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.

Duuuuuuuuude, Harley season is sooo near. Not quite, but it was close damn enough to bust out the long johns and leather again today and ride the bike into work. If I get to ride my HD into work most days this summer, boy does commuting not sound like such a bad thing

The ride this morning was a bit chilly — I decided to forego the helmet option, I figured it was warm enough I really didn’t need face protection. Dumb idea 40F at 60 mph is a bit cold. It wasn’t so bad after ~5 min, I either got used to it or my face whent numb. The speed limit between Auds & work is 50 mph, and in MN that means 55mph minimum. I was more than happy to oblige! I’m looking forward to chowing my lunch at my desk and getting out for a nice noon-time ride today, might as well get it while I can.

The day starts well….

What a great weekend. Saturday was a marathon shopping day (yes, I do feel a bit odd admitting that) - craft show with the girls, then to a very near closed stained glass supply shop — they were selling the shelves, to the Pinball Warehouse, then another 40 minutes north to the biggest damned furniture store I have ever seen.

The pinball warehouse was just the coolest — seriously. They probably had ~25 refurbished machines on the floor and you could play most of them for free. There was an Indiana Jones game that totally tripped my wicket but at 3100 bucks, I’m going to have to save for a bit. They also had an older Star Wars machine that was still living up in storage that was only ~1900. Portana drooled, I could see it. I’m thinking once I pay off the credit cards and get my eyes laaaazered…yeah, pinball machine. Or Tivo Series 3 — it is a race to see if the v3 comes out in time… Oh sweet sweet dual HDTV tuners and cable card…ahhhh!

The furniture store was fun — an astonishing collection of stuff. Portana and I managed to find a end table and coffee table set that will go well with our newly purchased sofa & loveseat — but not before a Battle Royale was had. We agreed on the wood, but it has beveled glass inserts which I am less than fond of — we agreed we could get marble or granite tiles cut and use those instead. We really only wanted the one end table, but as it was in the “outlet” wing of the store, it came in a 2 table & coffee table set. Frass. Portana is dead set (and for good reasons) against having a coffee table in front of the T.V, so her & Aud had to beat me about the head and neck to convince me that it will make a good T.V stand. I compromised…we shall see Aud managed to make a pretty good haul — lamp tables, curio and appolstered chair (wing back? too many seen to remember) to match her new sofa.

We had left at around 10 am that morning, returning around 8 pm or so — tired, very tired. It was a good tired though — a great day of getting things done, but boy was sleep welcome

I awoke Sunday with the grand intentions of being a bum. There was NAPCAR and College Hoops to watch, other T.V to surf in the meantime and I made some mean coffee to start things off. I was doing well with my “Day o Laziness” until around 11am where apparently the Wild Hair started sprouting…it was 40F+, why not wash up the Harley and get out for a ride. There is never a good answer to that…other than yes A quick trip to the storage unit for leathers and helmet later, I was off to the self-service car wash to give the bike a good warshin’. It was pretty filthy — 1000 miles of bugs and road grime, not to mention moving dirt. Thankfully some “pre-soak” and a nice pressure washer later - no bugs! I tooled around (including a nice rear tire roasting coming out of the carwash — god bless a little water and cleared the cobwebs out of the motor. Boooooy is having real air again nice, Hello Msrs Horsepower and Torque, oh look there is your tag-a-long Mr Adrenaline. I boogied home to give Portana a call so we could get out together and enjoy some V-Twin Therapy. We checked out the local HD dealership for a bit, then motored over to Champs for a NAPCAR & Basketball grubbin. Not sure if it was being tired or what, but that ride home was a bit chilly. We both passed out pretty quickly on the sofas watching the race…damn you Rubberhead.

That about does it for the weekend — there was a small battle with Auds furniture (moving it out to the garage to make way for the new stuff), but other than that — crashed I’m reqlly looking forward to this Saturday - we should have the movers, the cable t.v feller, and the new sofa & loveseat all in one day. Wow, what a whirlwind weekend this will be Oh yeah, supposed to be in the 50s this weekend…soooo going out riding again.

Greetings — it is alive again! I took a break like so many other people have as of late. It must be the late-summer-taking-vacation-blues. The last week and a half have been a cornucopia of things happening - Harley trips, work fun, family happenings, partying, friends visiting from out of town, and the odd things that life brings up. So in true lazy git fashion, I bring you the bullets!

