Category Anything and Everything

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Bleary eyed we got up Tuesday morning. We packed up, grabbed another continental breakfast, chatted again to the nice lady running it and we were off. The trip was almost over, we had a fantastic time despite it being the most tired I can remember being for a 4 day stretch. Troy and I said our goodbye’s. I think we were both very happy with how things went. Even though I have not seen Troy for at least a year and a half we were able to step right back into sync and had no problem keeping ourselves entertained the entire time.

Even with all the fun I had I was still very anxious to get home to see Ali and the dog. On the last leg of my flight I was sitting next to a woman that was slow. She told me her husband was meeting her at the airport. As we got off I saw she was really struggling with her 2 carry ons. They were heavy and I offered to carry them for her. I walked around with them for a good 15 minutes while we tried to find her hubby. It turns out he was late so I wound up helping her get her checked bag as well and then set her up outside so she could wait for her ride. Felt bad for her.

Ali and Nicki were there and greeted me enthusiastically. The drive home flew by because I was telling Ali about everything that happened. For me to talk that long is a rarity so imagine how much happened to fill a full 45 minutes of conversation of me talking non-stop. I slept quite well.

It was a a fantastic experience, one I will never forget. The people I met in Wisconsin were some of the nicest I ever have met in my life. I wish I could transplant some of that down here. It was enough to make me want to try to be friendlier as well. Spread the good will ya know, stuff like that. Hopefully we can do it again sometime.

Memorable Quotes/Sites from the weeknd:

Can I be foul, like a man ya know? Stinky and smelly…..
F it, I drove 14 hours from Toronto, I’m taking it
Spotted on a big passenger van windows – GIRLS GONE WILD FILM CREW / SHOW US YOUR TITS
Women flashing for beads in 30 degrees at the pregame party
(In heavy Green Bay accent) Watch it you drunk F, he’s taller than you and bigger than me, he’ll kick both our asses
HARD SIX, WOOOOOOHOOOOOOOOOOOO (Applause)
Dude, I’m so tired……
Dude, I was so drunk……

I’ll add more as they come to me.

…knock on the door, “Room Service” It startled me out of my slumber. I stumbled to the door, she asked if we needed service. I said YES! Just give me a minute. I quickly got dressed, she said she would do it up for us in no time. I went down to the continental breakfast. It was done at 10 am so I was just hoping to maybe snag some left over coffee. Noone was in the area except for the lady that was in charge of it, she was cleaning up. Being used to normal reactions I get, I assumed she would be annoyed if I made more of a mess since she was cleaning up. The exact opposite happened. She asked if I was hungry, she showed me what was left, she asked me if I wanted her to make me anything. Unbelieveable, she was so kind. I had a bagel, yogurt and some juice and coffee. She asked where I was from, if I was going to the game and seemed generally interested in what I had to say. Again I was flabbergasted at the abundance of good will that had been heaped on me in Wisconsin. I went back up to the room and saw the maid in another room. She was a young white girl that spoke perfect english, with that canadian sounding accent. I asked if she got a chance to do it, she said, Yep all done!!!. Geez.

Today was the big day, game day. We were excited. There was a casino right near Lambeau. We had a decent amount of time since it was a night time game. We decided to hit the casino first. It was a short half hour drive to Green Bay. The casino was a cool little indian joint. We first hit the all you can eat lunch buffet. 10 bucks for all you can eat and drink. The food was great but I definitely didn’t eat anywhere near to my money’s worth. After that we were out on the floor. I found the craps tables, they had 2 of them one 10 dollar and one 5 dollar one. 10 was too rich for my blood. Both of the tables were jammed pack. I watched for a good 20 minutes until I was able to squeeze in at the one end. The table was extremely slow, meaning the dealers were very slow placing and paying out bets. However it must have been lucky. I started with 60 bucks and walked away with 210. I was the “shooter” for at least 45 minutes, meaning it took me that long to “crap out” That is extremely unusual and my run of luck translated to everyone playing at the table with me, some players literally made thousands of dollars during my stint as the roller. Unreal. When I did finally crap out they applauded like I just finished the encore at a rock concert. Troy couldn’t believe it. He burned through 120 bucks in video poker in 20 minutes. At the table we also got to see some guy place the maximum bet allowed on the pass line when he was the shooter. He lost when he crapped out before rolling a 10. He didn’t look very happy. It was a dumb bet. My casino windfall made up for the majority of the money I had spent to that point an added bonus that made things even better.

