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The weekend.

Tuesday, June 29th, 2010

Big weekend. On Saturday we went to the Brewers-Mariners game in Milwaukee. We first went to the Miller Brewery and had some beer and went on the tour and stuff. Their tour wasn’t nearly as good as the Budweiser tour I took last year. They both handed out free beer. But I think the cool thing about the Budweiser tour was that they showed pretty much everything and there was just more stuff to show.

Miller had two different movies and they really didn’t show all that much. The only unique things about the Miller tour was that Miller had some really old caves they used to store the beer in because the caves were cold and they showed the warehouse where all the beer was before shipping. That place was gigantic. I mean it was huge. Really gave a great perspective on how much beer they make in a day.

We go to the stadium about 45 minutes before the start of the game and we grilled up some food and sat in some lawn chairs. I bought a grill last week and it ended up making some pretty tasty food. I was pretty happy that everything went well. After we ate, the grill cooled off pretty fast because it was a gas grill and by the time we cleaned up and got ready to go inside it had cooled off. The game itself really wasn’t all that interesting considering it had two teams I really didn’t care about. I was glad to see the Mariners win because the Brewers are in the same division as the Pirates. The seats were nice because they were in the shade the whole game and stuff.

When the game was over, we drove over to downtown and saw the lakefront. After that we drove pretty much straight back to Iowa.

On Sunday we went to a wedding. It was cousins wedding. I wasn’t really sure if I wanted to go or not. I really don’t know her that well and it was about 1.5 hours away, in Cedar Falls. My sister talked me in to going so that her boyfriend wouldn’t get bored. It was a pretty good wedding. The ceremony was at a theater and the reception was at a ball room outside of town.

On the ride home we watched Field of Dreams and then we played some Trivia Pursuit at home, which I won and then finally got to bed around 1:00 in the morning.

So yeah today was back to normal which is nice.

Oh, 11 days ago I reached level 80 in Warcraft with my very first character. It’s really different now. There’s no more experience points and so I spend most of my time doing dungeons and stuff. I’ve also done a lot of fishing in the game. And I’ve kind of just screwed around. Another nice thing is that it seems like quests are handing out more gold when ya do quests at level 80 since you’re not getting experience points anymore.

Also I finally got the delicious chocolate cake recipe this morning. But it’s a total lie.

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Road Trip 2010.

Thursday, May 6th, 2010

So I’m thinking of going to Pittsburgh again. The thing is that I’ve noticed that the airlines are too freaking expensive and inconvenient. Here in Dubuque, for example, the ticket price for the days I wanna go are nearly $600. Even the ticket prices for the Cedar Rapids airport are nearly $500. So doing the math in my head tonight while milking, I’ve realized that driving there makes a lot more sense. First of all, we have the driving time. I might miss one full day of work more than originally planned, which would be a Thursday. I’d get there Thursday night after a full day of driving. Originally, I figured leave on a Friday morning and come back by Monday afternoon with the plane from Cedar Rapids. Sadly, however, hotels are fucking expensive. I remember when I could go to Pittsburgh on a plane and stay at a hotel for a few days and go to a few games for less than $500. That just isn’t possible anymore.

But mostly, I want to drive there for the car, because he’s always stuck in the garage and not doing anything and not going anywhere. He needs a nice long road trip. Just me and the car and that awesome iPod car stereo I bought last year. It’ll be fucking awesome.

Also the game tonight was fucking awesome. The Pirates beat the Cubs 11-1. The Cubs starter was out after just two innings and the Pirates Brian Burres really shut down the Cubs, which is cool considering he was a minor league free agent they signed.

Watching Judge Judy now. Judy asks the asshole defendant how much money he got from the plaintiff and he says $2080. In the audience behind him this woman opens her mouth and her eyes bulge out. It’s fucking funny.

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Weekend Stuff.

Monday, February 8th, 2010

On Friday I drove to St. Louis to hang out with Jennie and John for the weekend. We went out and had crab at a Crabshack place. It was good, but I wouldn’t have it more than once a year or so. We then watched The Hangover, which was funny, but not for everyone. The Mike Tyson cameo was the best part.

On Saturday night we went to the Blues game against the Blackhawks. The Blues got totally screwed by a stupid ref who couldn’t see the puck and that cost the Blues a goal. So instead of regulation ending with a tie, the Blackhawks went home with a 2-1 win. We also went to the Hardrock Cafe, which is tasty.

