M.I.A.

I've been MIA on this here blog! This week turned out to be much busier than I expected. I flew to Philly and back on Monday for a meeting. And then on Tuesday, was asked to fly to Princeton, NJ to help out on a project for the rest of the week. But, I'm back and going to give a quick update of what's been going on...

Last week, Chuck and June came up to Chicago to stay at Hotel Plothow. Some of their friends were in town, so they spent a few days up here visiting with friends, hanging out with us, shopping, walking the streets of Chi-town.

On Friday night, we went up to Erin and Ross' house to hang out and visit with little Sofie. She's getting bigger and more able to walk around on the wood floors without face-planting all the time. She's a HYPER puppy! And about the cutest thing I've ever seen! : )

Play with me please!

She always has to be chewing on something!

It's very hard to get a good pic - she kept lunging at the camera!

Love her! Eventually her blue eyes will turn the same color brown as her fur and nose.

We had dinner with Ross' parents and Chuck and June at Pete's Pizza on Friday night. Love that place! Matt was at The Capital Grille with a bunch of guys for Steak Night. He ate a lot of meat, drank a few martinis, a little wine and came home very happy.

On Saturday, we had tickets for the Iowa vs. Northwestern game up in Evanston. There was a big group going... Ross' family was all in town for the game. Chuck and June had plans to meet up with some friends, so they didn't come with us.

Before the game, we went to the Wildcat Alley, where Goose Island was serving free beer! Wildcat Alley is like the NW pre-game party area. I think there were more Iowa fans there than Northwestern! The yellow to purple ratio was pretty high!

A little Steak Night reunion

Erin MAY have been dressed for a blizzard!

Me and Matt

Love Fubar's hat!

Hi Matt! Where's your poncho?

It was a bit cold and rainy!

Iowa band playing at half time

Unfortunately, Iowa couldn't hold on to their lead and lost. It's bad that we had to sit out in the rain and cold for a loss! We went somewhere warmer and drier afterwards (aka The PO) for a few more drinks and some food.

On Sunday, the Wilken crew and me and Matt and Chuck and eventually June all met up at the West End to watch the Bears game and celebrate Spencer's birthday. Erin and I introduced June to Bananagrams.

Me and Erin - Go Bears!

Group pic - Chuck, Matt, June, me and Erin at West End

Look at all those cups... Matt may have had a few beers while watching the game!

We dropped Chuck and June off at the train station and had a quick beer with them and Danny before their train left. I came back home and crashed. We had a very fun (and busy!) weekend and I was worn out!

I had to be up Monday morning at 3:45 am to catch a flight to Philly. Ugh... not the best way to start off a Monday! I was fighting off this stupid cold and flying was not the best thing for it. My flight was delayed due to the fog in Philly, but I ended up making it to the office about 15 minutes before the meeting was supposed to start. My flight home was uneventful. I was worried it would be delayed, too, because all the other flights to MDW were... but, luckily mine took off right on time.

On Tuesday, I went to work thinking I might leave early because I was feeling crappy. About mid-morning, my boss IM'd me and asked if I could fly to Princeton, NJ to help out on a project for the rest of the week working 12 hour days. I wanted to say "no" so badly, but I said "sure". I managed to negotiate leaving early on Friday, because I really didn't want to stay Friday night, too.

I ended up flying out Tuesday night, got into NJ around 9 pm and then had to drive an hour in the pouring rain and darkness to my hotel. I had the worst rental car... they must have cleaned the windshield with vegetable oil or something because it was impossible to see through it! It was better when I wasn't using the windshield wipers!

I'm so glad I got the GPS because it would have taken me twice as long to get to the hotel without it. The hotel was in the middle of nowhere. (We were working at the client site, so the hotel was near their office.) GPS is a funny thing... every day it would take me a different way to the office from the hotel than it would take me back to the hotel at night. Seemed about the same length of time either way and no one ways, so I'm not sure why it was doing that.

I was super glad when Friday 2 pm rolled around and I could head back to the airport and get back to Chi-town. What a long week! And fighting off this crappy cold all week did not make it any better.

