Happy Birthday Michelle!

Nash-Vegas

We had a very fun weekend in Nashville. I was totally wiped out on Sunday! : )

The trip started on Friday afternoon at Midway airport. When Matt and I showed up at the airport, everyone was already in the bar drinking. Awesome. The flight was totally full, no empty seats. The seven of us took up two rows and Matt was the odd man out in a row by himself.


We played the "low card buys the first round of drinks" game. I lost. Aces were low and I drew an ace. I have the worst luck. Andy had some Southwest drink tickets so I got a little bit of a break. We played one more time and Matt lost and had to buy the second round. I think he drew an ace, too. Wow. We both have bad luck.

Before I could finish my second drink, we were already starting the descent. I went to put my tray table up and set my drink in my lap for just a second and wouldn't you know it... it spilled all over my lap. I looked like I had wet my pants... both sides all the way to the back. Nice.


Of course, everyone was very sympathetic and helped me out completely... mainly by yelling stuff like "wow, I can't believe that girl peed her pants on the plane" as they walked behind me through the Nashville airport to the baggage claim.

We dropped our stuff off at the hotel and headed out for dinner at Rippy's BBQ. The weather was awesome in Nashville... sunny and warm. Typical Matt avoiding the camera.


After dinner we ended up at Second Fiddle (otherwise known as our Second Home for most of the weekend). Kristin met us out at the bar (she lives in Nashville now). Matt and Fubar played a serious game of thumb-war.


Michelle, Andy, Matt and I called it an early night on Friday so Michelle could get back to the hotel and get a good night's sleep (or try to, at least... Matt snores and the hotel has thin walls). Matt decided, in what was possibly a stupid drunken state, that he would get up and run part of the race with Michelle on Saturday morning. And by "part of" the race, he meant run "8 miles" with her!

The others stayed out... some later than others. Some didn't even get to sleep before we woke up the next morning! Apparently, a lot of interesting stuff happened in those hours. : )

Saturday morning was pretty rainy, but stopped before the race started, which was nice because the weather was cool. Perfect running weather. Matt, Andy and Michelle went to meet up with Barry who gave them a ride to the start of the race. I slept a couple more hours (so nice!) and then went to mile #10 to meet up with Matt. He was running from mile 2 to mile 10 with Michelle. Andy was running from mile 8 through the end with her. Matt made it the 8 miles without too much trouble... he did say his feet were hurting from pounding the pavement. Here's a pic of them crossing mile 10.



Michelle did awesome and finished 10 minutes less than her time from last year! Congrats! : )

After the race, we chowed on some Papa John's pizza and started out on a mini-bar crawl. Legends... Second Fiddle... Robert's...



Michelle and I did a little shopping at the souvenir shops on Broadway. I don't know who buys some of that stuff!

We all met up at Barry's around 4pm Saturday for a few drinks before going out. We played a few games of euchre. Kathryn brought some awesome cupcakes for Michelle's birthday. Reuter mixed up some shots for the boys to do...


Then, Michelle and Andy shotgunned beers... Reuter won, but only by a second.


We left Barry's place and half of us headed out to dinner at Bailey's sports bar and the rest went on to Second Fiddle.



I got the Kryptonite-Rita... I thought it was going to just be a regular sized margarita, but it was huge!



After dinner, the rest of us met up with everyone at Second Fiddle. Lots of fun... here are a few more pics from Saturday night.

Nashville or bust!

What a long week! I found out on Tuesday that a project I was working on was actually due on Friday instead of the two weeks I thought I had to do it. Nice. It was like one of those games where one person tells someone else something and so on and the last person (me!) gets a totally different message than what the first person said. So, when I finally talked to the first person, I basically found out I was screwed.