On Sunday we had the Super Bowl party. It was hard to care too much about the game since I honestly didn’t care much about who won. I’m glad the Saints won since they never won it all before and all that. But I would have been glad if the Colts and Peyton Manning had won it too. He’s a very cool guy. During the party a 3 or 4 year old boy got really interested in World of Warcraft. So he asked what you could be. So I put my guy away and went along and showed him the “Create a new character” page and I showed him what he could be. I teased him a little saying he looked like a Gnome. His older brother told me to make a Tauren hunter. So I did. And they thought it was really cool he had a gun. But he kept pushing me to be a zombie (The Forsaken in the game). So I made up an Undead Warrior for him, he couldn’t be a Warlock or anything like that because those guys are wearing dresses and he said they couldn’t have hair because that’s girly too. So I started doing quests with the bald warrior when he said he wanted a guy with two daggers. So I quit on that guy and made an Undead Rogue for him and did a few quests. At that point, my laptop ran out of power and the football game was hitting the middle of the fourth quarter and I wanted to see what happened so I told him that’s it for today and he got up and did other stuff ’till his grandma wanted to leave. After everyone left, Jennie and John put on Family Guy and I fell asleep during it.

This morning I woke up and started reading through teh blogz and I looked outside and noticed it was snowing out. I thought I better get going. So I quickly packed up and left at about 6:45. It’s amazing how much worse the roads were in Missouri compared to Iowa. Missouri, the roads were about 1/2 covered in snow. In Iowa, crossed the border and the roads were all clear. Also in Southern Iowa, I noticed a giant billboard that had a green background and in white had the name Jesus. That Jesus guy sure is narcissistic for putting his name up on a billboard like that. Got back to Dubuque around 1:00 and had everything unpacked and put away by 2:00.

Now back to my regularly scheduled programming.

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A weekend away.

Sunday, December 6th, 2009

I’m at Jennie’s this weekend. It’s nice. Saturday was my first full day off since April. So that was cool. We went to Chilli’s Friday night for dinner. Yesterday, they finally got the cable and internet installed after they moved in here last month. I played some more World of Warcraft and finally got another quest done and got to level 7. I’m a hunter and still need to learn to do more stuff. Saturday we went to the mall which was insanely busy, I suppose that’ll be my once a decade trip to a mall on a Christmas shopping Saturday. The cool thing is that looking through the iPod Touches they had out at the Apple Store, they all had copies of Ramp Champ, which is pretty cool.

In other completely non-related news, I’ve been having weird dreams lately. There’s this girl I went out with late last year, early this year and the last three weeks, I’ve been having dreams about her. The first one, I got in from chores late at night and I eat dinner, shower and then think I’ll go upstairs and take a nap for a little while. I get in to bed with just boxer shorts on and I look over and she’s there and says “I just thought I’d make my self at home.” The next one a week later, it’s about 110 F out and her AC is broken. Her kids are at her parents house and I agree to help clean up the place for some reason. We both do it in our underwear which is kind of weird. Then last week, I’m going #1 in the bathroom at her place when the shower turns on. She’s in it and says that she’s very dirty and needs someone to help clean her off. So I agree to that.

So yeah, very sexualized dreams. Not unusual in the sense that they have sex or a girl taking a shower in them. Mostly unusual because she’s in it. Not sure what that means at all. It’s usually involves girls I don’t know, so it’s weird to have it be some girl who I actually know.

Well it’s almost 5:00 and I should go back to sleep. I’ve been up for about an hour and my laptop needs power which is out of reach.

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Road Trip 2.0

Tuesday, April 7th, 2009

Well, I’m in St. Louis again. This time, it’s to catch the Pirates-Cardinals game at 7:00 tonight. I’m pretty nervous about tonight because they won yesterday. That happens a lot, they’ll win right before I come or right after I leave, but lose when I’m there to see them. Oh well.

Last night’s game was awesome. Mostly awesome thanks to the Cardinals awful bullpen. I mean, they’d be a great team if they had a decent bullpen. It was just a regular Pirates-Cardinals game from last year. They get a good or great start and the bullpen comes in and deficates. With any luck, the Pirates can take advantage of that terrible bullpen once again.

Otherwise, how about Sabathia. 7 years, $160 million and he goes only 4 innings and gives up fifty runs or something like that. That’s why you don’t spend that kind of money on guys like that…

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Back from the road again.

Monday, February 9th, 2009

Ok, so I’m back from St. Louis. It was a pretty good time. On Sunday we went and toured the Anheuser Busch brewery. It was fun. At the end of the tour we got two free beers. It’s pretty cool that when I drink a Budweiser, Busch, Bud Light or Busch Light or Michelob I know exactly where it comes from. It’s also reassuring that the place seemed impeccably clean and organized. I also liked the story about the wonderful day that prohibition finally ended, they had beer ready to ship out east to toast the somewhat cool politicians who helped put it to an end.