• Lou! Awesome visit. It was fantastic to reconnect with college memories and stories again. It turns out we had a ton of fun in college…I thought so! Playing golf was fun and I don’t mind losing by 40 strokes when I play the best game of my life. Yes I can count those on my toes, but I only lost 5 balls this time! New record — it sure beats having to buy and entire box to go out. BTW - did you yack up the pizza too? I soiled some poor peoples’ gutter while out walking the dog. It turns out that barfing up pizza looks the same now as it did in college — remember that one? Thankfully this time the cheese did not hang on the chainlink fence… Note to the masses: never, ever, ever beer bong a Yuengling after you just bong’d (new verb?) half of a box of wine. Note to self: you really are an idiot.

• Portana! Great ride to the Bozo, despite the coldest temps of the summer. It is amazing what leather will do as a functional piece, not to mention that whole wearing-leather-feeling-sexy-thing. It was the first trip I’ve actually felt like a Harley “road-dog” — you know the folks all leatherd up with copious amounts of baggage tied down with bungee cords. I’m soo looking forward to many more of those trips, especially to Sturgis, Jellystone, or some romantic get away. Your friends were a kick, but I think we agree on how life and its paths are funny like that. Too bad the Jellystone trip had to be junked, but 9h to Denver is looking to be a LONG day. As always, you steal my heart without meaning to!

• Liza! Nice job in Turkey — you have no idea how proud some of us are of you. It seems like only yesterday we were drinking at the ‘Dog every Thurs or traveling to Ohio to watch you kick heads. Congrats! I’m going to post a few photos, just cause you are that cool!

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• Pooperbook: finally into the shop. Yay! It turns out the harddrive was standing on the edge and needed to be replaced. Booo! Hopefully (and I say this with finger, toes and testicles crossed) it is the fix that was needed, cause that whole crashy-crash thing is getting to be boolsheet.

• On vacation. In the last 2 weeks, I’ve taken a total of 5 days of vacation, and not a moment too soon. I was becoming extremely burnt out on work and the hectic pace of life that is here in MT was not helping me to recoup. I’ve managed to do absolutely dick last week as far as cleaning or anything of merit is concerned, but boy did I have fun being a sofa cushion. Today I’m on a super cleaning streak (well once I stop writing to you bastages): the office, file papers, bird cage (they are getting given away, I forget to feed them), floors and laundry. I also need to get bottles for beer and a few other errands. I’m actually looking forward to having a clean office, even if it means finally unpacking several boxes. Tomorrow will see the lawn mowed, edged, and weed & fed. It is bad when you have more cottonwood trees next to the house than grass — enjoy the rain today my friends, for tomorrow you will DIE.

• Harley, etc. Ok, so $119 USD for an oil change is freaking ridiculous. Granted I only have to do that every 5K miles, but at the current rate that is one or more per year. I should mention that there are 3 oils that need to be swapped — engine, tranny and primary, so not all that bad considering they are all synthetic too. I still need to get the rest of the 5K mile service done too. I saw a Screaming Eagle Fatboy at the Belgrade shop on the Bozo trip — it had the new 200mm rear tire and a bunch of other goodies. Yes, I am trading in my bike when the 200mm becomes standard equipment on the regular Fatboys. This will probably happen the same year that my 3 (or is it 4…time to dig through the paperwork) extended warranty expires, so good time to move up. It will probably cost me 3-4K out of pocket to do the trade, given the need to get the Stage 1 and pipes for the new bike and get a few paint booboos repaired on the old bike, but well worth it I think. Yes folks, I have a girl that loves to take the Harley on long road trips and then go out for a romantic night. I win!!!!! Sorry ladies, I’m taken now (you had your chance) and this one can sooo kick your butt. Probably mine too. On the road trip note — I think a windshield is in the near future. I can do the 2h or so to Bozo at 85mph no problem, but if there is any bit of wind it really takes the stuff right out of you. For those of you thinking I’m a pussy — bite me. I was of the same opinion (windshields are a tombstone for your sex life) until we hit wind coming back from Bozo. Reality has a way of smacking you right in the head & neck. Look at all the road warriors out there (not those fake assed ‘trailer-it-to-Sturgis’ dentist types). You will find windshields and some funky getups. Message being: be yourself and get a windscreen, they help. On a related note — the Chatterbox folks have given me some hints on getting the unit to function better with no wind noise. We shall see.

• Family. Mom — can’t wait to make pickles tonight. Nothing like homemade pickles! Melanie — good luck in the UK! Remember to use the pub cash! Jeff - take care of her and make sure she is done freaking by the time you leave. Also - get ready for hunting season, it should be a good time. Gack, I have to get tires for the truck before that and to replace the existing ones it is a re-cock-ulous $152 USD a piece. That is 30% of the purchase price of the damn thing — but if I am going to bitch about that I should mention the gas prices. Ouch, in the butt and stuff with sandpaper condom. It hurts. Allison - congrats on the new job, amazing what you get yourself into. Good luck with your new place in Bozo and school this year, I will be up to visit! We should go skiing too…and get a fake (oh quiet Mom…) so we can get out and tear it up a bit too!

