Free At Last

No wedding and no anything to do this weekend! What a relief. Friday J and I stayed in and watched some TV and had a nice dinner. I made seafood marinara with scallops and shrimp that we had over some angel hair pasta. We had a little wine and some French bread with the pasta. I love scallops and the marinara turned out very good. I had forgotten how great a quiet dinner at home could be. Friday was just what the doctor ordered. I woke up and had a weird feeling. A feeling of being unfettered and free. I didn't have ANYTHING on my schedule! I spent most of the morning getting caught up with my side jobs. Once I finished that I plopped down on the couch and watched some college football. I think being out and about every weekend has really affected me because I started to get a little stir crazy. I called up Luedke and Adam to see if they wanted to go on the Lakefront brewery tour. They wanted to go so Luedke, Anna, Adam, Greg, Jocelyn and I went on the tour. We skipped the tour all together and just had some beers. We sat on the boardwalk area outside and enjoyed the early Fall weather. After the brewery we went to the new Brothers on Water Street to watch the Badger game. Brothers had a two for one special until seven and we all took full advantage of it. We watched the Badgers win and stayed at Brothers until 10. After that we split up. J, Adam and I went to the Metro. I had one very unnecessary appletini. After our one drink we headed to Mykano's for a late night gyro as a night cap. The Packers lost to the Browns at Lambeau?!?!? We're 0-2 and our season is over. Are we really the worst team in the league? Why is Sherman still on the sideline?

O’ Canada

VACATION! I had a full week of vacation last week and to say I had been looking forward to it would have been an understatement. After work on Friday we drove to Chicago to spend the night at Jocelyn's mom's house so we could get going in the early morning. Friday night we had some Chicago stuffed crust pizza and the cheesy deliciousness was a great way to start my vacation. We went to bed pretty early so we could get up early and head to Canada. We woke up at about three on Saturday morning. We had already packed the car so all we had to do was wake up and drag ourselves to the car. Marissa and Chad (Jocelyn's sister and her boyfriend), Arianne (the other sister), J, me and Jocelyn's mom slept walked to the car and started our journey. Jocelyn's mom took the first shift and we were off. The first part of the trip was fairly uneventful. I have a problem sleeping in cars so while everyone was snoozing I was taking in the night scenery in such beautiful places as Gary, IN and Kalamazoo, MI. The ride from Chicago to the Canadian border seemed very short and before I knew it we were in Canada. From there we cruised by Toronto and headed straight North to Port Loring which is by North Bay. On our way we stopped at a McDonald's for breakfast and a roadside hamburger stand for some delicious burgers. One thing that is different in Canada is the way they eat French fries. They put brown gravy and vinegar on their fries. The hamburger stand was my first exposure to the gravy fries which are called poutine. They were pretty good but my burger was delicious. After that we finished our trip and we made it to the Port Loring in about fourteen hours for the whole trip. As soon as we got into town we stopped at a little grocery store to pick up some food and a liquor store to pick up large amounts of vital Canadian lager. We had to drive the last miles down a gravel road in a car that was now packed tighter than a sardine can. At the end of the gravel road was a boat that we took to our final destination, Little Pine Isle. It took two trips to get us and our equipment and groceries over to the island. We immediately started up a fire, turned on the music and started unpacking. Once we got unpacked we some dinner. After dinner we decided to go into town for the big corn roast. I felt very at home at the corn roast. It could have been any of the summer picnics or brat frys in the Sheboygan area. The only thing that made this different is that the money we used to buy our beer was multicolored. The beer cooler behind the sawhorse bar was actually a canoe that was filled with…

