Brewer Fever

Yes, I think I have it. Throbbing head, sore throat, dry cough. This morning I was driving into work and on the radio they were talking about tonight's game and all of the ramifications of the game, and I told myself that I had to go. I don't know, but I got home from work, grabbed something to eat, and watched the 1st inning and told myself that I need to be in that stadium. I jumped on my bike and headed to Miller Park. I really like messing with the scalpers. I went down with the goal of being on the field or loge level for $20 or less. Am I cheap or just smart? I will go with smart. It wasn't more than 10 minutes after my first negotiation with a scalper that I managed to find myself a loge level bleacher seat for $5. You can't turn down a $5 bleacher seat. I have to thank Joe for helping me to fine tune my scalping technique. Although I have to butter Joe up since I am staying with him this Friday and Saturday for the Badger game. So I was at the game tonight. And I told myself that I will go down for each and every playoff game and attempt to get into the game. I have to. I will be gone on Saturday, but hopefully I will be back on Sunday early enough to make that game.

I heard this on the radio today. When is the last time that a Packer game took a back seat to both a Brewer game and a Badger game in the same weekend? Never. It is good to be a Wisconsin fan. Let's hope everything goes our way this weekend.

Oh one final note on tonight's game. I was going to take some pictures. But how many times have I posted pictures from my seats at a Brewer's game? It has all been done. Expect some decent photo's from with weekend. I might make an attempt to take a picture in Madison on Saturday every hour on the hour of what I am doing or watching at the top of every hour. That could be blog worthy. Right?

Line of the Night

As I said in my last post, I was down at Miller Park Friday night after the Brewers clinched the Central Division. And it was quite the party. I only knew 7 or 8 people and stayed relatively in control. I was standing over by one of the bar tables most of the night. In fact here is a picture of the table. Look at the size of this bowl of salsa. Everyone was too busy drinking so level of salsa in this bowl never changed. So anytime anyone came by the table I would say to them, "Hey, do you know if they are going to be bringing out any more salsa?" It was a big hit all night. Such a big hit that Nate stole the joke and started using it.

Brewers Celebration

Friday night I was sitting at home preparing to watch the Brewer game when I got a phone call from Nate. He told me that if the Brewers clinched that night that all of the front office people that work for the Brewers (Nate included) would be celebrating, and he wanted to know if I wanted to join in on the fun. Of course I said yes. Shortly after the game, Nate gave me a call and I told him I was on my way. I biked down to the stadium and met up with Nate. Then we went up to one of the bars on the club level. I would say there were 100-150 people up there. I will say one thing, they did party hard. Here is Nate with the bottle of champagne.I was kind of laying low, but everyone there was getting pretty crazy. And they had tons of bottles of champagne. I easily witnessed them opening up over 50 bottles and spraying each other. This is Nate doing the chicken joke with a bar rag.They partied until 1:30 in the morning. As we were leaving we went down to the ticket office where one of Nate's season ticket accounts had left him a present. Here it is.

Fridays

Certain times of the week have a feel. Monday mornings have a feel. Sunday nights have a feel. But there is nothing like the near electricity you feel when you first get home from work on a Friday night. Especially if it has been a long day or long weekend. You have 2 days to do with whatever you want. Funny this past Friday night after work I was typing this posting. Which for me is right now. I don't have a lot to do. But that is fine. As I type, I am still debating what to do with my night. And maybe more importantly what I am going to eat. I recall on Monday just wishing this week would be over with. And now it is Friday and I am wondering where the week went. The older you get the faster time goes. And when did everyone get so busy?

First Weekend Home From College

It was Laaren's (my Godwife's daughter) first weekend home from freshman year of college this past weekend. It made me think of the first weekend home my first year of school. I got home and we were waiting for people to show up before going out for a fish fry. I recall my brother, Jon, being there with his friend, Kris Darragh. We were talking outside when Kris said to me, "Let's see what you learned in college. Let's slam a beer." I walked into the garage and took two nearly ice cold, my best guess they were about 34 degrees, Miller Genuine Drafts out of the refrigerator. I walked back by Kris who was standing in the driveway. We didn't shotgun them we just pulled the tabs, cracked them open and began drinking. And beer will only come out so fast out of a can without being vented. I remember nearly sucking the beer out of the can, knowing that I had to win. I narrowly defeated Kris. The frosty beer burned my throat going down, and I developed an instant headache. Kris and I both walked over by the back of my dad's truck and sat on the tailgate. We had our hands on our knees and we were both hating life. That is when Kris slowly turned to me and said, "I don't know about you but I feel like shit." With my head pounding and my saliva glands working overtime, I said "You got that right." That was the last time I ever slammed a beer out of a can without venting it. In fact it is a rare day in which I will slam/bong any beer that is ice cold. I hope Laaren's first weekend home had a better start.