Slacking

I realized the last post I made here was over a week ago. Oops!

Let's see... what have I missed...

My fall volleyball league started back up, which I'm very happy about! We always take the summers off because everyone is so busy and we're always searching for subs. Plus, I'm not a huge fan of beach volleyball.

Matt and I refinanced and we closed last Friday morning. I'm now officially on the mortgage. Awesome. Pretty easy, lots of signing my John Hancock. I hadn't actually ever signed my new name with my middle inital. It was totally throwing me off. I think my signature looked different on every page!

Also, this past Friday, it was Halloween party day at my company. So, everyone brought in their kiddies all dressed up. They trick-or-treated around the office. I still have leftover candy, which taunts me every time I see it. "EAT ME"... "YOU KNOW YOU LOVE SNICKERS!!!" Yep, I'll probably finish the rest off myself. Awful.

On Saturday, we hung out at Kari's place to watch the Iowa game. We had lots of great snacks and we did a few Hawkeye bombs... but, Iowa couldn't pull it off in the end. Then we hung out with Andy, Michelle and Sam. Michelle made some super tasty chicken and dumplings and we played Scrabble. Fast fact: It was the first time Matt had ever played Scrabble in his life! I'm not even sure how that's possible.

Oh, the guys even tested out the 'quarter trick' with a few cans of beer. My uncle Chuck swears that if you shake up a beer can and then put a quarter on the bottom of it when you open it, it won't explode. Andy decided to not only shake the beer cans, but throw them full force onto the metal balcony. One can ended up totally flat on one side (that takes talent)! : ) I think one can exploded all over him, even with the quarter.

Sunday was 'catch up on everything' day... cleaning, laundry, organizing. Fun times, I know you're jealous. Matt grilled out turkey burgers = yum! We watched the Bears lose.

We've hired a cleaning lady... I'm very excited about this! I don't know why it's taken me so long to pull the trigger on this one. She's been cleaning a friend of Erin's house for over 8 years and has been cleaning Erin's place for a while now, so she comes highly recommended. She stopped by last night to take a look at our place. She starts Thursday!

The current discussion at our house is... what are we going to dress up as for Halloween??? I'm forcing Matt to go to the Halloween party we go to every year. It's at Witt's and it's for charity. Plus, everyone gets really into it and I love seeing what clever costumes people come up with. So, the costumes are TBD. I'm sure there will be numerous pictures taken!

Well, I think that gets me caught up!

Weekend in review

We had a nice relaxing, productive weekend at home and it was great! : )

On Friday night, we went to dinner in Greektown at the Greek Islands. Love that place! I always suggest Greek food and Matt always says "no", but Friday he caved.

I spent most of Saturday going through the closets and finding lots of stuff I don't wear, use, need anymore. I ended up with probably about 8 garbage bags full of stuff. I think I got rid of over 20 pairs of shoes. Somewhere Matt is cheering about that!

And in true Duesterhaus fashion, I fell off the step ladder I was using to get to the top shelf in the closet. I was stepping down and my ankle totally twisted and I came crashing down, while also twisting my body and hitting my back on the corner of the wall in the closet. Matt was in the living room and heard the commotion and came back as I was laid out on the floor. He's like "um, are you ok?" As far as I know, nothing is broken. But the right side of my back is really sore. My ankle is fine, though.

On Saturday night, we went out to dinner at Quartino with some friends. Good food, good wine, good company! I thought it was funny they put us in the farthest table back in the corner of the restaurant. I wondered if they thought we were going to be loud?!? Quartino has an awesome dessert drink that I'm going to have to figure out how to make at home... it's called a Sgroppino... it's made with lemon vodka, lemon gelatto and prosecco (Italian champagne). So good!

Afterwards, we headed up to the PO to watch the Iowa game and the Florida game. Erin and Ross met up with us there, too. Erin and I got into a fierce competition of Scrabble... we're tied 1-1. : )

On Sunday, I had a list a mile long of things I wanted to get done. Matt's list was "watch the Ryder Cup". Actually, he did spend some time going through his closets as well. My first stop was the Salvation Army to drop off all those bags full o' stuff. I also hit Target and Best Buy. Target is such a zoo on Sundays. I was picking up some stuff for the baby shower we're throwing my cousin, Erik, and his wife Caroline, next weekend in Quincy. The baby section in Target is full of crying babies. Go figure.

