16T08:06:00.004-05:00

So Day 3 has come and gone. It was weird trying to do things in the mountains when you can't walk much. Fortunately there are many beautiful sites you can drive to so that's what we did. The day started off early however as we needed to make the trip to Daylight Donuts in Breck. Awesome food, cool atmosphere and great prices make this the place to go for locals. Fortunately on a Monday morning in September the line didn't reach out the door like it did in the summer. Good start. We then headed up to the Quandary Peak trailhead at Blue Lakes. That is the start of the harder but shorter climb but it is also very scenic. Having a messed up ankle and all there would be no climbing but it was so beautiful to be there. We headed back down to Breck and then up Boreas pass which is a gravel pass that used to have the old railroad. The drive was insane with some spaces being wide enough for barely one car and exposure too. The views were excellent as you could view Quandary and all of Breck. We got to the top and they had some of the old railroad buildings. We spent a little time up there and decided to go back down the other side (which would leave us a long trip back.) We decended the other side and then got stopped at the bottom. There was a Med Flight chopper and some guy on a stretcher with his neck strapped in. His foot was all bloody as well. He was moving around and talking so that was good, no idea what happened and they also sent an ambulance up the pass which makes me wonder if another was injured. We headed back up Hoosier pass to Breck (and getting to see some more 14k mountains.) We decided to hit the Empire Burger again, it's the best thing going in Colorado.

It was 70 and sunny in Breck so we got to eat outside even!After that we strolled around the town for a bit. I soaked my ankle in the super cold blue river for a half hour or so. It was nice to take it easy and relax and Breck is the coolest town I know. We headed back to the condo to rest for a while. We worked on a puzzle and watched some movies. We then headed out for supper at the Dillon Dam Brewery. And since this blog is about food I'll post my mashed potatoes and chicken! :) After the brewery it was dark and the moon was full so a nice moonlit drive on the Dillon Dam was in order. This picture doesn't do this justice as the reflection of the moon on the resevoir and the outline of mountains made it almost surreal.It is now Tuesday morning and this is our last day here. Probably more of the same in store but we'll see!

How Mark ruined a Colorado Vacation

2008-09-15T17:27:00.005-05:00

Above is the view out of our condo window on a crisp Sunday morning. After lazing around we got going and headed out to Winter Park. Winter Park has one of the best bike parks in the US having just hosted the Crankworx festival last month. We were pretty excited. We decided on the way to take Hwy 6 over Loveland Pass. Of course decending downhill in the mountains in a car your speed can get carried away. I got caught doing 69 in a 50 zone and I wasn't even trying to speed. Fortunately the ticket for 19 over is only $70 in Colorado, not too bad. We got up to Loveland to check out some mountains. There are some pretty sweet ski resorts here, I just don't even know how you would choose one. I guess you can't go wrong anyways. We got to Winter Park and decided to have lunch. Low and behold the Packers game was just starting and we found a brew pub with the game on. By the time we were done eating the Pack was up 21-o. Headed to the park and bought some lift tickets and got ready. (Fear the Yeti!) Lift riding is the life, all the crazy terrain you want without having to kill yourself physically to get there. First run was nice, we had to take Long's trail as they had a Super D on the Cheyenne trail. Longs was a great trail. Got to the bottom and the Boot Camp trail was open. They still had all the Crankworx stunts there but not for us to ride (not that I can see how anyone could ride any of those.) They did have the dual slalom course and some dirt jumps and a pump track available so we tried those out. We rode Cheyenne later (fastest fun trail) and the boulevard (lots of nice jumps.) On our 4th time down we did Cheyenne then some other trail then I had Jess go ahead of me on Boot Camp to get photos. Here is me over a wood riser. I did some table tops without photo then I went to ride the wall ride. (This is about 1/8 of the ride as it loops around like a big horseshoe and if you have like 15mph and stick the tires at a good angle it is insanely fun.)I rode it once earlier and did it ok. This time however I was convinced to grab more speed. Of course I entered it well but I caught my left pedal on it and I was down. While I was sliding around however my shoe caught a plank and bent my whole ankle around, it was awful. And it was the end of the day and end of anything athletic this trip. While I am convinced I haven't broken anything I have a very sprained ankle (I can barely walk) and I bent my achilles and ankle both about 90 degrees to the left. So I can't really move my ankle and I can't put much weight on it (I can get around with a mean limp though.) I haven't had pain like that in a long time as I couldn't even get up to move me. Of course I got to see the next 20 people ride along the wall ride perfectly as I lay there in pain. And unfortunately Jess was on the other side of the ride to get my photo coming off of it but no photos. Next time I will run less air pressure, keep my pedal up and corner with a little more angle. We rode back to the car and packed up and headed back. The trip back was uneventful. Hit Wendys for supper as a Frosty seems to always make things better. We settled in with the movie Baby's Mama and I fell asleep to that around 8 not awaking until 6:30 this morning. I'll post more about today later (we are making the best out of it, secretly Jess is happy as I am not going to make her try to climb any more mountains.) The weather here is beautiful (70 and sunny today!)

Colorado- The Trip Out and Day 1

2008-09-14T06:45:00.004-05:00

So here I am, it's 5:44 on a Sunday Morning in Dillon, CO using a 1 bar strength boot-legged Internet signal. We don't have cable TV so we live and die newswise through this little signal.

We left Friday at 1:20pm. The day at that point was going pretty well already (I had just gotten Pain Amusment Park for PS3, had some good basketball, got caught up at work, won an ebay auction for another PS3 game and got alot of work done around the house and the car packed.) We headed out for our journey to Omaha. As expected the nicest part of the trip was to the Wisconsin border, good weather, no traffic, etc. From Iowa on it rained. And harder and harder. Throw in about 15 stretches of construction and that was the drive. But all was not lost, got to hit the world's best burrito place in Des Moines, IA. (Bandit Burrito)

Got to Omaha at about 8:45 and we had a reservation at the Clarino hotel. Turns out it was a Clarion hotel that got dropped by Clarion so they just changed two letters around. Hilarious! And good night by 9:15.

Woke up at 5 as there were two summits waiting for us in Colorado. Driving through Nebraska and the first three hours of Colorado is bad. Satellite radio is nice though. We get about 80 miles out from Denver and see the mountains. Jess' first comment was, "looks like they are all covered in snow." I told her the rocks were just really gray as it is early September and that is usually the time with the least amount of snow. Of course getting closer and closer I got worried too. Yep snow, everywhere! We fueled up at a Subway and Super Target convinced it would be just a light dusting that would melt. We get to Idaho Springs to go up to Mount Evans. I never made it to the true summit last year when I rode my bike up (I was about a 200 feet hike away) so we wanted to make it up to Summit Lake and climb from there (2k vertical, class 2-3 scramble.) But we get to the road and it says it is closed. Stupid snow. But me being me I want to get up there some time this trip so I find the ranger station and find out the road was just opened an hour ago (not to the top, just to Summit Lake) and we should go. We get to Summit Lake and begin our hike. 3/10 of a mileup the road and then straight up a coulour (valley face) to the top. Except the snow drifts were so large we never found the trail (we went about a mile.) We could see Denver from where we were, it was insanely small (so small a blog photo wouldn't work.) So we head back to the car dissappointed. We do meet a couple however who inform us of an open trail to the summit. They tried and got about 1/3 of a mile (it's 2.5 miles each way) and turned around. Jess and I grabbed our cramp ons and were off. It was the hardest .6 miles I've ever walked. Clouds came rolling in and we decided that there was no way we could summit and make it back. And it was very unsafe. We wanted to hike a saddle to another summit from Evans as well but both were out of question on this day. We did get high enough (an extra 500 feet or up to over 13,3oo feet) and saw some excellent views.

The drive down was much better than my bike ride down. We didn't see any mountain goats but did see a couple marmots and some pika (alpine chipmunks.) We got back down pretty swiftly and then to our condo in Dillon. Of course we drove by the other three summits we wanted to hit as well and each had well over a foot of snow. I am still hoping to do one but the other two we can't even make it to the trailhead. Oh well they are mountains they will always be here! My car did hit 150,000 miles, I was hoping it would be in the Eisenhower tunnel but it was about 7 miles earlier instead (if I would've only rode my bike to work 2 more times.)

The disappointment of having to change our trip from summits to other things would not last long though as we headed for one of our favorite restaurants (Empire Burger) in Breckenridge. Breck had their whole Main Street shut down for Octoberfest and the drunks were out in full force. But we got in just before the rush and had a great meal. Jess had one of her top 3 nachos and I one of my top three burgers. Life was good. On the way out I caught this license place and thought of my boxer. He loves it when we leave as he gets to play all day at the kennel. Popeye I think isn't a fan though but oh well.

Today we are going to ride the Winter Park Bike Park. They just had crankworks there last month so it should be dialed (but chilly.) My new bike is ready to rock!!!

Ray's

2008-09-09T19:45:00.003-05:00

Not sure if anyone even reads this since I haven't recieved a comment since I started posting again. I finally got some pictures from Crowley from our trip to Cleveland. She took some of me at Ray's since my camera battery died (I later lost my camera and never got it back so these are the only photos of me in Cleveland.) Anyways, Ray's (and Ray) is awesome!

Here's me and the legend himself. He opened up the park specifically for us (mostly Jenny) and the next thing you know there are about 20 pro riders and about 30 other riders and Fuel TV. Sweet!

Here's me on the pump track corner. Steep banking but the Mongoose Nugget handles everything!

Here's me on a log ride.

Here's me on a ladder.

Here's me on an elevator. The body weight makes the elevator drop, you track stand your bike until the bottom and then move on once down.

There are so many cool features and it'd be a sweet road trip this winter if anyone gets bored!

I mean it was fun for 4 hours in normal clothes with temps above 90F.

As for life, it goes on. My new bike is busy being finished up across the street, hoping by Sunday it will be riding features like these...just outside. Two days down this week, not too bad! 2-1/2 to go! Take care and thanks for reading!

Successes!

2008-09-08T05:48:00.003-05:00

Many successes this weekend!

Dean and Beth got married! Congratulations Dean and Beth, you guys rock and thanks so much for including me on the big day! I can't believe how well you pulled off a 300+ person wedding. Everything and everyone looked so fabulous and I know all of the friends in our circle had a most excellent time!

Yes, it was definitely Dean!The hotties were out in full force!All the good photos from the reception are on Jess' camera except this one:Tracy makes the greatest milkshakes. If you visit her at Barriques make sure to get one Mark Larson style (except for Riz as the Riz wouldn't like it.) The wedding was a blast (despite all the photos I got to watch) and everything went pretty smoothly. The reception was a most excellent party and if I can I'll post some other entertaining pictures.

The next morning we went out to the Ironman to watch Wolfgram. We saw him once on the bike. Actually he saw us I think as he kind of blended in. So no good photos exist of this event. I did go down to the run to provide some support on the backside of the course. Saw him at Camp Randall:

Then I stalked him for almost 2 miles and we had some conversation. He looked really strong and had a most excellent time. I've never seen anyone train as hard for anything as he did for this so I am really proud of him. Yeah I've made fun of him alot as he is a full-blown tri-geek now but you can't dig on his determination and his result. Congrats! Even the mighty Wolfgram had to refuel(I can't believe he didn't dump the water on the girl in the Randy Moss jersey.)

Then I rode back home and figured the 100ft climb I rode was photoworthy.

Happy Monday!

Life ain't cheap

2008-09-06T09:43:00.004-05:00

So after having a nice long weekend last weekend it was back to work. But yet another busy week with physical therapy on Tuesday, new tires and vet work on Wednesday, dinner plans on Thursday and a rehersal and dinner on Friday (along with picking up a tux.)

Wednesday Chili was to get his teeth cleaned. That's a pretty expensive thing anyways as they have to put him under. Of course he has terrible teeth and needed 4 more exctracted and it quickly became some oral surgery. Now he only has about 50% of his teeth left and we are much less rich. Plus right after that I picked up my car with 4 fresh new tires. Chili was pretty beat up though and was down for the count for a good day. He's back to normal now though.

I've been playing a game called The Last Guy on PS3. It is actually one of the best games I ever played, so much that it took me 5 days to finish it (I finished at 5:40am this morning.) I am now working on redoing some levels and I am currently ranked in the Top 800 in the world in this game. Pain, Amusment Park was supposed to come out on Wednesday but it got delayed a couple weeks so I'll have to find something else to play until then.

Dean and Beth are getting married this weekend! Should be a great time! The rehersal was alot of fun and we got to have some good ol' Wisconsin fish fry which has been a while for me. Even scored me a custom Brewers retro jersey! The wedding is going to be huge (300+ people) and we'll have a good time for sure! I wish them the best of luck as they both are very good friends of ours. I am sure I'll post photos from the wedding once it is done.

Not much else going on here. I am trying out a new GT road bike so that's been interesting. The Ironman is tomorrow so good luck to Wolfgram! He'll do awesome. Also my friend Jenn gets married today (her reception is in a couple weeks) so good luck to them. Should be a fun weekend! Take care!

Hunger gets what hunger wants...

2008-08-31T05:23:00.005-05:00

The weekend has been pretty sweet so far! Friday we got out of work early. Usually we'd piss away those two hours and in many people's opinions we did. We watched Ocean's Twelve. Not the world's best movie but really good nonetheless. We watched Bank Job a couple days prior and that was much better. It was just fun to be 23/36ths of the way through the Ocean's Trilogy. We then hit the Target quick and then the Riz and Hez came over. Tried my first ever volcano taco but I can't recommend if for myself as it was just ok (Kyle would probably like it though...and it is worth the $.89 investment to try anyways.) Played a bunch of classic 4 player games (Blockus, Oh Hell, Boggle, Euchre) and had an outstanding time.

I've been on a quest for a PS3 for months and now I've heard the new 80gb systems have shipped. I had lots of gift cards to both Best Buy and Circuit City but everyone buys PS3s there. I ended up finding one at Wal-Mart (and it was 99 cents cheaper.) By 8am I was back home with my new piece. Got it hooked up and wireless and started downloading games. I got a ton of demos and then the full version of Pain. Going to do some more downloading today!

Had to cut my PS3 session short though as I scored a couple free Badger tickets through work. We rode our bikes down there and even locked it back up to Larkin's bike (which has been locked down there since 1997 but has now been flipped.) Had a quick hot dog before the game and then some nachos at the game. The game was awesome. We sat with Dennis and his wife (who scored the other two tickets from work.) We were in the shade for most of the 1st half and then got to see the Badgers pull away in the 3rd quarter and stayed for jump around and another 4th quarter touchdown before grabbing the bikes and heading to the capital.Heading to the Captial I flatted right about State Street. The roads down there were so bad and my tires were low on air I can't believe it took that long. $10 at yellow jersey (I can't believe how crazy that place is) and I was back up and running for the two blocks to the capital.

Got to the taste and item #1 was the Jack and Blue Buffalo Cheese Sticks - $3

They were one of the best things to ever touch my mouth. They were the richest most decidant deep fried items ever. I don't really have a food scale but 9.5 out of 10 would seem appropriate. Not a bad way to start the taste and would be a determining factor on if I return on Sunday.

I skipped the Meatball Stromboli as it looked bad and hit the Butterfinger Wontons - $2. I am guessing you can't see the dissappointment on my face...they were horrid. The won ton wrapper took away the little butterfinger taste and it was more like a butterfinger cheesecake filling (that wasn't good for cheesecake) and it had way too little filling. Terrible.

Next up was a new Little Caesar's menu item Zesty Jalapeno Cheese Bread - $1. Pretty darn good although they were super rich and eating more than 3 or 4 of these would be pretty rough. But I can recommend them if you are sharing and for $1 we only got 2 so it was pretty good!
Since I saved $2 on the stromboli I was lured in to Potbelly by the Ice Cream Sandwich - $2. Two oatmeal chocolate chip cookies with ice cream in the middle...sold! It was such a hot day that ice cream seemed great! Highly recommended!
We then ran into a bunch of people we knew (O'Donnells, Balsleys & Chuck.) We hung out in the shade watching Stella and eating and just enjoying being downtown and outside.

Stella even represented.

One more place to eat, Toppers Mac and Cheese Pizza by the Slice - $2. At this point I wasn't hungry and was going to skip but for $2 I had to try it. I did get the worst slice of the 5 or 6 I saw but regardless it wasn't great. It was ok and I didn't mind eating it but Ians blows it away!

After that we took off and headed back home. We caught a couple songs by a group called the Too White Crew on the way out (the midwest's only hip-hop cover band) and I probably should have stayed for the whole show (awesome.) The ride home was rough but we made it. Finally got some more time with the PS3, playing for a couple hours before watching the Brewers and some more football and hitting the bed early. A great day!

Yummy

2008-08-29T18:17:00.004-05:00

Alright, this is not really a comeback post as I am not sure how much I will update this going forward but things are looking upward for more blogging. Since I last posted, my Internet has been down twice (for a total of 8 days) as Charter can’t seem to get it right. I mean I’ve got a new modem and a new and buried cable and it still didn’t work. Guh! I now have another non-buried cable that will be buried at some point.

This weekend is the Taste of Madison. Here is how I plan to spend $10. How will you spend yours?

Jack and Blue Buffalo Cheese Sticks - $3
Zesty Jalapeno Cheese Bread - $1
Meatball Stromboli with Marinara Sauce - $2
Mac and Cheese Pizza by the Slice - $2
Butterfinger Wontons - $2

Not too shabby I don't think. Might opt for some boneless buffalo wings instead of the Stromboli. I'll probably even get some photos!

I got a new camera too! It is a Panasonic something and it is teal! :) Here are some photos of the last couple of weeks.

Devil's Lake

Mark on a rock

Mark in a rock

Dean pretending it was 5 years ago

Pimpin' ain't easy...

Looks like I'll also will get to rock some cool mountain bike trails in a couple weeks...but that is for another post...yep another post. With a new bike or two in the works I'll have to try them out some time!

Oh by the way...I can't wait!
Fast & Furious

This video is crazy

2008-08-02T16:41:00.003-05:00

I am sure this will be making the rounds but I was told about this video today while working at Willy Bikes by a 60 year old lady. She didn't end up buying a bike from me but I had to check it out when I got home.

It sucks that even among the most noble of professions that there still can be some bad eggs.

On a positive note I met Gary Coleman last night at the Mallards game. A good time was had by all. I even won a free Chipotle burrito for my cheering efforts (making that 4 burritos from 4 locations in 4 straight non-breakfast meals.)

Why do we scream at each other...

2008-07-27T20:11:00.002-05:00

...this is what it sounds like when blogs cry...

Just wanted to let you know I am still alive and kickin'. Not much to report here though and without my camera as a back-up I really don't have much to blog about. Here's what I've done in the past week:
-Took a day off from work and travelled regionally
-Won 2 of 3 in volleyball
-Went to the dog park
-Went mountain biking at the Kettles with a bunch of coworkers
-Got a mountain bike resurrected only to have the frame crack
-Enjoyed the new Batman (Dark Knight)
-Played some games with friends
-Got together with family for Jess' cousin's birthday party. Got to do some 4-wheelin'.

As far as my shoulder goes, the good news is that I don't have any discernable nerve damage. Which was pretty much a shock to everyone involved. However that doesn't answer why my right arm is messed up (beyond the tendonitis and bone spur) so I get to go have more tests. Joy!

So expect sporadic updates for the time being as I look to getting a new camera and a life worth chronicling... :)

Cleveland Steamer

2008-07-21T15:39:00.003-05:00

Cleveland was hot as advertised, so much for lake effect. Had a great time at the Dew Tour and will post more soon! Now it's back to real work for me, free weekends are overrated anyways, right?

The bummer part is that I lost my camera at the airport on the way back...guh! Trying to contact an airport about something that doesn't have my name on it is a pain in the ass so likely my camera is long gone. While the cheap camera is replaceable the blog post that would've accompanied said photos is priceless (and now worth nothing because it will remain unwritten.)

However the gist of the 5 night Dew Tour extravaganza is this:

Sore feet, bruised everything, sweat, happy kids, Shaun White, bike riding, eating, walking everywhere, coffee, Mike Spinner, 1st place in the dirt for one of our riders, too little sleep, Ray's MTB park, farmer's tan, missing home, loving Cleveland, Wendys, bmx dirt track, flights, good times, hot!!!

Long Island

2008-07-11T05:39:00.004-05:00

It's been thundering for 5 straight hours and there is no end in sight. Sounds like the perfect day to try and get caught up back at work. The past week was super busy!

Friday- We got to meet Jenn's new boxer, Moxie, what a cutie! Also watched the movie Definitely Maybe which was definitely interesting. Then a small gathering at the Mundys to celebrate the independence day holiday! Good food and good times once again!

Saturday- Dog park was a good time and we did alot of hanging out! My brother and his GF Ali came to town and we hit Dotty's which is never a bad time.

Sunday- We travelled to Milwaukee to get some Barrel Man bobbleheads and watch the Brewers. They won in a great game on a hot day! John and Ali stayed behind as we came back and had supper with Jess' parents.

Monday- Got up early to get some work in before travelling to Long Island. 16 hour work day basically but it wasn't so bad. We got way ahead on the set-up.

Tuesday- Dunkin Donuts day 1. We finished the set-up early so we had some free time and I talked some people into a ride to the beach. Of course the beach we picked was private so we had to try and find another so we just picked something on a map called Oak Beach and headed there. Unfortunately we had a Griswold like moment:

But I am a rebel and went swimming anyways (all the way up to my knees):

The beach was mostly rocks, seaweed and glass so it was really classy! We stayed about 5 minutes. I usually suck at this type of photo but I actually got one to work:
Oh well...we made up for our poor beach outing with a Slurpee so all was well!

Tuesday evening we had to clean up and get ready for our guests. I met tons of my dealers and had a great time showing them the new products and everything. Then we had a banquet style dinner. Got to share a table with two of my biggest customers, Eric Carter, Hans Rey and some of my co-workers as we definitely had the most fun table of all! The night went pretty late as after that we hit the hotel bar to hang and then after midnight I watched some movie called Cellular.

