Opening Day CUBS!

Is this the YEAR? God only knows at this point. Of course like every life long Cubs fan we always are hoping this is the year only to be disappointed the end of September. I would love to see the Cubs make a good run at it this year since I believe it has been 100 years since they won the World Series.

I have a couple short term goals for them but I have not let Lou know this yet.

FIRST: I want them to win all the series against the Pittsburgh Pirates. I always have a standing bet with the boss (huge Pirates fan) over these series. I have come out the winner numerous times on that bet but would love to keep winning. I look forward to tipping back a nice glass of wine from the bottle of wine I will win from the bet or a good glass of beer from the 6 pack that I will win. We have not decided on the winners winnings yet but the tally sheets are up and ready to be marked in favor of the Cubs.

SECOND: I would like to see them repeat as NL Central Champs again this year. That would be back to back championships and more opportunities to buy NL Champs logo stuff!...hahaha

Anything above and beyond this is just icing on the cake! Of course I would love to see the Cubs go all the way, who wouldn't? What a great story it would be.

I'm alive----kind of

Back at work finally. Didn't make it into work on Friday. This crud is not fun. Still coughing and have stuff in my lungs but it is getting better. After a couple nice glasses of Blackberry Brandy yesterday I was feeling good! I think I need one NOW! Blackberry Brandy was my dad's cure all so to speak. When ever he was feeling crappy he would have a few swigs off the Blackberry Brandy bottle. Of course my mom's cure all for everything was to take a nice hot bath, 2-aspirins and go to bed. Didn't matter if you had a hang nail it was the right thing to do! I did try both remedies and the Blackberry Brandy made me feel better!

Now on to the weather...UGH...TIRED OF SNOW, READY FOR SPRING...the only good thing is that it will be a short lived 4-8 inches of snow that falls today and/or tomorrow. It is suppose to be in the 50's by the end of the week! YEAH!

Stay well out there!

Sick.....

Well, I ended up hitting after hours care at Hy-Vee last night after work. I started coughing Tuesday afternoon and as the day progressed yesterday it was getting worse. I do not have influenza-A like two of the four people in our company that are out sick with. I have either a different flu or a viral thing. So now I have cough syrup with Codene and some over the counter meds all in all it should make work fun today!

Body count today: One of the sickies is back to work, three are still out and the boss has yet to show.

Bugs

The flu bug is hitting our company hard. We are small anyway but today we are REALLY SMALL. Both shop guys are out sick. Our hardware guy is out sick and so is the other lady in the office that does some bidding and billing. That leaves me and the boss and he is not here yet this morning. UGH...Since I am acting boss this morning I am going to give myself a raise and more vacation time....what do you think?

Jurrasic fart

It's official

I finally joined the Falls Area Bicycle Club! (FAB)

Beer, Spaghetti and BUSY!

Well the weekend went off pretty much as planned. Nothing to wild. We did hit Monk's on Friday night after the Skyforce game. I had a Nogne-O Brown Ale that was pretty good but was a bit to cold to begin with. Saturday night we ended up cooking a big VAT of spaghetti sauce so we stayed at the house, ate, had some wine and just BS'd. We had five people eating supper and still froze 6 quart bags of sauce..YUM! We also tried whole wheat pasta - angel hair, it was very good and of course the roomie made beer bread which was also great!

Church was PACKED at the 9:45 service. We ended up out in one of the wings at First Lutheran and sneaked out before the end of the final hymn so we could make out brunch reservations. Braco had some great food for brunch. The Ahi Tuna was excellent on their buffet.

Sorted through a bunch of CRAP in the den and I mean to tell you it was CRAP! Still not close to being done and organizing things. It will take a bit of time so good thing we are starting NOW!


I can not believe HOW BUSY work is with bidding. I am going to be swamped the next three weeks. I feel overtime or comp time is going to be in order to get it all done. I also have my first responders coninuing education stuff starting this week and that will take up a few Fridays (6:30-9:30pm) and Saturdays (8:00a-1:30p) until mid April or end of April. UGH....Oh well good to get refreshed with all that first aide stuff and CPR. Not sure I need to be at all the class for the whole time as there is lecture and then lab time but we will see.


