This was definitely a weekend where I did not get any sleep. I feel like I might have gotten a total of 8 hours between Friday and Saturday. Very disappointing since I was just coming off a sinus infection in which I was feeling very exhausted.

I went to the Cards game on Friday night. The Cards were in a huge slump and totally at the wrong time. The slump did not end for us this game either. The highlight of the night was my friend Matt eating a bacon wrapped hot dog covered in baked beans, fried onions, and pickle spears. It was pretty funny watching him eat it for the mere fact that he told us that he was cutting high sodium items out of his diet earlier in the night. We left the game a little earlier since we saw the storms rolling in so watched the rest of the game from Paddy O’s basement. The place was not as packed as normal after the game. I am guessing because of the storm front. The people who did not show up were smart because the rain and wind was pretty bad. Basically everyone under the tent got a little wet.

I woke up bright and early Saturday morning for a friend’s wedding in Muscatine, Iowa. It was for one of my friend’s from Wash U and I was really looking forward to hanging out with the group. Thus we made the 4+ plus hour trip in the morning rather than go up the night before like some of the group did. We arrived around 1 to play a little Uno and have some tasty beverages from Mike’s new employer before going to the 5Pm wedding. The wedding was pretty cool. The reception was awesome. The food was great….had a terrific piece of steak and chicken. I also loved that there was both a live band and a DJ so there was a good mix. The band even mixed in some Katy Perry so they knew what the kids liked…lol. The band also played till 1AM and they had a midnight snack of pizza planned at midnight which was awesome. A bunch of the wedding party went back to my room after the night to indulge in a fine selection of more pizza, Taco Bell, and McDonald’s.

Not much happened on Sunday. Got back in the early evening and watched some TV and caught up on the DVR. I watched Big Lake and wasn’t impressed but I will still watch a couple more episodes to give it a chance. True Blood was awesome as it always is. A little disappointed that there is only two more episodes left. It seems like the season just started. I also watched the Big C. It was entertaining and will make my tv viewing lineup.

This week was round one of my birthday month spectacular according to some of my friends since I met with one group of friends at Parties in the Park on Wednesday and another group on Friday. Next weekend will be the grand spectacular in Vegas Baby!

My girlfriend threw me a party on Friday for my 30^th Birthday. It was pretty awesome. She went all out and got me a great cake from McArthur’s Bakery.  We ate delicious party pizzas, quesadillas, and other snacks while playing Rock Band and conversing. We followed it up with a night at Rue 13 for my favorite 80’s night. It was basically a perfect night. I had so much fun with my girlfriend and other friends. Many thanks to all that wished me a happy birthday and celebrated with me. This is probably the most I have done for a bday ever but I really do not feel any different. Being 30 isn’t depressing like some people have told me. It’s actually a little exciting because I feel like it’s the next chapter in my life.

I chilled at a friend’s pool in JeffCo all day on Saturday relaxing. We have been hitting up a lot of pools this summer and it makes me realize more and more that my next house must have a pool. My girlfriend joked though that she didn’t think she would ever get any work done around the house if she had a pool because she would constantly be in it. After the pool, we hit up West County mall to do some much needed shopping for Vegas and Wedding cloths (got two in the next couple months).

Sunday was a mix of all kinds of stuff. It was supposed to be a “working around the house day” but it was rainy when I woke up. Thus, my girlfriend and I went for another round of shopping. By the time we were done, it was hot and dry outside so we started the yard work. The big project was dethatching my girlfriend front yard. The Zoysia grass was getting so thick that it was killing itself. TruGreen recommended raking out all the dead grass so it could breathe. We were comically doing this with a metal kids rake for 30 minutes before we decided to go buy a “Big Boy” rake. The funny think is that the kids rake was easier since it wasn’t as wide so it did not require as much force. It was pretty grueling work so I hope it helps. We both got blisters on our hands and a good workout. We filled up a huge yard bag of dead grass in a relatively small front year so I was surprised. We finished the night watching our Sunday TV shows. All I have to say is that I really like True Blood this season. The story is very unpredictable but believable in a sense which was not the case last year.

