This was a pretty action packed weekend for me with all kinds of plans. I hit up my favorite Mexican restaurant, Mi Ranchito, for dinner on Friday with my girlfriend. I normally always get the lunch enchilada meal but got a mixed combo to “branch out.” I swear that I will order something totally different one day. We followed that up with going to the grand opening of Copia on Washington Avenue. The place looked fantastic. They installed a sliding roof on the patio for when the weather is good/bad. The one thing that troubled me was a “corking fee.” We wanted to try some wine. We saw a bottle that looked good. It said $8 for glass and $16 for bottle so we figured the bottle is a better deal even though we only wanted a glass. Well they ended up charging us an $8 corking fee. I thought such fees were only when you brought your own wine into a venue…not when you buy it from them. That is super deceptive adverting and is not right. The bartender even made a comment about how stupid people are for not realizing the corking fee. We followed it off with a visit to Shiver. Shiver is a new vodka bar next to Copia. I read an article earlier in the week about how you can drink vodka in a freezer. They provide parkas to keep you warm. Supposedly it is popular in other big cities like Las Vegas, New York, and LA. It was a good atmosphere even though it was pretty empty. I would describe it like Lure (down the street) but without a cover and cheaper drinks so much better than Lure. But it seems like Lure lowered their cover. I can swear paying in the $15 to $20 range when it first opened. $10 is more reasonable but still the highest on Washington Avenue.

I went to a friend’s pool party on Saturday. The weather was awesome plus I did not get burnt which is a major win. We also watched the US soccer game. All I can say is that FIFA needs to make some major changes. I understand why United States has not embraces soccer like the rest of the world. These are the changes I suggest (1) add replay or more officials…the calls and missed calls have been ridiculous. (2) be able to rescind cards after the game like the NBA does with technical fouls. I have seen some horrible calls that have knocked players out of the next match when they should not have been. (3) make more calls on flops. (4) stop the clock when the play is dead. Is it that hard to stop the clock?…every other US sport does it. Stoppage time does not work. Watching how the Ghana players were just falling and laying down on the ground to delay time was ridiculous. No sports outcome should ever be determined because of the delay tactics of the other team. I don’t care if people say every team does it…that doesn’t make it right.

I went on a serious cleaning binge on Sunday along with knocking out a couple shows off the DVR. I am glad Entourage is back. I also like the new realm of True Blood. I thought last season wasn’t that good and definitely like this new storyline better. I have an appointment to get my wood floors professional cleaned this week which has be excited. I did something to my floors the first time I cleaned them and they have never looked the same.

I went and had pizza at the Stable on Friday. My girlfriend raved about the pizza and we had been talking about going for months. We started out with the bacon wrapped dates. They were delicious. We also had salads which were good. We then got to our pizzas. We wanted to order different things so we got two different ones and looked like pigs when they had to set up a tray next to our table for our second pizza. I got a sausage, pepperoni, and onion pizza which was awesome. My girlfriend got the jerk chicken pizza. She liked it but I really did not. It did not have tomato sauce on it. Instead it had something very similar to the Harry and Davis sauce. We finished up the night with watching Alice in Wonderland. It was good but I think it would have been cooler seeing it in theater in 3D.

Saturday was my good friends wedding. It was a great day. The wedding and reception were really nice. I had a lot of fun but I think I got heat exhaustion. It was pretty hot during the pictures and the whole day wearing a complete tux. I quit drinking around 7 but managed to get a little sick in the parking lot around 11. I had a headache and was light headed the whole reception…all signs of heat sickness.

I have no clue what I did on Sunday. I think we did some shopping and caught up on the DVR.

• I have not played video games since I came back from Chile almost two months ago. Pretty odd considering I was addicted before I left.
• I can not get on top of my DVR situation.  I have my DVR 75% full which is about 900 GB. I have complete seasons of Chuck, Dollhouse, Tudors, Flash Forward, V, and probably others. I have over 5 episodes each of Simpsons, Parks and Recreations, The Middle, American Dad, America – The Story of Us, and many others.
• I do not know what to think about this shift from the Big 12. I thought it was a money issue but I read last week that MU has gotten around $22 million a year in the Big 12 revenue sharing program where the Big 10 programs get 20 million. Doesn’t make sense. It sounds like the whole league could fold if MU and Nebraska leave which is eerie. I read a stupid article yesterday that said KU and K State would be out to dry. Both are major sports programs so I am sure they will have no problem finding their way into a strong conference.
• I love that I somehow got new HD channels with Charter. I believe 6 in total. Comedy Central is huge and the Disney channel is not bad. Bravo is also a big one even though I do not watch any shows from there. My girl friend can now watch Drop Dead Diva in HD on Lifetime now too.
• I had a brief stroll down Wash Ave last night and saw a lot of development started back up again. The market that was started before Culinaria opened looked to be going again and almost finished. There is also a convenient store next to Lucas Park being built. Copia looks to open any day and the Vodka bar next door to Copia is open.
• The Lakers Celtics series is pretty good but I think the referees are deterring from the game. There has been a lot of missed calls in terms of fouls….more than normal on both sides. It seems life refs automatically call a foul if the player falls down but don’t call one when players get whacked in arm. The 2  minute replay review needs to be looked at because the Odom-Rondo reversal was ridiculous. Rondo fouled Odom (and it was easy to see) on a rebound that made Odom knock the ball out of bounds. The refs originally called it Lakers ball and reversed. Obviously he would not have knocked it out of bounds if Rondo would not have knocked is right hand off the ball.
• Looking forward to Vegas. More and more people keep signing up plus I can’t wait to hang out with friends I have partied with in a while.

