half a cat

Indeed it is! What stink am I talking about ? It’d be the cigarette smoke, stale beer, motorcycle exhaust, fried food and a good dose of the sticky-icky. With the wonderful wife safely on her way to Oh! Canada, I ventured out for some good old fashioned male bonding.

JW & I hit up the Herkimer for some vittles and a little pre-gaming of adult beverages. The food was quite good, but an appetizer would have helped to fill us up - portion sizes are not obscene and thankfully normal. Who knew! They’ve also got a great selection of German style in-house brewed beers. I can’t remember ever seeing local Kolsch or Alt Bier on tap anywhere. Very nice. The night starts getting interesting when the dude next to JW just waves hello and starts talking to us - not rude or anything, but the guy was a little off. Thankfully JW was in a mood to chat with the guy, or I’d have just been an arse and ignored him. Sometimes you just want to enjoy your beer without the extra mental anguish of having a conversation. (Women take note….) Hrm - perhaps there is some subtle body language or mental telepathy that allows men to sit around drinking and watching a baseball game to communicate without actually speaking. Perhaps we are somehow gifted after all.

From there we headed to the planned destination(s) for the night - Whiskey Junction & The Cabooze. I’ve always wanted to head down there - it is supposedly one of the better biker bars in the area. It is, but oh so much more! The bars are on opposite ends of the block with nice large harley parking lot and open-outdoor-air-but-tented-roof bar, grill and tons of picnic tables. The outdoor area joins up with a bar called The Joint and The Cabooze. It was really cool just hanging out at a picnic table - drinking, telling lies and the mutual pauses in the conversation to appreciate the sound of Harleys rolling in and out. One nice thing about riding a Harley, I can get to the bar and park directly in front.

The Whiskey was fairly dead - they had a pretty good blues band playing and several pool tables. I’ve lost that lovin’ feeling when it comes to shooting pool, hopefully more trips to bars will cure that. It will be rough, but I think in the end it will pay off.

The Cabooze… well that is where things get interesting. JW & I headed over there once Jason and his buddy arrived - thankfully sparing us from playing another unfortunate game of pool only to find those guys at the pool tables in the Cabooze… I’ve never really seen a trendy kinda hippy bar next to a biker bar. One would think you’d get some broken and battered hippies out of that - but all was well. Maybe it was too cold (50F) for hippy pounding ? Cabooze is a pretty cool place - hugely cavernous inside with a triple tiered bar-slash-table setup so that drinking and watching the bands can be done from the safety of a bar stool. In the back by the pool tables there is a room with a locked door and marked “Private Party”. I’m sure it was private but there was less traffic to the bathrooms. It might have something to do with the pungent aroma of that certain something - good lord it was ridiculous. Perhaps that explained our desire to get cheese burgers, tater-tots (tots !!!) and tubed meat in a bun at 1am.

And really, no night is complete without watching someone boot. They have nice large garbage cans near the bathrooms. These are the industrial strength grey ones with handles - you know, to give you something to really hang onto while barfing up $40 of booze. The bouncers were pretty cool about it - just wanted to make sure the dudes buddies got him home, I think they even called a cab for them, the poor bugger Hippies are nice.

Well, one nice cool-ish ride home and I collapsed into bed, doggies grateful to be inside. I slept like the dead until ~10 am and now my underwear clad self is contemplating leaving the sanctuary of the sofa and my blankie for food and maybe even a shower. One must prepare for a full day of football and Nascar T.V watching properly.

I’ve managed to update some long lingering photos:

• The Summer 2006 Huber Wedding

• New Garage & Brewing

• D.C 2006 Trip

Hrm — perhaps a few quickies as well

• Turkey Day was a 3h drive “Up Nort” to one of Moms sisters’ places — very nice spread and a great meal. Marinated wild turkey…mmm! That is a long drive for a meal though…
• Long weekend - so nice. I’m refusing to even turn the work laptop on. This is driving me a bit nutty, but I’m dealing with the withdrawl symptoms nicely.
• In Vino Veritas: Gotta get the Cab/Merlot bottled this weekend — by next Oct with 10 months in the bottle, it should be damn good.
• Lots of good news on the Cray front. This is a huge validating win for us and really should help move Cray back to the front of the pack, if not breaking away from the peloton someday entirely, for real HPC offerings. Wankers with your “clusters” need not apply. By-the-way, anything below a 30TFLOP system now immediately registers as “small” with me — I know, a bit snobbish — deal with it.
• The year of road trips starts in under 30 days. Oy. We are driving back to MT with the dogs for Christmas — I’m praying for a smooth trip both ways. If all goes well with the dogs, we’ll be repeating this trip 4 times next year — 3 weddings and then Christmas. If all does not go well, we’ll be repeating the trip with the addition of drugs for the dogs. Modern pharmacology is not without its benefits.
• Boston - I’ll be there Saturday May 26th through early morning Tuesday June 2 for the Liza’s wedding - I’d love to catch up with a certain Herr Schwan & McDonald provided they can be troubled to drink beer.
• The Violator: Just go watch. This, Ladies & Gentlemen, is my future brother-in-law. I couldn’t be happier.

