A Backstreet Weekend

Well I must say, I don’t have much time for this update. It’s been a busy week both at work and at home with not getting back from Chicago until Monday night, book club Tuesday night, first night of the cornhole playoffs Thursday night(KP&JLil won the first game, lost the second), and using the rest of my free time to finalize the plans on Martin’s big bachelorette party this weekend, but since I’m starting to get harassed about the time that has elapsed since my last update, I figured I should at least write something.

Chicago, as per usual, was a fabulous time. Friday we went to a delicious Italian BYO, and filled up our cups with vodka sodas to enjoy during the 20 minute walk. We also packed some soda water, a bottle of vodka, pre-cut limes and about 2 bottles of wine per person for the dinner. Dinner was Delicious. Seriously, I’ve never had such good bruschetta in my LIFE. Covered in garlic…just pure heaven. It was a delicious dinner followed by lots of time spent at the table finishing the ridiculous amount of alcohol we brought and then off to the dive bar across the street for some extended merriment.

The next night Allison cooked us a delicious “Tyler’s Ultimate” meal and we played some games, drank some wine and had another great night….

But I know this isn’t why you are reading..you want to hear about the main event. The Backstreet Boys Concert! First off- you need to understand this place that we went to.
You could bring in whatever you wanted. Chairs, tables, blankets, bottles of wine, liquor, beer, food, candles, coolers…..pretty much whatever you wanted, and trust me, people did. It looked like people’s intimate dining rooms at some of these places. They had little tables with a tablecloth and candles and wine glasses and bottles of wine and dinner. While we didn’t go this crazy, we still had quite the spread. We caught the train at the train station near Steph’s house and it was PACKED. I had no idea so many people would be so excited about the Back Street Boys! Including the dude I saw on the train with the ACDC tshirt on (wtf?) Anyway, bad news, the train was packed and we would have to stand for the 25 minute trip. Good news- you are allowed to drink on the train! We popped open a bottle of wine and we were on our way.

The concert was fun. While we couldn’t see the stage and the opening band was called “girlicious”, we had a great time singing all of the old songs, making fun of the new songs and dancing our pants off. (Lots of people were staring at us, so that must mean we were awesome, right?) It was also fun to people watch, I must say, there is quite a diverse group of Backstreet fans. Teeny Boppers, girls our age, gay men and random adults alike all enjoy the boys.

As usual, I had a fabulous weekend with my girls and their friends and I’m already looking forward to my next visit!!

Backstreet's Back! (kinda)

This weekend I am traveling to the wonderful city of Chicago, IL to spend some time with my BFFs Allison and Stephanie and to catch a boy band show. This show will be especially sentimental to me and Steph who caught the NSYNC Show back in like 2000 at Riverbend in Cincinnati. After this we just need to somehow catch a 98 degrees reunion show and we will have made the late 90s boy-band trifecta. Anyway, think long and hard to your favorite Backstreet Boys song from back in the day and leave it as a comment. I plan to make a CD to listen to on the way there (Rob- please disregard) to get psyched up for the concert!!

All you people can't you see, can't you see
How your love's affecting our reality
Every time we're down
You can make it right
And that makes you larger than life !!!

Here is an old school picture of me and Steph before the NSYNC concert. It would be especially sentimental if I could still fit in that dress....and be that tan....ok maybe a little less tan than that..but you know....

Everybody, yeah
Rock your body, yeah
Everybody, yeah
Rock your body right
Backstreet's back, alright!!!!!

Welcome back "The Hills!"

Yay!! It's almost that time of year when all my favorite TV shows come back on! I am here to admit that I am addicted to TV. Good tv, terrible tv, reality tv,food tv, wedding tv, hgtv, random tv... it is all wonderful. I can't believe I did not get DVR until this past November as it has been the greatest thing ever. My methods for recording my favorite tv shows used to be setting the vcr on my tv whenever i left the house and letting it run all night long (this method works best with an 8+ hour video casette) and then fast forwarding all around finding what I had taped. (Usually I am fairly technically inclined, but the setting of the vcr was something I never mastered) Then came putting episodes of tv on the internet, which was also great bc I could watch them all on my laptop from bed on Sunday mornings. And now DVR. Wonderful, beautiful, intelligent (usually) DVR.