Wednesday came way too early, 5 hours of bad sleep. Met up with some more dealers in the morning and then the show kind of flattened out. Got some other work done too and one of my reps brought me an iced coffee and a box of Munchkins, nice! Even Hans Rey was trying out the Munchkins! We got to tear down a little early and were done in time to watch the Tour's night coverage. Got some beers and headed to the hospitality suite and watched the tour on 42" of plasma magic.

Thursday was travel day. Got up and made it a Dunkin 3-fer before getting packed up and watching the tour as we waited to leave. Left in time to miss the two tour climbs. Took an unintentional tour of Brooklyn before returning the car and hitting LaGuardia. Not sure if you've ever flown to NYC before but LaGuardia is probably the world's oldest airport as it was way too small, smelly and weird. I wouldn't want to spend much time there although it's so small and does high volume that everything seemed to run smoothly. Got in to Milwaukee without much incident and drove back to Madison, back home by 5:30. Hung out with my lovely wife and pooches the rest of the night.

Now it's Friday morning, time to go play catch-up as I've got three work days left before my next trip (Cleveland).

In other news, sometimes it's just hard to get enthused about getting on a road bike. It's also hard to be enthused about mountain biking as this was one of my all-time favorites and was right by Levis-Trow.

Photo Share & Updates!

2008-07-04T05:48:00.005-05:00

Newsfeed:

-Jerry had a new boy, Kelton! Congrats!

-Got an e-mail from Kelson, "I moved to Madison yesterday." Sweet!

-I am once again going to be an uncle as Larkin and Beth are having another baby.

-Travel season begins Monday, it was nice knowing y'all...see you in September!

-Got to visit with lots of family and friends this past weekend, and will get to visit with similar but different this weekend.

-Finally beat the game Zuma on the computer. Jess, not to be outdone, went ahead and did the same!

-I know I am forgetting other things, so I apologize in advance, it's hard when I update this biweekly!

It's Anna-Time:

I think she enjoyed her trip:

At least more than Riz and Lexi:

She escaped the cluches of an evil rhino as Zarun looks on in amazement:

Jess layed some cover for us all so we needn't worry:

And I had a Royale with whipped cream:

Mark's opinions and links:

-The Plaza Burger as seen in Hamburger America was a dissappointment. But all is not lost, my two favorite burgers are listed although my 3rd and 4th are not. Sounds like an upcoming blog post.

-I am excited for new rides opening. This will rule! This also seems cool but I'll miss Back to the Future the ride. Toy Story Mania opening at MGM however almost insures a trip to Florida this winter!

-Cheesy Crunchwrap at Taco Bell...decent but not great. Cheese overpowers. If you do order make sure to get some jalepeno quesadilla sauce on the side to dip it. That's my advice to you.

-Wall-E was a good movie as was Charlie Bartlett. Yep, see them both! Jess signed up for Net Flix so I guess I'll be chillin' with lots of movies. Our Dish Network now officially works again, at least until it doesn't. They did alot of work though so I am optomistic!

Thanks for reading!

Photo Share!

2008-06-22T17:16:00.004-05:00

The weekend has pretty much came and gone. Thursday night we went to the premier of Kranked 7 which was a blast! Friday I had more physical therapy and now I get to do light weight workouts and that night we went to dinner and then to the Union with the Mundys (good times) and yesterday was the Farmer's Market, yard work, wedding, reception, etc. Sunday was news paper reading, seeing Get Smart (decent) and then errand and grocery running and a lazy afternoon. Now it's off to dinner with Jess' parents. Basically the standard weekend!

Here's a photo from early in the Wednesday night Time Trial.

Here's where I made up my mind to do a second lap
We went to a truly Wisconsin Wedding:I don't think we had any good photos of the bride and groom so this picture of us will suffice:Another happy coupleAlthough it may appear we were "Kung-Fu Fighting" we were actually playing a pretty good fiddle and giving the devil his due:One more photo of us:

Good stuff!!!

Sales meeting life

2008-06-18T06:03:00.002-05:00

The sales meeting is done and was an overwhelming success! I got a new territory and outside rep (lower midwest) in addition to all the east coast I've been rocking for the last few months. I worked several 12+ hour days and I am super sore. Our 2009 product lines look nothing short of fabulous so those of you into high end mountain and road bikes will be very excited, stayed tuned to your favorite cycling publications as our press camp starts a week from today.

Monday morning was perhaps the most fun I've ever had as an employee. We got to have our dirt demo at Blackhawk which is kind of my home course. Since I was the only one who knew the trail system I got to design a 15 minute course (for sales reps) so I was there bright and early checking out trails and flagging what I thought would work. I did a nice top loop with an option to go down the gully and an option to hit the log ride. I hit it twice more on two different bikes just for fun! Once the course was marked I thought I should scope out some more of the terrain for the more experienced riders. I rode the switchbacks down (for the first time ever I made it.) Then I went down and rode "Jerry's Trail" and then the Deer Run downhill run. All were in primo condition except Jerry's Trail was flooded at the very bottom. Once the reps got here I hosted some tours showing people what Blackhawk offered while riding a Mongoose Khyber. Then I made it to the top and decided to try out the GT Carbon Marathon Pro. That's when more and more people began showing up. Finally I took some people out on a tour of Blackhawk. I led a train that included the product manager at Mongoose (Darren), Adam (an east coast rep and downhiller), Ray (owner of Ray's MTB park) and Hans Rey (mountain bike legend.) I tried not to slow them down too much and they all rode the log ride. It was pretty much a mountain biker's dream ride, all on a carbon mountian bike. My next ride included Nick Reistad from Team Jelly Belly. That's right I am name dropping! :) After that we did run after run of the switchbacks, the deer trail and Jerry's run. I believe I had to ride up either the switchbacks or the ski hill 8-10 times (and another 4-5 times up the gravel road or ski trail) so needless to say I was totally tired. Of course then some people taught me how to do some jumps so I took to the air a bit. I still need to fine tune my technique but I had a great time trying and I only mis-hit twice. Finally it was 12:30 and I had to head back to work...and actually work, what a bummer! Sorry I didn't take more photos but here's one of Ray and Hans Rey at the bottom of the hill where you can't see unreleased product that I can't post.

The rest of the meetings were less exciting. We finally finished up about 6:30 last night and this morning I am sore from tons of manual labor. Of course in true name-dropping tradition today I get to ride with Eric Carter and Steve Rominuk so that will be cool. Tonight is the MTB time trial at Blackhawk and Steve will be there trying to see if he can get more air than me and then I head to volleyball at 9. Tomorrow is the movie premier for Cranked 7 which will be sweet and Friday I get to have some more physical therapy and then Friday night I'll probably fall asleep as soon as I get home from work...what a long couple of weeks!

Rain, rain here to stay...

2008-06-13T05:56:00.002-05:00

I think our house or one of our neighbors was hit by lightning last night. We heard the longest and loudest clap of thunder ever, the house shook. I went to make sure everything was ok and both the dogs were outside of the bedroom and shaking so badly I thought Popeye was going to have a heart attack. They ended up getting to sleep the rest of the night in our room a first (and hopefully last.) Somehow we didn't lose power so that was good.

Want some Abe Lincoln DNA or some Mark Spitz race-used speedo? Me too!

Big sales and dealer show this weekend. Put in 13-1/2 hours yesterday in prep (Jess also added 4 hours after her 8 of work) but we are well on our way. Today shouldn't be as bad although we have to be ready for tomorrow morning so if things aren't going well I reckon that I'll get the call for more work tonight. Oh well, they pay me for it so no complaints. And the 2009 product line looks sweet!!!

Slippery When Wet!

2008-06-07T16:05:00.005-05:00

It's tough being a dog... Dari swimming like a champ...Chili not so much...Brooke and I at Brooke and Brian's Wedding...Take Jess down to the Paradise City...

Me at Cam Rock...
Chili watching the Brewers game... Trying to teach Chili to swim...

Popeye swims...

A couple proud fellas...

Chili at play...

There is my last week and a half in photos (in addition to the photo below.) Add in several hours of work, trips to the dog park, watching some Brewers games, two volleyball matches and some various other happenings and that's my life.

Last night

2008-06-05T06:13:00.002-05:00

Last night I rode this:

-Take my word for it, it's much sketchier looking in person (round log suspended for 12 feet over jagged rock filled gully.) Took me 6 tries to finally just do it.

Of course about 5 minutes later the pivot on my bike sheered off which sucked. So no time trial for me but we did win 2 of 3 in volleyball. But with my Physical Therapy starting this morning let the hiatus begin...

Recreational Cyclist

2008-05-26T20:00:00.005-05:00

In the past week I've ridden every day! And always as a recreational cyclist!

Tuesday- Rode Quarry Ridge at lunch with a coworker. We challenged each other but I was proud to have no dabs in 4 laps!

Wednesday- Went for my urban lunch ride which is a 17-18 mile ride that shows off the scenic side of Madison. Of course once downtown I had a car turn into me. I put my hand on the side of her car to avoid getting hit and once I was stablized I went ahead and slapped the hood of her Scion (which was the first point which she actually saw me.) Scared her. She kept her distance the rest of the way down the street so hopefully she learned something. Rest of the ride was nice and relaxing. Jess and I also rode the 13 mile round trip to volleyball that evening!

Thursday- Participated in a weekly cycling ritual called the Gun Show. For the third week in a row I hung in there and even got one third place which I didn't think would happen this season. Cool!

Friday- Our annual brat ride, where our company president takes us all out via bike and we ride to Brat Fest for some sausages. He bought us brats, sodas and then later beers. Two hour lunch and 12 or so miles on the fixie make a good time, but a rough afternoon.

Some of my favorite co-workers:
And one of their favorite co-workers:
And just to prove we rode bikes down there:

Saturday- Got up super early and rode to the East Y, played basketball and rode back. Got 2 hours of basketball and 25 miles of riding in before 9am.

Sunday- Bike the Drive! They close down Lakeshore Drive in Chicago and only cyclists can roll it. 30 miles total (15 miles each way) loaded with awesome rest stops. Robbie Ventura was the grand marshall (I see him once a year.)

Had to ride at sun-up as we had to work by 8am (Navy Pier in the background):

Jess riding north back towards downtown:

Me doing something similar:

Monday- Brat Ride II, to meet with some friends. Jess and I took the longer scenic route and ended up with 20 miles. Good times with good friends...

As you can see, I lived a dream week for a recreational cyclist. This is the tale of two posts though, so lets fill the non-cycling stuff in!

Tuesday- After work we went to the dog park...yep, that's it!

Wednesday- We won 2 of 3 in volleyball...par for the course!

Thursday- I went to the dog park Thursday night. It was super windy so Popeye could hear my voice but had no idea where it was coming from...which was funny since he would start sprinting the opposite direction that I wanted him to run. Oh well.

Friday- After trying to stay awake all afternoon after brat fest we went to What Happens in Vegas after work. I liked it and it was good to see that Cameron Diaz was back as a viable option. Ashton was Ashton. Went to Noodles after that and then back home to chill.

Saturday- After getting back from basketball we cleaned up and headed towards Chicago. That drive gets shorter each time (despite the traffic) and less than 2 hours after we left we were at Dave & Busters. A top notch cheesesteak later we played lots of games, even scored me a flaming finger jackpot. Then headed downtown, checked in and then spent the next 8 miles of our life afoot. Went to Navy Pier (on a holiday Saturday, packed) and then just downtown in general. Finally went to Portillos for an Italian Beef sandwich and a chocolate cake milk shake (yes I did eat the cake at the bottom):
The rest of the walk was trudgery although we did see the world's largest mirroed shiny bean and the bean saw us:

We were so beat that I think we were in bed by 8.

Sunday- The 4:40am wake up call was bad enough but we got going, signed up, checked in and were riding by the 5:30 start. Beautiful weather and a wonderful event. Promoted Schwinn the rest of the morning but not without a latte and coffee from Dunkin Donuts...it's weird too, I had no idea I had a halo although I would've guessed said halo would look like this:

The day was great! After we hit the Fudd and went to a Performance shop. Trudged home with traffic and construction, chilled for an hour and then it was out with the in-laws which was a great time as well. I called my Mom and wished her a Happy Birthday as well! Three big weekends in a row for her (Mother's Day, Retirement, Birthday.)

Monday- Woke up with no schedule or plans. Got a call at 8 if we wanted to do breakfast at 8:30. Yes. Hit the grocery store on the way home and got a call to meet at the dog park. About to leave for the dog park and got a call for brat fest. Got back from the park and headed to brat fest. Hung out there and had a good time. Got home, watched the Brewers win, mowed the lawn, made some supper, caught up on Tivo and now I am typing this. What a good weekend!

End of an era...

2008-05-20T06:07:00.003-05:00

Friday was bike to work day. It's a pretty sweet day of work, that's for sure. Ride into work. Have a catered breakfast from Atlantic Bread Company. Work was laid back as everyone was in a pretty good mood. In case we weren't gut bombed enough, we had Glass Nickel Pizza for lunch. It really pays to ride in (we also get triple the commuter incentive in May, or almost $400 towards a bike if I ride every day.) Oh yeah, bike commuters also got to leave at 3pm to ride their bike. We headed up to Rice Lake that evening.

Here's me on the ride in:

This weekend was the end of an era. My mom retired from teaching. She had been teaching for 20 or so years, mostly 5th grade in Barron. I had her as a substitute teacher when I was in 5th grade. Although it's hard for teachers to get recognized she did win a state teacher of the year award a few years ago with her methods in science teaching. She'll be missed more than most. We went to her ceremony in Barron on Saturday night. It was a pretty sweet deal with a huge buffet and great desserts. The ceremony itself ran way long (6 of them retired) but it was a good time. The rest of the weekend was spent lounging in Rice Lake, I seemed to really lack energy.

All the retirees wore Hawaiian shirts as they wanted to say they are out of here on vacation:

We as a family supported my mom and got decked out in classic 80's Hawaiian garb:

Not sure what happened in Rice Lake since I left but someone thought it appropriate to give my Mom a Packers colored beer bong (it was a roast event.)

Sunday we cruised back and I tried the new $.79/89/99 menu at Taco Bell. I tried each of the "new" items on there and if you get the chance, pass. Not only were they not good, two of them (cheesy double burrito and the big taste burrito) remained only half-eaten. The cheesy roll-up is cheese on a soft shell (why wouldn't they just make the cheesearito?) The triple layer nachos were just plain boring. We then went to the dog park and intended to go watch some bike racing but instead we watched the Brewers and hung out with Jess' family. Good times!

Monday hit hard. Had to go to work early to catch up (and I did.) Rode Quarry Ridge at lunch which was really nice. Might have to go back today. Tried to cook a steak on a charcoal grill but I have no idea how old the charcoal was (Jess claims it could be 6-8 years old) so I had a tough time firing. I did just throw the steak on for an hour and it cooked pretty well as I picked up dog poop and mowed the lawn and then determined the steak done (enough.) Went to the Chainsmokers meeting and we worked on our biggest project. So if you are reading this you might as well just send me a check for $10 (or $20 if you want to bring a date) and buy a ticket from me, since I'm going to ask anyways! :)

Good Luck Thursday

2008-05-15T17:54:00.002-05:00

It's only 6pm but it's safe to say, today was a good day. Worked was kinda stressful and overwhelming at times but I got alot done and some good help with it.

My good luck started at 7:45 when I got an Iced Coffee at McDonalds. I've been wanting one for like two weeks and today it worked out. Well on May 15th if you buy an Iced Coffee you get a free chicken sandwich, the new southern chicken biscuit. It was good, not awesome, but combined with an iced coffee it was a good way to spend a couple bucks. Then I saw this
A Wisconsin-based Mexican food chain. Opens on Friday. I am a little bit scared though, Wisconsin isn’t a Mexican food hot-bed. So not sure how that’s going to work out and I am not sure when I’ll find out but I’ll give it a shot. Was hoping for a Baja Fresh, I went once and wasn’t impressed but the menu is vast and the potential is great and they use a lot of Monterrey jack cheese. But more options is good! Then I went on the Gun Show today, and local celebrity Leigh Mills joined us. She was pretty cool and well pretty. But it was a tough one out there today for everyone. I was able to give some sprints a go too. I almost crashed on the last sprint when I took the same shoulder to my shoulder twice while a guy was trying to beat me and then his front derailleur rubbed my front wheel (sketchy) but luckly I didn't go down and if someone wants 2nd place bad enough to ride that erratically well he can take it. Of course I threw in some choice obcenities but the rider apologized so no worries. So my good luck was staying upright. Got back to work and scored an extra sandwich, chips and cookie from some meeting. It was all from Potbelly Sandwich Works. If you like doughy cookies, try their fresh baked sugar cookie, best sugar cookie ever, hands down! Got home from work and had an e-mail from Jerry. He won the mountainous 1st stage of the Mt Hood Classic Road Race and gets to wear yellow. His blog is to the right in the links, his race report isn't there yet. Then as soon as I am done reading my phone rings and it's my mom. My dad got his 3rd career Hole In One just then on the 17th at Cumberland. Not a bad day so far for me and those close to me. Also I'm working on a special project and had a break through with that so I won't bore you with the details but a mental victory helped my mood! :) The only flaw is that the Brewers lost which is a 50:50 crap shoot these days. Office finale tonight to cap off a good day. Tomorrow is Friday and Bike to Work day...free t-shirts, reduced work day, bagels and pizza. Life is good!

Last night we won 2 of 3 in volleyball, the team we played was much better than last year and we are starting to gel. Other than that, this week has been pretty blah. Been working some OT, not doing much else though. Hit the dog park a few times as well.

Have a great weekend! No pictures today!

Shoulder Update

2008-05-13T06:09:00.003-05:00

Well I finally got to see a sports medicine shoulder specialist and the diagnosis was good and bad. I got to have some shoulder X-Rays and all that good stuff yesterday. Basically in common terms (the only terms I could understand) is that I have a bone spur in my right shoulder and it slightly pushes down on my outer tendon. Which I have probably had for a while. The injury itself however originates from some tendonitis I developed in the shoulder. So that tendon is very inflammed and it pushes against the bone spur and restricts movement and causes more pain then tendonitis itself would cause. The treatment is physically therapy which I assumed all along. Of course I have to wait until June 5th for my first physical therapy appointment. So what does this mean? The doc told me to take it easy until that appointment and then they would tell me what I'd need to do. She did say no swinging anything (golf, baseball, dancing) and to basically not do anything stupid. I am guessing once I get to physical therapy I won't be able to do anything that hurts my shoulder (which means mountain biking would also be out.) :( But the recovery if all goes well should be 8 or les weeks. So basically in the course of 3 months I got plantar facitiis which is basically tendonitis in the foot and shoulder tendonitis, both due to me being stupid. Lessons learned (I hope.) The foot is still sore but I figure I'll just set aside time each day to do exercises for both and go from there. Which is no biggy since I really didn't have any summer plans anyways.

I got a couple more Spoke Out photos from Kyle so here they are.

Our good looking Schwinn team:

Jess and I before the start:

Other than that, it's shaping up to be a typical week. Trying to get all my errands done early in the week so I can coast later this week and head up to RL for my Mom's retirement party!

One week

2008-05-11T12:08:00.003-05:00

So another week is down...not too bad! Was a pretty busy week for sure.

Monday- Rode some bikes in the morning and at lunch. Dog park that night. That was pretty much my day!

Tuesday- Commuted to work. Longest ride I've had in a while. Also rode at lunch, first with a fast group of coworkers then I took a short cut back and met up with other coworkers on the way back. Pretty sweet! I had to skip softball that night because of my shoulder...getting it looked at tomorrow (Monday.) Dog parked again that night.

Wednesday- It was rainy so besides my commute to and from work, no bikes. Did hit the Y though, so that was nice. Worked until 7pm and then had volleyball at 8 so it was a busy day! We won 2 of 3. We also have a lot of new faces on the team but we all meshed well and had a great time.

Thursday- It was cold in the AM so decided to ride at lunch and do the Gun Show. Did the Gun Show and didn't get dropped which was my goal (and a minor miracle.) Actually I rode well so I was kind of happy about that. Hit the dog park again that night and then watched the Office...such a good show!

Friday- Played some basketball and then rode to work. Went mountain biking at lunch and had a great time! Quarry Ridge is getting pretty dialed for lunch rides. That night Jess and I went to Chilis for supper (it's been a while) and then just chilled it that night watching the Brewers.

Saturday- It was a day of craziness! Like last week I decided riding to the Y was a good idea. So I did. Then we were to do the Saris Spoke Out (Against Child Abuse) at 9:30 but I had an hour to kill so I rode some more. Was 28 miles in before the 12.5 mile Spoke Out. Jess had invited alot of friends (mostly coworkers) to ride, so it was ultra casual. And it was a blast. I had my road bike so it was pretty easy to get around. But having a couple hundred people on the bike paths when traffic was open was kinda sketchy.

Here's me by the terrace, many think I need a haircut, I think I need a new helmet.

Here's Jess with her proper riding technique (and always in the big ring):As you can tell since I am the photographer, I won the KFC preme, but here's Hez and Jess coming through:And don't forget Kendra with her tounge out and Tracy showing her KFC support (and photographic evidence she can ride with one hand): Here's a few happy fellas eating gelato (if we were 30 years older we can be in one of those bladder commercials about how happy we are not to have a weak stream):

Maybe the Mundys will send the big group picture so I can post that? The rest of Saturday was sweet. Hit the dog park and had some good times there. Caught 15 minutes of shut eye and then out to the Irbys. They have a top notch entertainment venue with the projection home theater and the big-ass eat in kitchen with a table that comfortably seats 10. Good grilling and food and Kyle and I arguably won 3 games of bocce. Played a couple games of classic Apples to Apples. Couldn't stay to watch the Golden Compass however as after a day like that it's better to sleep at home then on someone's floor among good friends.

Happy Mother's Day to all!!! Have a great Sunday and stay dry!

1 Qdoba Burrito

2008-05-04T20:41:00.004-05:00

Not much going on here. Weekend was a good time. Thursday I rode a 29er mountain bike at lunch. I also wrecked it. We also got together with some friends at the dog park. Friday Jess and I invited over Riz and Hez for some classic games. Blockus, Oh Hell and Euchre were awesome and we busted out a new game, Rumis. Euchre was highley contested as it went down to a best of 5 but Jess and I prevailed. A fun time was had by all!