Slept for crap last night or should I say this morning. I was tired last night and took a nice hot bath then read a bit (28-days behind bars-about biking from Seatle to New York) and then turned off the TV. Woke up at 4:00am. Turned on the TV as I was tossing and turning then shut it off at 4:55am then of course the radio started playing at 5:00am and then I feel asleep again to wake at 6:00 to turn the TV back on then fell asleep AGAIN to wake at 7:20am. UGH...hurried and hit the shower and then to work by 8:00am...well...8:03am. I am sure it is going to be an EARLY NIGHT FOR ME! --- I am guessing I was thinking of ALL the things I need to do in the next few weeks so my brain was in overdrive and that was what woke me up! I guess it is better than dreaming about the spanish mafia trying to kill me...this was the Saturday night dream..very bizzare but I am know for very bizzare dreams!


Hope everyone out there has a great week!

Weekend plans

Heading to the Skyforce game tonight with some friends. Roomies sister won four tickets for a game and she gave them to us so we will hit a local establishment to have some beverages and food before the game. Tomorrow evening we are taking the roomies nephew out for supper and movie. He is a poor college kid and needs to be treated! Not sure where we are eating or what movie yet but it should be fun. Easter Sunday there will be church and a brunch with the roomies family at Bracco. Should be a good time also. The remainder of the weekend will be filled with cleaning and sorting in the den. We purchased a new computer earlier this week (delivery around April 7-9) so we want to get our computer desk fixed up. I bought some old desk parts are an antique store last summer and I am getting a wood door from work to lay across them. There will be some modifications to the wood door but will need to see how everything all lays out once we get our new computer all set up. The roomie is going to be having some up coming surgery and so we want to get it all put together for her to mess around with while she recovers. Exciting times at the old homestead!

To all of you out there reading this wacky blog of mine....HAPPY EASTER and travel safe!

NCAA and some bike stuff

I had one wrong from my NCAA picks last night...not so bad, I guess at this point...Duke almost put me in a real bad way but they pulled it out!

Picked-up the roomies bike (Gary Fisher - Napa-comfort bike) from LBS and man does it look NASTY...in a good way. It looks like it is ready for commuting! She had new serfas tires (inverted tread) and black planet bike fenders installed plus a tune-up. Once we got it home I put on her bar-ends, headlight and taillight. I tried to get her seat on but needed help...UGH...the bolt was on there so TIGHT that I could not get it loose. I did everything but stand on my head to try and get it loose. So, I loaded up the seat with seat post still attached and headed to Scheels as I knew they would have a mechanic there at that time of the evening. He ended up taking a HAMMER to it to ge it loosened. As we walked out the wind caught my coat and blew it up against the seat tube and so now I have grease all over it...DANG IT! It is that nasty green sticky yucky grease that is on the seatpost-shock. We headed home and got the seat all installed and she is almost ready to roll! I think she still wants a rear rack and trunk for it yet. I have some work on my old Gary Fisher HK-ll to do yet but it is minor, pump up the tires and put on the headlight and taillight.

I bought a Terry Liberator seat and I am still deciding on what bike I should put it on yet. I have a nice gel seat on my GF but on my Cannondale (road bike) I have a Avocet VERY old gel seat. I am going to ride my Cannondale in the MS150 so that is what I am thinking about putting the Terry on. The only issue I will have is that I will mainly ride my GF around town and not so much my road bike so in order to break in that saddle I am thinking of putting it on the GF and then changing it over later to get a few miles in on my road bike. Any suggestion?

NCAA Picks

Ok, so I have UCLA and Kansas in the Championship game with Kansas winning!....I also fill out a bracket for my roomie and that bracket has UCLA and UNC with UNC winning! Stay tuned to see how I did!...DISCLAIMER-this pool is all done in FUN and NO MONEY changes hands!

March Madness

First off, March Madness has a new meaning this year. Work has been silly crazy which is good but yet not so good as it is hard to get caught up. Oh well, I guess it is a good thing and I will survive. I have my arm floatation devices on to keep me above water!