Anyway, this season of The Hills promises to be drama-packed as always and I can't wait to see what happens! Will Lo and Audrina ever become friends? Is Whitney going to fall in love? Is Spencer ever going to shave his disgusting flesh colored "beard"? Will Heidi ever realize that Spencer is a total douche bag? Will Audrina move into that sweet loft overlooking the Hollywood Hills? It's just a shame the next episode is another 6 days away....

"Dog Days" of Summer

This weekend we took Maggie to a park an hour away for some fun in the sun and water at the beach. After Bill and Wall kept us up way too late (against our will) on Friday night and we randomly met up with Britt for an impromptu dance party, we were feeling kind of rough on Saturday morning. But since we had promised that mutt fun in the sun…fun in the sun she was going to get!!

This place was great! There was a beach with sand and (very small) waves. There were also lots of picnic areas, swing sets, etc. It was a fun place to spend a Saturday afternoon.
Here are some pics of Rob and Maggie playing in the water. Maggie was so funny, at first she was really confused by the waves and would get her paws in and just start biting at the water, then we started throwing sticks out there and she was all over it. It was so fun to watch her. If she was about 80% less crazy I might have taken her off the leash to see what she would do….but since she is not, we didn’t. It was fun and I can’t wait to go back!

Sunday night Krista and I went to the Bengals game courtesy of Tom’s awesome seats. It was fun but we played terrible and I feel terrible today.
Highlights of the night included:
• Louisville Chugger. Has anyone heard of this game? They had one of those red plastic bats you play with when you’re little, cut a hole in the bottom and filled it with beer. You chug the beer out of the bat, spin around the 10 times with the bat on the ground and your nose on the bat, then stand up and try to hit empty beer cans people are throwing at you with said bat. They also make you wear a helmet while participating in this activity. Ridiculous but hilarious.
• Deciding on a new business venture with Krista ( a secret)
• Talking to random strangers (as always)

Here are some pics from the game. Thanks to Tom for the tickets 

Olympic Questions

The Olympics have prompted many questions and discussions in the past week or so. Questions like: “How did Michael Phelps get so good?” “How did Michael Phelps get so hot?” “Do you think Michael Phelps would like me if he met me?”... There are also some questions that don’t involve Michael Phelps such as, “Can you represent any country that you feel your loyalties are with or are there some rules that come along with this such as citizenship, birthplace, etc?”

These questions are all intriguing, but the question we are going to be focusing on today is one that was brought up in Ralphie’s living room on Sunday morning. What the heck does a Chinese computer keyboard look like being that there are over 60,000 characters in the Chinese language? Well I did a little research and am still not absolutely sure. If you know the answer, an educated comment would be appreciated. (Matt Pereira- where are you when I need you?!)

Anyway, according to one website I read:
It is estimated that to read a newspaper, one must learn about 3,000 characters. College graduates know about 6-7,000, and there are very few people who manage to learn over 15,000. Nevertheless, the actual number of characters is much larger. The Shuowen jiezi, the first surviving Chinese dictionary complied by Xu Shen around 100 AD contains over 9,000 characters, the Kangxi zidian or Kangxi Dictionary from the 18th century has nearly 47,000. The largest modern dictionaries have over 60,000.

How do they alphabetize files? What do they kids sing in pre-school to learn all the characters? How can a whole sentence be formed with only 2 characters? How can you spell out peoples’ names if there are no letters? Or I guess if it’s a whole new character, how would you know how to say their name out loud if it’s a character you have never seen before? I have so many more random questions. Also, please find the two keyboards I found that represent a Chinese keyboard. One that has all the characters and one that has English letters with only a few characters? Which of these do they use? The first one terrifies me. Can you imagine having that thing in your cubicle? Ok. Random thought for the day, over. Thanks in advance to anyone that has any answers to my questions!

