Little Salty

I was watching Sportcenter this morning and I have to admit I'm a little salty. I could care less that my back to back catches weren't shown on TV but when I was watching SC they showed some schmuck in Philly dropping two foul balls. His balls were on consecutive batters and dropped. Mine, which were both caught, were on back to back pitches. Some other schmuck also made "Top Plays" by catching a home run ball with a glove! Come on people! Where is the love for Ryan. Back to back pitches with barehanded catches! I shouldn't have watched SC then I could have just enjoyed my accomplishment.

Sign Me Up!

Last night we went to the Brewers game. Jocelyn had gotten some 300 club tickets from work so we scooped them up and headed to the park. It was a nice night and we tailgated and had some gourmet Metro Mart brats. I added the habanero Monterey jack and the Buffalo chicken brats to my repertoire. Both good but I'll probably skip the Buffalo chicken next time and substitute it for one of the others. We headed into the game and made our way to our seats. There were two other people sitting next to us that got the other set of tickets from Jocelyn's work. We sat and talked and watched the game. Then in the sixth inning I had a life accomplishment. Victor Santos was pitching to Rockies right fielder Brad Hawpe. I don't know what the count was but Hawpe fouled one off and was right at me. The ball had some zip on it, but with my beer in my left hand I bare handed the ball and made the catch. There was some cheering and a couple guys were hooting that I spilt a couple drops of my beer. So I sat down and basked in the glow of my accomplishment. The next bit is a blur really. I know I was sitting down and talking to the others about my "great catch" but I must've been paying close enough attention to the game because the very next pitch Hawpe fouled another one right to me again. I don't know how I did it because I was still holding my newly caught ball and my beer but I caught the second ball and cradled it like catching a football. I now had just caught two balls in two straight pitches! Mind you I am sitting in the third deck of Miller Park so the chances of two straight foul balls being caught by the same person that far up has to be small. I was dumbfounded and really didn't know what to do. I had never caught one ball at a major league game before and I just caught two in two pitches. I took my baseballs and held them up for everyone to see and a bunch of the crowd cheered, it was a great moment. The rest of the game really didn't matter to me because I was on a high. I was just hoping that another ball wouldn't come my way because I would probably drop it or it would hit me in the head and didn't want to ruin this moment. We stayed for the rest of the game and a bunch of people said "nice catches man" and "there is the guy that caught the two foul balls." It was awesome AND the Crew won 6-1. Go Brew Crew! A little side note, the Bucks also won the draft lottery. They had a 6.3% chance of getting the #1 pick and they hit the jackpot and will be drafting #1…

Is That a Pre- or Post-Chili Glow

Saturday was the start of our weekend this week. Adam came over to watch the basketball games and drink a couple brew ha has with us. After the games the three of us went to the Metro for a couple drinks. I actually skipped the martini special this week and drank only beer. The last time I was there was the night we drank hurricanes and I got gut rot from all the sweetness of the drinks. After that we headed over to My Office and finished up the night there. Sunday J, Adam, Stacey and I went to the chili cook off being held at Lakefront Brewery. They had a bunch of different kinds of chili from all over the MKE area. It was $3 to get in and then a dollar for a cup of chili. I forgot my chili tastin' spoon at home but that didn't prevent me from eating upwards of twelve cups of chili. It was a gorgeous day so we finished up our chili eating adventure on the outdoor patio at Lakefront and soaked up some of the spring sun. It was pretty much the consensus in our group that Koppa's had the best chili of the competition. There were many other good chilies including Philly Way, Soup Station, Soup Shack, BBC's, and the official winner Q who made their chili with BBQ brisket and gave you a tortilla with it. We all ate way too much chili and we rolled home and basked in our chili glow. Maybe a chili glow isn't a good way to describe what we were basking in. Either way it was fun. Since a good majority of the Jocelyn's family went to Illinois I have to give them my condolences for Monday's hard fought loss to North Carolina for the NCAA basketball title. You'll get 'em next year tiger!

Pickled Easter Egg Hunt

This weekend is Easter weekend. Friday after work I watched the Badgers play NC State. The Badgers comfortably won which was a refreshing change as opposed to their normal play. I met Luedke after the game at BBC's on North Ave. I had a beer to celebrate the big win and headed home and got some sleep. Saturday was a lot of fun. Luedke and Anna joined me for the Riverwest Pub Crawl. The crawl consisted of 19 bars and you could consume one free beer at each bar. The crawl was $30 and more than worth it. We got our free t-shirt and map and off we went to explore the Riverwest area. Riverwest is actually kind of a sketchy part of town but there were hundreds of people on this bar crawl and there were always groups of people around. All the details of the crawl would take way too long to explain so here is a bulleted list of the highlights. Ate a pickled egg Met two old ladies on the crawl who were wearing plastic cups on their heads and said they were so hungover after last years crawl that their hair hurt Saw memorial to some guy that got killed in front of one of the bars Saw Peep art Saw crazily dressed band at a couple bars got buzzed in through buzzer door by the bartender/doorman at a sketchy bar Purchased old records from a yard sale Ran into guys from Random Lake Met Spike "the mayor of Riverwest" The whole thing was very fun and I must thank L and Anna for going along with me. I had a good time and made it to 18 of the 19 bars. Easter I just stayed at home and watched basketball. I didn't feel like going to Chicago with J so I just stayed put. I made a good ham and will have enough ham to eat for the next couple months. Unfortunately the Badgers lost to North Carolina. They played really good but didn't have quite enough in the end. Happy Easter!

Celebrating The Irish In Me

This was one of the rougher weekends I've had in a while and it started on Thursday with a little bit of St. Patty's celebration. After work I met Luedke and we headed to Sweeney's for some Guinness and Jameson. Neither of us were really feeling the Irish vibe in there so our visit was short lived. From there we went to my Friday lunch spot the Ardor. The Ardor has great food and it didn't disappoint on St. Pat's. I had a delicious corned beef, cabbage and potato dinner there. After that was done we sat around and drank some $2.50 Guinni and played some vids. We were minding out business when out of the blue Schwenker shows up. He was wasting time waiting for Brad Mohn's and randomly stumbled into our neck of the woods. So we sat, drank and played some dice while waiting for Brad. Finally Brad showed up but I was already deep in conversation with some random guy I met sitting at the bar that had a masters degree in art. He had just moved back to Milwaukee to interview to be a professor at a couple area colleges. His specialties were pottery and glass; he was a very interesting person. I was talking to him and everyone else had decided to go to another bar but I had just gotten a fresh beer and was talking to this dude. One beer turned into a couple and I ended up spending almost the whole night at the Ardor. This guy went to Madison too so we had all the college stories to share. Finally it was time to meet up with everyone else. I had gotten a text from Luedke saying he was at My Office so I made my way over there. When I got there there was no Luedke. Not wanting to look like a fool and walk in and walk out I sat down and had a brew. I ran into another character there. A black guy who claimed he was a true to life pimp and was waiting for one of his women. I was interested so I talked to this guy for an hour or so. His woman never showed up but I had had enough of this holiday and headed home a drunken solo Irishman. Work on Friday was pretty tough and I know now why I don't drink during the week. I went into work a couple hours late but it was no big deal because two of my three bosses were out and I didn't have much to do. For lunch I went back to the scene of the crime, the Ardor and talked with the owners about the craziness of the night before. After what felt like sixteen hours of work was over I went home to get ready for the night's basketball game. Luedke, Adam, Stacey, Chappy, J and I drove to Delahunt's joint to watch the Badgers game. It was a good time.…