Matt got Blackhawks tix from one of our bosses at work, so we went to the game Sunday. The seats were great! We were 4 rows from the ice by one of the goals. The game was pretty exciting, because there was a lot of scoring and also because we were so close to the action. The Hawks won 4-3 over the St. Louis Blues.

The Madhouse on Madison (aka The United Center)

Watch for flying pucks! Matt says to me "I bet you get hit by a puck"!

Our seats were awesome!

Goal! Cue the song!

The Blues stopped an attempt at goal and one Blues fan in the background is going nuts! Funny!

The "Ice Team"... Matt's favorite part of the game???

Go Hawks!

We took a road trip to Bloomington, Indiana this weekend to see the Iowa v. Indiana game and do some tailgating.

Some highlights of the trip:

*Cheap college drinks
I forgot how cheap it would be to drink on a college campus. Compared to Chicago, it was great! These big blue drinks we got at the Upstairs Pub on Friday night were pretty sweet and had like 6 large shots of alcohol in them... all for about $7.

Matt and his typical pose


Now, that's better


A couple of random pics Matt took... Michelle and Lauren at the Upstairs Pub

When we were at Nick's on Saturday night, a group of us drank for 3.5/4 hours and ate two large pizzas all for about $185 with tip.

*Tailgating at the crack of dawn and watching Iowa stomp on Indiana
The tailgate started off with a call to Fubar and the guys all shotgunning beers. It was still dark outside! We were just about the first people in the parking lot.



Matt grilled out our favorite hot dogs (Hebrew National = the best!) and we played bags and tossed around a football. One of the best things about the parking lot we tailgated at was that they opened the Assembly Hall so we could use actual bathrooms (not the typical port-a-potty tailgate I was used to). Very awesome.

Random group shot of everyone


Knowles missed out on the first shotgun, so Reuter did another one with him


Grillin' out the dogs


Tossing the pigskin around


I thought this sign was funny at the exit of the Assembly Hall


We watched the first half of the game in the stadium, but it was SOOOOOO hot. We ended up going back out to the cars at half-time so we could sit in the shade and cool off.

The Iowa Marching Band


Inside the stadium


Matt and me cooking at the game


*Napping after the game
Yep, I'm old. After being in the heat and drinking a little too much vodka, a nap was the perfect way to spend the rest of the afternoon. Even the crappy bed at the Motel 6 couldn't stop me from snoozin' at that point!

*Sink the Biz
April took us to Nick's English Hut on Saturday night for pizza, beer and a few too many games of Sink the Biz for the boys.



I didn't play this game, but it was really entertaining to watch. You have a bucket of beer and a small glass that floats in the bucket. Everyone takes a turn at slowly pouring beer into the glass. Whoever sinks the glass has to drink a glassful of the beer from the bucket like a shot.



There are some rules, though. When you are slowly pouring beer into the glass, it has to be a steady stream, not just drops. You also have to hold the glass up high enough that the handle of the bucket will not hit the glass if flipped from side to side. If the glass does not sink for 3 seconds after you finish your pour, you are safe and the next person has to shoot the beer if the glass sinks before they take their turn. Matt, Andy, Lee, Mike and others played this game for most of the night. It became sort of a science for them.

Round 1


Reuter concentrating


Lee mastered the perfect pour


After a while, it became sort of no-holds-barred and a rule was made that you can do whatever you want to distract a player... as long as there was no touching involved.

Lee trying to distract Reuter


Lee trying to distract Matt by getting in his line of vision


*Double dose of Steak-n-Shake
Matt was in heaven when he heard our hotel (the Motel 6) was right across the street from Steak-n-Shake. This is definitely not part of the healthy diet plan, but so great nonetheless. We went both nights after being out at the bars. The second night, one of the waitresses recognized us and said "man, you just can't get enough of this place, huh!?!" True... so true.