Saturday I got up to play basketball. I was always meaning to ride my bike to the east Y, well, I finally did it. It took me 38 minutes to ride the 12.5 miles, so 20 minutes longer than the drive. Got 2 hours of basketball in too! It took longer on the way home as it's harder and I took a different route. Then I thought to myself. With the price of gas being what it is and the calories I burned by riding, I earned the equivalent of one Qdoba Burrito. I mean an hour and a half of riding and 30 miles less in my car. So I was proud of myself. Unfortunately those calories would have to be replaced by something else as we were headed to New Glarus. I went to the dog park quick and then our friends, the Mundys, picked us up. We headed towards New Glarus but stopped in Paoli. I've never stopped in Paoli before. We had to stomach some gift shops and antique shops but I did get some curds (for those of you worried that I wouldn't replace my calories.) We then got to New Glarus and did a brewery tour. I found a beer I like, called Road Slush, it's super dark. We did some tasting and then they gave us each a coupon for a for a free tap in the town of New Glarus so we found this swiss place to eat. There I had two more road slushes. But since it was swiss, we had to get some swiss cheese!

It just might have been the biggest dissapointment I've ever had involving cheese. I hated the swiss fondue. It was way too sweet. It was like a super sharp swiss and the strongest I've ever had was super mild. I tried it 4 times because I couldn't believe I hated it but alas I hated it. I washed it down with a brat though. I also got an apple pie square at the New Glarus bakery (awesome) but brought it home as I wasn't feeling it. We then headed to Barneveld to visit the Botham Vineyards. They also had a chococlate and cheese tasting as part of their open house. I've been to probably a dozen wineries and well, this one had the best wines. Whod've thunk? Tracy bought a bottle of wine but we took it home as the patio was kinda windy. Got back to Madison and we played a couple of games. Then we just kind of chilled out, walked the dogs, watched the Brewers and Nascar and had a good night.

Sunday I got up and read the paper...that's what I do on Sundays. I really wanted to ride for some reason but it was super cold in the morning. Did some housework instead and cleaned out the garage. We then headed to the dog park as it was getting nice but was windy. I thought, the dog park is 8 miles against the wind so I'll bring my bike and have an even nicer ride. The dog park was fun and then I headed out. Brain farted on the route and realized the only way to fix it was to go over Observatory, so I did. Got past Belleville and did another climb and then I rocked Fritz with a tailwind. Got done and headed down Riverside which is worse for the wear. And then I hit the worlds sharpest pothole and my ride was done. I tried to CO2 it but I had everything I needed except the inflator itself, who knows where that went. So I missed out on 10 miles of pure tailwind back to my house and Jess missed two innings of Brewers baseball to pick me up...and unfortunately the Brewers decided to not only play 12 innings but to lose. Check the map out though, pretty random ride really but only 20ish miles. Went out to Mi Cocina with Jess' parents and now I am back home ready to start the week. Bike commute every day in May is here!!!

Week should be busy with bike commuting, volleyball, softball and just lots of random little things. Have a good one!

Repair Time

2008-04-30T20:45:00.002-05:00

Alright, do you want to know what really grinds my gears? For years I’ve waited for a quick service/fast food Mexican place to open near my house. That time has come. Yesterday Jess informed me that in the new Super Target complex we were getting a new quick service burrito place. Chipotle? Qdoba? Baja Fresh? Something new I haven’t heard of? Nope. Pancheros. That’s right in about a month’s time (rough estimate) we will now live 2-3 minutes from a brand new Pancheros. It could be worse, it could be a Moe’s. But I am open-minded and promise to give it a third try.

As for repairs. My car was at Car-X today for a new muffler, oil change and a brake inspection. I got new brakes last year (twice) but they never seemed to work and squeal big-time. But from what they've said and I've confirmed sometimes brakes are that way, especially high performance brakes. So I got a steal today. They had a coupon for half off of a muffler on their website. Well my $320 muffler cost me $160 which is funny because the lady wasn't that good at coupons and I saw that their cost on that muffler was $220. Now that this is all done and I get a speaker fixed and a new remote my car should be ready to run for the long haul (not sure how long the long haul is but hopefully a while.) I also finally got approved to see a sports medicine doctor about my shoulder. Hoping they can pimp my shoulder to make it strong again. I can’t lift much and I can’t throw well and my discus career is all but over but I can do the elliptical trainer, I can play basketball and I can sleep on it, so that’s good.

That's about all that's changed since I last reported in. I got some new bike gear so maybe that'll be a future post. God I hope it doesn't rain the rest of the week.

Same ol'

2008-04-29T05:37:00.002-05:00

Not much new to report here. Here's the recap:

Wednesday: Went to Balasteri's pizza in Milwaukee. If you ever get the chance...jump on it! Most excellent. We then headed to the Milwaukee Museum and after checking out what people though of history and geography in the 70's we watched the Grand Canyon Imax which was super cool since we were there last month. Then it was on to see dead people. Body Worlds is one of the most informative things I've ever done. While it was a little gross if you really thought about it, the wonderment of it all and everything I learned was magnificant. It's only there until June 1st so if you have a day off a road trip would be good. The obligatory stop at Dunkin Donuts for some Munchkins and a Marshmallow flavored iced coffee was the ticket. We then headed to Miller Park. I had won 8 tickets on Ebay (for $4.48) and since no one wanted to come on a Wednesday evening I was able to sell 6 of them (for $10) and then we went in. The game was one of the best I've seen with Prince hitting a go-ahead 8th inning homerun and then Turnbow getting the call. Drove home and got home late.

Thursday: Rode to Paoli in the morning and then a day of recovery. Work was work-like as expected. Watched the Office that night.

Friday: The weather turned Friday to something crappy. Opened up the day with some basketball and then another work day. Got through said day and came home. Did very little though and we chilled the whole night.

Saturday: Got up early for some basketball and then went to the grocery store. Jess thought I was making her go to Harold & Kumar Escape from Guantanamo Bay and she hated it. I was luke-warm on it...amusing but it lacked the creativity of the original. That afternoon I went to the dog park and had a good time. Then we went over to the Mundys and out to dinner. I discovered a new health food, it's called a Caramel Espresso Milk Shake at Barriques. With an estimated 35g of fat and probably around 600 calories, it was super tasty! Gaming was fun as well (and as usual.) Dari (their boxer) at less than a year now outweighs Chili (our boxer) who is 2-1/2. She's going to be a big girl!!!

Sunday: Got up and read the paper. It was supposed to be the crappiest of days. Jess and I cleaned and organized alot of the house. We even found out we get to do some major furniture repair on our couch. Figuring it was crappy outside (and being tired) we watched some Nascar and the Brewers and just hung out. Then that evening we went out to eat with Jess' parents. We then discovered that it might have been a good day to be outside, oh well. After supper I took the dogs for a long walk. That was Sunday.

Monday: Got up early and went to the Y. It was cold that morning and I needed some exercise. Work was work again. Then I went and borrowed Chili's girlfriend (Lola) and brought her home so they could play for a couple hours. That was the extent of my night.

Nothing much on tap this week. Hard to believe WORS starts this weekend. Don't think my 220 miles of riding this year will suffice so I won't be there. Of course it snowed yesterday here and I am guessing it did even more up there so I wonder what the trail will be like. Well thanks for reading! I wonder what Kelson is up to right now?

Cyclists

2008-04-23T07:55:00.003-05:00

So for many years, we've wondered, what type of cyclist can be considered the biggest geek. I often didn't think it was even a contest. Turns out I was right all along! Follow this one too! Yep, $45k to be a poser, and that just includes the entry fee, not the $10k tri bike, air-fare, lodging and everything else that goes along with this. You think for $45k you could buy enough drugs and "earn" your way to the Ironman. Of course all my ranting makes me seem insensative to the charities that will benefit, so I guess that's a plus (and maybe someone's justification.) I am just glad my flirtation with tri-geekdom was a success. In triathalon's defense however, all cycling is geeky.

A day off from work today! I haven't taken a random day off ever that I can remember so this should be fun. Heading to Milwaukee to see some dead bodies and a Brewers game. Yesterday I went out to Quarry Ridge for some MTB action before the rain hit. Tried a couple more stunts yesterday with success, I definitely need to take the camera out there one of these days! Monday I also rode, went out to Belleville before work and took the Badger Trail (I think that's the name) back. That trail rocks big-time, it beats the hell out of you and then you get to the unimproved section and it put one more nail in the hurt coffin. Then you get done and on to pavement and you feel like a rockstar once again. Weird euphoria.

Spring is here...

2008-04-20T08:19:00.003-05:00

So Spring has got sprung. The Brewers are winning, people are riding bikes and I busted out the shorts. I think it's even possible to go mountain biking in Wisconsin...definitely going to check that out soon!

Week was a good one. Took me all week to almost get caught up at work. Got a bunch of dog park trips in now that the park is (relatively) dry. Chili is a very happy dog. That was pretty much the course of the week. Thursday it was raining so Jess and I went and saw the movie 21. I can't recommend it but I really did like it. It's not for everyone, but it was for me. Friday night we went out to a musical at the Orpheum called the 25th Annual Putnam County Spelling Bee. It was Jess' suprise to me as I wanted to see in when we were in NYC last spring but we opted for Altar Boyz (which is still the best live show I've seen.) The Spelling Bee was hilarious and I can recommend that to anyone who loves stage shows. I also made my return to basketball Friday morning. It felt good to work out before work, I'll have to do that more often. Saturday morning I also got up and played and I can't remember ever playing better so that's a good sign. After that Jess and I hit the first Farmer's Market of the season. No one had any crops so it was kind of boring. I bought some hot & spicy cheese bread but now it's $7 and the loaf I had sucked so I definitely will be eating much less of that this summer. We hit Trader Joes on the way home. We then headed to the $5 Saturday morning movies. Forgetting Sarah Marshall was the flick we opted for and it rocked. There was a little too much male nudity (countered with too little female nudity) but other than that, it was a most excellent comedy that I highly recommend! Got out of the theater and instead of going shopping it was too nice so we headed out on the bikes. We got a 28 mile road ride in to Paoli and almost to Belleville. It was interesting to see how much flooding there was everywhere though.

On the military ridge trail there was water on both sides, it was cool. Jess also wanted these as proof that she rode her bike this year. Took the dogs to the park after that and we cleaned up the house as we had company coming over. We played games well into the night.

Now it's Sunday morning and I am about to head out for another road ride before heading to the dog park for a boxer bash and then to Research Park to watch some friends bike race. Have a great Sunday (and week.)

Little somethin'

2008-04-13T17:19:00.005-05:00

Alas we are back from the Little 500. It was a wild & crazy weekend for sure!

We were going to leave Thursday at 3pm. Come 3pm the van had yet to be loaded and we had super-charged winds and rain. Loading the van totally blew but we got out by 3:30 and headed south. Of course the de-fog had to be on max as I was soaked from loading the van...finally by Rockford I had enough and had to change into dry clothes. We hit a Subway on the way down and pulled in after 11:30 local time. Quite the long work day! It pretty much poured the whole way down too so it was a really rough drive.

Friday I got up and headed to the Copper Cup, the world's best coffee shop. Got some brew and went back, got Jess and we headed to Armstrong Stadium, home of the Little 500. Friday was the women's race. We were able to drive right to the track to unload and set up. We left our two best bikes in the van as we went and got (arguably) the worlds best pizza and a bubble tea. We made it back to finish the set-up and were open for business. We gave out some stickers and catalogs. We even got invited to a frat party and I guess Yung Joc was going to be playing at it (and DMX played at a different frat.) Well the day was decent, upper 50's but it was super windy. So much so that while the crowds gathered our tent took off, right for the track where the riders were riding. By some miracle I was able to grab the tent before it was totally on the track, 3 legs were on the track and one was in my hand. It took 5 of us to get the tent back and then we were advised it would be best to take it down. The wind also had knocked down all of our bikes and blew over our solid wood table. So we packed it up and took over the Coke Zero tent (they didn't show up Friday) for our headquarters. Once we were ready again there was this huge buzz. Aparently Barack Obama is a big bike racing fan and he walked right by me...and I shook his hand. It was cool too because I was right next to Miss Indiana so Obama talked to her a bunch so I got lots of face time. The race was awesome. Here's a photo of the first row, the inside girl won the pole position and was the overwhelming favorite, the outside girl was the defending champion...of course the middle girl won! The conditions were brutal with a 20mph steady wind with 30+mph gusts. After the race we packed up in anticipation of Coke Zero showing up the next day. We got home and cleaned up and went out for supper. I then went out shopping to buy some things I forgot and to be ready for the next day. I got me a solid 9 hours of sleep.

Saturday we awoke to a rain/snow mixture and 25mph steady winds. What a great day for a bike race. Started with some coffee once again and then we checked out the campus and the union. Setting up tents was advised against so we took a new marketing approach and we combed the stands handing out shirts and stickers and I think we touched more people that way as the day before we were tucked away in a corner. We also went to the VIP BBQ and got some good eats quick before taking our post for the race. We got to watch most of the race while it rained, snowed and was just plain windy. In the end the Cutters (who dominated the whole race anyways) soloed away and gained over a half a lap on the 4 chasers.

After the race they gave out an official Schwinn bicycle as a prize, so that was awesome!!!

After that we got to tear down our post and load the van back up. All and all the event was fun but the promotions part could've went a little better. If I am asked to go again, I think I want to bring water bottles or hats or something a little more tangeable as even the t-shirts kind of got lost in the fray. We got back and warmed up and were about to leave when we noticed a table down in the ravine. Turns out it was Stacy's table.

It broke into two pieces that could be put together but hard to picture a 50lb table flying through the air. Of course there were construction supplies and street signs and branches down everywhere! Supper was good again and it was fun to spend some time with Stacy. I ended up watching three movies that night (Borat, Thank You for Smoking and the Lake House) and goign to bed after midnight. I am a party animal.

Jess and I left this morning but not before one last Copper Cup. We went home through Chicago and that was a nice change that seemed to be shorter. Got home and the weather got better so we went to the dog park. Overall it was a fun weekend despite the awful weather (it rained probably 50% of the time and was windy non-stop.) Good food, good family and good bike racing. The Little 500 is one of the most interesting and awesome events I've seen, to see that many people paying $20 a head to watch a bike race...that is what cycling is about.

2008-04-10T07:31:00.002-05:00

So I guess people expect these more often so here’s today’s post.

Going south for a long weekend! Jess and I are representing Schwinn at the world famous Little 500 bike race. Should be an excellent time. Get to mix work (and getting paid) with good times (seeing family and watching bike races.) And don’t forget all the expense account food I care to consume, although I am a value compared to others because Chili’s is basically gourmet cuisine to me! If you get HD-Net on your TV watch the races live on Friday and Saturday afternoons!

Not much else going on this week. Cold lingers on in the lungs so activity has been minimal. PS2 is getting a big-time workout however and that’s been a good time. The game I wanted for PS3 has been shelved until late May so I bought myself more PS2 time. This morning I beat Ratchet & Clank Up Your Arsenal and I'd definitely rank it as one of the Top 5 video games I've ever played. Not sure what is next, the new PS2 Ratchet & Clank game might have to be bought before PS3 time.

For those of you who come here for up-to-date cycling news, Tristan now races on GT bikes. He was here yesterday to check things out. Hopefully he’ll have a good season as we need some results to expand our sponsorship of regional riders. He’s always got results in the past though, so no reason to think that won’t continue.

Here's something a friend sent me last year...don't think I blogged it yet...

glumbert - Bad Day at the Office

Well that's all I got! Have a great day and weekend!

Don't call it a comeback...

2008-04-06T20:41:00.002-05:00

So evidently people still read this thing...so I have to continue. I do have an excused absence though, I was sick. So basically any blog post I would've done in the past week would have referred to that. But this past weekend was different so maybe it'll be slightly more interesting.

Of note from last week, Wednesday night Riz and I went to Red Robin. Normally it's good but overall the food was pretty bad. I've been wanting to try their steak sliders for a while...what a mistake. I thought they'd be made with ground steak but instead they are made with mini (rough) steaks. Steaks like that shouldn't be on buns...the texture was all wrong. And you were still chewing on the steak long after the bun and toppings were gone. The onion rings were overcooked too, overall the steak sliders would rate a D. Stay away! Thursday morning I tried some shoulder rehab in the pool. I swam over 1/2 of a mile quick and my shoulder liked it. But then I got sick. All weekend long I was knocked down and out, not venturing far from the couch. It was all in the lungs, I couldn't breathe but I certianly could cough and I had no energy. Finally Wednesday the cough started to fade and the energy came back. Today I finally feel good (I still cough and hack a bit but not too bad.) So the week was like that.

Friday we had our last night of bowling. I ended up having the highest handicapped game and was 5 points away from winning money straight up with my 251. We won maybe $80 as a team, Kyle took $10 extra for being most improved and I also scored a bottle of Korbel Brandy. That's got "regift" written all over it! :) Saturday I had to work at Willy Bikes as a factory rep. My 4 hour shift turned to 7 and I was sore as hell from walking around and standing for that long. I was rewarded with Taco Bell though and then we played some games and had a great time!

Today we went to the Brewers game. It was excellent, Sheets threw awesome and the Brewers scored in 6 different innings. That keeps it fun! We both got Prince Fielder bobbleheads too! After we got back we went to the dog park. Then we took the much anticipated trip to Macaroni Grill (we've been meaning to go for the past 5 weeks.) But alas...it appears Madison can't support a Macaroni Grill as it was now out of business. So 5 weeks ago they sent me a coupon good for 8 weeks...but now it's gone. So that sucked. We ended up back at Taco Bell and then to the grocery store and now home.

There you go, you're updated on my life (or lack there of...)

Easter

2008-03-26T06:27:00.002-05:00

Easter has came and went. Just shows how zany Madison can be. Friday when it came time to leave, it was blizzard madness! It snowed really hard and we left work early to head north. It's not fun to drive in crap like that on the highway but we made it slowly but surely. We went to Taco Bell in Baraboo on the way up...and they ran out of rice. There are alot of items I could think of that a restaurant could run out of (buns, lettuce or anything remotely fresh) but rice is a bummer, especially for the vegetarian in our family. We made do with smaller than normal items. It was good to see the Badgers make it to weekend two of the NCAA tourney. Easter in Rice Lake was really nice. We hung out with Anna most of the time and watched lots of basketball. John and I went through over 100,000 baseball cards which are almost worthless to see if we could find anything fun. We found some fun cards but nothing overly valuable. We are hoping to get rid of them now to help my parents make space. Sunday we had easter brunch with both of my grandmas which is always fun. Got back Sunday and it started to snow more...it appears Madison did get to the 100" mark for snow, eclipsing the old record that was like 82".

Back to work on Monday was rough (it was Monday) but manageable. Monday night we played the city league championships in basketball. Our team was 8-2 this season. But alas the championship was out of grasp. I played like crap and had 4 fouls so I didn't get to play much...we all played like crap. So it wasn't meant to be. I do have one other shot of a championship as our work has a March Madness Foosball Tourney and today my team is in the championship. I even went riding yesterday and felt like crap, so much so that today instead of riding I am writing this lame-ass blog post!

One cool thing however is that our company makes an electric bike. It is pedal assist so if you are pedalling the assist will kick in and help you out. How cool is that? The only reason not to own one of these if you work downtown is the price as I seriously think with Madison's network of bike paths you can get to work quicker and not much more sweaty than you would in a car. It took me 6 minutes versus 4 in a car on clear roads for me to get to work, all on easy to drive roads. I know I can get to Camp Randall and back quicker on that then in a car. Anyways I am hoping to take that bike out more and give it some further research.

I still gotta get a PS3. I played it alot this past weekend... This video is almost all made with the help of a PS3.

Weekly Update

2008-03-20T06:15:00.002-05:00

I don't expect to update this much in the coming days with the NCAA tourney starting and going home for Easter and all that. But I figured an update was due now since it's been a week. Week was ok, it's always tough adjusting to post vacation work but I did. This blog's theme is catching up.

It took me a significant chunk of last week to catch up at work. And our work flow is spiking and I also got a new (additonal) rep so these past two weeks have been the busiest I have been since starting. It's good too, I feel I am about 95% of the way to knowing what the hell I am doing.

I run an NCAA tournament pool every year. It really allowed me to catch up with people. I heard from people that I haven't heard from in a year, or more. Two of my college friends in fact got married to each other, bought a house and just had a baby, all in the course of one year. Wow! I also got to go out to lunch with one of my former co-workers (Brooke) and catch up on things. I got a call from Russ the week before too, what is this world coming to? Caught up with the boxers Stryker and Lily at the park after their 1 month hiatus (and their owner Jenn). Got to meet our friends' new baby Grady on Thursday, what a good looking boy, check facebook for some of the cutest baby/boxer photos ever. We even caught up and bowled with the Mundys who we hadn't seen in a week. And yes, it's turning out my 251 game was an abnormality, I had one 170 game since then and the rest were lower (most siginificantly.) Got to catch up with Jess' extended family (who I haven't seen since Christmas) this past weekend, and this weekend it's up to Rice Lake to catch up with my parents (I can't bring it to myself to call them my "folks"). This past weekend we also caught up with some friends for a movie party. Unfortunately we also got caught up on some Spaceballs, which would've been much better left in the past. The Irby's spaghetti feast made up for it, so the night was still a success. I even started to catch up with some cycling, having a 30 mile day on Thursday (before not riding all weekend.) In an interesting tidbit I didn't go out to eat once all weekend long. I mean I ate at a couple people's houses but never purchased any food items or had them purchased for me. Weird.

Glad to see the Badgers win the Big Ten Tourney, even though it didn't net them anything in the eyes of the NCAA tourney committee. Tonight will be a late one with a late Badger game start, hopefully they'll blow em out early.

