Category: Good times

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Where’s his whistle?

I currently have a spider monkey climbing around my legs. Oh no wait, it’s my daughter. My mistake. And this is almost an hour after I literally crawled out of her room on my hands and knees after putting her to bed so as not to wake her back up. ‘Twas no army crawl, mind you, but it was a crawl nonetheless. Apparently I could have back flipped my way out, for that “bedtime” lasted approximately 5 minutes. Superb, here we go again, after a grand total of 3, maybe 4 hours of sleep with her last night.

But to the real point of this post, today was the Milwaukee Challenge, that urban adventure race I mentioned, and it was awesome! It ended up being me and 4 other girls, and we were team “Jolly Green Giants”. None of us had ever participated in one of these races before, so we had no idea what to expect. The description said the top teams usually finish by about the 1.5 hour mark, so personally, I was considering a sub-2 hour finish a success. Plus, they posted hints on their Facebook page at midnight last night, and all they did was confuse the hell out of us. Here’s what we had to go on going into this thing:

  1. 360 degrees of blades
  2. “DD”
  3. Elroy
  4. As You Like It 2/7
  5. Where’s his whistle?

You’re kidding right? So let me get this straight. Each of those hints is supposed to correspond to something in Milwaukee that we had to find? Um, yeah right. I think you can see why we all had a mixture of anticipation and trepidation brewing by the time we got underway. Here we were, about to start a race that was billed as “part 5k, part ‘Amazing Race'”, and our preliminary hints were utterly vague and confusing. Sweetness.

Fortunately, once we got our sheet of actual clues at the start of the race, those ridiculous hints became much more clear and appropriate. Here’s how it worked: each team captain stood in a big circle outside Rock Bottom in downtown Milwaukee, the race staff handed each captain a sealed envelope, and when the clock struck 2:00pm everyone was able to rip open their envelope, make their way back to their respective team, and it was off to the races. Literally. There were 12 clues in all, 11 of which had to be completed for a successful finish. I must admit, as soon as we started reading through everything I was kind of lost in a cloud of wtf? Each clue was its own little paragraph, and 5 people all trying to read the same list of 12 paragraphs was slightly awkward. We finally decided that we had a good enough idea of what a couple of the clues meant, headed off in that direction, and just tried to decipher the rest as we went. It was a pretty good strategy, for we were able to complete our first handful of clues in no time. A couple were definite stumpers, and a couple of us tried using our phone-a-friends (totally allowed, per the race rules), but they turned out to be pretty much worthless. Ha, sorry phone-a-friends! But we did end up figuring allĀ  the clues out on our own.

And get this… We took 5th place!! Read that again. We, the 100% inexperienced, 110% confused team, came in in 5th place!! Out of roughly 160 teams that finished (about 170 entered). BOOM! Take that, Milwaukee. The Jolly Green Giants turned out to be a force to be reckoned with, and we Jolly Green Giant-ed all over your ass! Our official time was 69:28, and we ended up doing at least a 5k’s worth of running through downtown to get to our clues. And I think that was definitely the difference for us – those extra jogs through the streets instead of the leisurely saunters some teams were doing. It was so much fun. I was so unbelievably proud of us and just simply amazed that we did so well. None of us expected anything like that, but when we ran up to the finish line and saw they were just then beginning to bring the water bottles out for the racers and the finish line sign wasn’t even hung, I think we all got a little twinge of butterflies, like, we actually might stand a chance here! And we so did. We got 5th!! Sorry, I’m still riding that high.

And what did we get for placing 5th, you may ask? A $50 bar tab to be spent at Rock Bottom. Why yes we would like to spend that right now, thank you very much. How nice of you to offer. 1st place got $200 cash, 2nd place got $100 cash, 3rd place got $50 cash, and then both 4th and 5th places got the $50 Rock Bottom tabs. We were so stoked, I can’t even tell you. All I can say is watch out Challenge Nation – next year we’re out for blood. It’s 1st place or bust, and yes, we will knock you down and run you over to get there.

Here are pictures from our day, and I’ve tried to give you some idea of which clue we were completing in each caption. Even with a heat advisory we rocked this.