It was around 3:30 when we left the casino and headed towards Lambeau. It looked impressive from the outside. The parking lot didn’t open until 3 hours before game time and the gates open 2 hours before kickoff. We had a couple hours to kill. We decided to park outside the stadium lot in a grass field so we could get the festivities underway. Packer fans were everywhere but surprisingly there were quite a few Eagles fans thrown in the mix. It was good to see I wasn’t the only one wearing my Eagles jersey. We went into a sports bar right by the stadium where we had a few beers and talked to more friendly, hospitable green bay fans. When we walked outside I felt stuff bouncing off my nose, sleet! Oh boy. Undaunted we walked around to see more of the sights. They had an outdoor tent set up with food and beer as well as a live band. It was a kicking good time. I knew I had lots of time so I hit the beer pretty heavy. I probably had 7 or 8 in a short time period. I also had my first taste of brat, a sausage like food item you eat on a bun like a hot dog. I’m sure my blood pressure went up a few points after eating 2 of them but they were damn good, a green bay food staple. We continued to walk around and eventually got into the stadium lot. We walked around and saw the mass of tailgaters. We saw the Eagles bus pull in. We saw the Madden cruiser come in. The sleet had turned to an ice cold rain. It was going to be a wet one.

We got inside with little fuss. Wow, the remodeling was impressive. We entered the expansive beautiful atrium and were handed foam “cheese sticks” At first I resisted taking one, I later went back and got one cause Troy said he wanted one for his daughter. Somehow during the stick handoff Troy lost a one of his gloves. We tried to retrace his steps but had no luck in finding it. We walked the stadium a bit seeing the sights. As we headed towards our seats we saw guys renting seat backs. I didn’t realize that the stadium seating was just metal bleachers. From prior experience Troy said it was a wise 5 bucks to spend so we each got one.

We entered the stadium, no ushers, everyone just goes where they should. It was an impressive view, our seats were pretty low and we had a great view of the entire field. To be honest it didn’t look like it would hold as much as Veterans Stadium did but it holds 71,000, more than the Vet did. I soon found out how, I was shoulder to shoulder with other fans. They pack you in there TIGHT. I was having residual affects from the beer and had to hit the bathroom one final time 15 minutes before kickoff. I went into the bathroom and crashed into a hoarde of men. The bathroom was packed. One set of lines to the left and another to the right. The lines to the right were probably about 15 deep, the ones to the left were 10 or less so I decided to jump into the left line. I soon figured out that the left was the line to piss in the SINK! Ugh. I quickly moved to the right side and waited 15 minutes to relieve myself in a conventional manner. Unfortunately my long bathroom stay made us miss the national anthem and the player intros. We made it back to our seats just in time for kick off.

It was sloppy. Sloppy on the field, and sloppy in the stands. The rain was getting harder. I did not have any waterproof clothing, just layers. My legs were just covered by jeans. I wore ankle high gym socks and sneakers. Very dumb in retrospect. The jeans sucked in the icy water. The water bounced off the waterproofed fans around us onto our legs. The game was a mess for the first half. A lot of fumbling by the Packers, a lot of non action by the Eagles. By half time we had to go in to defrost a bit. We wound up spending the entire 3rd quarter in the atrium watching the game on the tv’s. We were that cold. At the start of the 4th we worked our way back in. On the way, we saw a man passed out or sleeping in the middle of the atrium on a chair. It was funny as hell. The kid next to him in the picture gave him a big kiss on the cheek and ran. Funny stuff.

The 4th quarter was when most of the action happened. The rain had let up and the teams started to move the ball more. The Eagles had been more or less terrible up until that point. The Eagles got stopped on a big 4th down play with 4 or 5 minutes left. It looked like the Packers had it wrapped up. However, the Eagles defense held and the offense managed to drive right down the field and scored! I cheered the best I could although I had no other Eagle fans in my immediate vicinity. The Birds held on for the win. How awesome. The Packer fans were disappointed and you heard some angry words leaving but nothing like you would at a game at the Vet.