Fantasy Football

I know no one cares about fantasy football. But I just wanted to show the set up I had for this year. I grabbed the projector from work and was able to have an entire wall of my basement as the draft board.

I actually put together a Powerpoint Presentation to go over all of the league rules

This is the spreadsheet where I kept track of everyones picks as well as player that were still available. I was surprised that most of the people in the league, even though I had everything on the wall, still used their notes.

Last of the Camping

Borky and I were discussing and trying to put in order the events of the last so many camping trips. Here is what we came up with.

2005 - Schoen Blazing A Trail Through the Poison Ivy

2006 - The Year the Wind Would Not Stop

2007 - Nate Was Sick The Entire Time and Bob Torched the Wasp Nest

2008 - Chili Head U2 Bob - Ring of Fire - Fire Jumping

2009 - Worlds Best Steak - Cuts Like a Knife

2010 - Trebutchet

2011 - The Swamp Rocket

Happy Birthday Buddy

A very happy birthday to Nate. He turns 40 today.

And More Camping

So Nate brought the Mean Machine Rocket. Here is the first launch. Watch the dog freak out.

The island we stay on is maybe 500 feet wide. And the launch that you just saw resulted in the rocket landing in the middle of this swamp in the middle of the island. And that launch happened Friday night. Saturday, Nate decided to go retrieve the rocket. He asked me for my camera so he could document the rescue. As you can see from this picture it was in there.
Like I mentioned, Nate document the rescue. For the time being I am going to withhold that video of the rescue. That is unless Nate gives me permission to post it. I will say this, the video is one of the funniest things I have ever seen in my life. If you stop by my house, I will be happy to show it to you. I would like to preface the video with these two comments.

First: This happened one week before Nate's 40th birthday.

Secondly: It was Nate's idea to take video.

Back to other video, this was the second launch of the rocket.

More Camping

Here is Nate airborne on the slip and slide.Saturday night is always the big meal. Here is Tim cooking up some corn on the cob. And then there is the steak. Always the best steak I eat all year is on this camping trip.What else do we do? Well we blow stuff up. This is a 1/4 stick of dynamite (homemade) with a snow shovel and bucket on top of it.

Here we have some dynamite inside of a shoe.

This next one is interesting. We had dynamite attached to a rocket. The plan was to launch the rocket and have the dynamite explode in mid air. The problem was that we ran out of ignitors and we tried to fashion an ignitor out of sparklers. As you will see that didn't work and the dynamite along with the rocket blew up on the pad. However, here is the interesting part. As you watch the video you will hear my radio playing in the background. The radio was about 10 -15 feet away from the rocket. Somehow the shock wave killed my radio because it dies after the explosion. The LED display works but no sound comes out of it anymore. I know pretty weird.

Camping Day 2

The big talk before the camping trip was the trebuchet. Well the fact that I had to work Thursday and into Friday morning, and I wouldn't be to the island until later on Friday night, I decided that it would not be worth it to bring it on the trip this year. In fact I traveled as light as ever, 2 camping bins, a cooler and a backpack. I guess on to the pictures and video. Here is Eric with the Mean Machine, a 6 foot rocket that Nate made back when he was living with me.I think some people know about the game "Foot in the Cooler". It is a game that Borky invented in which you stick your foot into a cooler filled with ice and water, mostly ice, and you see how long you can go before you can't take it any longer. Since it was early in the trip and Borky's cooler was still mostly filled, he modified the game to "Hand in the Cooler" thinking that our hands were so much cleaner than our hands. Here we are playing.Borky made it 17 minutes and 40 seconds. Even though I won, I kept my hand in for a full 20 minutes just to prove a point. And what was that point? I have no idea.

This was the view looking south down the river Saturday morning. It was easily the best weather we have ever had on the camping trip.
People ask what do we do on the island. I will be completely honest, nothing productive. In the past we have brought kites to see how high we could get them. But there wasn't much wind over the weekend, so to get a kite to fly we used the boat. Here are Bob and Tim flying a kite behind the boat.Tim brought a roll of plastic and we made a slip and slide. After a couple runs, it got a little boring so we made a jump at the end. That made it a little more exciting. Here is Doug.