Thanks to the Sis for this treat in email. I laughed so hard that cried, good stuff wade.

• One Star Hangover: No pain. No real feeling of illness. You’re able to function relatively well; however, you are still parched. You can drink 5 sodas and still feel this way. For some reason, you are craving a steak & fries.

• Two Star Hangover: No pain, but something is definitely amiss. You may look okay, but you have the mental capacity of a staple gun. The coffee you are chugging is only increasing your rumbling gut, which is still tossing around the fruity pancake from the 3:00 AM Waffle House excursion. There is some definite havoc being wreaked upon your bowels.

• Three Star Hangover: Slight headache. Stomach feels crappy. You are definitely not productive. Anytime a girl walks by you gag because her perfume reminds you of the flavoured schnapps shots your alcoholic friends dared you to drink. Life would be better right now if you were home in your bed watching Lucy reruns. You’ve had 4 cups of coffee, a gallon of water, 3 iced teas and a diet Coke — yet you haven’t peed once.

• Four Star Hangover: Life sucks. Your head is throbbing. You can’t speak too quickly or else you might puke. Your boss has already lambasted you for being late and has given you a lecture for reeking of booze. You wore nice clothes, but that can’t hide the fact that you only shaved one side of your face. (For the ladies, it looks like you put your make-up on while riding the bumper cars.) Your eyes look like one big red vein, and even your hair hurts. Your sphincter is in perpetual spasm, and the first of about five shits you take during the day brings water to the eyes of everyone who enters the bathroom.

• Five Star Hangover: You have a second heartbeat in your head, which is actually annoying the employee who sits in the next cube. Vodka vapour is seeping out of every pore and making you dizzy. In fact, you are probably still drunk. You still have toothpaste crust in the corners of your mouth from brushing your teeth in an attempt to get the remnants of the poop fairy out. Your body has lost the ability to generate saliva so your tongue is suffocating you. You don’t have the foggiest idea who the hell the stranger was passed out in your bed this morning. Any attempt to defecate results in a fire hose like discharge of alcohol-scented fluid with a rare “floater” thrown in. The sole purpose of this “floater” seems to be to splash the toilet water all over your ass. Death sounds pretty good about right now!

This weekend was interesting.

Friday night was very relaxing and needed. The Portana picked me up after we both finished up work earliesh — like 4.30 pm or so. We headed down the Copper Colander to drool over the real kitchen gadets and appliances. The store is pretty solid, but it was missing my favorite brands for knives and cookware. I’m a big fan (for no reason really) of the Henkel 4 Star and for really good reasons the Calphalon One cookware. I’ve got a few of both and have been extremely happy with them. After CC, a nice dinner at the 11 cafe, then headed out to the new Furniture Row to gawk at stuff. Nothing much of interest, save for a $174 bean bag (it was not $174 nice, more like $75), and a really nice $300 leather coffee table that might have to come home with me some day. I think I found my next mattress set too, but that is a year or 3 off. A stop to the Petsmart and Costco for Dog, Cat, and Bird food, toys, bedding, etc. Sigh, little buggers are expensive. Cute, yes but expensive.

Saturday night… gift exchange with my usual group of friends. There was a ton of Elk related foods (Kris got one too!) and the usual liberal quantities of booze. I made some Tandoori drumsticks for the crowd, seemed to go over pretty well. A good time had by all, and some quite interesting gifts. One was a dildo-catcus, died green and needles for spines. I am still shaking my head over that one. We all drank enough, some cough cough more than others. Thankfully I had a lovely person to give me a ride home. At least I think that is how I got home.