On the way out a little skinny guy with something big under his rain pancho asked us where Kmart was. We pointed it out and kept walking that direction since that was near where we parked as well. He had a heavy canadian accent. Upon looking at the guy closer we realized what he had under his coat was one of those seat back rental things. I asked him about it. He said his brother told him not to take it but he said he drove 14 hours from Toronto, F it he was taking it! He asked us if we thought he was in the clear yet. We reassured him that his theft should be ok at this point since we were outside the main gates. Funny, funny stuff. The cops did an OUTSTANDING job of routing traffic out of the area, we were back out on the highway in no time. All Troy and I did was recollect about all the funny things that went on that day and night, how nice the people were and how special the entire experience had been. We got back to the hotel around 12:30 am, we had to be up by 7:45 to get up and out by 8:45. I set up the wakeup call. I didn’t need any cold medicine to sleep this time.

We woke up late Sunday. I didn’t sleep very well on the pullout. I kept waking up and was cold. Troy wanted a “real” breakfast instead of the continental breakfast they served at the hotel. We found a nearby Perkins and refueled our tired and somewhat hung over bodies. We went back to the hotel. Trying to somehow stick to my normal fitness routine, I told Troy I was going to go down to the hotel workout room. I got on the treadmill for 5 minutes, did a few sets of different exercises with dumbbells that would normally feel light. They felt heavy as shit and I bagged the workout after maybe 15-20 minutes. I just had no energy.

We got ready to go hit the sports bar. It was called Lord Rum Bottoms. From the outside it looked like a complete dive. 2 cars in the parking lot. Troy didn’t even want to go in. I convinced him to at least have a look. We were pleasantly surprised when we stepped in. It was great little bar with tv’s, pool tables, darts, pinball and all the little amenities you would expect. For awhile we were the only ones there. The lady bartender was extremely friendly. We played a bunch of pool, ate some lunch and hung out. The girl that recommended the bar showed up later. We had a great time talking with her and everyone else at the bar. I didn’t feel like drinking much, still suffering from the prior night. However Troy was hitting it pretty hard so I decided I would just coast along so I could be the designated driver. We met a bunch of interesting people, probably the most interesting was a local guy with the nickname of “Roadkill Eddie” I’m not quite sure about the origin of that name but I think it has something to do with stories of him grilling up roadkill to eat. The guy was a regular and was hammered as hell when he decided to start talking to me. Troy told him about his bcffl web site and how he would post a picture of Eddie on it. Eddie told me how he was already on a web site with a picture of him holding a 4 and a half foot shark. He told me this no less than a dozen times. He was really drunk.

We watched both the 1 and 4 oclock games and the start of the Sunday night game there. We were getting hungry so we asked our female tour guide where a good place was to eat dinner. She told us about a place called Victoria’s. We offered to take her to dinner to thank her for her kindness. Surprisingly she accepted. It was a cool place that served you HUGE, GIGANTIC portions. My eggplant parm was literally big enough to feed four people. I barely made a dent in it and had to call it quits. Afterward I was really tired and was ready for bed. However Troy and our friend were ready to hit yet another bar. Since I was the designated driver I had little choice.

She took us to yet another cute little bar in town that was a college kid hangout. It was loud but everyone seemed to be having a good time. As you can tell from this picture, Troy had fun too. The bartender was ultra-cool, towards closing he was giving people free shots left and right. Alas, all I had was one light beer. Being responsible is a drag sometimes but I vowed I wasn’t going to let anything disasterous happen on this trip so I kept clean. We closed out the bar at 2:15 am. I had to shower to get the smoke stench out again. I wasn’t in bed until after 3 am. Day 2 was another long one but very enjoyable one. I was really taken back by how friendly everyone we dealt with was. It was so refreshing. Florida isn’t known for friendliness. I was better prepared for the sofa bed this time. I was unable to find any Bayer PM so I settled on some generic night time cold medicine. It did the trick and knocked me out until 10:15 am the next morning when I was awakened by a……

My suitcase was pretty full for a 3 day trip, I wanted options since I had no idea exactly how cold it would be. I also packed my XBox for extra entertainment. My flight was very early, 6 am take off. That meant I rolled out of bed at 4am. Keep that in mind later. I had to wake up poor Ali to drop me off at the airport. We left the house a little late so I hauled ass to get there. I was able to do the entire trip in about 35 minutes, outstanding time.