Second, not sure if you get into the real March Madness hoop-la. We do in our office in fact there is usually a TV going at some point during the games. Some of them are very exciting. Not sure who I am cheering for this year. It is mid-morning and I have not even filled out my bracket yet. Yes, I am one that gets in an office pool and the funny thing is that it is with our competitor in town along with reps and various friends that also join in.

How do you pick you bracket? Do you agonize over the data and look at the records or do you do what me and another friend did one year and that was look at the mascots and picked what mascot would beat the other mascot. Now that was fun!...Yes, we lost and were out of the pool pretty darn early but it made for some fun at the time. I do not have a scientific way to pick teams. I usually look at their record and go with my gut.

To all you March Madness junkies out there......GOOD LUCK!

Weekend recap

Had a great weekend but not so good for the diet! Started out by hitting the Keg (chicken place) for some Rockets (beer vessels) and food (of course chicken) Friday night. Met a bunch of friends there and of course we always have laughter involved.

Saturday hit Dino's for breakfast and yes, I got talked into having a green beer with breakfast. It was ok and to be honest...this was the first ever green beer for me. Took the roomies bike to LBS and having it worked over. Two new tires, tune -up and two fenders. She will be already for commuting! We ventured down to the grocery store after the bike shop. A few weeks ago we had purchased the recycling bags from Wally World and decided we wanted to try and use them instead of using plastic or paper bags. We had our Wally World bags along (four of them) and got a 20 cent discount! I was pretty pumped about that. So nine more trips to the grocery store and the bags are paid for! We also noticed a bunch of other people starting to carry their own bags to reuse. VERY COOL! We did a few more things around the house on Saturday and then headed to Brandon. Met some friends for supper at the Brandon Steakhouse (this was a dumb- s*%t moment for me. I had said we will meet at the Tea Steakhouse in Brandon. Well, it is the Brandon Steakhouse in Brandon and the Tea Steakhouse is in Tea - Go Figure!) Good supper. Then headed to the Brandon Golf Course for a St Patty's Day party. It was very interesting. Seemed to be mostly a few of the workers family but it was still fun. I had a couple of drinks then they came around with jell-o shots and of course we had to have two of them that evening. I can't imagine what their family reunions are like. At one point they had a Lucky Charms and Green Beer contest. Yes GREEN BEER instead of milk in the Lucky Charms. OH MY...it was nasty looking! I guess they have family get-to-gethers like this all the time. They sure know how to have a fun time!

Sunday was pretty mellow. Fixed breakfast and then did some work stuff. We did grill out for supper and had cheddar burgers, baked beans, potato salad and chips....YUM!

This morning we were blanketed with fresh snow (very heavy-heart attack type). We have about 4 inches on the ground now and more to come today. Maybe as much as 8 total...we will see. Mother Nature's last winter hurrah.....I HOPE!

HAPPY ST PATTY'S DAY -----

Friday afternoon - silliness

Looking a bit different?

I decided to change things up a bit. Hope you like it! I might still change things a bit more...we will see! Yes, I did take the picture in the title. It is a picture of one of the many wonderful sunsets on the Bahamas cruise.

Friday Misc.

So, this morning I step on the scale and I am down 18 pounds! This is pretty exciting. This means I have lost about 7% of my body weight! I think the roomie is still stuck at 20-21 pound loss which is 9-10% loss of body weight. She is still doing great also! GO TEAM!

Last year a couple friends had asked our group of friends about hitting the LPGA tourney in MPLS this year. Me and the roomie decided at that point we would drive up there and spend the weekend and not go to the golf event and get hooked up with roomies nephew, hit Kierens Irish Pub (bring on the Guinness-they have the perfect poor there) and now we decided to take in a Twins game. All the ressies have been made and tickets purchased. I will be looking forward to that in June. I have never been to the Metro-dome to see a game and this will be my 3rd baseball stadium to watched a game in. The others are Wrigley (4-times) and Coors Field in Denver. I am excited as our tickets are in home run alley. We are staying out by the Mall of America and taking the Lightrail into downtown so no driving will be needed once we are there!

We are taking the roomies bike in to the LBS to have it tuned up and new tires put on it. We are getting excited for the warmer weather and commuting to our jobs via 2 wheels. I think we even have some other friends into doing the same this summer.