In Mark's health news, it seems like I am busy with appointments. I got fitted for orthodics on Friday. On Wednesday I did something I didn't think I'd ever do, I went to a chiropractor. And so far so good. After miles of paper work (actually 2 yards worth) I got to meet with an assistant. Then the chiro came in. We talked and he did some range of motion things. He said my shoulder motion was good but said that the part that gets sore cycling was messed up. He then looked at my pelvis and said I've worked too many years at a desk job and my pelvis has slipped and stuff. He also said something to the fact that my legs were messed up (he said technical things but that was yesterday so by now it's translated to my own words) and then measured my right leg being 1-1/2 cm shorter then my left, and it bowed outward. Robbie told me that two years ago when I tested with him but I kind of didn't deal with it. They are going to try and correct that too. Then he started poppin' stuff around. That was weird. But I was able to move my leg twice as far now, and half as far as I should. So short term I think it's really good, I'll give you my long term verdict once I get one. Thanks to Wolfgram for the referral, it's nice having a Chiro that's half way between work and home (2 minutes either way.)

I wish everyone good luck on their brackets. I am assuming I'll be posting niece photos and others early next week...until then count how many passes happen in this video.

Das Boot...

2008-03-12T19:11:00.003-05:00

So my plantar fasciitis feels the same as when I first got it. I finally saw a doctor. Now I get to wear a lovely boot to bed and do lots of fun exercises when I am not asleep. The best part though is that I got a prescriptions for custom shoe inserts so I get fitted for those on Friday and that should relieve a lot of pain. Hoping to be pain free sometime in April. Hopefully Jess will find me attractive still in my knee-high grey boot. At least it looks better than a pair of Uggs.

Here is a link to my bike ride today. Nevermind the average speed and all that jazz. Look at the map. Yes, I actually rode across the lake. I did this same ride yesterday but forgot my GPS so I had to repeat today. I got very wet as there are puddles every where and I also got very dirty. The lake portion is a blast and I am hoping one of these days to ride it all the way across like my coworker did. Yesterday was more crazy though. I had a tailwind entering the lake and it was pretty much glare ice. When I tried to make the turn to Olin park though, I couldn't. My bike got less grip then the wind pushed so I physically couldn't turn without crashing. It took until I found a patch of slush where the tires gripped enough and then I aimed about 200 yards upshore of my destination and the wind made me fade right to Olin park. It was a blast! Today the ice was slush covered the whole way so it was no big deal, just slippery. With highs in the 40s tomorrow it might be a 3-day riding fest! Might even ride in on Friday and group ride it Saturday. Gotta get back into some shape.

We made the playoffs in City League basketball. We play a team we beat before too, so it should be interesting! We get this Monday off though because of school spring break so it'll be like the two week preperation that teams get before a Super Bowl. Last night we got to go out with some near and dear friends and I enjoyed some Hubbard Ave Diner. Busy week as tonight is my only night of not having anything to do. Of course a week ago I was here so I gotta keep busy this week so I stop thinking about last week...

The Grand Crevasse...

2008-03-10T07:02:00.003-05:00

So Thursday morning we woke up in the Grand Canyon. Jess wanted some sunrise photos so we got up super early and went out. Of course it was about 20F at 6 in the morning but such is life. We got some good photos and some breakfast and then headed for the room to chill for a couple hours before our big hike. We were hiking the South Kaibob trail to a place called Skeleton Point which was 2 miles into the canyon and about half-way down. We had to buy crampons for our shoes as it was super icy, so I figured super sketchy. It wasn't very sketchy at all but it was beautiful. The 3-mile trail down was tough on the shins but it wasn't bad at all. The temps increased as you went down as ice was replaced by dirt. We saw tons of mules with tourists making the trip up...glad I am not a mule! We saw an endagered California Condor and a few other cool looking birds on the way. When we got to Skeleton Point we could actually see the river (which was at about double flow as the Grand Canyon was getting a 30 hour flushing and we happened to be there.) Had we started earlier in the day I would've been tempted to go to the river which they say is a dangerous day-hike. We started on the way back up and made better time. We even took time to walk to another point on the way back and it took us just as long to get up as it did to get down. To see what the trail is like, look at the photo below, in the upper right hand corner are people. 4-1/2 hours of steady hiking (and climbing) and we were back. We pretty much crashed most of the rest of the night, leaving to drive to the nearest town to get pizza and coming back.

The next morning we got up and headed out. We went east along the canyon to see other view points and trails. The farther east it got, the less deep the canyon and the more you could see the river. It's amazing how vast the canyon is...a mile down and 10 miles across in the narrowest point. I'd love to hike to the bottom some day and camp out. We then left the canyon and journeyed back to Phoenix. We did stop at Sonic on the way and they have new Java Chillers which makes me believe Sonic might be back...or at least extremely viable. We got to Phoenix and drove up to South Mountain. It just happens to be the most popular place for road and mountain biking in Phoenix so it was a bummer not to have a bike. The views of Phoenix were awesome too! After that we just needed some unwind time on our last day. We did some shopping and tooling around. We went to Tia Rosa which is a world famous mexican restaurant and was recommended to us by 4 people. We left dissappointed and before people say we don't understand real mexican food, I'll say this...they basically served the stuff we had here, just with less flavor. Jess said the margarita was top-notch and it was super popular as we had to wait at 5pm and would've waited tons longer at 6pm so they must do something right. We washed it down with some Gelato at the Gelato Spot. We then went to downtown Scottsdale and it was like one huge party. I mean beer gardens and restaurants were packed, reminded me of State St. on a nice fall night but with an older clientele. Seemed pretty cool! We then went back to the hotel to pack. Our flight left at 6am Saturday morning, guh!

Saturday we got up at 4ish and turned in the rental car. The airport was barely open at 4:45 when we arrived. We had to wait for security to open. Once we got through security there was no where to get some decent breakfast or coffee. We hit our flight and randomly we got to Dallas late. Of course our layover was short and we were on the other side of the airport. We got to take the train to our terminal and then sprint 10 gates, to make it just in time and get in the air. Now I am sweaty, hungry and need caffeine. The Nintendo DS got me to Madison...but our luggage didn't make it. Jess' parents picked us up and soon I was home eating Noodles, drinking coffee and watching the Badgers. Lounged the rest of the day and our luggage came some time in the middle of the night (it was on the porch when I got up.)

Sunday was fun as our friends Krystina and Cody had a baby boy (Grady Micheal). We got to watch and play with their boxer Lola all day. Chili is virtually dead from 7 days at camp and then going to the park and then playing with Lola. He didn't move all evening. Anyways we can't wait to meet Grady.

Now it's back to work...guh! Not ready but such is life and I'll get thrown right back into it I am sure!

Sedona

2008-03-08T17:05:00.003-06:00

Sorry for the lack of updates but the internet crapped out in Sedona and I haven't surfed the web since Monday night. We are back in Madison and I am hoping to break this up into 2-3 posts. So we woke up in Sedona to sub-freezing temps on Tuesday morning. Too early to go mountain biking so we grabbed some free hotel breakfast and went exploring. I find this road and it says you must have a high clearance 4X4 to clear. We had a rental Subaru AWD so we figured good enough. 4 miles of rough driving and getting out alot to take pictures, it was awesome! Finally we get to where the road is closed (presumably too much snow) and there was a cool rock formation called Merry Go Round mesa. I had a great time climbing all around it. Lots of good 10 foot free climbs. We headed back down the same trail and it was rough. We spent most of the morning exploring the greater Sedona area. We ate at Taco Del Mar (a west coast favorite) and headed back to change into riding gear.

We picked up our rental bikes from Sedona Sports and headed off. Some dude broke the GT I-D I was supposed to ride so I rode a Kona Dawg. Not a bad bike at all, at some point I think most suspension bikes are the same. Funny thing also, by the time we were ready to ride it was super hot and sunny. I wasn't able to use the Garmin GPS as the mount broke right after installation so I don't have maps to our rides. But from the start I found out I was a bit over my head, Sedona is made for big-boy riding. We rode the broken arrow trail which was a blast but very difficult. We then went out to Submarine Rock (Sub Rock) which is all slick rock. I rode around aimlessly but then a local guy showed me some lines and I was soon rocking some fun stuff (not as crazy as others but still fun.) We then took a crazy climb up to Chicken Point which was beautiful. Several miles of good singletrack later (Llama, Little Horse, Mystic trails) and we were heading back to the car. 3 hours and probably 15-2o miles (mostly hardcore singletrack) so that was sweet. Jess and I were both pretty wrecked but we showered up and headed out onto the town. We had dinner at the Red Planet Diner and then walked the town and then early to bed.

Wednesday was very similar to Tuesday to start. We went to a place called 101 Omelets for breakfast (pass) and then explored other rock formations and did another 4X4 trail. Jess decided not to ride a second day but I couldn't get enough. I had her shuttle me about 500 feet above the river to a trailhead so at least I had the descent in my favor. Here is the good and bad; the story of three trails.
1. Huckaby trail. Supposed to be a great XC ride. It was, I decended and it was white knuckle with a creek crossing. Had to climb back up which stunk but then back down to the river bed. Had to dismount a few things that were to crazy for me but it was some of the best riding I've ever done. Get to the bottom and am flowing around and head to the river. Get to the river. You can cross the river to finish the trail and then ride the epic Jim Thompson trail on the north of town. Except for a couple weeks a year the river is unpassable. For example, this week it was unpassable. So I got to climb, decend and climb. All of that to decend 500feet of vertical on the road. Bummer. Get to Sedona Sports figuring I can call Jess and we can go do something else. Jess doesn't answer.
2. Brewers Trail. I ride 1-1/2 miles on pavement to the Brewers trail. It's straight up and technical. I probably ride about 1/2 of the climb and walk the rest. It's only a 30 minute trail (that direction or like 7 minutes the other way) but it was insane. The last 1/4 miles were on off-camber slick rock that was about 5 feet wide and on a cliff edge. Loved it. Called Jess from that trailhead but no answer. I have to meet Jess in 45 minutes and I see this 3-1/2 mile loop. Perfect.
3. Airport Mesa. This is the most scenic trail I've ever been on. This Mesa is in the heart of red rock country and you can see most every legendary rock formation. It's the worst trail I've ever ridden. I got about a 1/3 of the way in (past the point of no return) before it got hard. And by hard, I mean it was tough to walk...tough to walk if I was wearing hiking boots and had poles, almost impossible to walk with a bike. I probably walked about 3/4 of the next mile. I even turned an ankle, so bad that I started to fall. Fortunately my other shin caught a rock and kept me up. When I was riding I fell three times, once onto a log, twice into cactuses. It was fine accupuncture with some needles going at least 1/2 inch (no lie!) into me. Finally I get to a point where I am superlate meeting Jess but at least I can ride probably 80% and it wasn't bad. Then I see the turnoff with the Bandit trail. I take it and bomb it. One of the best downhills I've ridden, reminded me of Crested Butte. So I ended with a bang at least and then a 2 mile road ride to the Taco Del Mar.

Yes, we doubled up on Taco Del Mar...it's that good. I returned my bike and we headed north. Slide Rock State Park was the goal...but when I was by the river I felt it and it was arctic cold. We passed which is a bummer as it supposedly is a swimming hole with natural waterslides. We headed through Oak Creek Canyon which is beautiful. Once we get out of the canyon, we first caught glimpse of a future conquest (Humphrey's Peak) and Flagstaff. We started the long haul north to the Grand Canyon as the temps dropped. We got to the GC just before sundown and got some photos in. We had a big day planned the next day so we just went to the cafeteria for supper and then watched TV the rest of the night.

The Valley of the Sun!

2008-03-03T21:49:00.004-06:00

The whole week was basically, for me, getting ready to go to Arizona. I mean I went to the dog park about every night and went to work everyday but that’s about the extent of things. Saturday morning I got up early and played some basketball and then we prebowled for bowling league (it went awfully.) We then took the dogs to the kennel and met up with my brother for lunch. That’s what’s nice about a late afternoon flight. We got to the airport (2 hours) early and I played lots of Nintendo DS (with that and our 2 hour layover in Chicago, 5 hours after we start we’re still into Chicago. The flight to Phoenix was long and boring. We made it late. Then it was time for rental car roulette! Yes, we get a row of cars and get to pick whichever one we want. And most were free upgrades from our mid-size. Dodge Calibers, Nissan Altimas, Toyota Priuses were all fine cars but we finally ran to get the Subaru Outback AWD. We got to it about 5 seconds before someone else who then ran to the other Subaru which wasn’t as good. I love the car so far!

Saturday we got up and headed to this blog’s namesake…the Waffle House. I hadn’t been to one since late 2006 and I don’t even think I saw one last year. Breakfast was outstanding. We headed back here, got ready and then headed a couple miles west to Tempe, home of ASU. We climbed this hill that’s next to Sun Devil Stadium, it was great! We then spent the next couple hours motoring around the Phoenix Metro area, first heading up to Scottsdale then west to downtown and the capital and then over to the Glendale area where the Brewers have Spring Training. We were a bit early to Spring Training so we headed up north to a place called the Coffee Bean. Had an excellent caramel latte. We then went back to Maryvale Park and got in. I felt special as we got to go to the VIP parking lot and then got to go to the players’ will call table (the lines for everything else were huge.) We got in and tooled around, it was our first time at Spring Training. Not sure how it worked but we had seats right behind the Angels dugout, 3 rows back. But I saw some Brewers players signing autographs over on the other side so I got my sprint on. I was able to catch Racine native Vinny Rottino and get him to sign a card. Also got Ned Yost to sign a card as well. Pretty sweet. The game was fun, the laid back atmosphere, the mid 70’s and sun, the 5000 fans who could actually hear the players talk. We were in the middle of the Angels fans and the Angels players and coaches would interact with them during the game. Neat! After the game we lounged around and I was able to add Tony Gwynn Jr and Gabe Gross to my autograph list. I was trying to figure this whole thing out and could’ve gotten a lot of minor league players to sign (and Uecker) but I didn’t really have anything for them to sign. No biggy.

After the game we found out the Mexican restaurant that a few different people told us about was closed Sundays and Mondays. Hoping to sneak it in on Friday before we go. We headed to the best burger in Phoenix, Delux. It was good, the patty was top notch, the toppings could’ve been better. We hit the Gelato Spot after and had an excellent dessert. Jess told me about some random trail where you climb 1400 feet in 1.25 miles and I figured we could catch the sunset up here. Little did I know, it was pretty much like a bouldering trail with some class 2 and class 3 scramble. We got almost a mile of it in where we got to a vista and saw the sun set. It was one of the most beautiful things I’ve ever seen. The sun setting behind mountains with the sprawl of Phoenix in the foreground. The sketchy part was descending while it was dark (the dusk was even darker when we were as going down the mountain was between us and what little light came from the sun. And Jess did take a top notch digger, I expected her to just have fallen to her knees but she went head (actually elbows(first) down to the ground. She was ok except for a huge not on her elbow. She’s soldiered on. We got to the car and it was night. We headed to the hotel and were crashed by 8:30, lots of sun and hiking made us dead!

Now it’s Monday am, I am up and Jess just got up. Heading to Dunkin Donuts for a latte and a donut before seeing whatever other adventures we can find. Then settling in for some Brewers/Padres before venturing north to Sedona. Hopefully DD has some WIFI so I can post this blog!
They didn’t so the blog continues. Dunkin Donuts makes a crap-ass latte (undrinkable). We headed back to the Cambleback Mountain this morning. We rocked it, made it all the way to the top. Jess took another fall but other than that it was nice. Took a couple hours round trip. Had some iced coffees after, it was awesome! Headed west to Glendale to check out the Cardinals stadium and then back to Maryvale for a second day of Brewers action. We hit Del Taco on the way and it was fun! Got to the stadium early and got a couple autos. The game went fast for about 7 innings and I scored a t-shirt in the t-shirt toss. The last two innings took forever but I was able to score some sweet autos (Hardy, Hart, Weeks, Sveum, Etc…) It was another beautiful day for baseball! After the game we went to Fatburger (pass) and headed to Sedona. Sedona seems awesome although it’s dark so I haven’t seen the beauty yet. Time to get some sleep!

Tuesday Night...

2008-02-27T06:17:00.002-06:00

This morning I finally busted out the first mountain bike ride of the year. We got 1-2” of fresh powder last night so I figured that would be perfect. It was also 26F so it was cold enough not to be sloppy. The roads weren’t bad at all (for a mountain bike with low tire pressure) but once I hit the military ridge I struggled. I could ride maybe 100-200 feet at a time before losing so much momentum I had to put my foot down. I guess there hasn’t been many snowmobilers out. I finally got to Quarry Ridge and entered the trail. Got about 10 feet before determining it was impassible. But I saw if I went right instead of left it might be ridable. It was for a while. Then it wasn’t. Then it was once again. Rode out to Fitchrona and determined that I should probably head to work. Took me over 20 minutes from there (just over 3 miles) so it was slow going for sure (uphill and headwind didn’t help.) But I got out for 50 minutes of hard riding (and hiking) today so that was cool (and about 6 miles.) I was basically on pace to race with this guy.

Weekend was fun. After my sweet-ass bowling game (see post below) I was in a pretty good mood. Saturday I played hoops and got groceries. We also bought some Brewers tickets for a couple of key games right when they opened up for sale. Hit the dog park too. Later that day I watched Fast Times At Ridgemont High for my first time. Not bad. Jess and I also went to see the movie Vantage Point (liked it) and went to Chilis and then spent a couple hours doing Arizona vacation research for our upcoming trip. Nice night. Sunday I woke up too early and wasn’t feeling great. Read the paper and watched the movie Hot Rod (excellent.) We then went to a 10am showing of Be Kind Rewind (worthy) then hung out and then I went out to the dog park again. Got home in time to go to Jess’ parents for the Badger Game, got home just in time to head out to Blue Mound for an Oscars party. Good eats and good times, Jess even won the Oscar pool and $75 (beating me by one.) So all and all the weekend was a success.

Monday sucked though. I was so tired from staying out late on Sunday and it was just a dreary day with the threat of snow. Never happened, but there was a threat. The evening was nice, went to the dog park and then we had our basketball game and got back on the winning track, so no complaints. I also got slushed by a semi on my ride home from work so that kinda sucked!

Pro?

2008-02-22T21:12:00.003-06:00

I've always dreamed of going pro in something, never thought it would be bowling. But apparently I am on my way. Before tonight my previous high was a 228 and that was in the last decade and my highest this season was a 198. But that all changed tonight in my third game, when I rolled a 251! 251 are you kidding me? Nope. 7 strikes in a row. All marks with a 7 kicker in the 10th. Unconscious. Even had to get me the score sheet and a print out. Finished with a 572 series. Maybe they'll even send me a patch or something.

So that is getting the weekend started off right. Also of note, Tracy bowled her best game (160) ever and our team won so it was a good night for the Munsons. It was my 7th game in a 2-day span so maybe that's the key. Note: In case you think I actually think I could go pro...I bowled a 118 yesterday...maybe I can fish better than I bowl...

Week was decent, didn't do much with all the cold. Monday the dream of an undefeated basketball season came to an end...stupid Applebees whooped up on us. Time to regroup. Also had our first Chainsmokers meeting which had really poor attendance. Tuesday and Wednesday were just plain cold. We did manage to get out to eat both nights, once with Jess' parents and once with Stephen and Emily so that was fun. Yesterday we had our bowling outing at work. Got four games in so that was cool...didn't bowl to well but had a blast. That night I went to a poker tournament hosted by one of my best friends' ex-girlfriends. Weird, not too much, but it went well. I took her out right away and played awesome until pretty much hitting a wall. Made it to the final but wound up 6th out of 19...at least I beat Dean! :)

Work has been going pretty well...I'm happy I work for this company!

This is a bigger shocker than my bowling tonight. Who knew that Prince even knew how to read? Total mind blower.

Kelson sent me this link. Seemed somewhat applicable to this blog. Crazy!

Lots of birthdays this weekend too, Emily, Sarah T, Irby(B) and probably others too so Happy Birthday to those born in February. Well that's my week in a nutshell...hopefully my run of good luck can continue for the next month or two!!!

Just hangin' out! (Photo Share)

2008-02-18T18:46:00.002-06:00

The dogs getting some nap time in.Jess and Chili just hanging out!
Snow angels...Jess style!
Our poor birch tree...it once was over 20 feet tall...the ice is taking it down!
Madison is a winter wonderland!

Valentine's Day!

2008-02-14T19:50:00.002-06:00

Happy Valentine's Day! Wow, it’s already Thursday and I haven’t blogged yet this week. I was thinking about my last weekend and how eventful and uneventful it was. I watched movies. Three 80’s movies in one day (Back to The Future, Goonies and Ferris Bueller’s Day Off.) The latter two were on a big screen, at the Irby party. Took 50 minutes each way for a 20 minute drive because of crazy blowing wind and icy roads. But enchiladas made up for that. Sunday I watched two more movies, Fools Gold at the theater (not very good) and Fast and The Furious Tokyo Drift (which I actually like.) I also finished off the PS2 game, Jak 3. One of the best games I’ve played. I’ve got two more PS2 games to complete before moving on to PS3. We bowled last Friday (horribly) and I played basketball on Saturday. So I kept busy!

This week has been laid back. Hoops team went to 6-0 with a thrilling 52-50 last second victory. Chili made his doggie day-care debut on Wednesday...he loved it. Might have to go back. Tonight we went to Abuelos to celebrate Valentines. Now we are home and doing very little.

Say what?

Rookie time!

Well that's it for now. I'll try to do something exciting so I can blog about it. Oh yeah, and now I've decided that I like Obama...he was in a commercial yesterday and he sounded like the Rock...I'm sold!

Winter Wonderland

2008-02-09T03:58:00.001-06:00

2008 Topps came out on Wednesday. I didn't get any yet, but here is something I might get to look forward to.

Week was crazy with big-time winter storm action. After work on Tuesday I went out to the dog park and all was well although the snow had started. Jess and I headed to Elver to go sledding which was a blast. Two inches of powder on top of icy snow made for some sweet ridng. Tuesday night was supposed to be big. Wasn't much, like 3-4 inches. Wednesday I snowblowed and then went to work and the snow started in. It got so bad that I got to leave at 1 and head home. Snowblowed again and then made lunch. Jess and I hunkered down. Went out a third time to snowblow that evening before calling it a night and we made smores and hate some warm chocolate chip cookies that our neighbors made. Thursday I got up and once again cleared snow, this time the icy residue from the plow. Thursday basically was work and then home. Yesterday I finally got out to play some basketball. Rocked a Victor Allens latte on my way to work too! I now officially work for Cannondale Sports Group too although that only means my e-mail address has changed and a few minor other procedural changes. We bowled last night and played awful. We lost two close games before getting "blowed out" in the third. This morning I slept like crap so it's 4am and I am blogging this crap!