Find the "DD" duck statue
Find someone from a state that starts with L, M, N, O, or P
Form a pyramid in front of "The Calling" statue
Find a donor brick with the same name as any team member's first, middle, last name, or last name of a U.S. President
Find a building built before 1900 or completed and occupied in 2011
Find someone in non-WI sports apparel
Find an outdoor stage and work w/another team to act out a scene from an Oscar-winning movie
Find the plaque dedicated to "Crazy Legs"
Find the 9' abstract referee statue
Unscramble an anagram to get "Public Market", then go find the clock in the middle
Then take another picture there 5 minutes later
Find the firefighter statue and pretend to put out a fire
5th place, baby!
See, the final list even says so
Putting our prize to good use
Once again, we got 5th!!

 

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Buffett recap

Here’s a photographic recap of the Jimmy Buffett concert at Alpine Valley last Saturday. Once again, fun was had by all and plenty of shenanigans ensued. Unfortunately I left my phone in the grass where we were tailgating when we cleaned everything up to head into the show. Fortunately the guy who was set up next to us told me our friends had it when we got back to our car at the end of the night, so I had to go get it on Sunday afternoon once Grandma headed home. It’s always something out there…

R with the fixins for Roaring Dan dark & stormies

 

I will play for gumbo!

 

The giant tiki bar was right next to us this year - awesome!

 

The boys

 

The girls

 

Our group

 

Me & some swimmers - I was apparently overserved and finding something utterly hilarious

 

Still drunk. Still hilarious.

 

Wastin' away again in Margaritaville

 

 

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FF

Fins up!!

Tomorrow is the annual Jimmy Buffett concert at Alpine Valley, and I can’t wait! I say annual, but he did skip a year in 2005 when he played down at Wrigley Field over Labor Day weekend instead. Jerk.

I was just figuring out how many Buffett shows I have now attended, and this year will be my 8th. Sweetness! I went in 2001, 2004, 2006, 2007, 2008, 2009, 2010, and now this year. For some reason I can’t find any pictures from 2007 or 2009, but I know we went in 2007 because I saw my Ticketmaster order. And I know we went in 2009 because it turned into a night that will live in infamy. The weather was shit, it started raining so hard we actually left the show early, I drank an entire bottle of Jeremiah Weed sweet tea vodka mixed with lemonade then transformed into a complete and utter ass, was a bitch to R, and basically ruined the night. Ugh. Note to self – don’t drink whole bottles of liquor single-handedly anymore (not that it was ever a good idea).

Each time we go now we meet up with a woman I bartended with the year after we moved back to Milwaukee and her husband, and sometimes some of their friends from their neck of the woods. They’ve been to well over 20 Buffett shows now, and holy shit, do they bring a spread! She brings table upon table of food, we always set up a tent, there’s booze out the wazoo (which was just divine last year when i was pregnant. 1,000s of drunk, hot, sweaty Jimmy Buffett fans and me sober. awesome), and often festive accessories of some sort make an appearance. We’re not the full-on Parrothead costume types, but we do like to decorate a little for the day. I know most of the people they’ve brought through the years from the bar where we worked (which she still runs), but we are definitely in agreement that when it’s just the 4 of us we have the most fun. And tomorrow it’s going to be just the 4 of us again, plus it’s her token Saturday off this whole summer (again, that bar she runs, it has a beach bar, so summer is prime time), so look out! R’s cooking up his famous gumbo and teriyaki shrimp skewers to add to all the food they’re bringing, so we are set for a great time.

Here are some pictures from our past shows. My photos from 2001 weren’t digital so I’d have to scan one of those in for you, and frankly, you know I’m just lazy. But if I get ambitious I might toss one of the oldies in when I post this year’s recap. Your fingers are crossed, I know.

Hula R & our friend we go with G, 7-10-04

 

Me, R, & our friend S, 6-10-06

 

Me & sis A, flanked by 2 of our friends' friends, 7-19-08

 

R & me, 6-26-10

 

This show is seriously one of the most fun days of the year. Everyone’s in a good mood, everyone’s just out to have as much fun as possible, and we’ve lucked out on the weather most years (knock on wood!). Right now they’re calling for mid-70s and mostly sun tomorrow, so let’s hope they’re right! I said as long as it doesn’t rain, we’ll be golden. For slopping around in the parking lots at Alpine in the rain and mud can make for a miserable day and night.

Happy Friday, Parrotheads!!