Bought a 5 gallon gas container last night and plan on filling it up along with my other smaller container for mowing this summer. That should almost last the whole summer....I HOPE! If the gas hits $4.00 a gallon like they are saying it is best to buy at $3.09 now.

Well, hey...HAPPY FRIDAY EVERYONE!

Darn, You Tube

Some of you have already seen the BLUNDER and some have no idea what I am talking about. Seems that last week I tried to do a couple of post to my blog from You Tube and they never showed up...well you know me, the one that has the patiants of some biblical charactor, had to keep trying to get the video to post to my blog. It seems that I had quite a few of the little vidoes on my blog by late morning today..even though the date they say they arrived was yesterday. Not sure what was going on but I had started to try and post them last week so ignore the titles to the blog entries...I do know what day it is! By deleting some of the videos I ended up deleting one of the kErnEls replies....sorry dude! I think I got everything all fixed up....unless more start to post to it again...not sure how many times I tried to post these darn little videos...so you better enjoy them!

Monday afternoon silliness

Friday - Silliness!

Be careful out there................

This is very sad....I read my niece's blog this morning (she is a wild cyclecross person in California) Her blog had a link to this story. She did know of the bikers involved but didn't know them personally. You can read about the story here

Super Hero

:
You are Superman

Superman 80% Green Lantern 75% The Flash 70% Iron Man 70% Supergirl 65% Robin 65% Wonder Woman 55% Spider-Man 50% Batman 50% Catwoman 50% Hulk 45%

You are mild-mannered, good, strong and you love to help others.

Click here to take the "Which Superhero are you?" quiz...

Super Villian

Your results:
You are Dr. Doom

Dr. Doom 62% Apocalypse 59% Magneto 55% Poison Ivy 55% Kingpin 53% Juggernaut 52% Venom 51% Lex Luthor 49% Mr. Freeze 47% The Joker 45% Two-Face 44% Dark Phoenix 43% Catwoman 41% Mystique 40% Riddler 36% Green Goblin 36%

Blessed with smarts and power but burdened by vanity.

Click here to take the Supervillain Personality Quiz

Weekend recap

Had a great time this past weekend in Bridge City! We got to Yankton and hit Charlie's Pizza....YUM! Had Three Stoogies (cheeseburger pizza) James Dean (I think) (Chicken, garlic and tomatoes) and Rose had a Marilyn Mermaid (Crab, Shrimp, green olive and black olive) I of course had to try them all and they were GREAT...and then washed them down with a South Dakota Martini. (tomato beer)

Saturday was spend reorganizing at the clubhouse. Cleaned out the freezer moved some books from the second floor to the basement and organized the laundry room storage area. Looks pretty nice. Still have what is left of mom's clothes in her closet. Can't seem to do anything with the yet. I opened the closet door looked at them and starting thinking about the last time I had seem mom wear a particular item so I closed the door and will try and get through that another time. That is very hard.

We drove out to the lake and only saw one bald eagle and a HUGE flock of wild turkeys! We lost count but there had to be at least 20 or more! On the way to Yankton we saw a heard of deer (nine). So we did see some wildlife!

Saturday late afternoon we fired up the grill and had steaks, potatoes on the grill and then I threw some french bread on there and then had to wash it down with a nice bottle of wine....OH MAN IT WAS GOOD! We headed out to pick up our tickets for the play, Beauty and the Beast and then paid for our season tickets. Headed to Ben's Brewing Company for a glass of wine before the play. Ben's has remodeled since the last time we had been there. They took out a wall and then made the bar longer. It has to be 25-30 feet long now. It was a good change to see! We drank our wine then headed to the play. The play was put on by the Children's Theater. Let me tell you they had 120 kids they had to try and coral...what an undertaking for the directors and other volunteers! The play was really pretty good. We were laughing at some of the little ones. They might have been in the 4 year old range that were just bouncing around on stage. Pretty funny! All in all if you have a chance go see the play...."be our guest, be out guest".......(For those non Disney people out there this is a snippet of one of the songs that is sung) The other great thing is that with a play that involves so many people the theater main floor was FULL and they had people in the balcony! This was great to see also!

Made back to Sioux Falls in decent time but feeling the affects of not being able to sleep in and the time change....UGH......