I went along and bought some fancy beers from them, including a six pack of Michelob Honey Lager and a variety six pack, with a bunch of different beers. Of course going to the brewery made me think of the Simpsons Episode where Homer went to the Duff Brewery. I have to say that having been to a real brewery, it’s very unrealistic. Unless they probably based it on a visit to the Miller Brewery. :-) So tonight I had to watch that episode.

After the brewery visit, we went back to Jennie’s place and sat around, watched Apollo 13 and Super Troopers. Eventually we just decided that Apollo 13 was better. Then we had some pizza and watched something else, I can’t remember what. I then decided to head back to the hotel because I was getting tired and wanted to play with my computer a bit. I put the beer in my car for the night and it didn’t freeze and explode. Otherwise, I just sort of hung out and watched some episodes of Penn and Teller Bullshit on iTunes that I had. I fell asleep around 10:30 and woke up around 8:00, but that was after several trips to the bathroom during the night. I felt a little sick when I came back to the hotel and I spent the night stinking up the room. Mom said it might be that I wasn’t used to the food I was eating there, which is a good point, I usually don’t have that kind of food all in one weekend. I personally can’t wait until tomorrow morning to get up and get me some Honey Bunches of Oats with Strawberries.

Overall, a nice couple days off. I think the best part was the hockey game. Nothing like a major professional sporting event for some fun. Also during a time out they had a Spaceballs Look A Like thing where they pointed the camera at people in the stands who supposedly looked like characters from Spaceballs. I was afraid when it came to Barf, they’d point it at me but they didn’t. The guy they said looked like Lonestar looked at the camera and mouthed “Me? Really?” probably because he looked nothing like him. Of course when it came to Pizza the Hut, they pointed it at a guy with an Avalanche jersey on…

Low point was probably sitting in the car forever on the interstate in Illinois, that was boring and long and kinda sucky.

I was listening to an ESPN thing about the A-Rod steroid use thing. We keep hearing about how all the records are tainted now and that none of them since the mid-90′s is real. The question though, is who has an hasn’t used steroids to improve their game? And how do we know that they have or have just been accused of using steroids? Since everyone is supposedly using steroids, maybe there’s nothing tainted about the records.

Sure there are some guys who have never been accused or associated with steroids use like Ken Griffey Jr. Until a few days ago, A-Rod was one of them. In fact there wasn’t really any proof that he did use steroids until this story broke. His body didn’t balloon up to some ridicilious shape and his head stayed the same. Sure he got bigger, but it looked like something anyone could do by lifting weights and excercising regularly. But in summary, I’m getting tired of hearing about how they have to throw out all the records since the end of the strike and all that. Since then the Pirates haven’t won dick, I would think some of these sports guys would be more worried about that than the fact that everyone is on steroids.

Of course today, he immediately did an interview and admitted to it and stated when exactly he did it, so I guess all is forgiven? I mean, that’s what they said Pete Rose needed to do in order to be allowed in to the Hall of Fame.

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We toured the city and elsewhere.

Sunday, February 8th, 2009

The Baseball Players Union basically covered up A-Rod’s steroid use. Next they warned the players in 2004 when the random drug testing was happening. I guess it wasn’t random enough. Of course in 03 and 04, A-Rod did not have his best offensive years, with a rather unspectacular OPS+ of 147 and 131. Of course after that, he took off with some really good years. 

So yesterday morning I had breakfast and just sorta hung out here in the hotel room until about 11:45. Then Jennie and I left and we finished off our Texas Roadhouse meals at her apartment. Then her friend John showed up and we went from there to Busch stadium to go on the Busch Stadium Tour. There was only about a dozen people on the tour. The tour guide made a big mistake though, when he claimed that the Cardinals were only the 2nd team to open a new ballpark with a World Series title. He, of course said that both the 2006 Cardinals with the new Busch and 1923 Yankees with the old Yankee Stadium were the two. He must not know about the 1909 Pirates opening Forbes Field with a World Series win.

After that it was to the Arch where it basically took forever to get up to the top. We got there at 2:15 or 2:30 and they didn’t have tickets until the 4:10 departure. So we had to wait around a lot. Then we got in line so that at 4:10, we’d be ready to go, but the told us to go wait at the end of the line, which we did and it moved so fast we were up front and they told us to go back again, instead we wondered off and did some other things for a few minutes and when we got back we ended up not being able to go up until almost 4:30. But it was crazy, the whole premise seemed to be to wait in line in order to wait in another line and then wait for the ticket color to be called and then wait for the lift. And the first line was horribly inefficient. They should have called the time on the PA so that people knew when to get in line. At the top, it was pretty much the same as I remember it in 1990, which is kinda disappointing, but oh well. It was pretty cool seeing how some stuff changed since 1990.

