P-Ville

Skeet skeet skeet skeet

First of all: thanks so much to the K’s in P-Ville for having me and my hobo friends up to their fine-ass country home for the weekend.  Same as before, I had a fantastic time and I always leave wishing I lived in that magical land.

The weekend was pretty chill-

• Friday Night: hard meats (including blood sausage), cheese, smoked fish, porto (ours won 500 medals; how many has yours won?), scotch, and camo high life.
• Saturday: The Menfolk went turkey hunting.  Us womenfolk stayed behind and did the shopping and cooking.  Cookie was on point as usual, creating a wonderful meal that included two (2) chickens in a stewpot, the best root mashers ever, sqwish, Katie’s Klever Kreen Keans (Kelicious!) and an Apple Crisp that tasted like it was cooked by a hyper-intelligent Bakery Squid from Universe X.  Alas! The Menfolk did not down a turkey, so the two (2) chickens had to suffice.  We also watched the Badgers poop all over themselves versus Iowa in the Homecoming Extravadanza.
• Sunday: Two activities consumed the day– Shooting Things in the Backyard and Watching The Packers Kick Ass.  Both were fun as all goddamned hell (see above photo) and I hope to do both the next time we travel North to P-Ville.  We shot the effigy, shot our juice-bottle-cum-pigeon, shot cans, and in the grand finale Brian shot a full can of expanding foam.  A good time was had by all.

I hope your weekend was as fun as mine, but it probably wasn’t!

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The Can-do Hotel

Our stay at the Canfield Hotel

Last night we bombed down to the Tri-State area (or is it the Quad Cities?) to have a fine old time at the Canfield Hotel and Diamond Jo’s casino (formerly a riverboat, now a Bellagio-esque resort).

Bottom line: it was the most fun of my goddamned life and I want to go again.

I wrote a review on Google Maps for the Canfield Hotel:

Great place! Affordable rates and it’s real close to the downtown area and the Diamond Jo casino. The native american mannequins in the lobby create a verisimilitude that can’t be matched, and the room was great– clean, with interesting furnishings displaying a love of cats, big and small. After waking from a night of casino action, however, I found out that the weird coffee cups near the coffeemaker had no bottoms and any liquids poured in ended up on the floor. The Rainbow Lounge in the lobby had good folks singing karaoke, too. Long story short, I will definitely stay at the Canfield again.

I gave the place 4 stars; truthfully I wanted to go 4 1/2 stars but Google’s reviews do not afford the reviewer the luxury of half-stars.  Lawman got some pictures of the Native American mannequins so maybe I’ll get those up here at some point; they’re very realistic, inexplicable, and terrifying when you first walk in.

The night was extremely fun and exciting.  It involved roulette, a fun craps session where I had two pretty good rolls, a Blackjack Buttraping, a profitable two rounds of bowling at the Cherry Lanes (apparently the bowling location of choice for recording artist Jewel according the website), some teams of douchebags at the poker tables, and much much more.

The night ended with wwhazz running many blocks to get to an ATM and back before the Rainbow Lounge bar (located in the hotel) closed for the evening.  He almost made it, too!  He also used magic and made pizzas appear right before we passed out.  There was somewhat of a row in the lobby when several gentlemen tried to apparently sneak with us up to our room to get at our pizzas and beer?  I didn’t get it; they weren’t staying in the hotel and we sure as shit didn’t invite them to accompany us.  The last thing I remember is timmer picking up his whole mattress like the incredible hulk and throwing it at me.  Then: poof, I was out like a light.

Short story long: the Canfield Hotel, Diamond Jo’s, and Cherry Lanes get my highest recommendation!  Fun fun fun!

Packers vee The Chicago Pisswizards

Spacebee and I are heading up to Lambeau in a few hours to take in a lovely evening of storied rivalry between the Green Bay Packers and those other guys.  We’ll be staying overnight in some guy’s RV that will be parked in my brother’s wife’s family’s driveway.  Should be a blast– I’ll update twitter with witty tweets LIVE from the game.

I got home safely from the California yesterday.  In a surprising twist, and for the first time in recorded history, my flight went form being delayed 1.5 hours to being scheduled for an on-time departure.  When I saw that I had to throw back the Jameson I’d ordered and hustle to the gate to make it in time for boarding.  I sat next to a helluva guy who was returning from Vegas with friends (if you’re ever in the Arlington Inn, give them all a holllarit and tell them ‘that guy from the plane’ sent you.)