As I was heading towards my gate I heard someone say my name, I looked and here a co-worker friend of mine was on the same flight on her way to Vegas. That was cool, so I talked to her a bit waiting for our flight to board. My flight out was to Charolette and then Milwaukee. The flights were uneventful, I had bulkhead seating the entire way through so that helped minimize the normal discomfort I get with being cramped during flights. After picking up my bag I noticed it had the blue TSA tag on it meaning they rifled through my bag. I suppose the Xbox looked like a bomb.

When we landed in Milwaukee I got my first blast of arctic air. It was in the 20’s and my winter coat was still wrapped up in my carry on bag. I was just wearing my jeans and a t-shirt. I met Troy in the terminal and headed outside to get the car, I dug out the coat quickly as my macho idea of parading around with no coat soon become blatantly foolish. The drive to our hotel took about an hour and a half. We both were very hungry so we stopped at some italian version of Bosten Market. We had some great lasagna stuff that stayed in our guts like a rock for most of the day afterward. Lot of cheese.

Our hotel was a Residence Inn. A cool place with an indoor pool, hot tub , a fridge a microwave in the room and supposedly 2 beds. It turned out MY bed was the pull out sofa bed. No big deal, I’ll survive. We decided to go do a quick drive around to see what was in the area, we found a bar that was close so we decided to hit that a bit later. I hooked up the XBOX and wooped up on Troy a couple games. Not much of a challenge.

We hit the bar. A nice little place. I drank a decent amount, we had a good time, talked to a lot of people and enjoyed our first night in town. It was getting late so we headed home. A girl we met at the bar told us about a good sports bar that would be great for watching the Sunday football action. Cool. We probably didn’t get to bed till 1 am local time (2am our time) Day one was over, I was tired, smelled like smoke but thoroughly enjoyed my time in Wisconsin so far. 4am to 2am, a 22 hour day.

Green Bay is football nirvana, no matter what team you are a fan of. I am going to do separate blog entries for each day to make it easier to digest. A LOT happened.

November is typically the start of our dry season. The humidity eases, the temperatures moderate and rain is light and infrequent. In the past few days we have reverted back to a summer like pattern. We got enough rain that we are once again underwater at home, something I don’t ever remember happening in November. Well at least the garden is taking off as a result.

Another typically summertime event happened last night. We lost power. We lost it just as my mom was getting ready to boil the water for the rigatoni. So we dug out the candles and flashlights. Luckily our gas grill has a side burner attachment so we were able to boil the water on it. My mom attempted to toast the garlic bread on the burner by sitting the bread on top of some aluminum foil. That experiment didn’t go well as the bread smoked in less than a minute. We had a nice dinner outside by candles.

I was starting to get nervous though because Thursday is Survivor night. No power could seriously put a damper on our Survivor viewing. I remembered that we have one of those mini pocket tv’s sitting around somewhere. I was on a mission. I haven’t used it in almost a year. So I am searching the house with a flashlight. I’m not having any luck. I am searching the same areas twice thinking I may have missed it. Finally I find it tucked away in a spare bedroom! So our emergency plan was in place, if power was still out at 8 we could huddle around this 2 inch screen and get our fix. 🙂 The crisis was averted when almost on cue at 8 oclock, the lights snapped back on. Whew. Another great show.

Tomorrow I will be crawling out of bed around 4am for my flight up to Milwaukee. Yawn…. as fun as this weekend will be, one thing I don’t think it will be is restful. Look forward to my Wednesday report.

Naples forecast for Monday

Partly Cloudy

High: 84
Low: 67

Green Bay forecast for Monday

Rain/Snow Showers

High: 40
Low: 38

Hopefully I’ll be too drunk to feel it.

The snowbirds are coming, the snowbirds are coming! The restaurants are filling up, the shopping plazas are dotted with gray heads moving slowly about, and the roads are backing up with elderly motorists going 5 mph under the speed limit in the passing lane. Yay!!!!!!!

I was walking the dog this morning and in the middle of the yard was another one of those mystery catfish. Not near any standing water. It rained a decent amount yesterday. So either this dropped from the clouds or was dropped by a bird. Never thought I would have fish in the yard. So odd.

