Getting My Milwaukee Culture

Back to back weekends with the Marti clan, a dangerous yet eventful endeavor. When we were up North last week Paul had mentioned to me that he was going to the Food and Froth festival at the Milwaukee Museum on Saturday. The festival consisted of 200 beers and a bunch of Milwaukee area restaurants positioned throughout the exhibits for sampling, both culture and beer. Jocelyn was going to go to Chicago so I thought that meeting up with Martis would be fun. The festival started at seven so I walked to the museum at about quarter after six. When I got there the lobby was packed with people waiting to get in with their sampler glass. Once the gates open I strolled around the streets of old Milwaukee and the Sahara desert sampling beers. The Martis were running late and I met them at about half past. The group consisted of mister and missus Marti, Paul and his wife, Craig and some of Paul's friends. The event was very cool. It was fun to stroll through the museum and drink some samples. The event museum was packed and I had heard that the event sold out. We drank and sampled until ten when the event shutdown. So after twenty plus mini beers we decided to go to Wolski's. It took us about an hour to get out of the parking structure. By the time we got to Wolski's everyone was geared up for a beer. The group got crazy and had fun and those are the most details I can tell you. I walked home from Wolski's at an unknown time and got home at an unknown time. I'll definitely keep my eyes open for this one next year, it was great time.

Up Nort’ ‘ey

Last weekend wasn't even worth writing about. The weekend was Doomed from the start. By Doomed I mean I spent the entire weekend playing my new video game Doom 3. I like to just waste weekends on video games instead of spending every night during the week doing little by little. I did solve it so I can have my life back. The other highlight was I switched my computer back to a tower case from my little cube case. I need more space for storage so I'm back to the full size. Nothing really even worth mentioning last weekend; boring and geeky. This past Monday was worth mentioning. We had our tasting for the food that we're going to have at the wedding and my is it good. We're having too much to list so all I can say is everyone will be pleasantly stuffed when it is over. That brings us to this weekend. I was finally able to make the trip to the Marti's cabin up North in the Crivitz area. Chad has invited me to about ten of these trips and I've always been busy on the weekend that they go up. I finally got to go along. Chad flew in Friday afternoon and Pyrek picked him up from the airport. After work I went home, packed up my long underwear and went over to Darren's apartment to meet up with Chad and Ryan. Ryan drove us three and a half hour drive up to the Northwoods. We met Telly (who I haven't seen in about six years), Chad's dad and brothers at a bar/restaurant in Crivitz. The bar was your typical up North snowmobilers watering hole. We had a couple drinks there and some pizzas. While we were warming up in the bar the weather was getting colder and colder and dropped to -10 without the wind chill. After we finished eating we drove north the additional twenty minutes to get to Amburg which is the actual town the cabin is in. Amburg has two bars and we split our night between the two. The bars were your typical up North taverns with your typical up North clientele. There was a nice mix of the hick locals and the snowmobilers taking a break from driving eighty miles an hour to the next bar. After the bars we headed to the cabin and staked out where everyone was going to sleep in the cabin. There were ten guys staying there and there was enough room for all of us, barely. So after eating some more pizzas to soak up all the Miller Lite I hit the floor to get some sleep. Friday night was the worst night of sleep I have ever had. I actually didn't get any sleep, not one wink. Craig has a new dog and the thing stayed up the entire night whimpering and yelping. The thing did not shut up for one second. I was so irate and I thought the thing…

My Waist Is Size XX-XL

Not much doing this weekend. Friday low key and Saturday we ran up to Sheboygan to get Jocelyn's car fixed at my brother's. We didn't stay overnight though and after a stop at the Golden Chopsticks buffet and Piggly Wiggly we were back in MKE by seven. Sunday was action packed with my third annual Super Bowl party. Chappy, Katie, Adam, Stacy, Todd and Steph were the party goers at Apt 54's XL party. I spent Saturday night doing some of the food prep work. Sunday morning I woke up early to get all the food made. This year's menu included BBQ Pork on Sheboygan hard rolls, chicken wings, potato skins, cole slaw, taco dip, French onion dip, and black bean dip. As is tradition I made way too much food. Everyone rolled in right before kickoff and I immediately started shoving food down their throats. The game was probably the most boring Super Bowl that I have ever seen in my life. The Steelers beat the Seahawks by a final score of something to something. Even though the game stunk we had a lot of fun. Everyone enjoyed the food and it's always fun to get together with friends for some revelry. Steph made a Steelers football cake that looked very professional. I wouldn't allow anyone to stop eating after the cake though, I had wings to get rid of. Even after the force feeding of my guests I still had a ton left overs. After the game everyone headed home and we cleaned up. It was another good time to add to the book of good times.