My camera hasn't been used this year I don't think so yet another photoless post. Tonight is the big movie double feature (Goonies and Ferris Bueller's Day Off) so that should be fun. Hope all is well and thanks for reading!

Wow

2008-02-04T18:46:00.000-06:00

So this happened today. Some how I thought Pacific was going to buy Cannondale and not Dorel. It'll be an interesting few months at work, not just because of my new job. I can't wait! I probably shouldn't comment further as you never know who might read this and really there isn't much else to say.

Last night someone referred to me as a trophy husband. I was honored. I guess I am too old for my old title of "teen hearthrob" although I am sure that I still have the jurisdiction to play a high schooler in hollywood.

Speaking of last night, the game was boring...until it got awesome. Which is the reverse of many Super Bowls. Glad the Giants won, if I am going to see history I'd rather it be from a team that's not the Patriots (or Ravens or Cowboys or Bears or Vikings or Raiders or Etc.) Plus 1-0 is all that matters in any given game. Also I have a new candidate for the worst food ever. It's called spicy fried chicken and it's from Popeyes. It tastes good. When you bite down it's like biting a wet mitten, but except for dirty ass water it's all grease. It's spicy. But I am 2 for 2 on puking roughly 8 hours after eating it. I last tried about 5 years ago, puked, considered it an abnormaility. Now I think that's the way. The combo of spicy and greasy is just too much. So I am done, consume your own at your own risk. Every time I puke my face swells up so it looks like I just got my ass kicked.

Looks like tonight is going to be one of those rain all day, freeze and snow all night deals. Maybe the 10th time this year. Love this stuff (stupid groundhog.) Had lots of boxer time this weekend with lots of boxers and it was awesome!

Wickity Whack!

2008-02-03T10:20:00.000-06:00

This weekend has been a whack weekend!

-Friday night we went to Abuelos, they messed up our nachos. Half shredded beef and half bean somehow translated into half shredded beef and half bean and ground beef. Huh. We send them back and they come back out with just half an order, the shredded beef, for me. Jess has to wait. I have like 4 of my 5 down and then they finally bring Jess' and she only gets 4 total, which is a 20% loss to her. And no condiments for her. That's whack.

-Friday night I watched Friday Night Lights, which is always whack. After that I turned to HBO and watched the Bob Saget stand-up special. It was totally whack! I couldn't look away, I don't know what else to say. You all need to experience it, it's not good but it's whack. I was disturbed...so much that I woke up at 4 and couldn't sleep anymore, which was whack!

-Saturday morning I played basketball and then went to the square to meet Kyle and have some coffee and watch the ski races on the square. Our timing was bad, they had nothing going on at first. How is this whack? This guy came up to Kyle and I and said he needed a couple tall guys to help him with a speaker. Two tall guys and Kyle in the same sentence? That's whack! The dude who asked might have been 5' though.

-Dish Network is whack. Although we get local HD channels I guess they come through a seperate antenna that sucks. I can get locals upstairs but not downstairs. I feel misled...which is whack.

-Saturday night we went to Unos. My burger was half cooked and raw on one side (the left side, not even up and down.) That's whack. They fixed it and it was a great burger. Went to a musical/play thing called Muskie Love. It was a musical about living in Northern Wisconsin. It was awesome, 'cause it was kinda whack! :)

-It's Sunday morning. Nothing whack this morning yet. We'll see as we're off to the dog park to meet some boxer friends...boxers are always whack!

It’s a bloggy blog world.

2008-01-30T06:39:00.000-06:00

Well I rode my bike yesterday. First ride of the year. Opted for the cross bike and was going to try and ride the military ridge trail but it was too icy. But the roads were just wet but not icy. I tried the cap city trail on the way in but it turned to ice (and I did a 270 while trying to ride it…but I kept it upright.) Ended up with about 15 miles and a commute. Of course the motherload of winter storms hit yesterday but fortunately my wife works at the same place so it's all good!

This guy is a big jerk, a 15 minute article on a seemingly invincible athlete.

If you are reading this and don't have Facebook, sign up. They've added Boggle to Facebook and you can play against friends, strangers, whomever you want for free. So even if you aren't into the whole see and be seen culture of this type of site (you can join pretty unceremoniously by using a name like Riswan Kilberknuckle) there are tons of fun games and applications that you are missing out on. Boggle should be the clincher!

No photos today...it's too cold!

Finally (It's happened to me)

2008-01-28T21:42:00.000-06:00

Mark, do you still exist? Why yes. So I haven’t blogged in a couple weeks, just haven’t found the combination of time and desire to make up a half-ass post. At least until now! Weekend was good but now it’s over. Friday night was bowling league and we won. Saturday we got up early and headed to Schaumberg. We went to Ikea to get some stuff, including two items that Jess wanted to hybrid together to make a TV stand, and she did and it rocks (literally with the Coldplay concert rockin' the TV!) We also hit Dave & Busters, I got $10 in free play for my birthday and then we got the Power Play combo. The guy must’ve screwed up (or liked us) as we each got $25 in play instead of the normal $10, so we had $60 in play…we couldn’t even play it all. I am still pissed though as I rimmed out a 100 ball on Skee-ball that would’ve scored me the jackpot, but we had some good games. Got home mid-afternoon just in time to watch the Badgers lose. Played games at Dean’s that night, good times! Sunday we went out for breakfast and we went out for supper. Went to the dog park and watched Friday Night Lights in between and we cleaned up the house pretty good! So the weekend was relaxing, fun and productive, not too shabby!

Other than that, life has been pretty ordinary. I really want to get a PS3 because there are tons of sweet games coming out for it. So that’s on tap. Seems like I am playing the waiting game with everything…waiting for a trip to Arizona, waiting for the PS3, waiting for spring/summer, just lots of waiting. I guess that’s winter in January in Wisconsin. Kind of sick of it but it’ll hopefully be spring before too long, just waiting to hear what the groundhog says! Plus I am getting old, I am sore more often that I used to be.

New job is going great. I love the variety and I love that everything is somewhat new to me so every time I talk to someone it’s a challenge that I have to figure out. I also paid my car off last week, so I am hoping that it won’t break down. It was kind of scary paying off my car on the coldest day of the year but so far so good! We also just became 4-0 in basketball and we'll almost certainly get moved up a division or two. Got to see Kelson really quick the weekend before last, hoping he moves back to Madison!

Here's what people at my work are up to:

Bike-cycles

2008-01-17T20:44:00.000-06:00

It just might be the coldest weekend of the year. So let's post some cycling articles!

Fueled by burritos!!!

Mountain biking, Minnesota style!

Today is unofficially my last day at my old position, my fingers are crossed hoping that's true (although my e-mail browser is open and it's not entirely true.) One more day until the weekend and a good ol' Wisconsin Fish Fry! It dropped 20 degrees here in about 3 hours today, it was nuts. Have a great weekend!

Weekly Update

2008-01-15T19:41:00.000-06:00

That’s the pace I’ve been on lately. I can’t seem any too inspired (I think I just mixed up words there) to blog much. Just enough to let you know what I’m up to. The new job has kept me super busy and with my new 270 degree window view I commonly have seen sunrises and sunsets on the same day. The job seems pretty fun so far although I haven’t done much as I’ve been tying up loose ends.

As for me, I keep toying (and yo-yoing) with getting fat and not getting fat. Some days I am super inspired to get back into top-notch shape and on others I am inspired to eat. All and all I am getting back towards being in shape though. Not sure what my plan is for 2008 but as far as I know I really don’t plan on doing any bike racing this year. Not sure what I want to do this summer yet. My foot has been hurting again which is really a bummer.

Weekend was good, the Colts loss seemed inevitable this year (just hoped it would come a week later.) We bowled the best team in bowling and took 1 of 3 and I had a decent series. Had some tasty food, hung out with good friends and family, played some hoops, hit the dog park and even saw the movie Juno. Good flick! Even went to the Badgers basketball game this past Thursday night, it’s been maybe two years since my last game, it was a blast! This coming weekend will be odd. No real plans that I know of and the peak will be at 6:30pm on Sunday when the Packers play. I get to spend all weekend looking forward to Sunday night. Last night we won our basketball game. I never thought we’d ever be 2-0 but we’ve had 2 dominating victories so far.

Check out the feature in this set, presidential candidate cards and autographs. Last year they had cards with astronaut autographs, this year candidates. So I’ve decided that if I can somehow procure an autographed version of one, that’s who I’ll vote for. I figure becoming president would increase the value of the card. Of course if I get just the regular version of a card I’ll make a display at my desk at work that says: Today I am voting for (and then I’ll insert the card in that display.) Should be good, to show that my vote based on baseball cards is as good as someone else’s vote who spends hours debating and deciding among candidates. I’m just like the Onion article, just with my own twist.

In Waffle House news, dude eats with a grenade on his table. Just in case the scattered all the way hashbrowns don’t kill him. Not a bad choice for your last meal on earth (or in his case his last meal not in prison.)

Monday...

2008-01-07T21:19:00.000-06:00

Furniture shopping really sucks. We went yesterday trying to find the perfect stand for our new TV. Except the perfect stand doesn’t exist. We don’t even know what we want but many less than perfect stands cost way too much. So we spent a couple hours basically seeing all the crappy things out there. Good times! We’d like to wall mount it but we like change and rearrangement too much. We’ll probably just buy something cheap and roll with it until we get bored with it. In TV reception news, it looks more and more like Dish network will win our business. Just have to take the time to get it all done.

Today the Wisconsin State Journal started a new format. Not normally big news, but when the reformat allows more room for puzzles and they add Boggle, well that’s something I can write about. They now have the best crosswords (on weekdays), the best Sudoku (especially Fri-Sun) and now Boggle. Life is good.

Weekend was laid back. Didn’t do much, played some games and cards on Saturday night with friends. Went to the dog park each day. Watched some football. Messed around on Facebook (some of you still should get facebook accounts, it’s so much fun.) Cleaned the house and then messed it back up.

This could be cool! Can't wait to check that out.

We are 1-0 in city league basketball. We beat a team that I know beat us last year, so that's pretty sweet. It appears we should be pretty decent.

2007 Year in review- Food!

2008-01-05T05:26:00.000-06:00

2007 was once again and excellent year for food eating. We had a Qdoba taco bar at work today and I am still in a taco coma. I definitely ate less than 2006 but I also didn’t do an Ironman (or much of anything) in 2007. I ate out 198 time in 2007. I only ate at one place double digit times, surprise, surprise, it was Taco Bell! 19 times including once in Puerto Rico. Hubbard Ave Diner was 2nd with 9 and JT Whitneys with 8 trips for 3rd. Great Dane, Red Robin, Unos and Papa Johns at 7 each rounding out the Top 7.

Local Rankings

Best New Restaurant: Abuelos
Best Burger/Appetizers: Dottys Melting Pot/Cheese Curds
Best Mexican/Nachos: Abuelos Shredded Beef Nachos
Best Fast Food/Fast Food Item: Taco Bell/Chicken Quesadilla
Worst Restaurant/New Restaurant: Gray’s Tied House (anything/everything)

Best places of 2007:
Empire Burger, Breckenridge, CO
Mama Bear’s, Bloomington, IN
Abuelos, Middleton, WI

On the rise: Taco Bell,
Sliding down: Sonic, White Castle, Taco Time

Notes
-I ate at 0 Waffle Houses this year and never made the trek over to Quaker Steak and Lube. I only ate once at Long John Silvers, Tumbleweed & Buffalo Wild Wings. So my win quota was lacking big-time in 07.
-Gray’s Papaya was the place to eat late night in NYC. It was located next to a White Castle in Manhattan but Gray’s was packed and WC not. I ate at both the first night, Gray’s the rest, best hot dog I’ve ever had.
-Manhattan also has a place that serves just Mac & Cheese. It’s called Smac. Go there!
-Want donuts, burgers or nachos? Breckenridge, CO has among the best in class of each of those, and some pretty awesome pizza to boot.
-It’s hard for me to declare something as the best pizza ever. But one of the top 3 I’ve ever had is Mother Bear’s Pizza in Bloomington, Indiana. Go there, eat big, be happy!
-Coffee was a big thing for me this year. The Copper Cup (also in Bloomington) makes the best brews I’ve ever had. Locally I’d have to rate my top 3 as Java Cat, Starbucks and Barriques, although I’ve only been to about 7-8 shops locally. Kwik Trip is the best gas station coffee hands down.

-My old favorite restaurant, Jungle Jims, is closed now. Much love and respect.

-The worst thing I saw in food was a two stage process. I hated to see our cherished State St. Taco Bell turn into a Taco Bell/KFC. It was even worse when we were in Puerto Rico at a similar operation and Barry got a quesadilla and put mashed potoatoes and cole slaw on them. It might have been the single worst food moment of 2007. Barry should be ashamed.

2007 Life...

2008-01-02T18:49:00.000-06:00

Sorry for the lack of updates, been really busy lately and when I wasn’t busy I was still busy playing with my new toys. Christmas treated me pretty well, getting plenty of books, games and clothes. But I got two new toys as well, one called a Nintendo DS and one called a snowblower. Fortunately I’ve only had to use the snowblower twice (and now I’m out of gas so I’ll have to work that out.) It’s odd, I now own a device that makes me perform less manual labor but for some reason the fact that it’s machinery that runs on gas it makes me feel more manly. As for the Nintendo DS, I wonder how I ever got by without one. The Mario game is super sweet, but Jess and I have been playing Brain Age 2. It’s a series of small mini games that make you smarter, improve your concentration and all that jazz…I love it!

So what have I been up to since I last wrote at ya? Direct TV and I are not friends, so much as we don’t even have a relationship anymore. It appears Dish network may be in our future instead. Our new TV is awesome, I’ve seen a lot of TV’s and this is as impressive as anything I’ve seen. Unless someone tells me otherwise it looks like a PS3 will have to be connected to that TV soon too.

The holidays were most excellent. Great food, friends, family, gifts and just quality time all around. Here’s a cliff’s notes version:
Saturday night we went to a Christmas party at our friends Kyle and Tracys house. The party was most excellent and I made a baked Alaska that is quickly becoming legendary. Even scored me a Rubik’s cube as a Yankee swap gift (thanks Hez!) Sunday we watched the Packers (more like watching the Bears, the Packers never showed up) and then capped it with Christmas with Jess’ family. That’s where the Nintendo DS came in. Sweet! Up early on Christmas eve to workout and then shovel. Then over to the in-laws for breakfast before heading north for Christmas. Got caught in a 1-hour traffic jam for an accident which was cleaned up by the time we got to it…such is life. Hung out at the aunt and uncle’s place that night. Christmas morning was Christmas in Rice Lake with the family, that’s where the snowblower came in. Then we had Christmas with my mom’s extended family (the day before was with my dad’s) which is always fun, especially when my parents hosted it and my brother brought his Wii. My grandma bowled a 134 and drank Mountain Dew between throws, how rad is she? That night my dad made me clear their driveway with my new snowblower. Good times. The 26th we hung out and played Cabelas Big Game Hunter for Wii (and did some shopping/returning as well.) We also busted out a new board game, Last Word, which is a fun play. The 27th was travel day. We stopped in Eau Claire at the mall there where I proceeded to dump like 4ounces of sensual vanilla amber oil on me while waiting for Jess to check out at Bath & Body works. It just reeked and I’ve washed my coat on heavy twice and it still smells. I had to stow my coat away in the back of the trunk. Friday we watched the new National Treasure movie (good flick) and we had bowling that night. Saturday was a chill day until that night when we went and saw the Bodeans in concert. Sunday was our anniversary. I picked up a smaller version of our wedding cake as a surprise to Jess. We then watched the Packers with her family and went to the dog park. After that we went out to celebrate our anniversary by eating at Tutto Pasta. Made it home and spent the rest of the night hanging out and watching Amazing Race. Nice laid back celebration. New Years eve arrived on Monday. I didn’t go outside that whole day, unless getting into a car and driving through a drive thru counts. Wasn’t feeling good and we spent all day cleaning and getting ready for New Years. Had some people over for new years and had a good time. Karaoke was sung and beer pong was played. Turns out I am pretty decent at beer pong. Had lots of food as well and I think everyone had a good time! New Years we got up way too early to see Jess’ sister off (and eat some breakfast.) Struggled watching the Badgers game with Jess’ family. Just kind of zoned on the couch the rest of the day watching football (and outdoor hockey.) We even rocked a 1000pc puzzle. There you go, one boring-ass long paragraph about what I’ve been doing…

Which leads me to today, the first day of my new job (sort of.) It’s actually a good transition, I get to finish up my old job for two weeks but sit upstairs at my new desk to get used to the surroundings while I do it. First day wasn't so bad...hopefully the rest will be better. My old (still current) boss took me and the new me out to lunch today as a kind of changing of the guard. It was a good time!

As for everything else, we officially suck at the materialness side of being friends. We didn't do Christmas (or New Years) cards. We didn't buy many Christmas presents for friends even though we recieved some. We forget some birthdays and anniversaries and holidays. That's something I hope we can improve upon.

Planning on doing some 2007 recap posts soon so stay tuned. Mark's year of food review and Mark's year of entertainment review are planned.

Jack Ass!

2007-12-22T16:11:00.000-06:00

So they say when you have a bad experience you are 10 times more likely to tell people than if you have a good experience. Welcome to my bad experience. As many of you know we bought a new TV last weekend. We also signed up for Direct TV as they have more HD channels and we were tired of Charter's BS. Of course BS mush be par for the industry and who knows when we'll have satellite service. I get a call on Wednesday to confirm my appointment. The tech called me this morning at 8:30 and said he's running ahead of schedule, is it ok if he comes over more like 11. I said no problem. He tells me he'll be over some time between 11-1 then (my original window was 12-4. It's now 4:20 and no sign of anyone. I don't even know what to say if I call which is why I called now as we have to be somewhere at 6 tonight. Bastards. So now I have no idea when we'll get satellite, it's not every day I have tons of hours to spend doing nothing. I hate Direct TV. Oh yeah, since I got the call at 8:30 I've had my phone in my pocket and they never called again. WTF?

In other news, Prime Quarter was most excellent last night. We didn't get to eat until 9pm as we were really late getting there and filet mignon takes along time to cook. Food and company were both great!

In a weird observation, I've noticed that people I don't talk to much at work can still talk to me like a good friend if I see them somewhere else. It's happened a couple times, most notably yesterday at the Y. A coworker who I've barely ever talked to was at the Y working out at the same time I was. She seemed really excited to see me and she talked to me two seperate times and went out of her way to say bye before leaving. It's cool and I am glad that people feel I am approachable (I always thought I was kind of an enigma.) I guess most people are nice when you get them out of a work environment.

Riz just called, he was desperate for something he'd like at Starbucks (I believe he was on a date) and I steered him towards the hot chocolate. He seemed thankful and those are some of my favorite calls to recieve.

Well it's almost Christmas and this will probably be my last post before the Holidays! From everyone here at the Waffle House Chronicles (me) to all of my readers (2) have a Merry Christmas!!!

Mmmm....

2007-12-20T19:26:00.000-06:00

I don’t know about you but this is really big news to me. It’s a nice new sipping drink and available in some quality flavors. If the taste is half-way decent then it’ll rock! Doesn’t come out until after Christmas so if you really need a fix, try the Gatorade AM Orange/Strawberry. Best Gatorade flavor ever! Not sure why Gatorade doesn’t make an enhanced beverage, couldn’t be too tough to add a multivitamin to a bottle of Gatorade. Vitamin Water is taking over though, it basically does everything Gatorade does and adds something else as well. I know some think Vitamin Water is stupid but those also aren’t the people Vitamin Water is marketed to.

Maybe we should make this into a food post? Sure! My parents went to Florida a month ago. My preeminent restaurant (#1 appetizer, #3 nachos, Top 10 Burger) Jungle Jims went out of business. It’s a shame, the food was always good even if the service and clientele has went downhill each time I’ve visited. On a related note, Madison no longer has a Damon’s restaurant. We attempted to go there a couple weeks ago on the east side…gone. Jess’ $25 gift certificate went to waste (supposedly it will work in the Dells and Janesville if those don’t go out of business before we can hit them as well.) Tomorrow night we get to go to Prime Quarter so I am excited for that! Of course the one Prime Quarter that I made the Wall of Fame (Appleton) has also went out of business. The only other place I’ve ever made a Wall of Fame is the (yes, now defunct) Taco Time in Black River Falls, WI, the only time Taco Time flirted with Wisconsin. They now have a Taco Johns which is a Christmas Eve lunch tradition (2 years) but I am going to go out on a limb and predict that much like all but one of the Taco Johns in the Madison area, this one too won’t exist.

Starbucks vs Dunkins? Everyone wins! My choice?

Holiday Update: Christmas shopping is 90% done and wrapping is 50% done. I don’t think I’ll get to 100% done this year but such is life. Christmas card and/or letter are on the back burner.
Sports Update: This is funny!!! I can so relate!

TV: Here's our new TV near our old TV.

Cycling news: No one wins with this story...but at least it could have a conclusion.

Work Update: Friday is kinda my last day at my current job. At least my current job will never be the same as I officially begin transitioning of my current role to the new guy and I begin to transition to my new role on the next day I work. Interesting.

Assorted crap!

2007-12-20T05:22:00.000-06:00

What are you eating? A few of my favorites made the list! I've had the worst pizza and dessert in the last year. The worst food in America sounds freakin' awesome, but alas even I have a limit and likely won't indulge.

Riz thinks I should embed this:

and now I have!

Heard about this book the other day: The hilarious new Chris Buckley novel "Boomsday" has as its Swiftian premise a near future in which, to restrain Social Security costs, the federal government offers luxury living to senior citizens: as long as they "voluntarily transition" -- commit suicide -- upon reaching age 75. Better not give the Chinese government a copy of "Boomsday."

Haven't seen any Simpsonizers lately, so I'll be 3 months behind...here you go!

Here's something else to watch if you're bored.

That's enough.......