 

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I think his tractor’s sexy

Saturday night was the Kenny Chesney concert up at Lambeau Field, and, as expected, it was awesome! We dropped D off at one of R’s cousin’s house in Sheboygan on the way and arrived at our tailgating destination around 1pm. The weather left much to be desired, unfortunately, with clouds and a chilly breeze. At least we didn’t get rained on, though, and R let me wear his sweatshirt before we went in as a second layer to keep warm.

We had a blast. It was just the 2 of us partying together the whole time, seeing how much hell we could raise. Just like the old days. šŸ˜‰ Coincidentally enough, we parked in the same lot we’ve parked in the last 2 times we were at Lambeau for Packers games or celebrations, so we knew it was an easy walk to the stadium. Plus we were right next to a port-a-john, a HUGE bonus, and we were in the very front row and able to drive right out afterward instead of getting mired in the concert traffic. Our tickets were down on the field, and we got into the show toward the end of Billy Currington’s act. We made our way up to almost the very front, saw all of Zac Brown, all of Kenny, and then obviously the group jam at the end of the night. Mike McCarthy made a special appearance at one point and brought the Lombardi Trophy out on stage, and of course the place erupted in cheers. Another Packer also joined Kenny to sing a few lines, but neither of us could really tell who he was; plus he definitely did not have a singing voice.

The crowd was amped, the stage was awesome, the music was fantastic, and my company couldn’t have been better. But what I might always remember as the best part of the night came on our drive back to Sheboygan to get D. All of a sudden we drove through a patch of “fresh country air” and I remarked how it smelled like rotten egg farts (yes, very mature, i know). In response, R said, and I am not making one word of this up, “Oh good. At first I thought it was my finger.” WHAT?!?! What did you just say?? You thought your finger smelled like rotten egg farts?? What is wrong with you? I laughed so hard my throat hurt and my voice went raw. I could not believe that was actually a train of thought in his head, no matter how much Roaring Dan rum he had consumed that afternoon. I asked him to explain where in god’s name he came up with the notion that his finger may have smelled like a bout of sulfuric flatulence, and he said, “I don’t know, maybe I ran it around the edge of the garbage can or something before we left.” Again – WHAT?! You may or may not have had your hand in a garbage can and now it may or may not smell like a fart?? And what are you doing over there, giving yourself a finger mustache? Wow. I thought I was going to hyperventilate laughing. Of course he didn’t appreciate my making the most fun of him that I think I have in all 10+ years I’ve known the guy, but he did get a good chuckle out of it too. I mean come on, who can possibly think their finger *might* smell like a rotten egg fart but not really be sure, and not think that’s both idiotic and completely hilarious at the same time?

Ah yes, good times. This article gives a better review of the set list than I could recount for you. I may or may not have been a little foggy due to Shandy and Corona consumption. And here are some pictures from the day and night, the part you’ve all been waiting for.

Our little tailgate

 

R's kabobs - yum!

 

Roaring Dan

 

Me & my man

 

Giant "Goin' Coastal Tour" bus outside Lambeau

 

On our way in

 

On the field!

 

Uh-oh, someone's had some adult beverages...

 

Zac Brown rockin' the green and gold beanie, and the crowd

 

Kenny!

 

We got up close

 

Kenny & Uncle Kracker jammin' during the encore

 

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Jelly much?

I dare you not to turn green with exploding envy like the Incredible Hulk from this post, but look what R made from scratch for dinner last night:

 

Yep, that's his homemade bacon on there, too

 

AND…

We’re going to the Kenny Chesney concert at Lambeau Field tomorrow. Wahoo!! Opening acts include Uncle Kracker, Billy Currington (who??), and Zac Brown Band. The first 2 I couldn’t really care less about, but I love me some ZBB. Then they’re all supposedly going to jam together at the end of the night. Sweetness! R’s making kabobs (steak and chicken) and BLT pasta salad for our tailgating escapades beforehand, and it looks like the weather *should* cooperate.

And with that, I anoint you sufficiently JELLY! (as in short for jealous, get it)

Have a great weekend!

 

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Family vacation #1 in the books

R said that last night as we went to bed, and he’s right. This weekend really was our first little family vacation, and it was awesome. We took tons of pictures (surprised? i didn’t think so), but I haven’t had a chance to go through them all and get any uploaded yet. I promise I will post a full photographic recap of our brewery tour weekend as soon as I do though, so you can get a little glimpse into the extracurricular activities of these Wisconsin beer lovers.