Sunday morning sucked. I was quite well hung, and not in the Enzite way. Recovery was a bit slow in coming, but a nice long day of sofa denting was a proper reward for doing battle against the evils of alcohol over-production. Watched a ton of football — some good, some bad. It was a nice relaxing day and I’m glad to get back to work for once

BTW — did I put out some sort of sign? Today is the second time in as many weeks that I’ve gotten an email asking me if I’m interested in a new job. I’m not looking, really, but the offers are flattering and it does give me some options should I choose to move along there. Intersting days…

Ahh, yes. Again with the lack of posting. I am in TN this week for work, so going to cling to that as a good excuse. Now, without further ado, the hillclimbs story.

So — just a bit of background. The Great American Hillclimbs take place in the South Hills of Billings, MT. The race is to see who can drive to the top of the ‘Bentonite Nightmare’, aka a 400 foot hill that is just about straight up, call it 70 degrees or so. Most folks do not make it all the way up, they end up not having enough traction, motor, or momentum to get all the way up. Oh yeah, this takes serious skill and a goodly amount of balls (lack of brains works in a pinch). It is impressive, and not just from a RedNeck point of view, these are for the most part heavily customized or purpose built machines. We are talking extended swingarms, paddle tires, different suspension, not to mention that they motors are from all walks of life - dirt bikes, street bikes, snowmobiles, well you get the picture. And these folks are willing to break them — tumble back down the hill break them. It was said that it was $100 a bounce, I’m guessing it starts higher than that. Some of the riders had wonderful dismounts, the bikes flipping several times in the air and then careening down the hill until a “catcher” grabbed it and roped it off. All in all, a wonderful event if it were just for the motorhead part of it…but well, let’say it is only a good reason to party like rock stars.

Here are a few links to slightly more event related photos and videos:

• Transworld Motocross
• Gagzette

Party, why yes we did! I took a fair number of pics you can find here. I’m going to pull the rest under the “more” tag to protect the innocent. WARNING Explict RedNeck behavior revealed and explained, not to mention photos of men in women’s underwear. You’ve been warned! (more…)

Now this is what I call a weekend! So, where to start…. I think it started Friday, ahh yes, Friday. Kris gave me a call and convinced me to head to Planet Lockwood with him. You know, that man gets me into more fun or trouble — I guess that is what best friends are for ? For those of you who don’t know, Planet Lockwood is one of those fine establishments that allows men with money to see girls with no clothes. sniff Ahh, the smell of captialism….and cheap perfume. I think it is official now, the cost of living in Montana is much lower. I have been to a few of these ‘Gentlemens Clubs’ (what a misnomer that is) in Philly and Jersey, and I have to say that the girls work harder here for a dollar than I’ve ever seen. Kris tossed a few dollars on the bar in front of me, and the girls would of course come over and use creative methods to scoop up the dollars, sometimes after strategically placing those bills on your person. I’m not one who goes to get all worked up in a lather by the girls — I enjoy more the whole scene, sometimes it is just down right hillarious. The trick is to remember — they don’t really like you, and in NO circumstances (well, at least not for less than a grand) are they going home with you….not that you’d really like to do that.

We continued to the “Anything for a dollar” theme from last night , and headed to BullWhackers to hook up with the rest of the crew and do some liver damage. Lucky me, they had Fat Tire on special for a dollar. As usual, I proceeded to drink lots — it is a fun thing to do you know! The best part was that Kris picked me up, so I had none of the usual driving worries to slow my consumption. We had the requrisite blast, spiced up by seeing the fruits of Mary’s visit to the piercing shop, very nice. Thanks to Chad for the lift home.

Saturday night was a bit calmer, and unfortunately was not a continuation of the dollar drink specials. I hit King’s Korner for a few games of pool with K &C, Troy, Sam and Bill. It was then onto the Red Door. It is amazing how good some of those karaoke singers are. Kris, Christy & I took off around midnight and crashed at my place — their house is a bit stanky after refinishing their tub. The fireplace got used again, and Tivo was her usual great self.

All in all, a nice lecherous weekend. Tuesday I will have to return to the guise of a nice dependable software engineer. I have to mention, it has been sometime since I’ve had this many friends to go out and party with. It is soooo nice.

So, I have finally broken down and let The Man put it to me for a gym membership. The good news is that I will be working towards a very svelte Nic. Photos to scare the women and children soon! Kris has remained good enough to drag my butt towards said gym. Sometimes you just need a bit of motivation. I have taken it upon myself to start eating better to help this effort, so I will actually be cooking more and hitting Wendy’s less.