Camping Day 1

Well camping day 1 didn't actually happen. I had to work last Thursday evening. The project that I am working on, a bridge in New Berlin on I-43, started Thursday night and into Friday evening. The contractor was paving new shoulders in preparation for moving the traffic over during the bridge construction. We started at 7:00 p.m. and they worked until 10:00 a.m. Friday. I got the first shift of working 7:00 p.m. to 4:30 a.m. A lot of people tell me that my job is pretty easy and dangerous is probably one of the last words you would use to describe it. The operation the contractor had going on was, to mill the existing asphalt shoulder and the repave that same shoulder with asphalt. I spent most of my time going back and forth between the milling crew and the paving crew. For this work we had the outside shoulder and outside lane of traffic closed with traffic drums spaced 50 feet apart through the entire construction zone. This left just one lane for through traffic. At around 2:30 a.m. a drunk driver attempted to pass a dump truck that was in the driving lane by using the outside lane which was closed off to traffic. When this driver switched lanes she ran directly into the back of a dump truck that was parked on a bridge with 10 tons of asphalt, at approximately 60 miles an hour. The dump truck didn't move an inch, in fact the car bounced back about 10 feet. I am amazed that the driver walked away with out any injuries. Here is the car.

Dump Truck 1 - Ford Focus 0. Once the police were on the scene, an ambulance was also called in. After the drive was checked out, she was given a field sobriety test, which I witnessed with another 15 or so people. The driver failed with flying colors and they slapped the cuffs on her. I was going to take a picture but decided against it. While on the job that night/morning, I probably walked over that bridge 15 - 20 times and very easily could have been walking there when the accident happened. Makes you think.

PJ20

This past weekend I went to both Pearl Jam concerts at Alpine Valley. My friend, Liz, came along. Before the show, I stopped at my brother, Jon's, because it was on the way. His friend, Al, was over. Al is a new loyal blog reader. I know he was disappointed I didn't get any pictures in after the kickball tournament. But he made it this time.

On to the concerts. Both were great shows. The band had a ton of energy. Speaking of energy, this guy in front of me also might have had too much energy. I think he got kicked out. For those that don't know, yes I have been kicked out of Alpine Valley before. But they needed 6 guards to get me out.

We had awesome seats. Check that, someone else had awesome seats and we sat in them.

Here is the setlist

Release (This is my alltime favorite live Pear Jam song, they either open with it or they won't play it at all.)

Arms Aloft

Do The Evolution

Got Some

In My Tree

Faithfull

Who You Are

Push Me, Pull Me

Setting Forth

Not For You

In the Moonlight

Deep

Help Help

Breath

Education

Once

State Of Love And Trust

Better Man

Wasted Reprise

Life Wasted

Encore:

Rearviewmirror

Stardog Champion

Say Hello 2 Heaven

Reach Down

Hunger Strike

Love, Reign O'er Me

Porch

Encore 2:

Kick Out the Jams

Here is the opener, Release. I had to take some video to help me remember.

More PJ20

Here is Sunday's Setlist. Strong work. Which show was better? Saturday I was closer, but Sunday had a better setlist. So I have to go with Sunday, 33 songs, 3 Encores. I honestly thought that "Alive" was going to be their last song and then it went on for 2/3 more. But hard to complain about either.

Wash

The Fixer

Severed Hand

All Night

Given To Fly

Pilate

Love Boat Captain

Habit

Even Flow

Daughter (It's OK Tag)

Leatherman

Red Mosquito

Satan's Bed

Elderly Woman Behind the Counter in a Small Town

Unthought Known

New World

Black

Jeremy

Encore:

(Unknown)(New Song)

Just Breathe

Nothingman

No Way

Public Image

Smile

Spin The Black Circle

Encore 2:

Hunger Strike

Call Me A Dog

All Night Thing

Reach Down

Sonic Reducer

Encore 3:

Alive

Rockin' in the Free World

Yellow Ledbetter

(Star-Spangled Banner outro)

Here is some Blair Witch video of "Alive"

Here is an idea I would like to see them implement at Alpine, a seismograph. This wasn't the first show. I have been to quite a few where you can feel the concrete under the reserve section move. Pretty crazy.

Packers

I have spaced off one of my favorite contests. It is the normal prize for whomever gets the Packers record correct. Here are my predictions.

Week 1 vs New Orleans

It is a shootout to start the seasons. Packers win 38 - 21

Week 2 at Carolina

The defense records 7 sacks, 4 by Clay Matthews. And there is a defensive touchdown. It is ugly from the start. Packers win 42 - 3

Week 3 at Chicago

The dreams that Bears fans had of returning to the NFC Championship are crushed as Jay Cutler is again unable to finish the game. Finley has 3 touchdown catches. Packers win 28 - 10.

Week 4 vs Denver

This game is closer than anyone thought it would be, as the 0 - 3 Broncos start Tim Tebow who is not the answer. Rodgers has an off game with 3 interceptions. Packers win an ugly game 17-13.

Week 5 at Atlanta

Neither team brought their defense with them. Matt Ryan goes for 400 yards and 4 TDs. Packers lose in overtime 45 -42.

