The Weekend That Was

I had a lot of plans for this past weekend, but my truck breaking down on me wasn't one of them. But then again as I was telling my sister when she picked my stranded butt up, "I guess there never is a really good time for your vehicle to die on you." Friday night I picked up my brother-in-law, Tim, and then headed to my brother, Dan's, house to watch the basketball games. Everything had been going splendidly, I was front and center in front of 61 inches of TV, I got in a couple games of pool, and saw some decent basketball. At what I thought was the end of the night, I started my truck to drop Tim off and head home, and my truck started shaking fairly violently. As I drove smoke poured out of the exhaust pipe. I easily could have been mistaken for driving the car from "Spy Hunter". But as I got halfway to Tim's house, my truck started performing normally. I dropped of Tim and headed for home. I was keeping an eye on the temperature gage and it continued to rise. I nearly got on the interstate, but decided to take the frontage road. My truck started acting up and was getting pretty hot. I pulled into a shopping mall and popped the hood. I will be honest, I am pretty smart guy, but I know nothing about vehicles. So here I am in a deserted parking lot at 11:30 at night looking under the hood and having no idea what I am looking at or for. I noticed that the antifreeze reservoir was bone dry. The closest gas station was closed so I call my sister up and had her come and pick me up. Saturday I spend the day car shopping. I got a price from the dealership, but I have decided to wait a little bit on making a decision. I am planning on buying basically the same truck that I have, just brand new.
I would like to take a moment to thank all of my family for their help. I realized how lucky I am to have the family that I have. I am a pretty independent person, and I really try not to ask people for help. However, it is nice to know that I have the safety net of my family no matter how bad I screw up. My parents are letting me keep my truck at their house until I decide what to do with it. My sister, Deb, picked me up at 11:30 at night and allowed me to sleep at her house Friday night. My brother, Jon, is allowing me to use his spare vehicle until I can purchase a new vehicle. My brother, Jeff, towed my truck to my parent's house and is looking into possibly fixing it up with a family friend. And my brother, Dan, well all Dan did was wipe the pool table with me Friday night.
As for the rest of the weekend, Saturday evening was my cousin, MKA's, football game. He is playing football with the Wisconsin Wolfpack out of Madison in the Continental Indoor Football League.(Iron League? Are there a lot of fights?) There game Saturday was against the Milwaukee Bonecrushers. The Wolfpack won 36-20, in front of 543 roaring fans. I actually don't know how many fans were there, but it wasn't too many. And that was fine with me. It was a good game and with so few people there, I could yell at MKA at anytime during the game, and I know he could hear every thing I said. Including Nate and Eric who showed up late (thanks Pickle for sneaking them in), our contingency consisted of 24 people. Here is a group shot that no one wanted to be part of before the game. It is so hard to stand together of 30 seconds isn't it? Pickle?Here is Erin at the game. I think Joey also had a good time.Here is some game action. As you can see by the stands on the other side, it was pretty empty.Here is MKA in action. Mike played very well. And for the most part, at least when the refs knew what they were doing, it was an enjoyable game to watch.I know, I know, it is almost embarrassing, but the ladies just can not leave me alone no matter where I go.After the game, as promised, there was a meet and greet with MKA at Buck Bradleys. But the only ones to show were, Nate, Eric, Katie, MKA and myself. Here is Eric taking care of the appetizers. "If you grab one nacho and they all stick together, that is still just one nacho." Look at Nate in the background.Quite a few of my loyal blog readers has experienced Nate when he is story mode. I feel partly responsible for it, but I nudged Nate into story mode on Katie and MKA. Nate pulled out two new stories that even I had not heard. I guess it is something you just have to experience. Just get about 5 or 6 drinks in Nate and he spins some incredible yarns. Around mid-night Nate, Eric and I headed to the south side to a bar by Eric's to get in some Golden Tee. Not a real big surprise that I took them both behind the woodshed.

Sunday, I did absolutely nothing. I hopefully took the snow blower out of the final spin around the sidewalks. I officially put my snow shovel away for the year, so it snows again, it is my fault. Otherwise, Sunday was filled with a touch of house cleaning and watching basketball.

Rodge, made a request for me to post MKA's football schedule.

MKA's home games are at the Dane County Coliseum. I would like to get a group to go to one of these home games. Here are the dates that would work for me. Let me know if you are interested. May 2nd, May 9th, May 30th.