With that said, I didn't do a lot of exciting stuff this week... I am totally looking forward to the trip to Nashville today. It will be nice to get away for a weekend and have some fun! Good luck to Michelle in the race! : )

Nice day for a game

Sunday, I got tickets to go to the Cubs game, so Brett and I went. It was super sunny and nice out. Of course, our seats were in the shade and it was freezing. But, it was still nice to be outside getting some fresh air. I got to have my favorite ball park meal... hot dog and nachos! : )


On another note, our bowling team won again... we are still in second place. I had a really good second game and I even won the bowling poker game once this week. : )

Pizza & Wii... good combo

Saturday, I logged a few hours on the Guitar Hero game. I'm officially addicted. When Matt left for work in the morning, I was playing. When he got home 8 hours later, I was playing. Of course, I stopped playing in the middle. Otherwise, that would just be REALLY sad!

Sat night, Matt and I went to Josh & Jen's place for pizza night. Jen made up the dough and had all the toppings and we each made our own personal pizzas. It was very good! There were 8 of us from work there... kind of like a little reunion of people who had worked overseas (John, Erin, Bryan, Josh and me & Matt). We played Wii bowling and Guitar Hero. Josh had just bought the Guitar Hero game that day and Matt brought his over, so we had some face-offs. Fun times.

John had extra tix to the Cubs game on Sunday he wasn't going to use... so Brett and I are going. The weather looks awesome, so I can't wait! : )

Jak's and Sarah Marshall

Friday night, Matt, Erin, Hany, my brother and I met up for dinner at Jak's Tap. It was a belated celebration for my brother's birthday.

Then, we headed up to the theater to catch Forgetting Sarah Marshall... very funny movie. Matt was skeptical at first (he says movies like this always put all the funny parts in the trailers and then he's disappointed when he gets to the theater). Anyway, we all thought it was very funny and gave it a thumbs up! : )

Ewwwww

My building smells nasty today... like fish at a fish market that have been sitting outside way too long. It's gross.

We got this in an email from the building management:

Approximately 30 minutes ago, the building engineers were testing the chiller operation as a result of recent repairs. Part of the testing required operation of the chiller without refrigerant. During this time, there was mineral oil lubricant in the chiller, which was set to exhaust to the outside of the building. Our HVAC system then pulled some of this air back in.

Why couldn't they do this testing on the weekend or at 3:30 this afternoon?

Hmmmm... maybe I should leave early today. : )

Around the world... in coffee

Ok, so this morning I was dragging a little, so I thought I would drink some coffee to pick me up. We have those Flavia machines in my office, which have about 20 different coffees/teas to choose from. Today, I decided to try a few... going on that whole ATW in beer theme, I picked the Italian, Colombian and now French. I don't normally drink that much coffee in a day and I'm on my third cup. I'm totally bouncing off the walls right now. Hence, the multiple posts I've already made today! : )

Oops

Owen is a guy I worked with in the Netherlands. He was im'ing me earlier about a project we are STILL wrapping up and then I got the following stuff. I'm guessing these are song lyrics or something.

Owen... zie je wel new age
Owen... btje jammer
Owen... who is this energy that never left or came
Owen... who lives in a different dimension free from the troubles we know
Owen... eeeeehmmmm right
Owen... sorry was the wrong chat
Owen... ;)
Stacia...that's ok. : )

I totally worry that I'm going to do this some day... like I'll be im'ing with Matt and also im'ing with my boss or something and accidentally type "smooch" on the wrong chat and hit "send" before I realize. I would be mortified. At least this wasn't bad.

It's so nice to walk outside and not need a coat!

Of course, it looks like we may need an umbrella in the next few days.

Again, this week was not all that exciting around here, folks. I was sick. I never get sick. I started feeling bad last Friday, but thought I was doing better. Then, I went to Indy and sang my heart out until the wee hours of the morning. By Monday, I was not doing well. I stayed home from work and contemplated going to the doctor, but I was too tired to get out of bed and drive myself there. They probably wouldn't have been able to do anything for me anyway. Just had to wait it out.

Anyway, doing much better now... but, unfortunately I think I may have passed along the bug to the boyfriend. : ( Hopefully, he can fight it off better than me.

Last night, we had the weekly volleyball game... we lost to a team we could have beat. I was totally worn out after the first game... that was the most energy I had exerted for a few days because of this stupid cold.

