Fuzzy the way it is

Note to self: tailgating before the Dave Matthews concert with only two small Ziploc bags of Pub Mix to stave off hunger makes for a very blurry evening. Good thing Joshie was in charge of the camera. He got some good pics since I was too busy dancing and wooing.

General Admission is where it's at! Jill knew what to do when security tried to deny us and banish us back to our seats. Ya'll just got served!

What have yahs Wednesdays

1. Splash! I finally enjoyed this renowned Des Moines culinary spot. I also had the raw oysters and they were awesome! If you have the chance I suggest you give them a shot no matter how much you think you won't like them. Give it a shot!

Freshest oysters around

2. Lora and I have entered the gauntlet! Our next few weeks are action packed and I couldn't be more excited. We are going to the Dave Matthews band concert at Principal Park on Friday, We are going to Wicked on Wednesday, Friday we head down to Austin Texas for the Austin City Limits festival, and on the weekend of the 10th we head to Iowa City for the Iowa Michigan game. We're going to need a nap!

3. As many of you know we bought a new car this spring. Well... we just received our bill for our new tags in the mail. Man does that suck! A far cry from the $13.00 I had to pay for my tags in high school for my 1966 Plymouth Fury.

The good ol days

The Writing's on the Wall

We went to Blues on Grand with Josh's parents and their friends this weekend. I went to the bathroom and as soon as I walked in I had a flashback. It was like I was back on The Hill in one of our favorite watering holes; the bar that we so poignantly named our dog after--SUDS.

Besides not having any doors for the two stalls in its bathroom, Suds (the bar, not the dog) also had a never-ending amount of graffiti on the girl's bathroom walls. In this college bathroom bar I found messages from my peers that warned about the treachery of men, commented about girls who didn't adhere to whatever the female equivalent of the "bros before hos" code is, and of course there was a risque limerick or twelve.

This past weekend, four years later, I read the writing on the wall on the Blues on Grand women's bathroom and the general gist of the messages (and most of the limericks) were the same. I walked out thinking the more things change, the more they stay the same.

Take away the stall doors, hand me a vodka cranberry and I would've sworn I was back in college.

BBQ and Babies

I want my baby back, baby back, baby back, baby back...



Ribs.

I didn't get a pic of the finished BBQ'd product. Here the ribs are being boiled. The garage smelled like vinegar afterwards...mmm, vinegar.

The big Iowa vs. ISU game was this weekend so we made ribs and cheesy potatoes and had friends and friends' babies over to cheer on the Hawks. They won, hooray!

The game wasn't very close but it still seemed to tucker out Suds and Andrew. That's cute.

Where are They Now?

I'm glad to see these two are still kickin' it these days...

THEN

I fell in love with Jamie (far left) from Real World San Diego during college and here she is five years later still in the limelight...

NOW
Or at the very least, she's basking in the pale green glow of almost celebrity.

Next, Josh and I discovered that the star of our most favorite Lifetime movie ever in the history of ever is still playing the role of a borderline slutty teenager...

THEN

Here she was in 2004 playing the role of the "good girl" who after falling prey to the charms of the school hunk yelled at her mom, "It was just oral!" and then ended up as one of the many countless victims of a syphilis outbreak in their upper-middle class neighborhood.

NOW

Josh and I recently caught "Nick and Norah's Infinite Playlist" on TV and found our girl playing the mean and mildly trashy ex-girlfriend of Nick, Michael Cera's character. Nice!

You win, Mediacom

I hate to say it but we're going to have to call stupid Mediacom to fix our internet. It's never working when we want to blog, check facebook, check fantasy football, check email, so it's checkmate. I give up, you win...but you can still suck it!

Addition to original post: As soon as I published this post, an ad popped up advertising High Speed internet from guess who---how infuriating!

And now, we Feast!

Pic from here

I swear the only thing we did this Labor Day weekend was eat. We spent the three days traveling to our next meal. Friday night started at El Bait Shop with drinks and Elvis Dip. I definitely think that El Bait Shop has our favorite patio downtown. After that, we made our way to Miyabi 9 for sushi.
Saturday started off with pastries at La Mie Bakery. Josh said that they have the BEST pecan roll he's ever had. Bold statement. I prefer to dine on their cheese danish but they had this prosciutto and asiago cheese filled croissant that we shared and it changed my whole outlook on pastries. It was like a classier version of Burger King's Croissanwich, a favorite dish of mine during high school study hall. Yum.

Saturday afternoon was Josh's homemade nachos (I really think we could start a farmer's market stand with these nachos). We watched the Hawks give everyone a heart attack by getting thisclose to losing the game to UNI. Yikes. If the rest of the season is going to go like this, I'm unsure that my little Lora heart can handle it. And I'm absolutely certain that Josh's heart can't.

Tony Moeaki jumping over someone. Pretty impressive. Pic from here

Saturday night was dinner at Iron Wok, our favorite Chinese food place, with my family. They have the BEST sesame chicken hands down. Not too saucy, not overloaded with breading, perfect. The older generation of my family has an affinity for Chinese buffets so I don't think they were terribly impressed but I knew going into it that we weren't going to win that battle. Sigh.

Sunday and Monday was more of the same. Eat, drink, repeat.

What Have Yahs Wednesday

1. I can't believe we only have one month until we go to Austin City Limits! I'm super disappointed that Lily Allen backed out. I do love me some sassy Brits! But I'm definitely excited about seeing the Avett Brothers again. We saw them play a few months ago and that night I made the executive decision that I should take up the banjo.* I read an article about them in Rolling Stone recently and that got me even more pumped up about it.

Pic from here

2. Speaking of magazine articles, did anyone see the Speidi interview in Playboy? Well, I did and it made me 1) hate Speidi even more and 2) hate myself for loving to hate Speidi even more. Oh, if only I hadn't gotten sucked into "Laguna Beach" all those years ago. They had me at "Dunzo".
3. Is it bad that I kind of have a thing for Elliott Stabler? The summer we moved into our house we decided to go without cable. NBC really liked their reruns of Law & Order: SVU that summer and as it turned out so did I! There's something about an actor that can go from a role as a serious detective with a slight anger-management problem to this:



*Editor's note: I have yet to make any attempt at purchasing a banjo or investing in lessons.

Smokin

Mad Men Season One: a smokey drunken chauvinistic adventure back in time

Over the past week Lora and I have been watching season 1 of Mad Men. I love this show! Have you ever been asked "if you could live in any decade other than one you have experienced which would you choose"? I have always said the 60's and that was before watching Mad Men. Mad Men hearkens to a day when drinking scotch all day in your office, chain smoking (in your office) and coming home to a home cooked meal whenever you feel like it was expected. If smoking and drinking scotch all day with the boys on Madison Ave wasn't cool enough you get to do it while wearing a suit, tie and a HAT! Mad men is a great show but be warned you may want a cigarette halfway through the first episode.
FYI... the parents of January Jones (Betty Draper, Don Draper's wife) live in Des Moines. Read more here.

Enjoying a little whiskey while I watch Mad Men... I didn't have any scotch.