This extended weekend seemed to last forever but I still am not sure where it went. I had so many plans and was looking so forward to celebrating the holiday weekend.

My girlfriend and I met some friends for sushi on Friday. We went to Tokyo Sushi since it is a favorite of both my gf’s and some others in the group. I have eaten a lot of raw fish and weird things on my various work journeys around the world but this was my first true sushi experience. Needless to say, I was pleasantly surprised. 75% of what we ordered (and it was a lot…it came in a big wooden boat) was good. It seems I like things with spicy tuna and do not like thinks with shrimp which makes senses based on past eating experiences. With that said, it is not something I am chomping at the bit to go back and eat. I can name about 20 different meals that I would prefer to eat first because of taste and price. We followed the dinner up with a St Louis tradition of eating Ted Drews. Two of my friends went and got their dogs so we could fit in with all the other dog couples…lol. The place was packed since the weather was gorgeous and the Cards game was just getting over. The concretes were good as usual.

I went back to my roots and went swimming at a friend’s house in rural Arnold on Saturday. A good time was had relaxing in the pool, shooting some pool hoops, and enjoying some adult beverages. My girlfriend and I were exhausted after a long day of sitting in the pool so we relaxed at my place for the night. We watched She’s Out of my League. I did get some good laughs but overall I wasn’t impressed. For some reason, I thought Seth Rogen was in this movie but it was only his lackeys.

I had a 4^th of July party on Sunday. It was a small get together but was a good time. My gf made delicious turkey pin wheels which I could eat for days. We made the 1 mile trek to see the air show on the Arch ground for it to start raining. We saw one F-14 and some old planes but they cancelled the show before the much hyped Harrier made an appearance. I guess it’s more of a reason to go to the air show at Scott in September. We were hungry so we decided to go get some food and skip the B52’s performance. We started walking and all the really close places like TGI Friday and Hooters had a long line. What amazed me was that a ton of restaurants were closed. For example, St Louis Bread Company was closed even though it almost right in the heart of the fair and right next to all the places that had a packed line. So we walked to Wash Ave to find more of the same. We finally made our way all the way back to Side Bar to find it open. I wish it would have been closed because we had a horrible experience. We found a table but had to ask for menus after sitting for about 5 minutes. After about an hour of waiting for our food, we realized there was a problem. We did not think we would be  in a time crunch for the fireworks but we now were. They gave free chips and salsa to almost everyone in the restaurant. We finally had enough and the waitress told me that had a new cook (which was going to be fired). We asked to cancel our food after we told her that we wanting to catch the fireworks. We ended up waiting another 10 minutes in which they packaged our food to go and gave it to us all for free. I at least have to commend them for that. We made it to Kiener Plaza to watch the fireworks but I would rather been on the other side to see the lower displays. Needless to say, it was a good site.

I felt like Monday almost did not exist. I think I slept like 11 hours and watched a whole lot of nothing on TV the entire day. I was such a bum. I had fried chicken for lunch and hot dogs for dinner so my laziness was compounded by the unhealthy eating. So much for the “Vegas Diet.”

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 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.

It was a pretty jammed pack weekend for me that was a lot of fun. Friday was the first Cards game I went to with the “boys.” I say that in quotation marks since only one guy was there. It amazing how much changed in two years thinking how we had 5 seats in the Bank of America club which was a blast. Needless to say the game was very fun and the Cards won so it was a plus. I met some other friends at Paddyo’s and did a little dancing. It was a good night.

I went to the Mt Pleasant and Sugar Creek wineries on Saturday. I will have a more detailed post about this later in the week but Mt Pleasant was a big disappointment while Sugar Creek was awesome. The wine was great, the weather was perfect, and we had a lot of fun. Plus, I did not get sun burnt or even red.

I put on my domesticated hat on Sunday and did some grass cutting and yard work in the blazing sun and heat (supposedly it tied the record for St Louis heatwise). I got some errands done and then settled down to watch the best TV shows ever….Lost! I am amazed about the show the more and more I think about it (which is a lot). I will have a separate post about it later in the week too. I missed the Lakers game and they lost (is that the theme of this paragraph?).