Not A Productive Year, So Far

Happy New Year all! This was a wild New Year. This past week I had that nasty cold/flu bug that has been going around. I tried my hardest to get rid of it in time for the New Year weekend. Friday I took it easy and started to get things ready for the New Year dinner that I was throwing. I was feeling significantly better so that was a good thing. A couple people asked if I wanted to go out but I didn't want to have a relapse. So Friday night I took it easy and got ready for the last day of the year. Saturday I woke up feeling about 85% to 90%. That was enough healing to get excited to have a good time. Jocelyn and I didn't feel like standing around at a party so we decided to have Todd and Steph over for a nice dinner and then go out after that if we felt like it. I spent almost all day Saturday cooking. The menu was bruschetta, salt and horseradish encrusted prime rib with horseradish sauce, quintessential roasted vegetables, roasted potatoes, creamed spinach, champagne Jell-O, and tapioca pudding. Todd and Steph arrived at about five. We had some drinks and the bruschetta and waited for the prime rib to finish up. We dug into the good stuff at about seven. Everything turned out great. The prime rib ended up being a little salty due to the salt paste that was rubbed on it but it meat inside was wonderful. After dinner we had our champagne Jell-O which ended up having a little more kick too it then we expected. Due to that little kick things started picking up and getting fun. Luedke and Anna came over to join us in our celebration. We turned on the tunes and played Cranium. It was the first time I played the game but it was very fun. It's a cross between Pictionary, charades and Trivial Pursuit. Jocelyn and I ended up having beginner's luck and pulling out the victory. After that we watched a bit of the New Year's celebrations on TV and waited for our countdown. The New Year came in with some picture on the Canon and some more champagne. After that we got a call from a motley crew coming downtown from the other party. They stopped in by us and we managed to find room for ten more people in our little place. The tunes were pumping and we were having a great time. The party started to thin out as people headed home. There was a pretty good size core group left though that wanted to head out. So some time after two we headed to the bars. We went to My Office and spent a good amount of time there. At about four thirty we decided that we had had enough and headed home. On the way home were needlessly sidetracked and ended up going to another bar. We went to…

Ba Hum-flu-bug

Ah, Christmas vacation. My mom came to down to Milwaukee to pick me up on the 23rd. Jocelyn went to Illinois to spend the holidays with her family and since she took the car I had to get a ride. On the way home we stopped by my Aunt Linda's to drop off an iPod I had to pick up for her. We were there for a couple hours and sampled some of the holiday food that she was making. After that I dropped my mom off and headed to Falls. I stopped by Randy before going out to drop off all the Christmas presents. I got a hold of Marti and met him and Pyrek and their significant others at The Other Place. We were there for a drink and then we headed back over to the O. I spent the rest of the night there. I ran in to Kotnik who I hadn't seen in a while so I talk to him for the remainder of the night. Christmas Eve day was on the couch by Rich's. About five I was finally able to pry myself off the couch and get ready. It was the usual Christmas Eve routine this year. We headed over to my uncle Jimmy's for a little Christmas Eve festivities. My godmother Terri gave me my usual gift of Bloody Mary mix. I used to love drinking the stuff as a kid, and I still do, so Terri makes sure I get my yearly fix. She also bought me a very nice baseball display case for the foul balls that I caught. The rack is huge though so I'm going to need to get about fifteen more balls somehow. I guess I'll have to go to forty Brewers games this year. After watching some Christmas Story, eating some dips and meatballs it was time for midnight mass. Mass was nice as usual and it really gets you in the spirit of the holidays. After church my mom dropped me off at Rich's and I got to bed immediately so Santa would come and visit. I didn't do much on Christmas day. I had Randy pick me up at about three for our family gathering. I must have been a bad boy this year because I got a lump of coal in the form of an awful Green Bay Packer team losing yet another game. After the bitter loss I washed the taste away with some Christmas wine. Dinner was very good. We had prime rib and a whole bunch of other side dishes. After that we exchanged gifts. It was the normal craziness of paper flying everywhere and toys being strewn all over the living room. After the gifts we headed home. It was pretty early, about ten, but I needed some sleep so I decided to just call it a night instead of find something to do. The day after Christmas I had some work to do so I had to get back…