• Work. It is official — I’m a travelling whore. The whore part was existing, they just put me on planes now. I’m riding the bike down to Denver, well really Boulder is what I’m hearing on the grapevine, Monday. 552 Miles, 8h15m at posted speeds. With stops, I bet it takes me 10h to get there, but boy am I going to enjoy that. Who knows what I will be working on starting Sept 1st, but it really doesn’t matter. I think I was fretting about the ORNL thing, but really it isn’t that bad and I could use the 2 extra months to kinda dig my mgmt reputation out of the gutter. It is mostly my fault, that whole consistent communication thing, but hey! I am learning. From talking to my boss , a very refreshing take on things was made and I feel better already. Thanks dude! I’m kinda hoping that I get to fly to ORNL at least once more — I need the miles for a free ticket to England to visit the sister.

• Money. I think bills are actually gaseous objects. It seems no matter how much you make, the bills seem to fill up all existing paycheck space. Thankfully I am getting near paying off one bill and with a little help from work in the salary department, I should be able to start squishing credit cards. Wee! The goal is to get everything but the Harley and student loans paid off in the next few months. Then to start saving for a house purchase. I need the tax break and the equity if not the fun of owning one’s own place. I really want to buy this house, but I’m not going to pay more per month than I am for renting it…so I might be looking at downsizing. I didn’t really want to do that, moving sucks and all, but the more I think about having less monthly expenditures, the more happy I am. Of course the new place will have to have a great fireplace, hardwood floors, central air, dishwasher, garage, etc. I’d really like to have a gas stove again too — cooking on it is so much better.

• Blog links: Ok, time to add a few more of my regular haunts. Portana was added a while back, now we are adding nitefire, hempler, the hillarious P (xmasbaby), jeff, and davem. Greetings from your referrer logs!

Well folks, I’d best get at the cleaning here, or I will sit on my arse all day and get nothing done. Laters!

Whoaaa there parder. A little splash-n-dash here on the blog before I get back to the hectic life that is my Monday, bullet style.

• Weekend was one of the best ever, nothing like spending a whole day with someone. I spent 75% of Sunday on or near the bike in pursuit of fun for Portana’s bday (birthday, not fancy french bum washer…). Great day of riding, hit small rain sprinkles during 90F heat, boy does that help, especially since I have the new fangled helmet. Lunch at the Grizzly Bar, talk about great food. I love a Prime Rib “sandwich” that is a steak with a dinner roll. Mmm, yeah, that piece of bread is soooo not getting used, and we are just going to call it a steak! Alaskin King Crab for appetizer, just about the best seafood I’ve had in ages. I think I may have hooked someone on Maker’s as she orderd one on the rocks while we waited out the rain deluge. There is something about a sexy woman drinking brown liquor on the rocks that makes her seem very mysterious This single day probably made my week, if not month.
• Lou in town! More stories later, but great to have a friend from college here in MT. It was fascinating to hear about the whole crew, oddly making me a bit sad that I’ve not kept in better contact, but then again I’ve always been horrible at keeping in touch with people. I think something about “living in the now” pokes in there…
• Chatterbox HJC 60. Total piece of crap. I thought it would be nifty to have an intercom for the road trips on the bike — chit chat and tunes the whole way. Yeah, first off, not that much talking you really want to do, just lose yourself in the ride. Second, wind noise. It kills. This thing is getting returned ASAP, and purchasing a direct splitter for the iPod and an extra set of ear buds. Net savings: $200+ USD. And to the person who suggested I get a windshield to help cut down on wind noise: yeaaah right.
• Work…you @#$@#$ers. On top of the week-a-month travel fun, aka HELL, to ORNL, I’m going to be spending almost 2 entire weeks outside of Denver for work meetings at the end of the month. That boosts this month’s travel+out of town work days to 18. This had better be the last month at ORNL, getting really sick of 25-50% travel, so not what I signed on for. To boot, other than doing my job and helping my company out immensely, no real benefit to me. Bitter? Nooo, not me. Selfish? Completely, but then again I’m just asking to have a semi-normal life. Oh yeah, and I am pretty sure there is at least 1 more trip to ORNL that will have to happen right after this Denver excursion, so looking at 3 weeks straight out of town. Booo! I guess this is the price to pay for working from home. I am very excited about the supposed pending return to recoding lots of internal tools. Coop: Remember the Shaver’s joke about rewriting ltest in python — looks like it is going to happen
• Northwest & 6.35am flights out of TYS. Bullshit! If you are going to cancel the flight because YOU HAVE NO FUCKING FLIGHT CREW, please do not mark the flight as leaving late due to “required crew rest” and then cancel it 30mins before takeoff. If I had known it was going to be canceled, I could have slept in past 4am and perhaps gotten a few hours of sleep. You do get bonus points for having reclining leather chairs in the terminal, made it quite easy for me to sleep the 5 hours until the second flight took off. This is the second day in a row, the last being end of June trip to ORNL, that it has taken me ALL DAY to get back to Billings on second rate flights after you botched this one up. Second, get the @#$@#$ing airport security guys to let us in the line so we can get our flights rescheduled. Note to self, never ever ever ever again schedule early flight, take the 8.40am one and be glad that it takes off on something approaching a routing basis. Yeah. Nothing like scheduling the early red-eye flight to get home just to spend 14h+ in the airports. My butt hurts.