I do apologize to everyone I didn’t see when I was out in the Yay Area (especially GMC), but I’ll be returning to dem parts roundabouts December 6th.  In the meantime, how about y’all try your hand at beating me in the 2009 Whazzmaster Survival Football Extravadanza.  You may win (note: you won’t win.)

Con Games

So I’m packing up the hotel room to leave Gen Con.  It’s been a fun four days, and Alandovos and I are in agreement that we’d do it again (though next year would be dicey cuz the wedding).

What I Did: Mostly WoW TCG constructed events; though I also walked around the exhibit hall a lot.  I’d missed one and a half sets of the WoW card game, so my deck was woefully underpowered and got stamped out pretty quick.  The cool thing was that I saw lots of interesting deck ideas, so I have some stuff to go home and try.

What I Missed: I had wanted to play some competitive Carcassonne or Settlers of Catan, but all events were well sold out prior to the start of the con.   I also would have liked to do some D&D 4e events but I have no idea about any of that stuff so I didn’t try to get in.

What’s Next: Back to the real world. Sigh.

Pizza Crawl and Road Warriors

UPDATE: Got some pictures posted on Flickr

My good friend Tim H. (known round these parts as SushiPowered) took me into Berkeley for a good time pizza crawl and sightseeing festival today. We ate at Zachary’s Pizza (also known as the inspiration for my own well-loved Patxi’s Pizza in Palo Alto) and then moseyed through town to the gourmet ghetto where we were prevented from eating Cheeseboard Pizza by their cursed ‘closed-on-Sundays’ rule.

Zachary’s was really, really good deep dish pizza and I endorse it with my highest recommendation.  We got the Zachary’s Special: sausage, green pepper, onion, and mushroom.  Terrific in every way.

Once presented with the forlorn closed sign at Cheeseboard, we ambled up a block and hit up the Original Peet’s Coffee & Tea.  There’s a small museum in the back with lots of historical Peet’s stuff, and I snapped a few phone pics of the joint.  Definitely cool, since I like Peet’s so much.

On the way out of town Tim showed me Indian Rock Park, from where you can see most of the bridges in the bay area (from san mateo up to golden gate).  It was super fun, and I got some pictures there too, but without a polarizing lens they will all be shit.  Once Tim gets his photos up on Flickr I can try to link them.

Finally, we took the long way out of town due to road construction in the hills, and came back down Claremont Canyon on a way twisty road.  Tim told me about some dudes that rode out of the canyon on longboards and suggested I find the video on YouTube/Vimeo.  Well holy shit, you’ve gotta see this video:

Adam Kimmel presents: Claremont HD from adam kimmel on Vimeo.

That is some pretty cool shit right there, son.  And I can say that I went down that hill in a CAR and it was a rush.

So, good pizza times, great vistas, and I even got firsthand knowledge of a traditional daredevil hangout.  not bad for a Sunday afternoon.  Oh, and all the interesting software talk I could ever want.  I need to make this a priority every time I’m out in the Bay Area.

May Sweeps

Quite a full weekend.  Friday night Spacebee’s parents dropped by on their way into town and we watched the first half of the Brewers/Cubs game.  We headed out to try and meet our nieghbors at The Brink but couldn’t find them, and headed back to the Depot just as the heavens opened up.

Saturday was a full day: farmer’s market in the morning, then we had breakfast at Marigold with Spacebee’s mom and grandmom for mom’s day.  Quick nap, then we hopped in the car to drive to Milwaukee to have dinner with my family for mom’s day as well.  We shot back to my brother’s house to watch the end of the Brewers/Cubs game two.

Sunday morning, we figured that since we had to drive back through Milwaukee to Madison anyways we might as well see if we could wrangle some tickets to the game.  A Long Wong’s Wagon ride and two Standing Room-only tickets later we were watching Rickie Weeks sky a homer to left-field from the right-field foul pole.  It was nice to have standing room tickets as we just ambled around the stadium the entire game and saw lots of cool stuff.  Bad thing: the built a canopy over the FSN desk in right-field so you can’t hang over the fence and jaw at Craig and Davey anymore.  Good thing: the new store is ok, but the renovated store in left field is pretty cool.