The past 24 hours has been a traffic nightmare. On my way home last night our main road was blocked by an oil spill and related accidents, I got redirected 3 times to get around it, a 30 minute trip took 75 minutes. This morning for no apparent reason other than the fact the road was wet, the morning commute took 75 minutes. It’s really wearing thin on me. I find myself cursing out total strangers in other cars for no other reason than they are contributing to the gridlock that is making me miserable. Of course I know it’s silly but I do it anyway. And don’t get me started on dump trucks, those god damn dump trucks@!!!!! HATE THEM.

We rushed home to prepare for trick or treaters. Last year we didn’t get a lot, maybe a dozen, but still we wanted to be prepared. We(I) actually put out Halloween decorations this year. We carved the pumpkin. I put away the groceries quickly and then lit the pumpkin and waited for the kiddies to arrive. Perhaps our pumpkin wasn’t sincere enough (Charlie Brown fans understand) At 10 pm I blew out the candle in the pumpkin with a grand total of ZERO visitors. Disappointing. Our street and connecting side streets has over 200 homes on them, many, many kids live in them. Oh well. Perhaps in today’s fear filled world, coventional trick or treating is seen as just too darn dangerous. Sigh…….

Alison had to work on Saturday so you would figure I would enjoy the time to myself, do something fun. Of course not, instead I spent most of the day cleaning the house and doing chores. I had some screw off time where I watched an episode of Playmakers and some other stuff but basically I hustled most of the day. Not really complaining because if I didn’t do anything I’d feel like a bum.

Our pool is still green although a light shade of it. We have thrown enough chemicals in it to kill a small army but it still isn’t totally clean. I’ve had to clean out the pool filter 4 times clearing out all the junk that is in the water. Hopefully it will be cleared up this week.

This weekend I relocated 3 pygmy rattle snakes as well as spotting 3 black racer snakes. Ali HATES snakes, they freak her out. She hates them enough that she actually talked about the idea of moving to a development. I was never determined to live out where we do, that was much more of her thing, she wanted the space. I’ve always been open to living in a more community type area (development) but for totally different reasons than her. She would want to do it because of snakes and having sidewalks to walk the dog. I would want to do it to be closer to work and “stuff” as well as relieving myself of the financial and labor responsibilities of living in a single familiy home with almost 3 acres of land. However in reality, I doubt that it would actually happen. I have so much invested in that house emotionally, financially and sweat, it would be very hard to walk way from. If the house would ever be up for sale it won’t be for any of the reasons listed above.

The Eagles won again. As bad as things have been, they are 5-3 halfway through the season. The offense actually performed well, albeit against one of the worst defenses in the league. Maybe there is hope yet. I will see my team first hand this upcoming monday night at Green Bay. One of those once in a lifetime things that I’m sure many stories will come out of. I leave early Saturday morning and return Tuesday.

I’ve been slowly working on getting a model Cessna RC airplane ready to fly that my buddy Mike gave me before he shipped out to Colorado. He painstakingly built it from scratch. It’s very realsitic and even includes working marker lights. I finally have all the components I need to get it in the air, however I am very nervous to fly it. I will feel like shit if I crash the thing and it is so light, it needs to be flown in near zero wind conditions. It was too windy to fly it this weekend. I’ll take the plunge soon. Instead of flying the Cessna I threw my flying wing in the air. It is literally a bat out of hell. I take it up a thousand feet and power dive it and then pull out low. It sounds so cool as it screams overhead. I buzz the surrounding houses. It’s fun.

My buddy Chuck got me a copy of Max Payne 2. I put in a few hours with that as well over the weekend. If you liked the first one, you’ll like the second one. It is basically the same thing with enhanced graphics. Personally I never get tired of shooting lots of baddies so I am enjoying the game.

My old server went for 336 on ebay. 3 dollars less than the BUY IT NOW price I started it at. I’m happy with getting that for it. Shipping that beast will be a challenge.

Somehow, believe it or not, I know there are other things that I thought about the weekend that would make good blog material but it escapes me now. I seriously have some sort of issue in my brain that is going on. Makes me speak poorly at times, forget shit that I should easily remember. Sometimes I even “misspeak” while typing, scary. I hope I kick the bucket before I can’t remember what day of the week it is. How miserable.