In the meantime, here’s the low down on everywhere we went. It sounds like kind of a whirlwind excursion, but we actually did everything at our own pace, with no set schedule or agenda, so it felt very leisurely and relaxed. Exactly what the doctor ordered!

Friday: After taking roughly an hour just to get out of Milwaukee County on our way out of town (mind you, it’s only a distance of about 15 miles), and being thoroughly disgusted by the traffic and highway construction in our city, we were finally moving at highway speeds on our way westward. We arrived in Mt. Horeb around 7pm, checked into our little motel, and headed to the Grumpy Troll for dinner and a sampler. And just as last year, it did not disappoint. Oh yeah – as we were unloading our stuff in our room before dinner, D took her first nose-dive, right off one of the beds onto the motel room floor. Lovely. The good thing about kids, though? They’re apparently made of rubber, so fortunately she survived unscathed. Not even a scratch, just a little shaken up. Whew. Nothing a good beer sampler won’t cure. šŸ˜‰

Saturday: We took D for a couple mile walk on the Military Ridge State Trail right after breakfast, which we were able to pick up just blocks from our motel. Then we packed up, checked out, and headed over to New Glarus. For those of you who have never been to the new New Glarus brewery, GO! It is out of this world fantastic. I never visited the old brewery, but their new facility is beautiful – it’s a little over a year old now, and they have the outdoor bar set up and the inside tasting room is complete. The tour is self-guided and free, and you can buy either a 3-taste sampling or as many full pints as you’d like. We sat outside on their patio and enjoyed a couple pints while enjoying the day. D had a blast playing in the grass and entertaining everyone at the tables around us, and they also had a bags game set up that a couple people were playing. We both agreed that we could have easily spent the entire day there, lounging around and drinking down their delicious brews. However, more places awaited. We stayed at New Glarus until mid-afternoon, stopped at a super old timey awesome bar in the little downtown area called Puempel’s Olde Tavern for a drink, then headed further west to the Mississippi River and Potosi. This is another really cool place. The town itself is nothing, so if you’re not going to the brewery then I don’t think I’d recommend a stop. But the brewery has a beer museum attached, so we checked that out too. The tour is $5, which also gets you a complimentary 12 oz. pour from the bar afterward, and it was very interesting. They have a ton of old beer memorabilia housed in a couple different levels, so it made for a really neat place. The bar is a nice arched stone, open room, and they have a beer garden patio outside as well. We had samplers and ate dinner there, and their food was tasty too. After our free beers from the tour, we hit the road to our rest stop for the night, Galena, IL. It was only about half an hour south of Potosi, so we were there in no time. We did get a glimpse of the might Mississip on our way out of Potosi, for the brewery doesn’t sit right on the river. We stayed at the Irish Cottage Boutique Hotel in Galena, and it was great – cute Irish theme, nice rooms, extremely comfy bed, Irish dancers in the pub downstairs Saturday night, and a complimentary hot breakfast in the same pub Sunday morning. We were spent by bedtime that night and a little sun-kissed from the hours at New Glarus (not D though, no sun on that fair little skin please), so thankfully D decided to be nice and sleep in until 8:00 Sunday morning. Thank you sweet Jesus, our prayers have been answered by room-darkening curtains.

Sunday: After that nice breakfast, we checked out and drove into downtown Galena for some sight-seeing and moseying. That is an awesome town. It’s very quaint and historic, and the main street downtown is beautiful. Full of shops, bars, restaurants, and an outstanding winery (in Galena, IL? who’da thunk it). And guess what else we found? Another brewery! So we spent a couple hours meandering through town, having a sampler, then doing a little wine tasting at the winery on our way out. Their wines reminded us a lot of Door Peninsula’s wines in Door County, which we love. So of course we got a couple bottles as our souvenir from Galena. Then it was off to Madison – wahoo! We headed right to the Great Dane downtown, and our friend G met up with us there. We had one of their giant 15 beer samplers, of course, and lunch, then went out to the east side to Ale Asylum. Neither of us had been there before, so we were excited to check it out. It rocks! We got one of their samplers, of course, and sat out on their patio to enjoy the gorgeous weather (finally!). I was very impressed there – their beer was excellent (i’d only had a couple of their brews before) and the place itself was really nice. So we chilled there for a few hours, bid G farewell, and started to make our way home. We’d originally planned on spending Sunday night somewhere, but decided it was unnecessary. We’d gotten all our stops in in those two days, so why not just sleep in our own beds that night and save the hotel fare? Okey dokey smokey. Just a short ways outside Madison we were in Lake Mills, and guess what’s in Lake Mills? Tyranena, duh. This was the last non-Milwaukee brewery on our list for the weekend (we decided to scratch Minhas and save it for another trip), so we popped in for a pit stop. I got a sampler since I couldn’t have one when we were there last year, and R got a couple pints. D again made friends with everyone and their dogs there, so she was in heaven. It was late evening by the time we finished up at Tyranena, and then we were homeward bound.