This weeks plans...try and get the bikes in to the shop to have them tuned up and ready to roll!

Bike races!

Don't forget to watch VERSUS on Sunday for the Bike race coverage!

Season Tickets and a Good Book

Yesterday I called the Dakota Theater in Yankton. Me and the roomie are now season pass holders for the Lewis and Clark Theater Company! We went to a few plays last year and really enjoyed the productions so decide that with the up coming GREAT productions they have scheduled it would a be a great thing to do. We are heading to Bridge City tonight to hit Charlie's for PLL(pizza, libations and laughter). Tomorrow it will be taking down some of the winter decorations at the Clubhouse and then hitting the play Beauty and the Beast Saturday night. Should be a great weekend!

I am also reading a NEW book...yes this is book number two of the year! The book is 28 Days Behind Bars by Harold Waggner. It is pretty good so far. I just finished day 6 of his 28 day adventure. I get a kick out of his humor...like the girl that had a tube top on but didn't have tubes to go in it and also the seasons in Wisconsin...early winter, mid winter, late winter and next winter! That is how it feels here today....UGH...below zero AGAIN! REALLY DONE WITH THIS! Anyway it is a good read so far!

Seafood

Hit Joey's Seafood place last night. I had the fish and chips with of course malt vinegar and let me tell you it is a lot of food! I ordered an extra filet for left overs and I have two HUGE filets left (counting my extra)! It was good although the fish and chips are still better at the Rose and Crown in the UK at EPCOT but these were good also....ahhh more left overs!

Sign it!

Here is a site that has a petition (www.petitiononline.com/bikether/petition.html). It is for google maps to add a "Bike There" and "Take Public Transit" options. It would show actual bicycle lanes from the city being mapped and would automatically plan your route and might also have an option to show the most direct route or the most bike friendly (safest) route. Currently byCycle.org has these features for two cities - Portland Oregon and Madison Wisconsin.

Now if our city only had biking lanes that would be GREAT!

SNOW and CERT

It snowed last night! Not much but DANG IT! I am so VERY READY FOR SPRING! I was sitting in my CERT (Community Emergency Response Team) meeting last night and we looked out the window and saw it snowing. The streets were greasy last night and on the drive to work this morning. CERT was good and we have our usual city events that we help out with every year but I did bring up a few more events like for some of the area bike rides to help out with and I think our leader is going to check into that. I also have re-certification for being a first responder expiring the end of this year. They were going to do a few education sessions with our monthly meetings but now they have a first responders class starting up the end of the month that we can audit (sit in on for free and get our credits needed). This will be good review but will mess up a lot of up coming weekends. It is all good though!

Weighing in:
The roomie is stuck at around 20 pounds and I actually moved a bit and am now down 17.2 pounds.

Cool idea!

There is a little liberal arts college in Wisconsin, Ripon College, that is going to give FREE bikes to freshman (incoming) as long as they do not bring a car on campus for a year! What a great idea!...so do you think they will be Wisconsin make Treks?

Weekend recap.......

Not sure what got into me but WOW....I started cleaning out the kitchen cupboards! I am about 2/3 done and have a few garbage bags amass for my efforts full of expired or best if used by boxes or cans of food. VERY Sad and nothing but a waste (money and food wise). Well, now that it is cleaned out I feel the need to make sure this does not happen AGAIN! We have both decided that it is best to eat more at home (except this weekend was not a good start) as it is healthier and less expensive. I am sure we will get right on that after we eat all of our leftovers from dining out this past weekend!

Hit a few bike shops this weekend to find a trunk and rack for the roomies bike. I think we found one but just not sure yet on size. I guess it depends on what all she wants to use it for and that has yet to be decided. Saw some very cool bikes but man some of the are very spendy but they are still very fun to look at! I would have to win the lotto to justify buying a $5,000.00 bike.

Went to the home show on Friday night. Kind of boring. There were some cool things but we were not all that impressed with the show in general. Maybe it was the fact that we were both very tired. The roomies back was sore and my ankle was not doing all that well. It sure was a hit the bed early night for me!

From other blogs I have read it sounds like the South Dakota Bicycle Summit was a success! Way to go dudes!