One of my friends was gracious enough to get us tickets for the regional Sweet 16  games in St Louis last week. Luckily she had a pretty good connection which resulted in amazing seats. As you can see from the pictures, we were in the third row from the press seats. We were surrounded by “celebs.” Most notably Magic Johnson but Steve Maruicci (current Detroit Lions coarch) and Tom Izzo’s wife were all within a couple seats of us in the Michigan St section. We also had all the players families around us. So not bad seats at all.

The games were interesting. I had never been to a tournament game nor a college basketball game that MU was not playing in. A couple things surprised me about the game: (1) the players all looked much bigger than on TV when your at court level (2) the crowd never really gets into the game (3) they didnt serve beer but it is a NCAA game (4) 75% of the fans in the Mich St – Northern Iowa game were wearing purple but the crowd never got loud and intimidating like I was expecting before the game. I expected them to be going crazy when they started on an early run but nothing sustatined to try to rile up the Mich St players. (5) Ohio St does not travel well; or at least didn’t for this game because their section was tiny and I saw little red through the arena (6) not sure if attendance was down but they should of had this game at Scottrade since the attendance was only 13k for Friday’s games. There was a Blues game on Sunday so maybe this was impossible. Also, I would have expected a ton more fans and a better atmosphere if Kansas would have made it like they were expected.

The games themselves were both interesting and close. Ohio St got some bad calls and a cold streak in the 2nd quarter by Turner hurt them. Turner rebounded at the end but couldn’t pull it off. Northern Iowa was clearly over matched and lacked in talent but they were able to hang around because of some timely 3′s and the play of the their big man.

Wow, what a fun weekend. Mardi Gras is one of my most favorite weekends in St Louis. It is #1 when it is warm but we have not seen that in several years. I also missed out last year due to my senior capstone class at Wash U so I felt like I needed to make up for lost time. I headed out to my friend’s now annual party which has unlimited alcohol (or at least we thought), heated tent, and multiple port-a-potties. It was a a fun time. I was surprised that we did not walk around as much but it was pretty cold. It was also a first that I did not go to a bar but that is because we were having that good of a time. It was also the first time I woke up without a hangover afterwards…lol. Here is the limited pictures from the weekend.

Friday and Sunday were both laid back days. Got some good Vday time in with the girlfriend along with some DVR, COD, and movie watching. Two things: (1) I am getting better and better at COD (up to a level 21). Especially since I gave up on the sniper rifle. My kill to death ration is almost always positive now. (2) I watched District 9 on Sunday. The first 25 minutes was so bad that we turned it off but I gave it a second chance since it was recommended and up for awards. I turned it off right as it was getting good. The weird thing about it is that the movie had a totally different look and feel the first 30 mins compared to the last hour. It was almost like it was directed by two different people. The last hour was very good and I would recommend it. It had a good plot which I did not see coming.

I figured I needed to post something since I have been sort of dormant lately with my blog. I need to make sure that people still think I am alive. My lack of post will change soon since I got a post brewing about my Xbox fixing experience and Lost reactions with the season starting tonight.

This weekend was somewhat laid back. On Friday, my GF and I went to a 30th birthday party for a friend from grad school. It was good seeing some of the ole group. I was more amazed by the location of the bar. We went to Llywelyn’s Pub in Webster Groves. I had no idea it was even there…it’s almost hidden in a neighbor hood/back alley. We followed that up by meeting my GF’s sister and brother-in-law at The Dubliner. The place was empty which was good because it allowed us to talk. Saturday continued my laid back weekend. I chilled around the house and ended up finally watching Inglorious Bastards. I did like it but I had a hard time following it at times. I wouldn’t mind watching it again…especially since it is up for a Best Picture. As for Sunday, I got in a good swim and workout…something I plan on doing much more now that I have a YMCA Metro pass. We followed that up a good steak dinner with some friend’s at the GF’s.