I Am A Meaty Sauce

My friend Chris sent me this great email: Are you interested in learning about your Ancestors' life? Here is a short story about our city of Naples. We hope you will enjoy reading it. Proverb in dialect: Vide Napule e po' muore (Vedi Napoli e poi muori) See Naples and then die There are legends that tell the story of the city of Naples and many others who tell a story of the origin of almost everything else. Even the Neapolitan meat sauce called Ragu' or RRau' (dialect) has one: It was the end of the 1300s in Naples and the Compagnia dei Bianchi (Brotherhood of the Whites - established for the purpose of helping the poor against tyranny and starvation) used to walk around the city preaching "Peace and Forgiveness". At that time the "Palace of the Emperor" (the building is still standing on Via Tribunali and was home to Charles, Emperor of Constantinople and of Maria Di Valois daughter of King Carlo D'Angio') was inhabited by an aristocrat, unkind and merciless to many. If the preaching of the Brotherhood convinced almost all the population to make peace with their enemies, only the man living in the "Palace of the Emperor" bearing ancient and vicious grudges refused to follow the preaching. Not even his 3-month old son was able to convince him after he miraculously spoke three times the words: Peace and Forgiveness". The aristocrat continued to be blinded by anger and revenge until one day his wife tried to soften him by cooking some pasta, maccheroni. The Holy Providence filled the dish with a sauce full of blood. It was then that the stubborn man finally decided to make peace with his enemies and become part of the Brotherhood. His wife reacted to this miraculous behavior by cooking the pasta, which magically turned red again. That mysterious sauce was so good and tasty that he decided to call it "Rau'" like his son. The Recipe of Napolitano Ragu': This traditional tomato and meat sauce takes a long time to prepare, needing between 3 and 5 hours of very gentle cooking. If you are using a piece of leg, tie the meat into a roll. Use a terracotta casserole if available. Place the diced bacon fat and lard in the casserole, heat and when it starts melting place the meat inside. Cover with water and cook at moderate heat covered with a lid. When all the water has evaporated, pour a glass of good red wine on and let it evaporate on low heat. Turn the meat occasionally so that it does not stick to the bottom of the pan, adding the extra wine. When it has all evaporated add the tomato sauce and cook for another half hour. Add 2 glasses of water and cook on low heat with the lid on until the sauce is thick and dark. Remove the meat, which can be used apart. If it has broken up completely as in the case of…

Must Be Fall, The Weddings Are Over

Believe it or not this weekend was the last of the summer weddings. It has been a long summer and I admit that I am relieved that it is finally over. This wedding was in East Troy so it was fairly close and we didn't have to spend the night. Billy and Stephanie had their wedding in a quintessential small town church. The weather was pretty hot so all the doors and windows were open with a nice breeze. The wedding party was by far the largest that I have ever seen with ten attendants on each side. There seemed to be about the same amount of people up by the alter than there were in the pews. The wedding was nice and the little church and summer breeze added a lot to the experience. After the wedding we went to the reception which was at a golf course a couple miles away. My brother Rich was one of the few people that wasn't in the wedding party so we spent some time at the bar before the reception started. The meal was a very tasty cut of prime rib so I was happy. After the meal we headed to a patio, smoked some cigars, and had some brews. We concluded the night with a couple dances and headed back to MKE to conclude the summer wedding season for me. Let the relaxing weekends begin. See you in Canada!

Down By The River…

On Friday Jocelyn made arrangements for one of our college friends, Erin, to come over and hang out. She came over about seven. We drank some beers and listened to some music while we waited for her husband to get off of work. He showed up about ten and we hung out and played some cards. Her husband Chris is a fellow tech guy so I finally found someone to talk geek with. We made some pizzas in my new pizza oven and spent the rest of the night at our place. While we were talking we discovered that they were going to a wedding in Falls tomorrow, as were we. So before we called it a night we made plans to meet up with them tomorrow night. We drove to Sheboygan early Saturday morning to go to Tyler Schueffner's wedding. We had to stop in Random on the way up because I forgot by camera at Craig's the weekend before. I picked it up and we headed off. We stopped at a couple stores to take care of some errands. The weather was perfect for an outdoor wedding, which this was. The wedding was at the Pine Lodge in Falls and was a nice small wedding. The wedding included some very cool alternatives to typical wedding parts. Instead of the unity candle Tyler and Angela took two vials of different color sand and poured them into a bottle. The sand mixing represented the coming together of two lives yet you could still see the two different colors of sand to represent the separate lives as well. They also said an Apache wedding prayer which was cool as well. After the wedding the wedding tent was cleared out and converted to the reception tent. We had the normal Falls wedding fare, chicken and tips. Of course I proceeded to eat way to much chicken because the skin is just too darn good. After the last morsels of chicken were consumed an area was cleared away for a dance floor. Tyler had gotten this really good pianist guy who was a professor in Madison and plays at a bar in his spare time. He was great and sounded a lot like Randy Newman who did the Toy Story song "You Got a Friend In Me". I wasn't able to do much dancing because of my hammy but I did get out on the floor to do a polka. I also caught a frog that was trying to get back to his Sheboygan River home. So I helped him get back home and had fun grossing out the ladies first. The night was really great. Tyler and Angela did a great job and I felt privileged to be one of the people to help them celebrate their wedding. I also got to hang out with a couple old high school friends Dale Karls and Sheila Tenpas. I also met Tyler's air force buddy who was a fellow tech junkie so we had…