Ahh… so I’ve been MIA for a few days from the whole blogisphere. I’ve really been getting good work done at CFS, so been directing the creative and expansive juices in that direction. Given that…time for a few shorties:

• Black Eyed Peas - sexy - sultry -georgeous lead singer. Mmmm, tasty — her, Gwen Steffani and a ..well let’s call it a good time had by all. Oh yeah, their music is pretty darn good too, been jamming all morning. How is it that I am actually listening to main stream pop culture music? Am I losing my discretion ?
• Great American Hillclimb. Good times, I will have to explain the fun after this weekend, as I’m just not going to do the stories of yesteryear any justice. So far it has been a bit of cat herding to get all the friends on the same page, but I think we’ve got the plans lined out. Rough plan is to get there at 6.30am to setup the double truck & canopy venue, bust out the steak & eggs on the grill, start drinking (DUH!) and get things situated before they start launching. Loooots of drinking. Lots.
• England - only two weeks until the sister and the niece fly out — I’m so happy for you!
• Back, back, back at the ORNL. I’ll be in TN again Aug 1-6, good times. Things.move.fast. This is supposedly the second-to-last trip I will make there under the current contract, but I can’t see how the contract would end now — to many things to be done. The good news is that after 4 more trips, I will qualify for Elite status on NWA — free first class upgrades and 150% miles. Oh yeah.
• Coding is fun - I’ve gotten to do some again this week at work, turns out I’m still good at it. Thankfully I’m not a completely useless “suit” yet.
• New motorcycle helmet. Modular, super comfortable and full face protection. I can’t wait to ride on the highway with this thing, I won’t have a super sore neck or bugs implanted in my face after riding at 100mph! I know, what a wuss, but have you ever hit a dragonfly at 100? How about a cicada? Didn’t think so! Them buggers hurt.

Well I’m getting bored now, so I’m going back to work so I can get to the gym and head out for a lovely dinner date, nothing like starting off the weekend the RightWay(tm).

Hey look, Nic has managed to not write anything here in a few weeks again. I guess I am not that active writing here when there is so much to do elsewhere… So, what have I been up to? Lots I tell you, lots! So, in usual form, watch out for flying bullets.

• Work.
  • Wow, what a month. I am continuing to enjoy working for ORNL. As I am attempting to work right now, I’m going to try and not blather on for eternity. If I talk about it, I’ll be forced to not do anything today…again.
• Working out
  • It turns out that Svelte Nic is being a bit more reluctant than I anticipated. Getting old sucks. I’ve since switched gyms to Evolution. I’ve switched mainly because I sometimes need folks to drag me to the gym and the availability of work-out buddies changes during the summer.
  • Evolution kicks ass. Period. Also, drinking protien shakes is lots less painful than it used to be. They even taste good, not like the shredded cardboard of yesteryear.
• Softball
  • Since the move back to Montana, I’ve gotten to do 10K things I’ve been missing for the last 6 years. We are playing city league co-ed ‘D’ league. So far we are doing pretty well. I’m having a ton of fun!
• Girls
  • Ahh, the dilema. How much do I tell, given that some of them might just stumble across this site? I think it more fun to keep y’all guessing…
  • The Lions made an early run and attempted to suck the life out of me with a nubile young decoy, but I managed to fend of the attack through the use of my you-must-be-able-to-at-least-appear-interesting-for-the-first-date defense. The Christians seem to be coming back, with an exquisitely crafted import with a seemingly Siren ability to lure me into beaching my raft. It is quite surprising to see this new level of tatics being used in Billings, it was refreshing to meet similarily equipped warrior as myself. I might just have to revise my reporting to a more positive light, war leaves something to be desired for reporting, but hey, I’m having fun with it, so just go along for now.
  • Alive after 5 proved to be a target rich enviroment. It was fun to see people I’ve not heard from in years, as well as those people I got introduced to.

