Stupid Bills. Lost Again. Wait... They Won? How Could That Happen?

 It's football season again and that means Conklin's Bar & Grill's Illegal Motion tailgating is back!

What's on the menu?  Why, is that fried bologna sandwiches and other assorted meats your making? 

MARISA!  What are you doing in Buffalo?  Really, if you are going to visit us, this is the best way to do it. 

When in Buffalo, you need Buffalo Wings.  And, in Buffalo, they are just "wings."  The Buffalo part would be redundant... 

"I bought candy from you already.  Don't you remember?"
"NO!"
Smart little cheerleaders raising money at everyone's tailgate parties. 

ARE YOU READY FOR SOME FOOTBALL!  Buffalo Bills vs. Carolina Panthers at Ralph Wilson Stadium.  

 Best way to avoid traffic to and get to the game.

Rainbow parachute!  What does it mean? 

 Ka-BOOM!  And here come the Buffalo Bills!

The mob rejoices 

It was a pretty rough game.  At least it was competitive.   

And, we got a CJ Spiller bobblehead just for attending the game.  As always, we had a great time!

Now for some other business...

A large book sale at the local Penfield Library.  A grocery store bag of books for $3!  Sounds like trouble.

Not sure if they were working on the utilities or having the best fried turkey cookout ever...

Mr. Gorbachev, Paint Over This Beige Wall!

Another room being painted!  Here's Megan painting the master bedroom buttercup (yellow) from beige

Before

After

Before

After

Before

After

Before

After

Yeah for new bedroom.  That was a fun couple of weekends.  If you want to see what we did to the living room, you can visit: http://mikekraus.blogspot.com/2013/06/the-battle-against-beige-tyranny.html

How do you celebrate a newly painted bedroom?  A bonfire of course!

Whoops, I guess I made the fire a little too big...  Exciting day yesterday.  A guy driving by my house had a gas leak in his car and it caught fire.  It's not in this picture, but you can imagine what 2,000 lbs of charcoal with a Chevy bowtie looks like...

Ruby Shoes playing in the parking lot of the main street (Commercial Street) in East Rochester.  For some reason, they played all the songs from Grease.  That reason is probably that people love it.

Rachel showing off her swimming ability.

Foot

And, what would my blog be without my baby deers update?  

This is by far the closest the fawn have been to us.  Curious little fellas and they still have their spots.  Pretty soon, they'll be moving in the house and paying rent.

That's about it.  Lots of stuff coming up over the next couple of weeks...

October 2012 #27

Issue #27

Goodbye Chicago.  You’ve always had a place for me on your broad boulevards.  But, I’m married now and it’s time for me to move on.  To settle near family and have kids of my own.  Find a place to call “home” and live the clichés of Thanksgiving dinners and grilling in the backyard.  I love my simple life of taking the “el” to work and checking out the neighborhoods on the weekend; but I must go.

I remember the day I decided to move here.  After that misleading job interview, I wondered all around the Loop knowing there was nothing I could do back in Michigan.  Staring at the spitting faces of Crown Fountain.  Grabbing a hot dog and fries at Max’s Take Out.  I gave myself one year to sink or swim and moved into my Spartan Ravenswood apartment a few days later.

Now, the moving truck has all our junk in it and we’re starting a new life in Rochester, New York.  Will it be better than Chicago?  Apples and oranges.  But, I will miss the activity of a world-class city.  The adventure, amusement, and/or oddities I could find around every street corner.  The food.  All of my friends going to dive bars, the bartering of Maxwell Street Market, all kinds of concerts at a wide variety of venues, apartment parties for any reason, and just sitting on the porch people watching.  It’s been good.  

The Monster Jam! It Was A Grave Digger Smash!

MONSTER JAM THUNDER NATIONALS FEATURING GRAVE DIGGER AT THE BLUE CROSS ARENA IN ROCHESTER, NY!
You have to admit that my wife gets me some pretty awesome xmas gifts...



STONE CRUSHER!



Who will win?  Eradicator or Grave Digger?



GRAVE DIGGER!!!  



This is a truck line up out of my 8 year old dreams...



The Grave Digger pennant/the tattoo I'm going to get...



Monster Jam is really good at coming up with products.  Products like the Digger Disc boomerang



Or the Grave Digger hat that came with cotton candy for only $15...



CANNONLADY!  The ceiling of the Blue Cross Arena is so low that they had to fire her from the minimum trajectory, which was still really close to the ceiling.  We found out that her entire family does this for a living and her husband blew himself up earlier as "the Human Bomb."  



Spiderman would have been much cooler if it didn't stall every time the drive hit the accelerator...



GRAVE DIGGER!



Just doing a few donuts...



Maximum Destruction was the true master of donuts.  I have to admit, I was genuinely impressed with this performance.



BACKDRAFT right before that rear tire went flat and he had to leave the show.









Evidence of a hard days work...



Teaching Rachel how to ice skate!  The facilities at Monroe Community College are really, really impressive.  






My strange ice skating still life...



This dog is so cute that in the time it will take you to read this sentence, 15 people have already emailed me about adopting her.  



And yes, my job is so awesome that this puppy is considered "job related."


That's it for now.  I have a string of weird blogs that will probably continue next week.  All I can really tell you is I'm changing my name to "Andy Warthog" for an evening in Buffalo.  Even I don't know what that means...