Week 6 vs St. Louis

What can I say, it is hard to pick against the Packers. They win despite giving up 150 yards and 1 TD to Steven Jackson. But Ryan Grant has the better day, 160 yards and 2 TDs. Jennings also hits pay dirt. Packer win 31 - 17.

Week 7 at Minnesota

You would think this was the Packers bye week. Rodgers throws touchdowns to 5 different receivers. Side note, this game is played at Gopher Stadium because the Humpy Dome again caves in under the 6 inches of snow Minneapolis gets in October. Vikings move to L.A. before the end of the season. Where was I, oh yeah, 5 touchdowns to 5 receivers, so what is that 35 points. Make it 42, Rodgers runs for one. Packers win 52 - 0.

Week 8 bye

Week 9 at San Diego

Rodgers and Matthews are seen in Mexico during the bye week with a group of Victoria Secret models. Their minds are still in Mexico. Packers lose 24 - 14.

Week 10 vs Minnesota

Minnesota suffers from jet lag from flying in from L.A. McNabb is chased all over the field, he has 3 turnovers on his own. Jennings has 10 catches, 4 for touchdowns. After the game, team officials request the NFL to allow them to forfeit the remainder of their games. Packers win 40- 3. (Very important side note: Brewers win game 4 of the world series and complete the sweep of the Yankees. The last time we see Fielder in a Brewers uniform)

Week 11 vs Tampa Bay

Green Bay get hit with 4 inches of November snow. But that doesn't phase the team from Florida. I can't believe my Buccaneers, they pull of a last second win. Packers lose 13- 10.

Week 12 at Detroit

The Thanksgiving game. The upstart Kitty Cats are still in the game at halftime. But Stafford's arm literally falls off during the game. With no quarterback they are doomed. Packers win 28 - 17.

Week 13 at New York Giants

This one ends up just like their trip to New York last year. Winning ugly. Packer win 9-0.

Week 14 vs Oakland

Oakland is just happy that they no longer are the worst team in their state (see Vikings moving to L.A.). But just because they are better than the Vikings doesn't mean they are better than the Packers. Starks runs wild for 180 and 2 touchdowns. Rodgers throws for 300 yards for the 8th straight game. Packers win 28 - 10.

Week 15 at Kansas City

It isn't that I am running out of material, it really happens. Starks runs wild for 180 and 2 touchdowns. Rodgers throws for 300 yards for the 8th straight game. Packers win 28 - 10.

Week 16 vs Chicago

After being demoted to 3rd string, the Bears call on Jay Cutler after the 1st and 2nd string quarterbacks are knocked out of the game. But he gets a bruise on his knee his first play. The Bears are forced to go to their emergency quarterback, Devin Hester and they run the wishbone. It doesn't help. Packers win 35 - 0.

Week 17 vs Detroit

All the starters sit and the Packers barely win 10-9.

That puts the Packers at 13-3 and a bye in the first round, home field advantage throughout the playoffs.

Divisional Playoffs

Packers dismiss Atlanta with a game winning field with no time on the clock. 27-24.

NFC Championship

Packers get revenge for the loss against the Giants a couple years ago and win on a day when it actually wasn't that cold. Oh and I go to the game with Krum's dad. Packers win 21 - 6.

Super Bowl

It is a nail biter, but the Packers beat the Chargers in the Super Bowl 31 - 21.

Classy vs Unclassy

It has been a long time since I have had a poll on my blog. But here is a new one. Allow me to paint a picture for you. You are having a little backyard get together with no more than 10 people. Fairly intimate. One person in attendance is a good friend. No wait, a great friend. No wait....a lifelong friend. (Give them no where to go. No use trying to disarm a bomb after it has already gone off. (Anyone???)) So this life long friend throws their cigarette butts in the yard. What do you think, Classy or Unclassy? Alright not replace cigarette butts with bottle caps. Classy or Unclassy?

Throwing cigarette butts / bottle caps in someone else's backyard?
	Classy
	Unclassy
	They are Klinks, what did you expect?
Free polls from Pollhost.com

Bucky in the Backyard

Well here was the event. I think it went over pretty well. The weather was a little hot, so there wasn't a fire. Haus brought some wings and that took care of the food. In attendance were, MKA, Dan, Tim, Haus, Melon and Preston. Dan helped me move the TV outside and there was a little complaining. The TV is on wheels so the only carrying is out the door and down to the sidewalk. I will probably stop at Home Depot one night and get a sheet of plywood and a 2x4 and build a ramp so that I can move the TV by myself.
Let me put the feelers out now for Bucky in the Backyard again. They play back to back night games Oct. 22nd (Michigan State) and Oct. 29th (Ohio State). Depending upon the weather I will have a party on either or both dates.