GAME05

i forgot most of the information about it, sorry, but it's one thing you and your son might really enjoy. there's a drag racing track maybe 30 minutes outside Denver that holds regular races. it's not really a sport i'm into, but it was a lot of fun when i went, and i think something a three-year-old would get a big kick out of.

i moved to North Carolina from Wisconsin three years ago. more than even the weather, the biggest thing i miss is the general culture of Wisconsin and the way people talk and act around each other. i notice the differences more and more the longer i'm down here. i think if one were thinking about moving, that's the biggest thing that should be considered. it's been pretty rough here with this Southern culture. it's hard when you never really fit in. for the holidays, Thanksgiving and Christmas are the worst times. it's impossible money-wise to fly home for Thanksgiving and then three weeks later, fly home again for Christmas. eating a lonely Christmas dinner at Hooters last year was one of the worst experiences of my life. the nice thing, though, is that the one or two weeks of December cold in Wisconsin is sure easy to put up with when you're going home to warmth.

i've been away from weightlifting for maybe six months now and am getting back in it. you guys are getting me excited about it again. looking back to last time i was lifting and on a stricter meal schedule, i'm sure glad i did the research myself and didn't just jump to what i was told to do by a video. now i've got the knowledge for my own, plus i still have the habit whenever i pick up food at the grocery to look on the label for the nutrition (or lack of) information. and since any change in regular diet can be difficult to adjust to, i always allowed one day a week that i wouldn't really stick to it, have that ice cream or the chicken wings when i'd go out with friends. i also thought it was fun to research and design my own workout program. i've never taken to plans from other people. i gave myself a 6-day schedule with an extra open day in there for whenever i wanted to take a day off (like laundry day). a motivation suggestion i have is to take measurements of yourself every couple of months like bodyfat%. it was a huge motivation for me that maybe i wasn't seeing the progress in the mirror, but the numbers were telling me that what i was doing was really helping. i'm starting a boxing regimine next week. i've got two different pairs of dumbbells at home and will buy a simple bench. for about $150 and some knowledge about exercises, that's really all the equipment you need for a full and complete workout. if you don't have the knowledge about different exercises, i would say look some up online or invest in a couple workout sessions with a trainer, tell him to show you a lot of different stuff, then just duplicate those on your own. it's going to be a challenge this time to build strength and muscle for boxing yet trim up some (i've probably plumped to 16% bf by now). i think i'm going to have to go heavy on the protein yet stay low on the calories.

i consider myself a decent home cook and eat on the cheap, too. i think the two go hand-in-hand. I just made risotto tonight, which is cheap and easy, just takes a while. just be sure to get short-grain rice (short-grain brown is healthier and more filling), then I added anchovies and mushrooms, although you can use a lot of different combinations. you just need chicken or vegetable stock and some cheap white wine with the rice. be sure that at least 1/2 of the liquid you use for the rice is water, or it gets too salty. I also like to marinade some eggplant, and then i'll throw it in the blender with some white wine or sometimes water, and that makes a good sauce for those large stuffed pasta shells (the particular spices you need can be tricky), in which i'll add bread crumbs, tofu if you like it, onion and peppers and diced tomato. or you can cut the eggplant in half, hollow it out and add those same intredients with the breadcrumbs on top and then bake it (be sure to sweat the eggplant a little first). Stuffed mushrooms work the same way, another cheap idea. Otherwise if i'm making a simple tomato sauce, i'll just cook up some diced tomatoes, and if you can, add some brandy or vodka since tomatoes are alcohol soluble, so you'll get a lot of flavour out of a simple sauce. one thing i'll make sometimes is a ghetto Shepherd's Pie. it's just Dinty Moore beef stew with mashed potatoes on the top, add some cheese on top of that and shove it in the oven. a favourite of mine are those KFC Twister wraps (don't like them anymore now that they've added cheese). it's just grilled (i don't fry) chicken breast strips with lettuce, tomato and peppercorn ranch dressing. one healthy one i'll make is just angel-hair pasta with olive oil and broccoli. just that. and it freezes well for work lunches. one appetizer i recently made for a party that went over real well was won-ton wrappers in which i put shredded carrots and cabbage, and marinated tofu (basically marinated in soy sauce). i sealed the pastry with some eggwhite and baked them and they came out really well. they went over really good, too. if you've got a vegetable steamer you can soften up some large cabbage leaves with that. i'll roll a filling with those made of pork and rice, oregano and definitely some paprika (it's a Slovenian food).

be sure to sit in the bleacher seats at Coors Field. for a night game, you get the sunset over the mountains to your right and the city skyline to your right--a beautiful ballpark view. i used to live there, but i was broke, so i didn't travel much. The Coors Brewery tour in Golden is fine, and if you go for the "quick tour," that basically skips all the stuff you've seen before in Milwaukee and leads you right to the tasting room.

i don't really like mustard.

stupid car. i've already been paying $0.11 in repairs for every mile i drive, and now i need a new battery. it'll start on a jump, then i drove it around for an hour to charge it, but now it won't start again. piece of junk.

i've always got rice, pasta and eggs on hand since almost any food or leftover can be combined with one of those to make a cheap meal.

it's annoying that we still have to wait through those automated messages on peoples' phones of how to go about leaving a voicemail. and my car is busted again. since i've had it, i've had to drop $0.10 in repairs for every mile I've driven.

You made a BIG mistake pal. Bob Uecker loves this stuff!In Craig's defense, he probably only thought better of it because he realized he wouldn't have been able to buy the Silver Spring Beer 'n Brat Mustard at Pick 'n Save's low-low two-for-one price.