I thought this past weekend was going by super slow on Sunday when I woke up (which is good) but here I sit on Monday and wonder where the time went. Isn’t it always like that?

I went to the Cardinals game with some of my boys on Friday. We hit up Harry’s before hand to enjoy the great weather and patio scene. The game was a fun time, the weather was perfect (not too hot), and Waino was pitching so of course we won. I went to Paddyo’s for a while before I went home to crash.

Saturday was pretty relaxing. I hung out with my brother and saw Lucabrasi at the RFT Music Festival on Wash Ave. I followed that up with a quick dinner at Ozzie’s then went to Pepper’s for a 30^th bday party for my cousin. I tried to end the night by watching Where the Wild Things Are but gave up about 30 minutes in. It is already back in the mail because I don’t think I would ever get into it and there are much better movies in my Netflix queue.

Sunday was also a relaxing day. I knocked out some errands with my girlfriend, made a delicious spaghetti dinner, and suffered through a Lakers loss (even though it was a good game but with some bad calls). I also flipped back and forth between the Cards game and the Chicago/Philadelphia NHL game. Two comments… (1) I do want Chicago to win the Cup which is hard to say. The series has been fantastic. (2) Why does the NBA switch formats to 2-3-2 in the finals? It does not make sense. It seems to give more of an advantage to the team that doesn’t have the best record because all they have to do it win 1 game out of the first 2 on the road and then have 3 home games to close it out. The finals games are spread out further too which makes it even easier for 2-2-1-1-1 schedule.

Wow, what a fantastic weekend! Everything seemed almost perfect. There were a ton of things going on this weekend and I had a bunch of things to choose from like Cards/Cubs action in Chi Town with a bunch of my grad school friends or Rib Fest and all of the shows (right next to my condo) but I happily chose a weekend at the Lake of Ozarks with my girlfriend’s family. Most of you know me; how could I pass up a weekend of water filled fun?

We took off Friday to head down to the Lake. We were staying at my gf’s dad’s house in Camdenton. I have always been on the Osage side of the Lake so was excited to see the difference. We got down there around 2PM, took a quick tour, and immediately hit the water for some lounging around the dock. The water was amazingly warm and relaxing. It was awesome. We ate some pretty good pizza that night and enjoyed the beautiful weather.

I had my first true fisherman experience on Saturday (in my opinion). I have fished off docks and lands numerous times as a kid but have never really done any fishing on a true fishing boat. It was a fun time but we caught nothing. We didn’t even see a boat nearby catching anything either. My opinion is we started a little too late (around 10AM) but we value our sleep.

Once we got back to the house, we ate a quick lunch and took out the big boat for a cruise and to cove out. It was a lot of fun. I was definitely amused by the difference in the sides of the lake. I have never been on a holiday weekend on the Osage side but have heard horror stories. This side of the Lake was actually pretty quiet for Lake of the Ozarks in my opinion. There was a lot more pontoon boats and I don’t think I saw a boat over 30ft the entire time. It was also interesting seeing entire parts of the Lake with no houses. I did catch a fish that night while fishing off the dock at night. It was the only fish caught by anyone the whole weekend. It was a 14″ crappie which apparently is pretty big and is worth of mounting to a wall.

We took off early on Sunday to drive back to the Lou and knock out some errands. We hit a quick BBQ and passed out early.

My girlfriend hosted a BBQ on Monday for her family. It was fun with good food. I also cleaned my BBQ pit that was in storage for two years. I am a little bummed about it because I did not store it properly. I guess the grease produced moisture under the cover which caused some mold and rust. I cleaned it good but have my doubts. I will fire it up in the coming weeks to see how it is.