After that we walked back to the car and drove over to Union Station, had some food and then went to the hockey game with Jennie’s roommate. The first period the Blues were just ok. They didn’t score, but allowed the Avs to score a goal about halfway through the period. Jennie and her roommate left to walk around for a while so John and I went back to our seats to watch the game. The Blues came back out in the second period and scored three goals right away, so of course Jennie missed that. That was very cool, suddenly everyone was really in to it. Then the third period they scored about five minutes in and then we learned that if the Blues scored 5 goals, everyone would get a free blizzard. Of course that didn’t happen. Overall, the Blues were very good tonight and just dominated the Avalanche, something I didn’t expect to happen. Now, when I come back here for opening day, need to see the Pirates dominate the Cardinals.

Overall, a great, but busy day with lots of really nice weather that just made it even better.

Then it was back to Jennie’s apartment where we turned on SNL and I just about fell asleep on the couch. Jennie decided to drive me back to the hotel then. I came up to my room, sat in the chair, turned on the TV and fell asleep on the chair until 3:30 in the morning and woke up about 40 minutes ago.

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More on Peter Schiff and the first night in the Lou.

Saturday, February 7th, 2009

At one point, they’re talking about Wal-Mart and Target doing good despite retail experiencing a real down turn. I think the big thing for Wal-Mart and Target is that they’re discount stores. People are either making less money or trying to save money in the chance that they lose their jobs and are heading to the discount retailers to get their clothes, food and other necessities. Likewise, I’m sure there are online retailers who are doing well too because they offer products at a discount, like when you can buy a DVI cable for $10 online when it usually cost $50 at Best Buy.

Meanwhile, what stores are really hurting right now? CompUSA used to be in every major city in the country. Now they only have 17 stores in Illinois, Florida, Texas and Puerto Rico. Circuit City meanwhile is experiencing a huge downfall, as they are closing down all their stores. Office Depot is going out of business in Dubuque and are closing 111 other lesser performing stores in the United States as well. Starbucks, after building a lot more stores than people needed, they closed down hundreds of stores they wasted money on building in the first place. Essentially what these companies all have in common is that they’re over priced brick and mortar stores that charge people a premium for stuff they can get cheaper somewhere else. They’re going down while discount retail is going up.

Of course Office Depot in Dubuque is offering some good deals right now. I found the Tomtom there for the same price as on Amazon. Normal price at Staples and Best Buy are $60 more. Of course if it didn’t work, I wouldn’t have been able to take it back. I’d have to deal directly with Tomtom.

We went to Texas Road House for dinner last night. It was pretty cheap for the two of us and there’s enough food left over for lunch today or tomorrow. Holy crap, that place was absolutely packed, though. I mean, the waiting room and the door way was packed too. If they’re making about $20 per person (assuming that since Jennie and I got the cheap meals) that store might have taken in $20,000 a day. The guy at Verizon, where Jennie got something for her cell phone said they were always busy. 

Also went to see Jennie’s cool apartment. I liked it a lot. Basically you go in the door and then it goes directly upstairs. and right there is the kitchen, living room, one bed room, the office and all that stuff. Then up another set of stairs is her room and bathroom. It’s bigger than it looks and has this old feel to it while it looks really new. So yeah, it’s awesome.

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Easy Rider.

Friday, February 6th, 2009

St. Louis is way nice, it’s about 65 outside right now. It’s pretty fucking awesome. The hotel I’m at has three free alcoholic drinks every night. It’s pretty awesome. I don’t need to go buy booze. I mean I got my cooler full of Dr. Pepper still. I only drank three of them on the way here.

Driving a lot in one day sucks. I started at 11:00 this morning and drove to the Dubuque Casey and then I stopped at a Hardees north of Davenport, but just did the drive through. Finally stopped at a rest stop just north of Peoria. Then I stopped again at a Gas Station about 80 or 90 miles from St. Louis. Otherwise it was just driving all day. Um, the snow all but disappeared by Peoria, it was still on some hills hiding the sun and all that.

Also my seatbelt gave me a nice red mark on my neck. I need one of those things I see in those catalogs that puts a fuzzy thing on the seatbelt. For my next 300+ mile road trip. Also the FCC should keep an empty FM station everywhere so that we can use our iPods there.

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On the road again!

Friday, February 6th, 2009

It’s amazing, I’m just driving along and decided to write an entry while I’m driving so I’m using my amazing skills of telepathy to sign in to a computer and write a new entry while I’m driving. Be amazed at my ability to write blog entries with my mind.

Either that or I just wrote this last night while a little bored and scheduled it to be posted this afternoon. Or I bought an iPhone and did all this with that while driving at 75 MPH. Actually I should buy one of those one of these days this year. Then I could email in entries instead of having to always log in to a computer to write this. But really, I did this with my mind.

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