08.08.08

The weekend was ridiculous and maybe too much excitement for one blog entry (I don’t want to overwhelm anyone)- so let’s start at the beginning, Friday night. We loaded up the car with people and headed to the Newtown Village Tavern for the first stop on the 08.08.08 tour. A handful of us had surprised Krista by custom making some “I heart KP” tshirts, which we unveiled at the tavern. After eating some pizza, a quick meet and greet of all the bus riders, taking some pictures and drinking some beers, we loaded up on the yellow schoolbus for our night on the town with our driver, Kim. Custom Koozies, jello shots and homemade stickers were also involved in this 08x3 celebration. (Do you want captain Krista? Classy Krista? Irish Krista? 80s Krista? Or Screaming Krista?)

On the way we had a 8:08 countdown complete with noisemakers and champagne toasts (and by toasts I mean take turns chugging champagne out of the bottle- classy)


Our first stop was a lovely establishment called, River Dogs. It is a random boat on the river in Kentucky that is apparently also a bar and restaurant. I had called the owner of the establishment earlier that day to give him a little “warning” that 40 .of us would be showing up that night to which he replied, “Alright, what do ya’ll drink. Wine coolers?” I told him that most of the people would probably be drinking beer and then asked him if they had any drink specials for large groups, to which he replied, “Yeah, I got drinks. Beers and wine coolers” Needless to say, I thanked him and ended the conversation there. By the time the 30 minute ride from Newtown to this random Kentucky tugboat bar had ended, most people on the bus had heard this story and thought it was random and funny if they all ordered wine coolers…go figure. Until Friday night I literally can not remember the last time I saw anyone drinking a wine cooler. Here is Wall pictured with his delicious beverage.

After about an hour of fun here, and a couple of hillbilly wives looking like they might want to beat us up because their husbands kept hitting on all of us, it was back on the bus and onto the next bar.


Next stop was the Dog Haus in Cheviot. The people here must just go around and buy anything they see that has a dog on it or has anything to do with a dog reference. We did a little dancing, a little drinking and then loaded back on the bus for the next random stop.



Our next stop was the Strauss Haus in Mainstrasse, where one of KP’s favorite local bands, Endive was playing. There was lot of dancing going on at this bar..obviously the details of this blog get a little more vague as the night goes on, due to the details of this night getting a little more vague in my head as the night went on.


The Suite at Blackfinn ended the night and the place was PACKED. Seriously crowded…. But as always, we had a great time here. When it was time to leave I decided I desperately needed a delicious cheeseburger and it was time to make that happen. We found a great little place around the corner and I got the best French fries I’ve ever had. (so hot you could barely eat them! – yummm) and a delicious cheeseburger. We hopped a cab home and apparently am happy we did as I heard the school bus sideswiped an escalade turning the corner to pick everyone back up, causing them to have to wait for police reports to be filed. I’m sorry to report Kim will most likely not be driving any of our party bus excursions in the future…



All in all it was a very successful 08.08.08!
Stay Tuned for wedding updates coming soon :-)

Uninspired

This week has not been an inspiring blog week. Nothing particularly interesting, funny or exciting has happened. Nothing screamed out “blog about me” to me this week. So maybe today, I will blog about the coming weekend and how excited I am for it!

