Category Archives: baseball

Friday’s here, let’s all cheer!

Well, I’m not cheering as much as takaza, who took off this afternoon to go see the Cubs play. If it were 80 degrees on a nice late-spring day, maybe – 47 degrees and 15 mph winds coming in off the lake, not so much. Still, I hope he’s having a good time as I write this. The good news is that since I worked last Saturday my boss was nice enough to give me next Friday off, which means an earlier start to Furry Connection North for us. We’ll probably take off just after morning rush hour, and get to Ann Arbor at around 2:30 PM or so. We’re looking forward to it!

So as I mentioned earlier, on Wednesday Dan and I decided to go out for dinner and try Lindy’s Landing in Wauconda. Not only did their specials look good, but they have NTN! They were in the middle of a poker tournament on NTN when we got there, but the staff was nice enough to turn one of their many TV’s to the NTN Trivia channel for us. The food was OK – the fried wonton-wrapped mozzarella sticks were a pleasantly crunchy diversion from the usual, and the garlic mashed potatoes and steamed broccoli that came with my meatloaf were tasty. Alas, the meatloaf itself was rather tasteless and covered up by a spicy barbecue sauce (?!) that masked whatever flavor there might have been. Dan’s pizza was to his liking, at least. I was impressed that when I ordered a 23 ounce Fat Tire Ale, I was told that they were out of tall glasses so the waitress just gave me two pint glasses – all for three bucks! We’ll
definitely be going back.
The only other item of note from this week was the surprising revelation that I can actually find a frozen entree that isn’t completely nasty! Garden Fresh Market carries a line of frozen Indian from SWAD Foods. I picked up the mutter paneer a few weeks back and finally got around to making it. I made up some white rice and served it with the mutter paneer and…wow! Excellent flavor, and a surprising spiciness that I’m not used to from a frozen entree. I’ll definitely be picking up a few more of these entrees to keep in the freezer.

Plans for this evening are kind of hazy. Depending on how the afternoon goes for him, I may go into the city and meet Dan or I may just hang out at home. As for the weekend, the plans we had for Saturday night fell through, so we’re kind of at loose ends. We’ll see what develops!

“Baseball Has Been Very, Very Good To Me”

(Wow, am I dating myself with that subject line…)

So, con reports aside, what have we been up to? Well, the past weekend was quite entertaining, really. The fun started on Friday when Takaza and I played hooky from work to meet Mirkowuff and Siegferret at Wrigley Field to watch the Chicago Cubs vs. the Arizona Diamondbacks. Mirko and Siegfried experienced some delays getting to the park, unfortunately. We missed the top of the first inning, but once we got seated things were fine. And those were some really great seats! Section 215, Row 2 – about a third of the way up the third base line with a great view of the game. I will freely admit that I am not the world’s best baseball fan – hell, after football season is over, I usually throw away the sports section unread. But I learned that actually being there at the game is far more interesting, and I really had a great time. Mirko and I swapped rounds of (expensive, nasty) beer and Sieg and Dan each got some hot dogs. The game was great, too – a real thriller, with the Cubs pulling it out in the bottom of the ninth. I would actually be willing to catch another game this year, albeit maybe from the cheap seats.

After the game we fought the teeming throngs to get out of the park and onto the El, taking about a half-hour to go a few hundred feet. We eventually made it onto a northbound Red Line train and rode up to DaveQat and Jimcyl‘s place. We hung out there, and were eventually joined by boixboi and perromutt. Perro stuck around to wait for Darkwolph (who was apparently traveling in low orbit, since he got from Lafayette, IN to the north side of Chicago in 90 minutes, on a Friday afternoon) while the rest of us tromped off to Evanston to the Asado Brazilian Grill. We dove into the tasty food and copious quantities of meat, and Perro and Wolphy joined us not too long after. The meal was excellent, and the company grand. We parted ways afterwards and went home and to bed.

On Saturday Dan and I set forth once again to the wilds of downstate Illinois (i.e. south of I-80) towards the Champaign-Urbana metroplex. We arrived at Mirko’s in time to do some birthday shopping, then it was over to Siegfried’s place for a fun night of games with Mirko, Sieg, Lycaos, and Wolftail. We played Malarky (very fun game, though I’m not sure about the scoring system) and Cranium (always fun) and had a great time.

Sunday morning, we met everyone but Lycaos (who was flying out that day) at The House of Lard, aka The Original Pancake House, for breakfast. Yum! Very tasty. I drove home, and on the way back we finished listening to Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince. I have…comments. But I think I’ll wait a bit and think it over some more. Anyway, we arrived home just in time to meet up with Rustitobuck and Linnaeus and strike out for Linnaeus’ birthday party. Paul has documented that well, so I’m going to be lazy and just point to his entry 🙂

And today it was back to the grind, woohoo. Ah well. Now, to figure out what we’re going to do for dinner tonight…