I think that covers most of the interesting bits, well ok, I’m sure I am forgetting lots of stuff, but I’m lazy and need to work.

Here are the pictures from the Memorial Day ride to the Natural Bridge.

It was a fantastic day, the weather was the best of the whole weekend. Mary & Landon rode up on their bike (the green one), I rode mine, and Matt & Mandy followed in their truck with their dogs. The drive from Billings to Big Timber was uneventful, but got in some cool 90mph single lane side-by-side riding with Landon. It was neat to hear the bikes right next to each other - there is almost no exhaust note and all you can hear is the raw motor sounds. Grunt. We also stretched out the bikes legs a bit and zoomed up near the 100mph barrier for a while. Lunch was in Big Timber at this pizza place, can’t place the name at the moment. It was really good and a nice mid-ride break. We gassed up and then headed south of Big Timber up the 2 lane road to the Natural Bridge. We putzed around there for a while, and I took a bunch of photos. The ride back started off painful - rain drops sprinkling down at 80mph make me want a full face helmet for the next road trip. We managed to outrun the rain, and near Columbus we actually overran Landon’s dad and brother. We played a nice game of ‘how fast can we go?’, with us hammering down the highway well into the triple digits. It was also the first time I have had the throttle pegged in 5th gear. Nothing like 30 miles in a little over 15 minutes Landon’s dad put all us HD guys to shame with the BMW bike — he blew by me doing 110 like I was standing still. Humbling.

The weekend was not that exciting, blog wise. Here are the shorts:

Saturday: It was 63F, so I got the Harley out of the garage and leathered up. As the grandparents had come in from North Dakota with Walt & Sarah, I rode up to Red Lodge. The ride was fantatic, right up there with heading to the beach last Sept. I could have set the throttle lock at 80 and never slowed down. It was pretty fun pulling out to pass people starting at 70 and by the time I got back in the right lane doing 100+. Wee! It did get a bit chilly the closer I got. Gee, who would have thought a 2500 foot elevation change would make such a difference. It was the first time I got to ride into the mountains, and I am so looking forward to doing more of that this summer. I had a nice chat with the fam and headed back after a bit, before it got too cold.

Sunday: Ahhh, bliss. I slept in, lounged around until noon until I got a surprise visit from Mom. We cleaned the kitchen, cooked up steaks and salad, and watched NACAR-slash-took naps. I ended up working that night, to get a few things cleaned up before Monday rolled around.

Another weekend has come and gone, leaving a good sized wake of empty beer bottles, truck parts, dinner bills, and burned rubber. I really had a pretty great weekend — probably one of the most fufilling since I have moved back. Here are the shorts:

Friday. It was another day of 60F weather here, and I was not going to miss out on it. I would like to think I kicked butt at work the rest of the week and cranked out a lot of testing, so took a long and late lunch to polish up the Harley. There were a few spots on the paint that had been rubbed when I moved all my stuff in Kris’ horse trailer from CT. I used the Harley Scratch & Swirl and rubbed all the spots out in a few hours. A nice coat of glaze and a polish later, and the bike is back to its usual sparkling self. I worked for a bit, and at 5 gave Landon a call to see if he wanted to ride — he did =D. We cleared out the cobwebs for the bikes and cruised around Billings. A few beers at BullWhackers dried up that pesky road thirst, and then we proceeded to really crack open the bikes on top of Zimmerman trail. As it turns out, my bike has NO problems keeping up with Landon, so my previous misgivings about the lack of power are still founded, but I’m not experiencing anything out of the normal. Such good news!

I headed home after the ride and was just going to hit Golden Phoenix or something like that for take-out, but got inspired and hit up Walkers Grill for dinner. I was completely surprised at the place — it made me feel at ‘home’ again in a restaraunt. It was like I had stepped into a nice place in Philly and was getting dinner there. I had a few Maker’s & Cokes, the Satay and Lamb Curry, and finished off the lovely evening with a glass of Sandemans Founder. Yes folks, there was Port on the menu! Fantastic!

I rounded out the evening by chilling at The Shop (I’ve decided to add capitals, it does get mentioned enough) for a few, but Koelzter was busy doing the heads on a Ford, so I chilled at K&C’s for a bit. I managed to not get too shitty for once and head home at a semi-reasonable hour.