Friday- My good friend Krista is celebrating a birthday on Friday. Now friends, you all know how obsessed with my birthday I am. Please close your eyes and think about how obsessed I am, multiply that by 20, and then make it the only time ever in the next hundred years it will fall on 08.08.08 and this is how excited Krista is about tomorrow. There will be a bus, custom made products, lots of stickers, shots and noisemakers at 8:08pm, lots of dive bars and a dance party at the Suite at Blackfinn to end the night. (If you don’t already have plans for Friday night, you should probably make them for dancing at the Suite at Blackfinn and run into all of us, its obviously where the party- and drink specials…. will be!) Tell them you’re there for Krista’s bday!
(stock photo from last year’s event on 08.08.07)

Saturday- I am heading up to the lovely Columbus, OH to celebrate the nuptials of Dork and Angie and then crashing on an air mattress on Ralphie and Alison’s floor, poor college student style. As with any OU alumni wedding, there will be sure to be lots of drinking, dancing and ridiculous amounts of merriment. I can’t wait!

Tonight, the undefeated Team KP&JLil play our third game in our cornhole league. Hopefully KP will not be too mentally distracted about the big 08.08.08 tomorrow and keep up the victorious streak!

Busy Weekend!

I had a busy/fun weekend yet again. Let’s start at the beginning. The Festival! The festival was a great time as always. I didn’t win any money necessarily, but I did play blackjack for an hour on $5, and was up to $15 for a while. I also played some kind of ridiculous quarter game for a good half hour on $1 before I “lost it all.” Of course there was also lots of beer, spicy pickles, a great band, some dancing, those pull off bars and bells games and much more.

Saturday was Jenn Martin’s couples’ shower at her Aunt’s house in Mason. I like her Aunt because she knows how to pull off a good theme. It was a “calendar shower” where everyone was assigned a month and was supposed to get the couple something they could use in that month. When we walked up to the door her aunt had a Jack-o-lantern, a Santa Claus and a basket of Easter Eggs. Throughout the house she had all holidays represented in the bathroom, outside, with each table decked out in a Christmas or Easter tablecloth and centerpiece, and Christmas lights around the pool. Seriously, this is going to be me in 10 years. I love a theme. Also a great excuse to bust out all your supercute serving dishes that you only usually get to use once a year! Jenn and Jason walked away with some great stuff and are getting married in less than 8 weeks!!

Sunday Rob and I volunteered at a beer booth down at a “bbq and blues festival” down at Findlay Market. It was fun and we found out we are really good bartenders. People even kept tipping us even though we told them we were just volunteers. It was a fun day and we got to be right next to the stage of some great bands and walked away with like 40 something dollars in tips! Ridiculous considering we were there to volunteer, and were only there for 2 hours! But we spent most of it back right there at the Market on some delicious produce and fresh meats for the week. If you have never been to Findlay Market before on a weekend morning, please go. It is so much fun and a great thing for our city!
We really wanted to get a picture of us bartending, but I forgot all about it until we were leaving for the day and randomly had another volunteer snap this picture.

Last but not least was our final show choir show ever. It was very bittersweet. I am happy to have my Sunday nights back but will miss seeing everyone every week and having a place to go sing and dance around once a week. Afterwards we went to BW3s for some drinks and dinner to celebrate our last show ever. Special thanks to Suzi and Rob, my own personal support section!!

Carl...you're fired!

I am sad to report that Carl, my Roomba of 6 months, no longer has a job at my apartment. While the idea of a robot doing any kind of cleaning for me sounded like a great idea, I’m afraid Carl just couldn’t take on the responsibility of taking on two girls that shed so much (Maggie and me). He is also terrible at running over cords and getting himself stuck in ridiculous places, only for me to come home and find him whining and almost dead in a corner or under a chair somewhere. He needs to be cleaned out constantly and cleaning him is no easy (or clean) task. You have to pull apart everything and clean hair out of the brushes, clean the filter, empty him, etc every other time you use him. Ridiculous. Just teaches me what I should already know, if it seems too good to be true, it probably is. Oh yeah, and robots suck at vacuuming.

I picked up this red beauty for a mere $45 at Target on Wednesday ( I love target) and it cleaned up everything Carl has been leaving behind and then some. My carpets look brand new! Carl…. I’m sorry, you’re fired. (ps- I warned you I was going to write about any random thought that came to my head, did I not?)