My Favorite Reader Of The Year

With today being the final day of the year, it is time for me to reveal who is my favorite reader of the year. In case you are wondering how to become my favorite reader, it is easy. All you have to do is leave comments on my blog. The person with the most comments is my favorite reader. And why do I love comments so much? Believe it or not, at times it is difficult to come up with things to talk about. Any outside material that I can get to talk about is a blessing. The more comments, especially those that are controversial or opposed to my line of thinking, the more material I have for postings in the future. This year the run for the title was very close.

I will only list those that have had more than 10 comments for the year. Just think if you want to listed here next year, all you have to do is make one comment a month. Anyhow here is the list:

My top reader, BORKY. 46 comments.

Runner up, Annie, 45 comments.

3rd place Bubs, 42 comments.

4th place Julie, 26 comments.

5th place MKA, 24 comments.

6th place Tree, 18 comments.

7th place K-Mart 17 comments.

8th place Pickle and Sugar Lips, 16 comments.

10th place Liquid, 15 comments.

11th place Pocahontas, 14 comments.

12th place The General, 11 comments.

I want to thank you all for helping contribute to my blog.

And as a new feature of my blog, I will be signing off every posting with the calling out of MKA who is afraid to step up to the MKA challenge that he threw down back in May.

MKA WHEN IS THE DAY?

Rusted Root

Last night I went to see Rusted Root at the Rave. I have seen them 3 or 4 times there. But the are a good live band. I am not the biggest fan in the world. I really only know about 4 or 5 songs. But they always play their classics. This isn't a picture from last night, but from two years ago at Summerfest.
One of the best parts about last night was that I opted to get the VIP balcony seats. They were $35. The general admission tickets were $29. But in the VIP balcony that bar was serving $0.25 beers and $1.00 mixed drinks. Granted the mixed drinks were all rail stuff, but those same drinks were $8.00 at the bars outside of the VIP area. So after one drink I was already ahead. I went with my friend, Liz. I went up to the bar to get two rum and cokes for myself and a water for Liz. The total was $5.50. I spent more on the water than the mixed drinks. Weird. Anyhow, as I mentioned, they played their standards hits, Send Me On My Way, Ecstasy, Back to Earth, Beautiful People. I was pleasantly surprised to hear them do a cover of Elvis' Suspicious Minds. And in the encore, the covered Neil Young's Cinnamon Girl, with which they did a great job with. The Rave is such a great venue to see a show, it is so small and you are right on top of the stage. Plus I don't think the place was anywhere near capacity so there was plenty of room to move around. We ended up just staying up in the balcony off to the left side of the stage and had a great view of band the entire show.

Christmas Cards

I like to display the Christmas cards that I have received each year. It saves me the time of trying to think up of at least one posting a year, so here they are.

This is Kyle and Jenna, Mark Thome's two kids. Mark and I went to high school together and played soccer together. This is T1, Tammy, Dane, Caleb and Bailey the dog. T1 and I were roommates in college together. Here is the Eggener family. Jake, Lauren, Nancy (my god wife) and Brian or Green Hat at I like to call him.This is the card I got from Storch who was one of my roomates in college.Here are Anna, Abby and Alex, my cousin, Heidi's children.This the card I got from Bob the Blatz man. Bob was also one of my roommates in college. This is Leon, Cammy and Zachary. Leon and I worked together when I was at Merge. And now that I am working out of URS' Milwaukee office which oddly enough is right across the hallway from Merge, I seem to run into Leon about once every two weeks. Here is the card I got from Matt "Scotty" Kaker. His two boys, Miles and Charlie. Lisa is a friend of mine whom I met through my sister in law, Julie. Julie who did not send out a Christmas card this year, either that or I wasn't on their list.My brother, Jeff's kids, Zack, Joey and Sarah.

This one is from my buddy, Brown up in Minnesota.

This is from my friend, Hilt. That was her last name and I always call her by it even though she has married. Hilt and I worked together in Fond du Lac when I was working for the DOT.

Mark, Suzanne and Elise. Mark and Suzanne were actually both roommates with me when I was in college.

Here is Topher, The General's son. This is Tree's Christmas card.

This one is from my friend, Flo. She is another of my Minneapolis friends.

Bones, who is my sister in law Julie, yes the one who didn't send me a Christmas card, as I was saying, Julie's brother. He and I played club soccer together when we were in high school, and from the distance of the sidelines looked alike.

Here is my friend, Pretzel's daughter. Pretzel and I used to do fun runs and triathlons together.

The Ehrgott's. I went to high school with Brian.

This is my old roommate Truz. And this is also an old card that they resent me. I got this same card two years ago. I am sure Julie sent it out thinking I would never notice that it was an old card.

This is my high school friend, Matty Beier's daughter, Layla.

Julie was my old boss when I worked at Merge.

Ryan was on my kickball team, but since has moved to Illinois to fulfill his dream of being a F.I.B.

Rob is another friend from kickball.

Tyler is one of my friends from the Hartland area. I guess you could say that I met him through the Klinks but that is a slap in the face to both Tyler and myself by acknowledging our friendships with the Klinks.

This card can from my neighbor when I was a kid, Jacob Heinzelmann.

Christmas

I had a grat Christmas. Rather than bore you with the details here are all of the pictures. This was Christmas Eve at the Eggeners. The Eggeners whom I need to publically appologize to got accidentally excluding them from my blog entry at the last Whitewater Football Game. Green Hat, my Godwife, Nancy, Lauren and Shut Up were all there, and the game and day would not have been the same without them. As for Christmas Eve, here is Gordy, the sit down cook putting the glaze on the ham. The food was wonderful, and thank you to the Brantzeg family for once again inviting me to take part in their holiday gathering. Here are the family Christmas Pictures. These are all of my nieces and nephews in reverse alphebetical order of middle names.:
Joshua William.Lindsey Rose.

Zachary Richard.Joey Jeffery.Jared James.Nicholas Evan.Erin Emma.Sarah Elizabeth.Abbigail Diane.

Ethan August.

Here are all the kids altogether.

My parents.My parents with their 10 grandkids.The Coonen Family.

Davies Family Number 1 Davies Family Number 2. Davies Family Number 3.Here is the whole tribe, all 21 of us.
Josh picked the winning envelope.

Dinner. This was fantastic. We had prime rib. My sister makes these rolls with cottage cheese and mandarin oranges. I know it doesn't sound right, but they are great. So I made these sliders with the rolls, prime rib, some mushrooms and steak sauce. I managed to push myself away from the table after 8 of them.

Here is Chucker giving Josh a lift.

And as is always a Christmas tradition, a stop by the Krumrich's on the way home. JFK recently finished his garage. We got in some pretty serious ping pong. About two hours worth. I have no problem admitting, that in 5 games head to head, JFK beat me in 3 of those games.

I hope everyone had a great Christmas.