I bought a pink bat.  See?

We also stopped off at Eastgate Cinema on our way back into Madison to see Star Trek.  I’ll bottom-line it for you: great movie.  I’m no die-hard Trek fan but I watched it when I was younger and was uncertain how they would shoehorn the new dudes, villains, etc. into the existing framework.  They did a great job, and with the exception of the groan-inducing (to me, but drew cheers from others in the theater) shouting of catchphrases by the characters I had a great time.  Go see it, it’s good.

What’s Up, Dirty Dawgs?

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

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

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

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

HOLLLARIT!

Milwaukee’s Best

Spacebee and I kicked it in Milwaukee last night with good friends Arlo and Jen.  To my delight, I found out that Arlo now has a blog on the interwebs at Arlo’s Bloggity Bloggy Blog-Blog.  To my dismay, I found out that madd has been moonlighting over there in comment section without my knowledge.  I don’t care what other websites he visits, you see, but I damn well want to be able to watch the fun when other comment threads crumble under his expert punditry.  Anyways, we had dinner a terrific Mexican joint across from the airport and then drank crazy beers at a post-modern beer bar.  We finished the night with Rock Band action and this morning Arlo served us tea and pumpkin pie.  I love that guy.

I’ve been crumpled in a chair in O’Hare for last 3 hours waiting for my connection to San Jose.  Barf-a-roo: these are flight times we can believe in, my friends.  Eventually I will saddle up to the front desk at the Crown Plaza and get myself a hunkerin bunker for the next week, but I hate travel so much that… uh, I guess I just hate traveling.  Whatever.

I never followed up that election thread with any sort of results.  FYI: Barack Obama won.  I made merry at the Lawman’s party and am currently cutting together a short documentary of my footage from that fateful day.  Mostly I remember walking through upper middle class near-west side Madison yelling at my phone.  Ultimately I made it to the Blue Moon to hook up with a newly-off-work Spacebee.  I made merry there for awhile as well and then went home and busted upon my pillow a maneuver that I like to call: The Crash.

I’m working on my yearly goals document right now at work and under my ‘Goals/Priorities to Achieve True North’ I have: Be the motherfuckin’ Six Million Dollar Man of making teams STRONGER and FASTER.  It will likely get excised from the final version but whatever.

Anyways, they just bumped my fligh to another gate because they are asshole motherfuckers, so gotta run.  HOLLLAR back you jerks.

My Busted-Ass Website

I see that the few dedicated hobo-lovers that still post here are up in arms over the lack of updates.  Sorry holmes, but a melancholia has set in as my world crumbles around me.  Everything’s right-as-rain on the home front– I couldn’t love my little peanut any more than I do– but aside from that the world is falling to dust.

Brewers: ousted. Badger football: balls.  Packers: meh. My parlay cards: BAD!  My weight: high.  My bank account: low.  My ebay feedback rating: so-so.  My craigslist want ad: unanswered. My gainful employment: perhaps running out.  My stock options: worthless.

Which is not to say that I had a bad 30th birthday.  Spacebee did a wonderful job of tricking the living shit out of me.  I am so stupid, I was on the Booze Cruise and still not eating anything because I didn’t want to spoil my appetite for the non-forthcoming dinner at the Tornado Room.  The birthday tailgate was besieged by legions and legions of bees but we made the best of it.  Thirty people: one stung, which is pretty good, but the one was a small child which wasn’t so great.  He rubbed some metaphorical dirt on it and was on his way, though.  Someday I’ll actually have all the pictures I took up on Flickr, and when that happens I’ll post a link in comments.  Thanks to all who came (not you, CAL).  Props and slops.

I’m thinking of buying a years supply of food. Can’t be too careful, seeing as America’s GDP now hovers somewhere around $12.50 + gratuity.  Am I a paranoid sonuvabitch? Yes, most assuredly.  But I also worried about a housing bust a-way back in 2005, and worried about the stock market a-way back in January 2008.   Sometimes a paranoid motherfucker is right about shit.  Sometimes.

I know you all come here solely for my wit and motherfucking wisdom, so I’ll try to post more.  That is, if the mole men haven’t taken over the country yet of course.