Christmas Greetings from Hez

2007-12-18T20:13:00.001-06:00

Hez rocks! Check the link for some familiar faces!!!

Back to Life…Back to Reality…

2007-12-18T05:15:00.000-06:00

I guess I have to continue my blog for the time being as it’s been requested. Hopefully it’ll become more interactive or maybe semi-enjoyable to read. My car got a new battery last Tuesday. 139k and it still had the original battery. So now my car starts great and is almost paid off. Sweet! Too bad lately it seems like I am dropping hundos on crap like this like they are going out of style.

Of course on Sunday we dropped some hundos on a new TV. 42” flat-panel LCD 1080P Phillips. It’s pretty sweet and got great reviews so we pulled the trigger. Plus this Saturday we will now have a satellite dish as we are dropping Charter and going to Direct TV. Not sure how an installer will install a dish on a snow and ice covered roof, but that’s not really my problem. I am pretty excited to have tons of HD channels, just in time for the official start of winter!

Looks like there is an end in sight for my job. Someone supposedly accepted an offer to start in early January so hopefully in mid-January I can start my new job. We’ll see what happens though. We had our office Christmas party this past Friday and it was a blast! Stayed out until 2am, it’s been a long time since that’s happened! Lots of hilarity went on, even more than the average party. Good times and good memories, and hopefully some good photos!

I really miss being on a cruise. We spent roughly 4% of our year being transported around by the Carnival Triumph and it’s sad to think that’s over and to not know when we’ll be back aboard. On the plus side, after these next 4 days where I have to be at work and have lots of stuff to take care of, it should be about a 2-1/2 week fun fest! Holidays, parties, great times, my birthday, time off from work and just a great time of year! On the negative side though, we have to get through these 4 days (4pm Friday can’t get here soon enough.)

Well that’s what I’ve been up to. Exciting stuff huh?

Carnival Triumph

2007-12-10T18:04:00.000-06:00

Sorry for the hiatus, I’ve been both busy and gone the past couple of weeks. At least now I have something to write about…interesting to me at least and hopefully to you as well. I wasn’t kidding about Facebook though so if you get a chance set it up.

Basically the week before last was mostly just spent getting ready for our trip, a Carnival Cruise to the Eastern Caribbean aboard the Carnvial Triumph vessel. It included some pre-bowling for league and going out to watch the Packers (stupid NFL network.) Also we got to watch Lola (another boxer) for a day which was a great time! Even got out for some Red Robin for Dean’s birthday! Friday came and I merely had to make it until noon before I could leave work! Got done, ran some errands and was ready to go! We got to the airport (thanks Jess’ parents) and met up with Riz and Barry. We shared flights. First to Chicago (and Burrito Beach & Dunkin Donuts) and then to Miami (which we ended up getting in late.) Missed the free shuttle but some cabbie (who happened to be about 7’5” and 300lbs) gave us a ride to the hotel and almost got into a fight with some dude in a Camero (until the cabbie got out of the car and the Camero guy backed off.) Got to bed late.

Saturday- This was boat day. We met up for breakfast. Then I took a self-guided tour of Miami near the airport on foot. No good coffee to be found anywhere (bought a gas station Starbucks Frappe). We got on the shuttle to the Port of Miami to board. Boarding went smoothly taking under an hour. Soon we were enjoying food in the dining room! Spent the afternoon in the hot tub, on the waterslide and doing some exploration. Jess, Riz and I have been on this boat before so it was all good! We set sail around 5 and had out first of our several course dinners. All was well except we looked forward to free melting cake which was about 95% melted and not really cake at all. I ordered it every night hoping it would get better (and technically it might have, I had one that was only maybe 90% melted) but it was the largest disappointment of the week…which tells you just how much fun the trip was! We hit some game shows and trivia and Tracy won the first trophy of the trip and some of us even rocked a dance class (and there’s now officially a term coined called the Mark Shimmy, which isn’t a good thing) and closed out with the welcome aboard show and comedian and well, I’ve seen both before and both were exactly the same. Oh well.

Sunday- We didn’t get much time to rest as our first destination was Half Moon Cay, a private island in the Bahamas. We toured the boat some more and got off the boat onto a smaller boat and to the island. Most beautiful beach I’ve ever been to! Swimming, sunning, more swimming, beach combing, eating, swimming, sunning…a perfect day for the beach! Can’t remember what else we did although that night there were more games and Tracy got up on stage and won another trophy! Two before anyone else had one…although Beth followed suit with another. I even went to another dance class and still sucked! Spent the rest of the night partying and hitting the piano bar! Stayed up late!

Monday- I love the days at sea. Basically they have tons of activities. I mean I played lots of trivia, I was in a cribbage tournament, we played some euchre, and you just relax and eat and have fun…all for free! We even participated in and won the Amazing Race and the trophies were flowing! Things on the Islands cost money. That night was the first formal night, proceeded by the Captain’s Party which is an all you can drink 45 minute party. And drink we did. It made dinner that night a lot of fun! We played a game or two after that and all crashed out.

Tuesday- St. Thomas day! Wasn’t sure what our tour of St. Thomas would be like…turned out to be arguably the most fun day. First things first though, I had to get a workout in, basically needed to detox the body and try to jump-start the metabolism. Crazy tour with a wacky guide! Started out with some shopping (I only bought a Mtn. Dew.) Then to the top of the mountain for an outstanding view of the ocean and sea. This is one of the top 10 beaches in the world, but we went to a different beautiful beach (wasn’t the best for swimming but was picturesque) that we hung out at. Then the highlight, some parasailing. Jess and I went up together. 600 feet of rope left us 400 feet above the ocean.

Awesome! Got back for dinner and then we saw this crazy magician guy (who is outstanding) do some crazy stuff. Called it another early night.

Wednesday we got up early as we visited Puerto Rico. We rented a car and stuffed 8 into a crappy Dodge Caravan. We headed to the rainforest. Vegetation-wise it was as expected (vines and stuff) but we didn’t see much in the way of wildlife (some enormous snails were about it.) Of course it rained the entire time in the “rain” forest which is probably why we didn’t see any birds or insects. We did get to swim in a waterfall which was awesome! Then a hike to almost the top of the mountain to an observation deck. Pimp. On the way back we hit a real Taco Bell! It was nuts, they had a 3 meat crunchwrap but it had shredded beef and chicken and then ham…nothing that the US carries. I was impressed! Got back to port and walked around old San Juan until it was time to go. Riz once again disappointed by not hot tubbing with us but the rest of us had fun. Past guest party and then dinner as usual, then game night made for a really fun evening. Oh yeah and we saw the world’s 2nd worst practicing comedian as well…not good (I can’t remember the 1st worst but it was way back in Madison.)

Thursday we headed to Grand Turk. I guess the only cool stuff to do on Grand Turk revolves around scuba diving and that’s a lot better when there isn’t a cruise ship there (or two like there was that day.) I spent the morning however playing trivia and then I snuck into a Q&A session with Rusty Wallace. Yes Rusty Wallace was on our cruise for a fan club gathering with about 300 of his biggest fans. We got to the island and we checked out the Margaritaville. It was huge and right on the beach. We tried the ocean at the beach but there was too much coral and crap, it was best to go in the pool. Plus once we started hanging out at the pool (with Dean, Beth and Barry) well then Rusty came. And he sat on a stool drinking beer and hanging with the buddies he brought with. Oh to be rich and famous and be able to do that any or every week. Got back on board and finally got to hot tub with the Riz. I did get 2nd place in the largest splash contest going mostly for style points with my rockin’ belly flop. That night was formal night #2. It was fun and we got lots of photos taken! We then played games late into the night.

Friday was another fun day at sea. Started off with a workout and breakfast. Then some US trivia (which I won) and then various other games (Name that Tune and another win, some brain teaser and tv theme song stuff up Riz’s alley) and then we had tea time and played euchre…even pulled off two consecutive loaners! I need to play more euchre. Then we rested up and got ready for our last supper. It was sad but fun. Lots of games that night, I got on Game Show Mania and won! So did Beth. Jess won Who Wants to be a Millionaire (we won’t mention a loyal blog reader being the 1st one eliminated.) We got hosed in a game called “It’s in the bag” but it was fun. We left and played games for one last time. It was fun but it was sad.

Saturday was a cluster. Nothing went smooth. Took forever to get debarkation approval and we forced our way off the boat about. Then the trip through customs and to the airport was smooth. But then it took us over an hour to get checked in and then another 15 minutes to check our luggage. We had basically 20 minutes to go before our plane loaded. Riz gave us a tip to go through security in a different gate so that took 10 instead of 20 minutes and then we were on a terminal that was out at a train which took time. Had enough time to buy some cheetos and a Coke and board. Ride was good. Got to Chicago and had a latte. Then we were waiting and they were offering a $250 credit to get on a flight that was 2.5 hours later. Passed with the weather getting crappy. But then they found a flight that was 58 minutes later (instead of 2.5 hours) and it was apparent our flight wasn’t going to leave on time anyways. We jumped at it and got approved and it worked out well, we were on a less crowded flight that left 18 minutes later than our original with $250 vouchers in hand. Got to Madison as the snow started, had supper, went home and enjoyed home life.

Sunday was a regroup day, groceries, Packers, TV and pizza.

Good things:
6 trophies for the household…and 4 medals
Rusty Wallace is a genuinely cool guy
A great time with some of my best friends in the world
Perfect weather for the most part, record crappy weather in Wisconsin
Travel vouchers

Bad things:
Only once did I hot tub with the Riz.
Chocolate melting cake was bad
All the crazy foods I tried (lobster, oysters, other sea foods) were all as bad as I thought they’d be
Didn’t win the cribbage tournament

If you’ve found my site by researching Carnival Cruises and have any cruising questions please let me know. I can tell you what’s good and what’s bad about everything! We've got almost 1000 pics and I wish I could tell you a story and share all of them with you but alas neither of us have time like that!

A week in the life of Mark.

2007-11-26T07:15:00.001-06:00

Tuesday morning I got my Starbucks and loved it. My order was Carmel Macchiato with skim milk and sugar free syrup. Checking on the Starbucks website, it’s actually not that bad for you and damn it was tasty. At 6am, 6 of the 8 cars I saw on the road turned into Starbucks. I can’t afford to go there much but I do plan to go there more often as it was one of the best cups I’ve ever had. That was about it for Tuesday (besides work and such.) Oh yeah, I also finished Midnight Club 3. If I knew I was only 1 race short of beating it I would’ve done it earlier. But now I am on to Jak & Daxter 3 which is awesome.

Wednesday I lifted before work. It was hard not to play basketball but my body thanks me for it. At lunch we went out to eat for Dean’s birthday. Wednesday evening we headed over to the in-laws for some supper and we played some games. Nice and laid back.

Thursday was Thanksgiving! Got up early and got some newspapers. Read them and we did lots of decision-making for Black Friday. It was a bummer not being able to do the Berbee Derby though. Went out to Jess’ cousin’s house and had some good eats and watched some football. That night we made our Black Friday plans, not as glorious in years past.

Black Friday: I got up at 4am, got dressed and headed to JC Penneys. Got a free snow globe (or 3) and headed to the mall which gave out $10 gift cards. Line was too long so I just went into the mall and toured Sears and Boston Store. Jess said Kohls was too difficult so she helped me try on suits at Boston Store which sucked and then we went back to Penneys and I finally bought a suit (and some socks.) Back to Boston Store because we had some sweet discounts. And I was Kelson-like and bought some Crocs. Not sure if I like them but they are comfy and will help my foot on the cruise because of the cushioning. Went over to Target to kill time before breakfast (plus they had a Starbucks so I got another Carmel Macchiato. Did breakfast and then I went home and played video games and hung out. Later that night we went to the movie Dan in Real Life (awesome) and then ordered some pizza.

Saturday: No basketball for me, but I went and lifted first thing. We headed to the new Super Wal-Mart which was big and empty and I liked it. Then we went to Java Cat and I tried their Carmel Macchiato and loved it as well. Went to East Towne and got some new shoes. Finally found almost exactly the type of shoe I was looking for. Took it easy the rest of the day and went out that night to the UW Volleyball game for Hez’s birthday. UW dominated. I went home right after the game but I guess everyone who went out had a good time.

Sunday: I didn’t sleep worth crap the last few days so the 10 hours I got started me off right. Read my paper and coffee then met Jess’ family for breakfast before her sister had to leave. We then went out and cut our Christmas Tree. What a splendid tree it is (a little short and a little crooked but beautiful.) Spent the afternoon collecting all the leaves. Which sucked because those in the shade were wet. But two hours later our yard is finally ready for winter. Went out for supper and I fell asleep on the couch.

Monday: It’s Ryan Braun day! Buying myself an early Christmas present today so that’ll be fun (if all goes well!)

Other news: Alright, judging by the lack of comments and the lack of fun topics to talk about (my life day-to-day just isn’t all that interesting) I am going to take a step back and reevaluate this blog. What started off as a blog about random stuff and Ironman training has now become nothing more than an encompassing journal of my boring life. Not sure where it will go from here (if anywhere) but hopefully I’ll get the direction figured out. For now, check back every once in a while and see if I’ve done anything and join Facebook and look me up. Facebook was probably cool two years ago which is why us 30-somethings (or upper 20-somethings) are finally using it. Plus I want to have more friends than (either) Balsley has.

Video Tuesday

2007-11-20T05:29:00.000-06:00

Give this at least two minutes...you'll be impressed. The middle is a little slow for some (I knew 2 of the 4) and then then grand finale is pimp!!!

Thanks to the Riz for sharing. At first I thought he was drunk...but I gave it a shot and have a big smile on my face.

Stuff...

2007-11-19T18:06:00.000-06:00

Depression: It’s Monday. Chili is feeling better but still isn’t well. My foot is actually feeling worse so I think I’ve got to shut it down for a while, so likely no basketball for 3 weeks. So there you go, two of my main hobbies are both done for a while (basketball and dog park) so I’m kind of bored. It’s a foggy, cold Monday and work was a drag.

Optimism: Thanksgiving is ahead which is one of my favorite Holidays (it’s based on food, football and family, what’s not to love?) Will likely do some Black Friday Shopping. It’s so insane it’s awesome! Cruise is coming up fast as well! Next couple months should be exciting. We get three days off for Christmas and two for New Years. I took 2 days of vacation to leave me with an 11 day break from work with minimal responsibilities.

Actualization: Friday we had bowling league. We won 1 of 3, no thanks to me with three games (far) below my average. Guh! Played some Wii and pool afterwards and got to see Dari which is always a good time. Saturday I played some basketball and then just chilled. Went to work at 2:30 as I wanted to work on a couple of my bikes and I listened to the Badger Game while fixing my stuff. The Canaan is back to working (it weighs 29lbs as I found a bike scale.) Got home in time to help Jess with a puzzle and then had a small group of friends over to play games and talk cruisin’. Good times! Sunday I got up and lifted weights and then we did the Packer game thing and went out to dinner with Jess’ parents. Pretty relaxing. 13 miles short of 2k on my bike…less than half of last year’s miles. Double fantasy football loss again this week…

Agenda: Need to find me some new shoes. Need something with extra cushioning as everything I have is old and broken down. Still need to find a new suit too. Black Friday here I come. Not much else on tap for the week and I am not really sure what I’ll do with my time. I think some raking is in order as it’s time to winterize but we still have half the leaves still on the tree.

Sustenance: Although I’ve been trying to perfect my home-brewed cappuccino (despite a terrible cup today) I think I need to get to a Starbucks this week. Time to step up my coffee game and see what’s out there. Chipotle grilled stuffed burrito? Decent but too much bean. My advice? Use the sauce on something else…you can’t go wrong!

Etc: Got my new cell phone, now I can make and recieve phone calls! How novel is that?

More bad luck...

2007-11-15T16:24:00.000-06:00

Dude, this photo is whack!!! That guy is going to be so famous!

So my bad luck continued into Wednesday. Woke up and got some basketball in and headed to work. Not a bad work day and we had our Thanksgiving celebration at work, which filled me for the day. Had to run some errands after that and hit American. Hate that place. Left to go to the bank. I moved all my finances to a credit union and just wanted to close my account and get the small amount of money out of it. Well I guess it takes like 15 minutes to even see a banker and then who knows what it will take to cancel. Needless to say I didn’t have the time and left, so that sucked. Driving back to work my car made an awful racket. Guh. Finally I was almost to work and my car fishtailed on a corner…huh. Flat right rear. Screw it, I drove it to the mechanic as I knew at some point I’d need new rears anyways. Still made it back to work in less than an hour and then had to pick up my car after work. What a fun hour span. Got home and Jess and I did some cruise shopping. Buying a suit sucks, problem with suits are that they are either cheap (and look and feel that way) or are expensive. I found one that rocked at a price I could stomach, but alas the fit was all wrong (Jess commented that it was something Brozek would wear, the suit that was two pant sizes larger that I normally wear fit me like an elastic glove.) My plantar fasciitis isn’t getting much better so I finally bought some insoles. I also bought some Sudafed, what a pain. It would probably be easier for me to get a gun or life insurance or something easy. My cell phone broke about 3 weeks ago (I can only call people on my phone memory with 1 digit speed dial numbers) and after checking out phones, the best renewal deal was on-line so in a few days I’ll have a new Motorola Razor V3 in an anodized blue hue. Should be hot!

Thursday morning I got up super early and was able to get to the Y to lift before work. Lifting now takes an hour or so instead of the 40 minutes it used to take as I’ve added some additional exercises. Someday I’ll have to research my routine and see how off base I am. But for now it makes me look and feel good. Another work day here, what can you do? Got my bank closed out at lunch and also a haircut so I am doing pretty well errand-wise today. One more day until Friday is also nice! A weekend with no real plans, just some bowling, friends and Packers. Last free weekend until the new year, crazy huh?

Link time!!!

If you like old or new hip-hop this is awesome! (Thanks O'D)

Life is changing?

Gotta love the jerseys!

Just can’t catch a break.

2007-11-14T05:52:00.000-06:00

Craptastic Tuesday...

Woke up Tuesday morning to see my fantasy football game was in fact a loss. I guess the live stats aren’t always correct and after adjustments I lost by 2 points although knowing who I lost to I just have to assume she somehow cheated.

Also Chili is now the proud owner of Kennel Cough. Which means, after another nice vet visit, some antibiotics and at least 2 weeks without contact with other dogs he might be back to being healthy again. Oh yeah, and he has the dry heaves pretty much non-stop with some god-awful sounding coughs and the puking up of white foam. So yep, our house is really pleasant with a hacking dog who's bored out of his mind.

I also once again headed out to Quarry Ridge at lunch to ride. My bike didn’t want to work well, my bent hanger being a lot worse than I thought so most uphills were virtually unrideable. And I clearly ran out of talent the day before. Did the middle jump again 4 times but landed heavy two of those times which was a bit scary. Bailed out just before the drop I did on Sunday and did an easier one instead, did some recon on another drop and just didn’t have a good time. The silver lining is that it was warm and nice and as hard as I tried to crash I never laid it down.

No complaints about the evening though and hopefully Wednesday will treat us even better!

People like photos...I climbed this tree while mountain biking last week.

Extreme!

2007-11-13T05:37:00.000-06:00

Friday night was fun! After taking the dogs to the park we then went downtown to take in some Badger/Michigan volleyball action with Hez and Tad. The game went to five sets and even into extra points (that whole win by two thing) but somehow the Badgers scored three points in a row to pull it out. Good times!

Saturday I was up early to play basketball. Then I went for some groceries and to the dog park and was back home in time for the Badgers/Michigan football game. Great game! Jess and I went out for a very early supper and came back to see OSU get beat. Headed to Dean and Beth’s for the poker tournament. It was a blast! I was left for dead about halfway through but somehow mounted an epic come back and made it to the final table. Once I was there I pissed away my fortune on some questionable hands and coasted to a 5th place finish. Dean made us all dress in costumes…and Tank and new wife win with their Taco Time taco and hot sauce costume…classic!

So Sunday I got up at 7 and went out to get the newspaper and noticed it was pretty warm (high 40s.) Nice! Once I got done reading my paper and drinking my coffee I decided it was go time and went to Quarry Ridge. Did a couple laps and then went down and did little sister like 4 times in about 2 minutes (riding up and down.) Finally thought, lets do this, and did the middle sister. Man she's smooth. Did it again, no problem. Even went into the Fitchburg Moab section and cleared another drop I've never done before (still need to check off the first More More drop, which should happen soon.) Finally on my last lap I did middle sister once more. Now I am comfortable on it and things slowed down in my head so I was even able to concentrate on what I was doing and watch the landing. Headed back up the new road to Target and then bombed through the construction site where the golf dome was. Not a bad way to spend an hour and a half on a nice, fall morning! Got changed up and headed to Best Buy before family time. Random. Headed to Jess’ parents for some good Sunday times including a dominant Packers game. Got back home in time to hit the dog park quick and then to Circuit City and then to the Hubbard for more family time. Got home for kickoff, which ended up being a touchdown the wrong way and on to the worst, most depressing football game in the past two years, the only silver lining is that we deduct 3 points per missed field goal in fantasy football and well, I was playing against someone who had Vinateri and eeked out a 1 point win. I’d trade it for a Colts win any day.

Monday started off as a Monday. Had a great weight lifting session. Got to work and worked. Was going to go back to Quarry Ridge at lunch but I forgot my bike shorts. Some how my way of thinking turned that into I should leave work early and ride at Blue Mounds! So I left early and rode the whole loop (Overlode and everything else.) For the first time ever I rode the steep Overlode climb after the creek crossing. Blue Mound was awesome, all the leaves were down so you could see forever, a nice brown ribbon of singletrack in the middle of all the leaves. The trail manager out there is awesome!!! I had two crashes, the first one I escaped certain injury but bent my hanger. The second one my bike escaped certain breakage but bashed both knees and a good 16" scrape from above my knee to my shoe. Good stuff, perfect weather! Took Chili to the dog park in the dark and then came back and watched some TV on the DVR. Went to bed early. Welcome to Tuesday morning!

In current event news, this story is a story? The story should be some jerk coach calling for an onside kick with a 43 point lead. A finger is the minimum reaction that Utah deserves. Apologies? Reprimands? That’s crap. I applaud this coach!