Melanie called me while I was at the grocery store, and it turns out it was Travis Gs barfday. The plan was to hit the Wild West (oh how I hate that place, let me count the metric assloads of cigarette smoke in the air…) for a couple of drinks and make an early night of it. Riiiiight. They were having a $1 USD special on Crown Royal drinks. Let the party begin! I had a few (ok, a few doubles, but who is counting) and had quite a good time.

It has been sooo long since I’ve gotten toasty on a Thursday night. I can’t help but remember the years of ol’ White Dog. Wow did we kill a lot of pitchers there, enough that someone named her cat after the beer we always drank. And no it was not “Bud”, we drank real beer. Following that link might shed some light on the naming of my group of friends too.

Ahh yes, good old bourbon. I belive Shakespeare said it best: “It stimulates the desire, but hinders the performance”. I’m pretty sure the gate keeper was refrerring to getting ones winky wet, but I think it applies to anything — driving, speaking, not peeing on ones shoes, not peeing on other peoples shoes, etc.

So — Friday night was Matt’s birthday and Mandy threw him a surprise party down at the shop. Kris, Christy, Sam and I hit the Circle for some good spongein’ and then the liquor store next door for the nights refreshment. I was feeling frisky, so I splurged for a bottle of Maker’s Mark. I think the last time I had this was drinking at the Union League on someone elses tab. The party was pretty fun and I ended up drinking half the bottle. Yeah, whoops. One of these days I am going to realize that drinking continuously for 6 hours does make one VERY drunk.

So! It was finally time to have a house warming party at my new place. Pictures, sadly but a few, are up.

First up on the parade of details - Food:

• Roasted Garlic
• Southwestern Rubbed London Broil
• BBQ Pulled Pork
• Spinich Dip (Melanie)
• 7 layer Taco Dip (Mom)
• Assorted Chips, bread and soda

Honorable Mention to Melanie, Koeltzer, Mandy, Kris & Christy for helping out with rubble duty and cleaning.

As it turned out, there were oh, I suppose 30 people here over the coarse of the night. I have to say it was a freaking blast. I got to see almost everyone in Billings I know at one place. It was very nice to have a place large enough and setup to have that many people — not once did it feel overcrowded. I look forward to doing this again this summer, perhaps for some wicked BBQing. Hrm - the driveway is definately large enough for an inflatable pool.

Everyone seemed to have a good time, especially once we busted out Brooke’s gift of Beer Checkers:

Now for the usual bullet list of fun:

• Amount, in square inches, of counter space left open after beer cases were set down: 0
• Number of Full Moon cell phone picutres taken on Melanie’s phone against her wishes: 2
• People who fired up my Harley just for fun: 6
• Approximate start and ending times: 6.30pm and 5.30am
• Overnight guests: 3
• Number of welcome (and planned) overnight guests: 2
• Bags of beer cans, bottles and cardboard cases tossed out: at least 8, you freaking booze hounds
• Amount of food left at 9pm: 75%
• Amount of food left at 2am: 5% . Drunk people get the munchies too.
• Gifts recieved: 4 - Beer Checkers, Candles, Oriental Dragon statuette, Lambic Beer
• Tours of the house give: too god damn many, that is for sure. Next time it is “Hi, glad to see you; Can I take your coat? Make yourselft at home - hey leave the pants on, for godssake”

So, I must have jinxed myself - my sister, Melanie, and I went out and terrassed the town Friday night. We hit the Billings Hotel comedy night with her friend P.J and P.J’s sister Ole. I love it when parents name their kids after cheap beer. Just says ‘Redneck’ to me.

The lead act was a total douche bag. Here is a hint: If you are white, Mormon and from Boise - DON’T DO STANDUP. Seriously, I’ve met dead people that had better acts. The main act however, was a total 180. This lady had her excrement in a proverbial mound. I don’t think I have laughed that hard in ages. After the comedy was over, we continued to the Wild West to continue the hillarity, otherwise known as Nic dancing. Yes folks, he dances, but only after some serious drinking. Now, I’m not sure if it was the booze or the fact that I am participating in the Great Women in Montana Snipe Hunt, but P.J seemed to be quite cute and could dance. Too bad she has a boyfriend — although, for those of you who know me from Penn — that’s never really stopped me. (Editor’s Note: it was only twice, and both times I was attacked like a 3 legged cat at a dog show).

Well, come Saturday, Karma must have caught up with me, because I’ve caught a nasty cold. It is Tuesday now and I am still reeling from it. It better be gone by Saturday, cause come NyQuil or not, I am drinking my butt off Saturday night. Why you ask? I’ve finally decided that a housewarming party in the new place is in order. This should be good….