Category Archives: whirlyball

Memorial Day 2010-palooza!

I need a vacation from my vacation!

It all started so long ago…Friday, I think it was. That night, what was going to be a small pre-party get-together swelled to 11 people getting together for “tapas” (as in “we only serve a bunch of appetizers, so let’s call it tapas”) at Rugan’s in Antioch. The company was excellent, the beer tasty, the food OK, the service disastrous, and the sound level inexcusable. We had a good time anyway.

On Saturday things got rolling early as folks started to arrive for our big Memorial Day Party. The cast of characters from the previous night, plus, um, a lot of other people – I think we had 25 people in our place at dinner time. I smoked a bunch of chickens in the smoker, Dan grilled up some bacon cheeseburgers, and everyone had a great time. Little-known fact: “Mai Tai” is Polynesian for “express train to drunkville” 🙂 Everyone brought an amazing array of food and drinks and we had a fantastic dinner.

On Sunday morning we made the requisite pilgrimage to Las Vegas Restaurant for their tasty brunch, then retired back to our place for chatting, relaxing, and gaming. As the day wore on we broke out the leftovers (of which there were copious quantities) and Dan got to try out a couple more drink recipes. Drunken Malarkey was played, where we learned that Bill Hep may or may not have been a hep cat, toothpaste magically regenerates itself, and popping movie theater popcorn has been outsourced to China.

Monday brought breakfast fail, as I somehow failed to comprehend that bagels, lox, and cream cheese requires bagels and cream cheese. Um, whoops. Thanks to Mirko, at least, for importing salmon from Seattle! We recovered, though, and headed out en masse to take over Whirlyball in Vernon Hills! We had 23 people in all there, including 11 fursuiters. The Whirlyball marketing guys loved us, taking pictures and video of the fursuit Whirlyball sessions (our picture gallery is here). We played for two hours, and I think everyone had a pretty darned good time!

Afterward, we adjourned back to our place for lunch with a few folks, then saw our last guests off at 4 PM. Dan went to bed not long after that, and I took a nap myself, then enjoyed a quiet evening, just me and Buddy.

As always, this was a terrific weekend, and I want to thank all of the great folks who were able to join us at some time over the course of the weekend: Aerofox, Aiden Dingo, Aureth, Bacon, Baja, Basil, Croc, Delmir, Drake, Eddi, Ford, Genet, Gir, GrayWolf, Hartree, Hegdish, Jenne, Linnaeus, Mirko, Nik, Perro, Quasi, RB, Rex, Roho, Rusty, Stevie, Street, Ted, Theome, Tozier, Vish, and Woody (I think I may have missed a few – if so, I apologize!). As tired as we were at the end of it, I know I felt it was all worth it, and we’re already thinking ahead to New Year’s Eve and other fun events in the future!

Birthday Weekend for a Sheppie!

What a weekend that was! It was fordshepherd‘s birthday, and we were determined to celebrate it in style.

baja_hyena flew into Milwaukee International Airport (MKE) on Thursday night. I picked him up and we came home to a tasty dinner of fried chicken and mashed potatoes that Takaza had made.

Friday, we were joined by Ford, who arrived just in time for a great steak dinner and a relaxing evening of chatting and relaxing.

On Saturday, the fun really began! Following the surprise (to Ford, anyway) arrival of r_bear, the first stop was Whirlyball, a crazy combination of bumper cars and lacrosse with a really good bar. We were joined by perro, wolphy, deccadoggy, tozier_wah, justincheetah, calapurr, r_bear, linnaeus, and snickershusky. We were able to get in six 10-minute games, and we had a blast! We’ll definitely be going back, perhaps either during Wuffmeet or Memorial Day next year.

After Whirlyball we stopped for a tasty lunch at Eloise Chicago, then it was over to Nickel City Arcade, where after paying $2 admission you can play any of their 100 games for a nickel (OK, maybe $0.15, sometimes). I got an hour’s worth of entertainment on about thirty cents with a couple of games of pinball, an old version of Mortal Kombat, NFL Blitz ’99, and Puzzle Fighter. The place was of course overrun with kids on a Saturday afternoon, but it wasn’t too bad.

When we wrapped up there several folks took their leave, and it was down to eight – me, Dan, Baja, Ford, Linnaeus, RB, Cheetah, and Cala. We stopped by Linnaeus’ place to change and then it was off to dinner at Moto. Oh my god, Moto.