So, I totally forgot to post a 'Happy Birthday' to my little brother! I blame the cold medicine I was all whacked out on. I did email him (but he never responded... hello???)! Hence, the delayed birthday wishes posted below. Sorry, man!

Oh, I went online to buy Ravinia tickets to James Taylor (they just went on sale today if anyone wants to check it out) and they were already sold out! Bummer. Guess I'll have to search on Craig's List or something. Matt and I went last year to see Tony Bennett at Ravinia and it was so nice. We should get a group together to go this year some night!

Happy Birthday Brett!

Hope you had a great day! : )

Road trip to DeMotte

I'm a little slow on the blog update today... Michelle and Lauren have already made a few comments about the fun time we had in Demotte.

After the Sox game, Michelle and I headed down to pick up the boys on the South Side. They had continued the drinking from the earlier pre-partying and were in quite a good mood.

Michelle had stocked the car with some beer for the boys, but they needed a bottle opener... so we made a quick pitstop at Walgreens. I grabbed some cold medicine and Michelle and Matt picked up the bottle opener, snacks and Oreo Cakesters. Yum! We pretty much took over the checkout at Walgreens... Matt made friends with Victoria, the checkout girl, who told him that he "made her day". I think that made his day. : )

We were finally off... in the pouring rain. The drive went well until these big red flags kept showing up on the GPS system and it kept saying take a detour... which we initially ignored. After some backtracking, we made it to 65 and continued on our way. You can't really see it in this picture due to all the rain, but this is another exit sign for Hwy 65 with a big orange "CLOSED" sign on top of it.



Of course, the boys needed to make another pitstop so we hit a McD's. Andy made friends with two little boys in the bathroom who took pictures of him... I'm not even sure what that was about, but it's scary to say the least. JUST TO CLARIFY, PEOPLE: Andy is NOT a pedophile... he was actually minding his own business when these two little weirdos took a picture of him. I didn't realize how bad this sounded until I saw the comments! Sorry!

We finally made it to Lauren's place and relaxed with a few beers and a game of euchre. We headed out to dinner at Gentleman Tom's Hideway, a bar a few miles from Lauren's house.


We had planned to do a little barhopping, but Lauren had trouble finding the second bar... turns out we were soooo close. We were not any help... she could have dropped us off in a field two blocks from her house and we would have been totally lost!

We went to Holley's. The boys played this game called Lighthouse and probably lost more dollars on the game than they spent on alcohol at the bar.



Holley's was fun... live band and great people-watching. Notice the guy's rat-tail in the background!



Andy was really wanting to do some karaoke, so we headed back to Lauren's house. A few minutes later the karaoke machine was all set up and ready to go. Lots of singing followed... the poor cat, Darby, probably didn't know what the heck was going on!



I have a great video of the Andy & Matt Show. I'm surprised these two could talk in the morning!

The karaoke ended a little after 2am... and we all crashed.

The next morning we got up and headed back on the road for Chicago. We stopped off at Steak & Shake along the way.



Thanks to Lauren for showing us around DeMotte! We had a fun time! : )

Warm shot of tequila

Saturday morning, Reuter and Iwanski came over to Matt's place for a little pre-partying before heading to the Sox game. I originally had planned to go to the game, but was feeling crappy with this nasty head cold I caught and decided sitting out in the cold and rain watching a baseball game was not the best medicine.

They played a few games of Wii bowling... the loser of each game had to do a shot of the winner's choice. Iwanski lost twice and Reuter lost twice. For Reuter's shots, the boys decided to heat up tequila (I guess this is something they've been talking about doing for a long time, but just never found the right occasion). So, the first attempt at warming up a 1-ounce shot of tequila went a little bad... 20 seconds in the microwave was just WAY too long. Tequila boiling over is not a good smell. To cool it down, they dropped an ice cube in it. Andy had to wait a few minutes before he could actually do the shot or else he could have scalded his throat.





The boys did their last shot before heading down to the game.