Day 157

An absolutely beautiful weather weekend here in Chicago just ended. This by far will be the best weather we will have all summer. It was in the 70's without a cloud in the sky. I tried to be outside as much as possible. Saturday we had another open house from 12-3 and we had to be out of the house. Leah had her friend Jenny's bridal shower, so she was gone all day, leaving me with Casey. I ran a bunch of errands, listened to some tunes with the windows down and the sun roof open. Under normal circumstances, the fact that it took me 35 minutes to essentially go about 3 miles in the city to pick up Casey's medication would kill me, but since I couldn't go home, it was no big deal. I'll say it again - I certainly will not miss the traffic in this city. Especially during the summer months where you literally can't go anywhere on the weekends without it taking forever. But I digress. I met Dave and his future father in law at Hot Doug's, which I have chronicled in this blog. Is it bad that I went there both Friday and Saturday for lunch? At least on Saturday I didn't order the Duck Fat Fries. Seriously though, on Friday I had a Brown Ale and Chipotle Buffalo Sausage with Guinness mustard and sharp cheese. Saturday I went for the Tuscan Veal Sausage with lemon-dijon mustard and jack cheese. The place is too good. I brought Casey along and she enjoyed waiting in a 55 person deep line Saturday, which went out the door and wrapped around the corner. Saturday night we had a mini-bachelor party for Josh "The Buatch" Morris. It was the KU boys and Mark P, since none of us went to Vegas for his real b.p. a few weeks ago. If you know or have ever heard of the Buatch, you know why we didn't go to Vegas. Anyways, we took him to Hugo's and went out for drinks afterwards. We went to the Kerrymen for a while, which was a good time. Then the busted call of all time by the Buatch - he had to go to this place called Narcisse, which none of us wanted to go to. I didn't like going there 5 years ago and things didn't change one bit. The place was pretty much empty, real loud, and we for some reason had to have a reserved table and bottle service. I wish I had that hour of my life back. The only people in there were unconfirmed K-Fed's.

I spent Sunday afternoon at Gregg's daughter Samantha's first birthday party in the burbs. We drove up with Dave and Sara. To see one of your lifelong friends, especially one who is younger, at his kids first birthday is truly scary. Gregg is really good with her, but it really hits me when I see it in action. They put a big piece of cake in front of Samantha and she absolutely ravaged it. Another highlight of the party (besides the french toast) was that I was able to get Taich on the "cake smells funny" routine. Since Samantha can't have dairy products, the cake was dairy free. So I said, "Taich, tell me if its just me, or does this dairy-free cake smell funny." He leaned right in and I buried it in his face. Again, my top two laughers were with me in Sara and Leah, and we just laughed and laughed.

I have to comment on last night's season finale of The Sopranos. If you haven't watched it yet, stop reading here. Why is it that it seems like almost nothing happens when you are expecting something big? So we learned that Christopher is sleeping with the woman Tony wanted but passed on and is back using drugs. But what did that do for the storylines? Nothing. AJ went from working construction one day, to fully dating a Dominican woman 10 years older than him with a 3 year old son. So what? Carmella's spec house is back on. Swisher sweet. Who cares? Here is a question for Sopranos fans - Why did they waste an entire episode about Artie Bucco and the credit card scam? That was never mentioned again and Artie wasn't on any other episodes after that. What about Pauly and his prostate cancer? We never heard about that again. But the biggest waste of all was the half of an episode following Carmella and Ro Aprile in Europe. That meant absolutely nothing other than she had a dream about Adrianna. My grade for this season was a B-.

One season finale that didn't disappoint me last night was Big Love. Other than Rafal, I know nobody else who watches it, but I loved this show. Things here were resolved, yet a cliff hanger was out there as well. I never knew I could feel so sorry for a polygamist TV characters played so well Bill Paxton and Jeanne Tripplehorn. I have also been watching Six Feet Under reruns pretty much every night at 10 PM in bed for the last month. Now that was a great show. Such great writing and so unbelievably deep. You get a much better picture of it when you watch them continuously the way I have instead of once a week each season. Tonight through Wednesday are the last three episodes. Most importantly, Entourage, the best show on TV right now, starts next Sunday night.

Props go out to Dave and Sara for getting a new puppy this weekend. It is some sort of spaniel mix, but will be about 40 pounds in the end. Casey is very excited to have a new friend. In classic Dave fashion, they haven't named the dog yet. They got engaged a month ago and haven't set a date yet either. Sara actually called for a 30 day moratorium on planning since her mom was driving her crazy, and Dave has extended it another month. Too funny. They both want a small, destination wedding, but can't decide where. I am definitely going to miss them when we move.

Speaking of which, still no offers on this place and we have dropped the price. Nothing is selling. There were 5 open houses in our building, 4 of which were two bed, two baths like ours. The good news is that they are all over the board pricewise and ours is still the most reasonable. We would like our move date to be July 18th and if all goes as planned, that is when it will be. But if we aren't sold, we won't be moving probably until the beginning of August.

For some reason Saturday morning, I woke up and my Yahoo email was shut down and I received an error message saying to was cancelled. After an hour of going on circles and getting to the right person, they accidentally shut down my account. Yet inexplicably, they told me that others are having this same problem and it would be 3-5 days before it was restored. So I am off personal emails until it is fixed. Hopefully, by Thursday it will be back up. I am going to Ft. Lauderdale for a work conference, coming back Saturday night. Nothing like Florida in June.

Song of the Day: "Why Not" by Erick Sermon