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 would shut up eventually but it never stopped. We went to bed around three thirty and the fishing folk were getting up at five so I thought I’d tough it out until then. So I rested my eyes for ninety minutes but no sleep was to be had.

The people that were going to go ice fishing pressed the snooze button a couple times and didn’t get up until around six thirty. I woke up with the fishers and complained about the dog and told them they were nuts for going out in the cold to fish. So once the left with the dog, amen, I claimed one of the beds and got a good hour of sleep. After my cat nap I bundled up to join the guys on the ice. There was a tournament going on on the lake so there were a bunch of people sitting in zero degree weather looking into a hole. It was nice and sunny without one cloud in the sky but flat out cold. I stayed outside a little over an hour. Nobody saw a fish all day. Even the fish knew that it was too cold to be out there. The only fish I saw the whole weekend was breaded. After fishing we headed to the same bar from the night before to get a hamburger. We ate and then headed back to the cabin for a nap. The nap was a necessity for all. After everyone woke up we headed to the Amburg Pub for the ice fishing awards and a raffle. The raffle was a fun. They were selling paint stick paddles for huge hams, huge pork loins, cheap leather jackets, a bread machine and a rotisserie grill. I dropped at least $20 on the paddles but came away meat free. Chad won a turkey and Darren won a Budweiser collector’s beer bottle that was promptly drank by everyone. During the raffle they have prizes for almost everyone. Most everyone in the group ended up with some sort of booze shirt and a shot glass. After all the prizes were gone so were we. We took ourselves back to the same bar where we had lunch and got another burger for dinner. We asked the girl if she could just redo our orders from lunch. We stayed at this bar for a good portion of the night. There was craziness throughout the night and I haven’t laughed so hard in a long long time. Some of the highlights included an atomic wedgie, the burning of the aforementioned atomic wedgie underwear in the wood stove, fun with taxidermied animals, the toilet papering of a mounted moose, and other craziness. Props to the bartender. I really don’t know how she was able to put up with all our crap. Probably because money was flying around like crazy. After we drank the bar out of shorties of Miller Lite, the group drink of choice for the weekend, we went to one last bar called The Northwoods over by the cabin. The bar is in the middle of nowhere. We stormed into there like a tornado. There were a couple locals there that weren’t too happy when we came in and they made it clear to us that they didn’t want us there. They yelled at one of the guys and then the local guy went off on a tirade. He called the bar a “family place”, told us that he knew that we were “fancy” and “we had to be from down south, someplace Sheboygan or South” and finally he insisted that “I’m not inbred, everyone thinks we’re all inbred up here and I’m not inbred.” The last point continued to be reiterated throughout the night even after the confrontation calmed down. We stayed there for a little over an hour and we all decided we had had enough and headed back to the cabin. After some more pizzas at the cabin and more craziness we all managed to find our sleeping space and concluded a very long day.

Sunday we cleaned up the cabin and headed home about noon. We stopped at a bar in Wausaukee and had one last up North burger. The burger I got was really good and consisted of one Italian sausage patty and one hamburger patty. Good stuff. We made it back to Milwaukee around four and I spend the rest of the day on the couch. I had a lot of fun and a thank you goes out to Chad and his family.

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 a place called Brio Trattoria. The group had thinned down significantly but J and I were still kicking. We ended up getting home about six thirty which was very late/very early and a little ridiculous. It was very fun but I ended up paying the price.

I woke up at noon on Sunday for the Packers’ last game of the year. I was able to watch the first half through one eye but I was not in the best of shape. I watched the second half in the bedroom and struggled through the game. The Packers beat half a Seahawks team to finish a dismal 4-12. I really hope Favre comes back. I don’t want him to go out like this. Todd and Steph had stayed at are place to watch the game and they headed home after the game. I drifted in and out of consciousness the whole day and wasted the very first day of the year. Not a good start.

I had off Monday as well but didn’t do much. J and I watched TV and wasted the second day of the year. I’m two for two. Happy New Year everyone! May it be more productive than mine is thus far.

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 to Milwaukee. My mom, Randy and nephew brought me back. We stopped by Kopp’s on the way down so I added to my holiday weight gain with a burger and some ice cream. Once I arrived home I did my work so I wouldn’t have to worry about it the rest of the week. Adam and Stacey didn’t have to work the next day so they called and asked if I was up to anything. The came over and we watched the tube and had a couple beers. Jocelyn got home about nine but because she had to work she really just wanted to relax. So Adam and I got out of her hair and headed to Flannery’s. Stacey didn’t want to go so it was just the two of us. We sat there for a bit and they headed over to My Office to close out the night.

It ended up being a big mistake going out because some mongrel gave me the nasty cold bug that has been going around. I could’ve gotten it at Kopp’s or at home and it was just incubating but either way I was now sick for my week off. I planned on doing a whole bunch of stuff but Tuesday through Friday I didn’t do anything. My week off was super boring because I couldn’t do anything. I ran a couple errands to get some fresh air but for the most part I just kept my butt planted on the couch. I watched about two movies a day because daytime TV is so awful. All these channels and there is not one thing on that I would even think of watching. So, boring week off, and a wasted week off.