Monday: Yesterday was a rare vacation day at home, and it felt great. We started off with some nasty thunderstorms, so I thought it was going to be a hunker down kind of day, but the skies cleared by mid-morning and the sun came out blazing. I got the hammock out of its winter storage in the garage and spent an hour lying in that, then we walked over to Sprecher for a late afternoon tour to cap off the weekend. Nothing like a local brewery in your own backyard! It was a steamy walk, but I lathered up D with sunscreen, put her sun hat on her, and got the extended canopy on the stroller to try to give her more shade. Sprecher’s tour is fun too, if you’ve never been. It’s short, sweet, and to the point – their beer. $5 gets you a 10 minute tour (it’s not a big place), then you get 4 good-sized samples afterward. Yesterday they were in production bottling their delicious root beer, so the whole place smelled great. R grilled up some outstanding brats for dinner when we got home, and we called it a weekend. And a mighty successful one at that.

Oh, in case you’re wondering why we did all these brewery tours, R joined the WI Brewers Guild this year and got a ton of coupons for tours, pints, schwag, etc., at breweries around the state. Well, that, and we just like good beer. šŸ™‚ And don’t worry, at no point were we too impaired for driving. That sounds kind of bad that we went and had samplers, drove to the next place with more samplers, drove to the next place with more samplers, and so on and so on around the state. But I assure you – there was plenty of time and food mixed in with every stop that no one was in danger of an incident at all. We’re not that stupid (i think).

So there you have it – the wonderful world of WI breweries. And there are so many more we want to visit! We think the next one will be a central/northern WI tour. I think we’ve found our annual spring mini-getaway theme.

 

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Road trip!!

Yesterday after work we loaded up the car and headed west. Before you start picturing us trucking through wide open spaces and the wild wild west, let me tame those ideas of grandeur. I mean more like Mt. Horeb, WI. šŸ™‚

R, D, and I are taking a little family vacation, a much-needed respite from the daily grind. D’s been on longer car trips than this before and did great, so hopefully this one turns out to be equally as uneventful for her. (we drove up to Minneapolis for a long weekend when she was only 6 weeks old, and she traveled splendidly)

Last May R and I did a similar Wisconsin weekend getaway to the Madison area and had a blast. So this year we decided to extend it by a day (we’re taking Monday off – 2 3-day weekends in a row, yay!!) and see a couple new places.

The over-arching theme of that trip was Wisconsin breweries, and we have a couple on the agenda again this time. Last year we visited New Glarus’s new brewery, and it was amazing! It was completed that winter before we went, so everything was brand new and shiny. We loved it so much that it made the list again for this year.

Then we’re heading over to the far western edge of the state to visit Potosi and their brewery along the Mississippi River, then down to Galena, IL, for a night to see what that little corner of the world has to offer. After that tiny sojourn we’ll head up to one of my favorite places on Earth, Madison, and bum around it and its local breweries for a day or two before making our way back east.

Monday we’ll drive home through southern Wisconsin, possibly detouring down to Monroe to check out the Minhas brewery, but most likely at least stopping in Lake Mills to quench our thirst at Tyranena. Last year D was cooking away so I couldn’t fully partake in the tasty adult beverages, so this year I’m planning on making up for that. Work has gotten me kind of down lately, so this little break will hopefully be just what the doctor ordered!

I’m sure we’ll throw in plenty of sight-seeing along the way, too. We’re planning on talking D for a walk on the Military Ridge state trail, maybe visiting Cave of the Mounds, and basically just exploring the natural wonders our great state has to offer.

The southwestern corner of Wisconsin is beautiful, and now that the weather has finally warmed up it should make for some great scenery. There will be plenty of pictures taken along the way, so I’ll be able to give you a full report upon our return. Have a wonderful weekend!