Week=over

2007-11-09T17:45:00.000-06:00

Man, this is crazy high. The gondolas are big enough where it might not be too big a deal but still, seems pretty insane to me! Of course I probably won’t be going to China any time soon, so I’ll just settle for the Star Flyer thrill I had last year.

Sonic and I are breaking up. Not one of those bad break-ups, we both are just going to go our own ways. I like Sonic and if there was one locally or one conveniently located I’d go sometimes. But I am no longer going out of my way to get some. I like tots, but they aren’t as good as they could be. Jess even ordered fries on Monday…and they were horrid. Burgers are pricey. Everything is kind of pricey. They have good drinks, desserts and breakfast, but a lot of places do that. We only went twice this weekend because Jess and I each thought each other wanted to eat there (the second time.) So sorry Sonic, I need a break.

This week has flown by. Monday I was off driving back from Indiana. Tuesday back to work and back to the dog park. Wednesday I went to a sales training seminar for my new work job and then went to the dog park at night. Thursday more training seminar and then I got to help some friends move. Basically 10-1/2 hours of work and 4 hours of moving…good times! Friday started with some basketball and then back to work for a quick 8 hours of catch-up…broke away for a weight lifting session at lunch and I’ve really been able to step up my weight lifting game these past two weeks. Weekend should be fun and super busy as well. Really looking forward to the next four weeks too, actually the next two months should be pretty decent until we hit the thick of winter and end of football season.

Having Copper Cup withdrawls...

Caution- May contain cycling related content...

2007-11-06T04:55:00.000-06:00

Wednesday- Chili was not given his clean bill of health like we had hoped. One more week before he can resume contact. We bought him a muzzle and took him to the park anyways...he spent half the time playing and the other half trying to get the muzzle off.

Thursday- Left work early and dropped the pups off at the kennel. We headed south to the homeland (Indiana) to visit Jess' sister. Pretty uneventful drive although they doubled the amount of big-ass fans (wind farms) on the way down. Rocked the Sonic. Got to Indiana and just hung out with Jess' parents until it was bedtime.

Friday- Went to the best coffee shop ever (Copper Cup). Got some groceries and they even had Kaboom cereal so I was real happy! Jess and I got ready and headed out to Brown County State Park. Some of the best singletrack I've ever seen awaited. We started on a new section and you couldn't wipe the smile off my face! Here's Jess rockin' an early section.

I loved this downhill corner. Perfect weather. Jess ended it early but I went on and kept riding! It was the perfect mountain bike day, awesome fall weather, riding with Jess, no mechanicals, no mishaps, just pure fall mountain biking joy! Afterward we went into Nashville. That place is crazy busy with tourists in the fall. We did a little wine tasting.We decided to hit another winery on the way home and called Jess' parents to join us. We had a great time! We then headed back into town to meet up with Jess' sister to get some supper and then back to the condo to play some games and watch TV and chill. Good day!

Saturday: Started like Friday with some Copper Cup. Then I regrouped and no one wanted to ride with me so I headed out to Nebo Ridge. It was 42F when I left Bloomington and it usually gets warmer as the day goes on. 32F when I get to Nebo. Nebo was overrated. It was super fast, did 16+ miles of singletrack in roughly one and a half hours. It was open, rippable singletrack with lots of ups and downs. It was beautiful and a great ride for the legs and lungs. I went and hung out in Nashville again for a couple hours and met up with the Smulkas to go to Brown County again. We climbed up this old fire tower and did a couple hikes. Hit yet another winery on the way home. Then we went to Mother Bear's Pizza, it was rated one of the Top 9 pizzerias in the US and I can see why...it was awesome! Didn't do much else.

Sunday, I toyed with heading to Brown County again but decided not to. Jess' dad got up early too so we headed to Copper Cup and to Square Donuts.

We then picked up the ladies and headed to tour Campus and then to Lake Monroe State rec area. Stopped alot and skipped some rocks and saw some crazy fall colors. It was fun! Got home and Jess' dad bought a sack full of sliders. Both the Packers and Colts played big games on National TV so I parked it for 7 hours. One good and one bad result. Didn't do much else on Sunday.

Monday was time to leave. I got up super early and got to Brown County for some singletrack. A little secret, Brown County is the best place to ride mountain bikes if you are into cross country. 20 miles+ of pure singletrack...it's all beautiful and I've never ridden anything quite so good. Think Levis but with no crappy trails, or sand, and well maintained.

Perfect weather and I was the only one out there. Got back, showered and were on the road by 10:15am. Hit Sonic on the way back. Got home at 3:45 and while unloading the car it started to snow! Freakin' crazy!

Thanks for reading. Jess' camera contains a whole different trip perspective so maybe I'll upload some of her photos later.

Humptastic!

2007-10-31T17:01:00.000-05:00

It’s Wednesday…It’s Halloween…it’s almost freakin’ November. Crazy!

Haven’t done all that much since I last checked in with y’all. Monday night we went to Jess’ parents house for some good food and a most excellent Packers game. Can’t believe the way it ended, Greg Jennings making two good plays in overtime (one correct coin flip call followed by an 85 yard touchdown catch) was awesome!

I was nice and tired on Tuesday. But I made it through. Went freeride mountain biking at lunch which was a blast! Got to see some awesome riding and had fun trying things myself and saw Kyle execute a spectacular face plant. After work we went to dinner with Kyle and Tracy to the Dane. Lots of new menu items kept it fresh. We then prebowled. I finally threw down a 506 series which is pretty good for me. I was mad though, left a 3 pin basket on my first shot and then missed all three on my second to score a 198 in the second game. Most importantly though, we had a great time! Got home in time to basically fall asleep.

Wednesday is here now. Dressed up again as Donkey Kong for work, to go along with others. We added a Mario, lost a Wario and got a different Peach. It was fun, lots of good costumes this year. Chili still has one week before he is cleared for full dog park duty...but we got him a muzzle so that will have to suffice as I am about to take him! After that we will sit at home and pretend we aren't home.

Here is us today:

Here's me 10 years ago:

Another weekend down- Photo Share

2007-10-29T17:58:00.000-05:00

Another weekend down.

Thursday was good. Watched Transformers (finally) and it is quality. Not quite the movie of the year or anything but still really good and with a couple exceptions if you are reading this blog you should watch it. Jess had a good trip to Seattle. She saw Anna

And a future conquest

Friday was good. Got smoked in our office foosball tournament. After work we did some (unsuccessful costume & successful grocery) shopping and watched some TV, that was basically our night. Messed around with the boxer a bit when we got home too

Saturday I got up and played basketball. Went pretty well. Then headed out to walk the dogs and then down to the Farmers’ Market with Jess. Of course that 1 hour span was the 1 hour it decided to be cold, wet and windy that day. We did hit Barriques on the square for some coffee and a cookie which was fun. Then we headed to the east side to resume costume shopping. But Farm & Fleet decided that they needed less crappy clothes (brown sweat suits) and more quality clothes. Hit Taco Bell quick before heading to Shopko and Hobby Lobby (yes, I was that desperate) and finally found the stuff I needed (Jess was basically done at that point.) Spent the rest of the afternoon watching football and making costumes, right up until it was go time. We then picked up Beth (Dean is a wuss) and headed out to Blue Mound. The party was a lot of fun, good food and drinks and company and awesome costumes. I think everyone had a pretty good time! Got home late. I didn't recognize Kyle and Tracy (actually I didn't recognize Kyle so I didn't think to look for Tracy

Here we are as a group...if only we had some Karts.There is so much wrong in this photo...it's almost right...

Donkey Kong loves his ladies...hairy!

And this photo was just way too cute not to include!

Sunday I slept too little and then just did very little. Made a quick trip to Super Target and pretty much wasted away a day of perfect fall weather. I did start a big-ass Puzz3d and played some video games and watched football and cleaned the house so now I am recharged to start the week. And I ended the weekend with an awesome burger and company!

Looks like I’ll even go 2-0 this week in fantasy football, dominating two of my most loyal blog readers!

Once again it’s Monday. Got in a good weight lifting session to start my morning and then off to work. (Quarry Ridge + lunch + 29 inches + 60 degrees= fun) So far tonight I've walked the dogs and raked the backyard leaves. Now just a little chill time before heading off to watch the Packers. Oh yeah, last night the Red Sox won. What’s not to hate about the Red Sox? They basically are just a smarter version of the Yankees. A crappy end to an otherwise great season. Thanks for reading and hopefully you are ok even after seeing Riz in a dress!

Dari- Photo Share!

2007-10-24T21:39:00.000-05:00

So tonight I got to hang out with boxer pup Dari. One change though, 5 month Dari is now 40lbs. She is growing up so fast. After work I met up with Tracy for some comfort food at the Hubbard Ave Diner. Good eats. We then went back to their house to play some Wii and so I could try to wear out Dari. Only problem was, 2-1/2 hours of play, and she was still ready to rough-house it. She is insane, so much energy and just wanting to play! She'd jump all over me. It was so much fun, I don't think Chili was even half this crazy as a puppy. Good thing she is so cute!
Oh yeah, it was fun to hang out with Tracy too. Thanks for letting me come over and play with Dari!

Life or something like it…

2007-10-24T13:20:00.000-05:00

So Jess is off to Seattle and I get to live the bachelor life. First on my agenda is to eat some reheated pizza. Yesterday was fun. Went to the doctor and found out I have plantar faciliitis. I was basically told not to do anything stupid like go running or play basketball. Guh! Hopefully with ice, stretching and rest it will heal up. She gave me a brochure and well, I am surprised it took me to long to get plantar faciliitis. I guess running really is stupid. I did play basketball this morning and I have been resting it and it feels better each day…just not good. Later in the afternoon I took the dogs for a walk and then Jess and I ordered pizza and got caught up on some TV. My DVR was acting funky so that’ll will merit keeping an eye on. And my cell phone is about dead, no outbound calls unless I hit speed dial. And I only know the speed dial of three people. I’ve been eligible for a new phone for a few months now, so anyone with Cingular and some input on a cool phone, let me know. I did ride my mountain bike at Quarry Ridge yesterday. Rocked the smallest of the three sisters jumps with ease and had a good ride with no crashes and perfect mountain biking weather. Oh yeah, back to the doctor, she kept saying "older men need to" in reference to things I need to do (older men often need to eat better to keep cholesterol down, older men need to check for these things, etc.) Am I now part of older men? I can race masters class in cycling now, I have gray hairs, I am sore every morning, ...guh, I am older men. How soon before I have to go buy a 'vette?

So where did summer go? Really, where? I was trying to think to myself what I did this summer. And beyond our Colorado trip and a couple other moments (Belleville Bike Race, and a couple weekend things) I have no idea what I did with my time. I guess this was the summer of rest, friends and dogs. It’s been more than 3 months since we were in Colorado and it seems like 3 weeks. Of course my sole focus right now is to return to Colorado and climb 2-3 more mountains. I’m hooked. Quandary and maybe a Grey’s/Torreys double and I’d like to rock some more too and get back up to Evans (not on a bike this time.) Hopefully some epic Indiana mountain biking will hit the spot for me before we get snowed in.

Ok, that’s enough rambling for now, I should be able to find something better to do than type, even with Jess being gone.

Every Dog has his (bad) day...

2007-10-22T18:02:00.000-05:00

Well Chili’s mouth thing wasn’t as simple as we thought. I just assumed they’d yank 10 teeth and that would be it and he’d be himself again soon. Well, that wasn’t the case. It’s more like oral surgery as they have to cut open the gum, extract the tooth and sew it back up, he’s got 5 large areas stitched up. No action for Chili for two weeks. So my bachelor life got a lot more bachelor as my main bark-park buddy can’t even go so I even get to not hang out with my boxer friends. Oh yeah, this whole thing wasn’t cheap, we could’ve got 2-3 new boxers for what is cost to fix the one we have. And the vet wanted Chili to stay longer to recover from anesthesia and we went and ran some errands and to add to the great Friday night my car died. Somehow by fiddling with some wires I got it to start (after about 5 minutes) so who knows what happened, but I expect an even more untimely death on the horizon. We go to Indiana soon so I’ll predict then (either the morning we leave or the morning we drive back.) So I wish I could steal some credit for this cool costume, but Stryker will have the best boxer halloween costume this year...

I wonder what the Riz is doing right now?
Late Friday night my parents, the Beav and his GF Ali came to town. We just hung out Friday night. Saturday we got up and headed down to the Badgers game. We hit a house party near the stadium (yes, my parents are cool enough to get us into pregame tailgates with free drinks) and played some beer pong. Hopefully Mom can share some photos with me so I can share them with you! The game was fun, somehow my dad got Northern Illinois tickets so we were in the NIU section. And their fans made a somewhat boring game really interesting. Post game consisted of shopping, dining (Abuelos rocks) and games. It was a fun day! Sunday morning we had breakfast with Jess and my parents and then they left. Jess and I decided it would be a good day for the corn maze. We dominated the corn maze. We then headed to Wollersheim Winery and did some wine tasting.We bought some cheese and pretzels and a bottle of wine and sat outside in the vineyard area and just chilled. Got home in time to catch the end of the early football games. Did a whole bunch of nothing that afternoon and then went out to supper with Jess’ parents and then just kind of visited with them for a couple hours before coming home and sleeping. Now it’s Monday!

Got this link or some derivative 3 times in an hour or so today. Gotta represent!

Win-Win situation...

2007-10-19T16:22:00.001-05:00

I traded one six pack of 16oz Bud Select and a 20oz Vault Red Blitz

for one Sonic footlong bacon cheesesteak with a bonus Fritos Chili Cheese Burrito (also from Sonic) bootlegged across state lines from Iowa.

Today has been one of the most insane days in recent history, and it's only 4:27pm and I still have to pick up my drugged up, redneck (he had 10 teeth pulled today) dog.

Headline News...

2007-10-18T17:58:00.000-05:00

Today is Jess’ birthday! She turns the big 29 today, 1 year away from officially being old (like me!) Happy Birthday Jess! In honor of her birthday I am taking her to a swanky fundraiser, you know it’s all about social awareness! It’s the Wisconsin Bike Federation Fund Raiser and in the past it’s been pretty fun and pretty productive. Looking forward to it yet again. And if you feel bad for Jess because she has to spend her birthday at a fundraiser, well you should. She got her party last weekend but other than that I haven’t done much of anything. I guess that’s life when you are busy every day. My presence should be present enough, right? I did buy her a dang quesadilla for lunch.

Chili graduates! He graduated last night with a degree in Intermediate Obedience. Which for Chili means Intermittent Obedience. He actually has been a rock star in class; our 6 classes were probably the 6 most well behaved instances he’s had since we’ve had him.

"Mark Larson will be joining the IBD Inside Sales & Service team as an Inside Sales & Service Representative. In his new role, Mark will be providing assistance to IBD dealers and Outside Sales Reps in their product, order, warranty and technical questions. Mark will formally transfer when his current role as Inventory Analyst is successfully transitioned. Congratulations Mark!" And after today I realized a successful transition just can’t come soon enough. Each day since our department was trimmed down to 2 has been more busy and stressful than the day before. And not a good busy either, just a pile it on and make it more crappy, busy. I’d anticipate the transition would take a minimum of a month from now (I was told I got this new position last week.) We’ll see how it goes.

Alright...time to get going...

It's about the boxers

2007-10-16T13:07:00.000-05:00

Life has been crazy lately. Work has been boring despite having too much work to do which is a really bad combination. But most of life has been about the boxer.

Last Wednesday- Dog park with Stryker and Lola (and owners). The usual. Then Chili’s class.
Thursday- Met Max (and owner) out at the dog park. It’s been months since we last saw Max, but he is an absolutely beautiful dog.
Friday- Went out after work to meet up with Stryker. Met up later to go bowling with fellow boxer owners (the Mundys) and later joined them at Taco Bell (I refrained from the Chili Nachos BelGrande.)
Saturday- After basketball we met up with Lola and Max at the new dog park. We were joined randomly by 6 other boxers. It was the most insane time at the dog park ever.
Sunday- After the Packer game, got the call from Cody to come over with Chili so the dogs could play indoors (it was raining.) So a couple hours of brawl time while we watched football.
Monday- Spent all afternoon figuring if it would rain or not, finally it didn’t and more new dog park with Chili. It sure gets dark early. Lola (and Krystina) joined us and we saw Buster. Chili had a great time playing with Lola and later with a St. Bernard pup (9 mo old but double the weight of Chili.)
Tuesday- Tonight we get to spend lots of money on Chili for his first of two expensive appointments for his teeth. Might hit the new park if there is time.
Wednesday- The usual Wednesday group and then it’s Chili’s graduation from Intermediate training.

So there you go, 8 days in the life of Chili. Thursday is Jess’ birthday but we will be busy going to the Bike Federation of Wisconsin Fundraiser. So we celebrated this past Saturday night by inviting her friends over for some party action. It was fun and I made up a new drink, I called it the yuppie soccer mom. Basically 3 parts of TGI Fridays Mudslide to 1 part Starbucks Coffee liqueur. So it was pretty strong, pretty name brand and pretty freakin’ good. I only had enough to make two of them which I drank myself. But something about booze makes me sleepy but not able to sleep which again was the case on Saturday night/Sunday morning.

2007-10-12T05:45:00.000-05:00

Recap: Sunday was supposed to be a nice, relaxing break from reality. And it mostly was. Got up and did my normal Sunday morning routine. Took the dogs to the new Badger Prairie Dog Park as well which was cool and had some Kwik Trip coffee, which is actually my favorite, which is probably pretty lame. Jess and I then went to Super Target and got some stuff. Exciting morning. The afternoon was spent watching football while doing a huge amount of cleaning and organizing. We got the house to a pretty high level of cleanliness. Chilled out in the late afternoon and got ready for some guests for the Packers game. Our new friends Krystina and Cody (and their boxer Lola) joined us. From the start it was pandemonium. There is no turning off a boxer, so Chili and Lola just played, pretty much for 3-1/2 hours straight! It was fun to watch. The game was fun to watch until the end, which totally sucked! But the company was top-notch so the night wasn’t a total loss. Monday, however, was basically a total loss: tired, sore, bored and not feeling too well. Did head out to the dog park and I ate some tacos. Tuesday was similar, different dog park and thai food instead of tacos. Wednesday was very similar, except pizza and add in Chili’s dog class. Thursday more of the same, work, dog park and catching up on some TV. One class away from graduation. Work has been pretty interesting actually, should be a fun rest of the week!

My running career is at a standstill. I bruised my heel somehow and now it hurts to walk. Haven’t worked out on it since Saturday, hoping a week or so off will heal it up and if not, no big deal I’ll just find something else to do. So I haven’t done much this week.

Fun:
This guy fails to mention that there isn’t a refund policy as many of these athletes invested time and money into this event. While no one forced them to run his lack of compassion and understanding for those pursuing a goal is ignorant…guy probably never set a physical goal before. Probably an idiot sportswriter who thinks that there are only 4 sports. Yes I do believe in personal responsibility, I also don't try to kick people when they are down. Jerk.

Which leads to my next sory, how cool is this sport? While I consider myself an average video gamer, I have nothing but respect for these people. Growing up and old around a couple of the best video gamers I know, I can’t imagine the dedication it must take to be this good at one task like this. Which makes me wonder if I am missing the boat on video gaming by not being an on-line player, which seems like it would add a whole new dimension to gaming.

Finally this place has cool shirts. The coolest of the cool?

Woke up at 4am yesterday and couldn’t sleep anymore so I went down and watched Alpha Dog. That movie is epic, among the best of 2007 with lots of randoms. Similar to Disturbia but much better. Wednesday night I completed a computer game called Pandora’s Box. If you like puzzle games, I recommend it highly. Jess is also playing it and almost done. I’ll miss having it, I started in April of 2006 and played it off and on until last night. I’ll still fill in some bonus levels.

I wonder what the Riz is doing right now?

Kettles

2007-10-07T08:07:00.000-05:00

It was the first trip of the whole year for either Jess or I to the Kettles. I got up super early and rocked a couple hours of basketball before Jess picked me up at the Y to head southeast. Got there around 9:30 and were on the trail around 9:45. Last time we were there they had rerouted the first section so when we came to a snowfence we just figured it was part of the reroute. It was evident we weren't on the blue loop like we wanted but then we found some new trail that was awesome that cut us to the blue loop. Only problem the south half of the blue loop was closed so after less than 2 miles we were already on the connector trail. We took that back and forth and I did the Emma Carlin loop. They cut a new vista on the top of the Emma and it was awesome. We got back to the car after 20 miles of singletrack and called it quits. Jess rode the womens' Teocali which was too much bike for out there.

After the ride we cleaned up and headed south towards Elkhorn. I read of this place that had apple cider donuts so we had to have them and compare to others we've had. They were excellent, I'd rate them second out of the four I've had. They were fresh and warm. I then noticed the best way back to Madison was through Janesville and well we hadn't had lunch yet. 25 minutes later we were poundin' our fudd. It had been a while and it was much needed!!!

The rest of the night was spent watching football and napping and not feeling well. The one thing I don't miss about cycling is the evening of dehydration headaches, tired everything and the wind/sun-burned feeling. Got some good sleep but am achy today. No biggy because we aren't doing anything of note.

Friday night we bowled. I bowled poorly and we got smoked. Of course if I would've just bowled my average in game 3 we could've pulled out one win. Oh well. Did have a 417 series so it wasn't as bad as it appeared but I really need to gain some consistancy. Our whole team was beat down after a long week so it was like zombie bowling anyways. But we had fun, it's always fun to hang with the Mundys.

There you go, it's Sunday morning, the coffee is drunk and the paper is read...

Another boring post...

2007-10-05T18:06:00.001-05:00

Why? Because sometimes art emulates life. My week so far? Monday was fun, we went out for Beth’s birthday to PF Changs. It was pretty decent, but I am glad I checked their website before hand. Lots of their entrees are upwards of 2000 calories and over 100g of fat. I’ve got a name for things like that, I call them nachos! I went with a sensible chicken chow mein. Then we played some scattergories and I washed that down with some Ice Cream cake (a much better source of calories.) Went home only to watch the single best baseball game I’ve seen this decade, and the Rockies won! Tuesday we went to the dog park, only to get caught in the rain. But it was still a blast. Came home and we caught up on some DVR TV. Wednesday was more of the same, except it was perfect dog park weather and then Chili had his class, which he once again excelled in. Imagine how awesome he’d be if we actually worked with him outside of class? Yesterday was exciting, we got to leave work early for a scavenger hunt on State St. called Amazing Race. That was a blast, we don’t know who won (I am doubting it was us, but we should be in the top third or so) but it was fun to run around, eat some tacos and then party afterwards at the Angelic. Good times! Now it’s Friday and I am through the week. What a long week it was though but it's nice that it's over.

Weekend should be good! Bowling on Friday, basketball, mountain biking at some point, Packers, Badgers, chilling who knows what else! Lately I’ve just been super-hungry. I haven’t really acted upon the urge but man I just wanna eat! Today’s craving is Red Robin (my crave flirted with Taco Bell for a bit but went back to Red Robin.) Yesterday it was Ian’s Mac & Cheese Pizza. Next week should also be decent, or interesting, or some combination of the two. Which is good, I could really use a decent week. Well that’s all I’ve got right now, if you read this far you should be commended.

In the ghetto...

2007-10-01T13:10:00.001-05:00

Got off to a good start working out this week, running 10ks on Sunday and Monday, and getting in a weight lifting session on Sunday as well. I do need to get some new running shoes so I should probably get going on that one of these days. Seems like I even did at least an Ironman worth of miles of each event during September, so I guess that is good.

Weekend was good. Went to the dog park after work on Friday which was fun. Then I made a couple calls to Riz and Hez to continue or euchre rivalry, Jess and I swept once again. We also played some Boggle and Blockus and Oh Hell, all the classic 4 player games. Saturday I got up early for some basketball. I’ve been playing really well lately and that trend continued. After some grocery shopping I took the dogs to the park. It was insane, Chili played with a St Bernard puppy that was full of energy. We were about to leave and then an English Bulldog came and Chili just went to town some more and then we mixed in a Pitbull/Bulldog mutt mix and it was on. Good times. We then did a lot of work around the house and went to Goodwill with a car load of stuff. There goes about 5 years worth of my wardrobe, guess I’ll have to keep my weight down. Watched the Badgers (which was an epic 4.5 hour battle) and then Jess and I just didn’t feel like doing anything…so we didn’t. Got up Sunday with my paper and coffee and then did the aforementioned weight/running workout and then off to Jess’ parents. Watched the Packers, came home and took the dogs to the park (post Packers is the best time, everyone goes) and then back to Jess’ parents as they just got back from a 2 week vacation in Greece and we got to take in a 2000 photo slide show. And I survived! It was actually really interesting; Greece is so unlike anything I’ve ever experienced before, a different world from what I know. They had a great time, so that’s awesome!

Another weekend, same story with fantasy football. Already lost in one league and am on the verge of losing in my other one. Sorry if you are in the RFFL league with me, but this will be my last year. The Mundy league is much more fun (there actually seems like a point beyond money) so that’s all for me. Plus the RFFL league is ran by some random guy named Russ. Never heard of him. On the plus side my teams all won yesterday (my favorite top 3 football and top 2 baseball) so life is good in that regard.

One not so good thing about my weekend though: Sunday morning I get into my car and someone had uninstalled my XM radio, but it was sitting, complete, on the passenger side seat inside my car. Odd. Turns out they tried to steal it but couldn’t get the antenna so they left the whole thing. Stealing XM radios is stupid, I can report it as stolen and no one can ever use the unit again not to mention, if they try to activate it they can get into trouble. At least the thief was smart enough not to rip out a bunch of wires (my XM was stolen in 2004 by people who had no idea) and left the whole set-up for me to reinstall. I’ve got to invest in a nice softball bat, man I’d love to go Tanya Harding on someone who tried to steal my stuff.

Now it’s Monday, and it sure is a Monday. Busy week though, which is good and bad. I think the only evening in at least the next 8 that we don’t have plans is Tuesday (tomorrow) so I’ll welcome a relaxing day that day. So here’s to being busy. No slowing down in October and probably not in November. Here’s to January!!!

2007-09-29T20:14:00.000-05:00

As you probably have already figured out, I’ve been living weekend to weekend lately. Seems like life is in a holding pattern right now, busy all the time but nothing really noteworthy going on, just day-to-day life. The first episode of the Office was awesome. They had to write some people off the show which was kind of half-assed but that’s the case with any show. Of course some of you are TV haters although I’ve never met a TV hater who isn’t a hypocrite, so I just embrace TV as part of my life, not as my life, just as part of my life. Work is work. Not sure what else to say about that. Today was nice, played some basketball, had a great time at the dog park, did some house work and watched the Badgers win.

Chili Update- It appears that Chili’s battle with bad breath will soon be in the past. Seems he had a mouth infection that may have been a result of his spring-time electrocution. The one side of his mouth is perfect, the other is injured and infected. So right now we are clearing up the infection and hopefully the injury isn’t too bad so it won’t require surgery. Either way we’ll had a nice vet bill on Tuesday and his next appointment will be pricey no matter what the outcome is. But two days on antibiotics has done wonders for him. As for class, he was a star yesterday. The only problem we had in class was with him waiting before going through doors, mostly because we have our own procedure for it that works for us which is a lot different from the procedure they want to teach and he was confused. Before class we took him to the dog park and they are different dogs when it was cool. Chili and his buddies Lola and Stryker just seemed to have double the energy since it was 60F and not 80F which makes it extra fun!

Lets see, besides work, dogs, running and TV, there hasn’t been much else. Jess and I went to a movie Thursday called King of Kong. It’s a mocumentary (which apparently isn’t a real word yet) about two guys in pursuit of the world record score in Donkey Kong. It was good and had that independent feel and a retro trip beyond typical retro. Anyone who enjoyed video games in the 80s will like this movie.

According to Wiki: "A scripted movie adaptation is already in the works. Director Seth Gordon has said that the movie might be a sequel instead of a remake, telling the story of how the documentary changed both men's lives, as well as their continuing rivalry"

Boxers!

2007-09-25T21:00:00.000-05:00

Took me a week to finally get these updated, but as many of you know our friends Kyle & Tracy have a boxer pup too! Here are some photos that Jess took! Enjoy!

Hi, I am Dari!!!

Nap time!

Everybody loves me!

And here are a couple of shots of Chili lounging at lunch yesterday, for good measure.

Football!

2007-09-25T16:35:00.001-05:00

Shawn Merriman and Stephen Jackson are featured in the new Nike ads. They are shown either tackling opponents or running around/through opponents. Oh yeah, and they are playing against actual NFL teams. It’s funny in the commercial, Merriman tackles a quarterback from the Patriots who are 3-0 and throttled the Chargers a couple weeks ago. And Stephen Jackson (now injured) of the 0-3 Rams runs through 4 teams that are a combined 9-3 (Packers, Vikings, Steelers and Seahawks.) Seems like that ad makes added motivation for the other teams. I hate Merriman and was prepared to hate him on Sunday when he played the Packers. One problem, I didn’t even notice him on the field. Overrated hype. Played part of last year on the roids, got suspended, then came back with a chip on his shoulder, good year. Not so much this year.

I hate fantasy football, I just can’t catch a break. I decided to play in two leagues this year (mistake) and am now 1-5. The problem is, although my teams both have issues, both should be solid. Last week I ran into a team that not only had Donovan McNabb but also Brian Westbrook. I fared not much better in my other league where I ran into the Brady/Moss combo.

I do love football though, I just can’t get enough of it this fall. I love jerseys too! Like the gem above I captured in Breckenridge this summer!

Taco Tuesday.

2007-09-25T05:32:00.000-05:00

Weekend was fun! Friday I made my return to bowling as part of the team called the Munsons. My average after week 1 should be 154, I believe I bowled a 464 series. Which was pretty sweet, and almost scary since I missed quite a few shots. I guess I did have more strikes than usual but I opened my third game with 3 straight 9 opens so there is room for improvement.

Saturday opened up with some basketball. For some reason I played really well again. Got home and cleaned up and then we met some friends down at the Farmers Market. Had some cheese bread (I said eating better above, not eating well) and then we went out for brunch at the Old Fashioned. Went home and got ready for having some people over that night and then watched the Brewers blow yet another game. Watched the Badgers pull out a tough one that night and played some games. Good times!

Sunday was laid back. Coffee and a newspaper and then some grocery shopping opened up the day. Then I got both my fantasy football teams ready to play. Four sporting events of interest started basically simultaneously at noon. I soon realized the Lions were going to get smoked so we watched the Packers game and Brewers game with Nascar on the flip channel on commercials. Brewers blow another one. Packers did awesome though, so that was sweet! My fantasy teams played well but bad luck plagued me once again, running into two very hot teams. Two more losses, 1-5 on the season. Went to the dog park after the game, it was fun, lots of good and fun dogs! Then we did some errands, hit some JT Whitneys and then I fell asleep on the couch. Good times!
Oh what a last week it was. I ran a marathon of miles (26.2 to the 10th of a mile) and tried to keep variety. Speaking of variety, I went vegetarian for four days last week. 96 hours between meat eatings. The first 36 hours were unintentional and then it just kept working out that way. And you know what I killed it with? A hot dog. I even went another 24 hours without meat after the hot dog but then Sunday I was back on the meat train. Although today is posing to be a meat free day as well, protein shake for lunch (after lifting) and I have an open container of pasta sauce at home so probably some pasta for supper. I’ve been trying to eat better and I didn’t really have any healthy meat around the house like chicken breasts.

Now it's Tuesday morning. I hope all is well out there!

Floyd

2007-09-20T17:22:00.000-05:00

Yes, as many of you know, I was on the Floyd Landis panel. He lost his vote 2-1, I'd like to think I was the one who voted for him. I think it's BS that there can be so many flaws with testing yet even flawed testing can take away some one's livelihood, their biggest accomplishment and over 2 million dollars. We'll never know if Floyd did it or not, there are so many scenarios where he could have, so many where he could have been set up and so many involving flawed testing that the real answer will never be known. I'd like to believe that he is innocent, to the point that he didn't knowingly take testosterone. Everything beyond that is possible to me. Man, if that Mark Larson wanna be did vote against Floyd I guess I'll have to kick my own ass!

So it begins...

2007-09-20T05:24:00.000-05:00

Today was day one of my new cubical. That’s right, I went ahead and built a new cubical by adding some walls to the desk I was supposed to sit at. People seem to like it, only a couple people have been annoyed with it but they can deal. Other than that, it’s really boring over here. The person I expected to entertain me said nothing except asking if I could turn my stereo down. Seeing beltline traffic go back and forth in the background of my screen is a new experience. So you know what sucks? I can’t get radio reception here, Not XM, Not AM, Not FM. So my 5 hours of sports talk in the morning seems to be gone. I’ll look for some better antenna solutions when I get a chance, and a new stereo as mine takes up half my desk…and the CD skips about every time I move. As far as working with my wife and boss, so far so good. I think my boss is adjusting as well so it’ll take time. Jess has been great about the whole thing so far so hopefully that will continue.

In other news…well there isn’t really other news. This week has been dominated by the move. I have went running the past three mornings and have lifted enough to where I can do it every other day. Probably on an MWF schedule for lifting and maybe taking every third Friday off to heal up completely. My base running training has went well though, better than I expected, so life is good in that respect. I even rode my bike yesterday! Dog class was good again last night, Chili just turns it up on Wednesday Nights...it's really nice! We start bowling league this Friday. Not sure about that yet, but if the Mundys enjoyed it last year then I am sure we’ll enjoy it with them this year…at minimum we’ll have good company. Lots of sports on TV this weekend with the Brewers, Badgers and Packers all getting HD games. Thanks for reading!

Sunday night...

2007-09-16T18:30:00.000-05:00

Weekends, happen so fast! Just a short three days ago I was awaiting the weekend to be here...now it's almost gone. Quite the cycle you enter when you join the work world. Is it Thanksgiving yet?

Friday I got up way too early. By 3:55am I concluded I could no longer sleep. Y isn't open yet so I decided to take my run outside, and with Chili. By 4:10 we were out on the road and by 5 we had done 5.6 miles and were tired. Had some water and protein and was to the Y by 5:30 to lift. Got in a good weight lifting session. Then I got in an hour of hoops. With me having to work late that day I decided to come in late, so I went home, messed around on the computer and rode my bike to work. Was working before 8am. What a crazy morning. We had a mini golf outing that lasted until 5:15 or so. Good times! Just hung out at home the rest of the night.

Saturday I got up early yet again and played more basketball. Got done with that (somehow I managed to go 9-0 and in the two day span) and headed home. Jess and I went out shopping for a couple hours since we couldn't watch the Badgers game. We went to Red Robin for lunch when a strange thing happened, I only had my meal, no extra fries. I must be sick. Chilled for a while that afternoon and then I ran to Verona (4.5 miles or so) and met up with Jess and the pups for some bark park action. Got home, scrambled around the house to clean up and got ready and then we had people over for games. Games were awesome. Played a bunch of games including a new one called Bubble Brain which is pretty sweet! Boggle, Scattergories, Blockus, Bohnanza, Imaginiff and Bubble Brain in a 5-1/2 hour span.
Sunday I got up...late! 8am is late by my standards. Read the paper with my coffee. Went to work to clean up some stuff and then to the grocery store to replace some lost cilantro. Then over to the Mundys to watch the Packers whoop up on the Giants. Awesome. Dari (their boxer pup) is so big now! It was fun! Then back to the bark park with our pups and now here I am writing a below average blog post. Awesome!

-I knew there was a reason I only like to play in one fantasy football league. Now I play in two and this week Carson Palmer killed me in one and helped me kill in another. Except it wasn't a total kill yet so we'll have to wait and see.
-Hez is a gaming bastard. But she did ride her bike to our house and today I passed her in my car while she was motorcycling.
-Boxers are the best!
-I am a decent mini golfer, except when I play at Vitense...then I am worthless!
-I can't buy clothes anymore, they no longer sell the type of stuff I want to wear.

Is it Friday yet?

2007-09-13T19:29:00.000-05:00

Friday just might be my last fun day at work. As most of you know, my boss and I are all who are left in our department, doing the work that was done by 4 and most recently 3 people. They’ve decided to go forward with just two people. But they might be able to off-load a couple of our responsibilities to other people who are in sister departments. To do that however they decided that my boss and I should be relocated to a different part of the building, starting next week. I love my work area, I always have, I’ve made a bike and coffee station next to my cube, I have satellite radio, I sit by one of my best friends, etc. Well my new cubical is much smaller and less private than I have now. It won’t be able to get satellite radio. My coffee and bike area will be gone. The kicker though? I am now going to be part of a small cube farm and the three people that sit directly around me are:
A. My Boss
B. My baseball talking buddy Bob (who is not irrelevant except within the context of this conversation and me making a point.)
C. My Wife

Not to mention that my boss’ boss will sit directly behind me. Don’t get me wrong now, I love Jess more than anything in the world and I for the most part like my boss. But to have my boss sitting directly between my wife and I? I can handle sitting next to my boss (like I do now) or by my wife but I am less than excited to have the combination of the two. Oh yeah, and I am the only employee my boss has. So of course I went to HR and asked if we could do something else, there are plenty of cubes around and even if I was a couple cubes away it would be better. They said they could probably work something out. I mean really, do you want to have married people working next to each other in the corporate world? Of course it took less than a day for them to say that they did what they could but couldn’t make it work. None of the feasible options I laid out could work I guess. So that’s that, and come Tuesday (that is the day we were given) I get to sit in a new cube, one with less privacy, less music and less space.

So this will be an interesting experiment, I mean juggling both a personal and professional life for 40+ hours a week. I mean half of the conversations I have with Jess not at work involve work things, but now we will both know the story and not have the story to tell. I’ll keep you posted on how things go, even my greatest optimism towards the situation could easily be confused with pessimism so it’ll be crazy.

On the plus side, Chili started class last night and is well on his way to being a B- student. Actually he handled everything like a champ...it was awesome! Rocked some pasta bowl tonight too, so that was good!

2008 Ironman

2007-09-12T18:51:00.000-05:00

So my last blog post left off at the end of the weekend. I decided I needed to start working out regularly again. I’ve pondered how to do this. I really enjoyed swimming last week, but swimming in a pool isn’t nearly as fun. I haven’t run since last fall and I haven’t lifted weights in almost two years. Cycling in the fall is all about the weather. Well after thinking about this a lot, I decided, at least for the time being, to try and start running and then do some upper-body weight work. So Monday I rocked a 5k on the treadmill. It went so much better than I thought. After that I did a nice upper body workout and it felt really good. Then this morning I ran 5 more miles on the treadmill and it shouldn’t take too long before I am back to where I was last year, and hopefully I can build upon it. And don’t worry cycling fans, I’ll still be riding bikes. I love riding on nice fall days and I hope to get some crisp morning rides in along with some nice mountain biking mixed in. So hopefully I can get that going as Fitchburg has two nice 10k races in the fall so maybe a nice three month running season. Mainly, I just want to keep the weight down for the winter and it’s always nice to have the incentive.

First on my list is this.

Not much else going on here. I didn’t sign up for the 2008 Ironman. I toyed with it for a moment but I just couldn’t fathom training for it again. Ultimately I’d like to do better than last year if I did do it again and I couldn’t commit myself to training that hard for the next year. My decision was a good one, as now it is Wednesday and I am glad I didn’t sign up. It’s easy to get caught up in the moment and just sign up. Plus I couldn’t assure super-fan Kelson would be around to cheer me around the course! I know of two people who did sign up and I am waiting for the list to be posted so I can peruse it for random others. I can’t wait to rock my Hungry Like The Wolfgram Ironman T-shirt for next year.

I'm in the club...it's goin' down...

2007-09-11T05:29:00.000-05:00

Thursday- Woke up early and went down to the Terrace for some swimming action. Yep, first swim since Ironman Wisconsin last year. 49 minutes for a lap and the finish, which wasn't that great, but ok for not training at all.

Got to work late, got some new, new brakes for my car. After work, Jess and I went to the mall (it's goin' down) and bought some stuff. Got some new trunks for our upcoming cruise for $1.97. Hot! We also went to Olive Garden for the neverending pasta bowl. Got home in time to watch the Colts dominate!

Friday- Just another work day. Got home and chilled and then left to go to the bachelor party of my friend, Brent the Tank. We ate some supper at the Great Dane, good times! Then we headed to the club (it's goin' down) called the Come Back Inn. Hung out and shared some good stories and stayed out pretty late. Good luck Brent!

Saturday- Got too little sleep and went to play basketball. Basketball went really well, I don't think I lost a single game. It was a blast! Left basketball and headed down to the Terrace for some more swim action. I dominated, keeping on Wolf's most of the time and my lap time was around 40-42 minutes which is about last year's race pace for me. I guess perfect conditions and one swim really do help! Met up with Jess as we dominated downtown. Oh yes, dominated! We did the farmer's market and the Ironman festival then went up and down state, down to the union twice, to Charley's steakery and Jess even hit up the contravercial new Taco Bell/KFC combo. It's not as bad as I thought as now they have plasma TVs and it's bigger. But I couldn't imagine getting Taco Bell there as it smelled liked chicken everywhere. Oh yeah, I found something I'll have to buy at Urban Outfitters, maybe for the cruise.The Tetris cube, not the Snoopy sno-cone machine, Hez! I even saw some racing sausages, meaning in the past month I've ran into them at 3 random places now!

Saturday after that we (Jess) stained the deck while I mowed the lawn and walked the dogs and cleaned up in the house. We also ate some Papa Johns and did a puzzle and watched sports, a relaxing night.

Sunday- Got up early to watch the Ironman swim. Watched it. Watched the beginning of the bike by this big bump where people would lose their water bottles and stuff. It was insane. I drank that red Gatorade laying there and even got to eat a dropped banana and 3 dropped fig newtons so it was a nice breakfast! We then headed out to mid-town to watch the race some more. Hit the in-laws for some Packers action and some lunch. Went back to the action though, now down on State St where we walked up and down following some friends.

Go Rybarik! Go Koebs!

And then Rybarik finished and Koebs was on his way to finishing so we came home to go to bed...a long weekend but full of fun!!!

This week, Chili starts obedience class. It's also 45F out right now, insane!!! Not much else going on here! Hope you enjoyed the photos!

So I actually went on a ride today...

2007-09-05T20:45:00.000-05:00

I got an e-mail from Patrick around lunch time announcing a bike ride tonight at 5:30. He promised the pace to be tolerable. I didn't commit to it but then Jenn (Stryker's Mom) e-mailed saying she couldn't make it to the dog park tonight so I decided to check out this ride. I think I was the last person that was expected on the ride. 5 of us went out (Patrick, Hertz, Balsley, Alvarez and myself.) I even found a way to win a sprint which I was sure would doom me for the rest of the ride. But a funny thing happened, the ride ended up being not too hard and I felt great, after almost 40 miles I was still feeling pretty fresh. It was a great ride with great company, one of those rides you wish occured more often as it was social, fun and not stressful.

Here are the stats.

Swim time

2007-09-05T13:16:00.000-05:00

Tomorrow I’m going to go swimming. The Ironman course is open for swimming so I figured I’d run down and rock a lap. I haven’t swam since the Ironman last year, so it’ll be a fun trip down memory lane. Wolf sent me this video that is actually surprisingly accurate of what the Ironman swim is like. Except there is no one kicking your face and pulling and pushing on you in this video.

The excitement level of this weekend has dwindled big time. Monday I went back to the dog park so Chili can play with one of his best buds, Stryker. Then we went out for supper with Jess’ parents. I thought I was going to get a thick burger but alas the Hubbard was closed so we settled on Tutto Pasta. But. They had some insane pasta that was awesome, Quattro formaggi stuff, with lumps of bleu cheese and mozzarella. Tuesday, work, dog park, Brewers, Wednesday, work, dog park, Brewers. Tomorrow is the Colts opener though…I am excited for that! Basketball might be dead though, got there this morning, only 1 other person there. Saw a couple people on my way out but I had no interest in waiting around to maybe play a game of 3 on 3. Guess I’ll have to find something else to do for fitness.

Oh yeah, this is a classic little tid-bit for the football fans out there.