Informational interviews. just ask for 20 minutes to go in and talk to a manager from a handful of companies you really liked but aren't hiring. maybe offer to buy him lunch. say you understand they aren't hiring, but that from what you've researched, you like the company and just want a quick chance to get some more information about them. emphasize that you won't take up much of their time. but don't go in and be asking if they're hiring or they'll think you're just trying to sneak in a surreptitious job interview. it's a good way to build up some weak contacts, plus they can sometimes be good sources of information about the hiring economy within the economics-job industry or other companies. and when a job eventually opens up at the company you talked to, you've already got your person from within that maybe will help you out if he liked you (just don't ask for it directly). at least you're in a decent spot that the 1st Quarter isn't too far away, and that maybe hiring will start to pick up around then.

kudos to the dude who added frozen vegetables. my freezer is full of it and it's uber-cheap. also a lot of beans in the pantry. i completely disagree that cheap food and health is mutually exclusive, although usually the easy-to-cool stuff is. i think a lot of food, like cereal, has a lot to do with picking one that is filling. i can eat a ton of bread and frozen pizza and Cheerios, but rice (especially brown rice) and a lot of the whole-grain foods fill me up a lot more that I eat comparatively less.

The Better Business Bureau of Wisconsin gave Pick N Save a B- rating. Roundy's got an A+. Sentry got a B+. Sendik's got an A.

If you're a Brewers fan and you love great prices, there's nowhere better to shop then Pick N Save!! Even some of your favorite Brewers and Packers stars like to shop at Pick N Save. Go to Pick N Save for all your summer savings, or head to your conveniently-located Pick N Save to stock up on lunches for back to school!! It's a fun place to shop, and you'll save so much money compared to shopping at other grocery stores. Pick N Save is always working hard to keep prices low to pass on the savings to you, and we have wonderful specials every day! Yay Pick N Save!

i've priced my meals out before and they're typically $2 each, and despite what i said before, i think i actually have a fairly small appetite that two meals a day is more than enough. Today I had two turkey sandwiches (~$3 if that) and leftover spaghetti (~$0.75). ok, so i guess that's about $110 per month, then. I think it also helps quite a bit that I'm a student so I don't have to pack lunches with sodas or those expensive pudding cups. I've gotten in the habit of making a huge batch of pasta or rice, then freezing serving-sizes, and I've saved a lot of money and time with that. Probably my favourite meal to freeze is three chicken breasts ($3), your basic cream sauce with just butter and milk ($1?), a $1.50 box of pasta and broccoli ($3)--so for something like $9 I'll get five or six meals out of that.

i'm just a bit bigger and eat all the time. i tend to stay away from red meat and beer which saves me a bit. is there an Aldi's in Wisconsin? $80 per month is usually about right for a month's worth of food for me. i tend to only buy the food that's on special when i shop.

i like Aikman, too. it's hard to find a decent football colour guy these days. the big fat guy who does sideline stuff for Fox is annoying and useless. but then so are all of the women who do sideline stuff, too. i think the most annoying baseball commentator is whoever the second Cubs radio guy is. He basically has the personality of the ordinary fan, so whenever anything big is happening all you hear is a "whoa" and an "wow" and some cheers, but never any actual commentary. As you know Monte, Vaughn has been working on a couple of new pitches: the Eliminator, and the Humiliator; to compliment his fast ball, the Terminator. Monte: I heard that. Harry Doyle: Dynamite drop in, Monte. That broadcast school has really paid off.

a lot of people have Nurse Ratchet as a villain, but if you watch the movie again from her point of view it's hard for me to call her a villain anymore.

without cable or an antenna, i only catch what's on Hulu, so that means Monk, Psych and the Office. i like to watch Hell's Kitchen, too. the guy with the broken wrist had always looked familiar, and a good friend just reminded me that I'd hiked the Appalachian Trail with him in 2005. I was happy to have some geography with the face. I was rooting for him before, but now I'm doubly so. cool guy.

Zorak-Brak Show and Space Ghost Lady Macbeth--Shakespeare Skeletor (my favourite as a kid, at least) Scott Boras (not the man, but what he represents) Dr. Frankenstein's monster Archie Bunker--All in the Family

Field of Dreams is awesome despite Costner. and the Eagles are the worst band since the invention of music. CCR is a close second. what's this thread about? http://forum.brewerfan.net/images/smilies/smile.gif

i don't think it necessarily means we're going to be picking up his option for next year. that's a pretty steep price. i think it's just a pickup to keep this team moderately competitive through the rest of this year and that's it. i'm not overreacting about this PTBNL, either. we're talking about the Noochie Varner's of the world, not the Adam Heether's.

i'm not ready to jump on the "it doesn't matter anymore, we're totally out of it" bandwagon yet. heck, we heard a lot of that last year. the chances are pretty small, but one never knows. it's a small move but it makes the papers, DM can throw in a few quotes about how we're trying to catch up at least a little bit and give the average fan at least a small reason to keep coming to the ballpark the rest of the way.

i used to collect cards, too. i got out of it mostly once there started to be a million different companies making cards and even more sets and specialty sets. i'd make trades with the brother a card that was $2.50 and going down in value for a card that was $1.80 and going up in value. then suddenly it was a Griffey Upper Deck that was selling for $50 and specialty sets that were hundreds of dollars. there's something to be said for Eisner's comment that the market just isn't for kids anymore.

PitchLeague, i always thought the toe looked nasty in other pictures, but yours is by far the most gruesome. i think this shot is gonna beat the alcoholic transmission fluid i had once as the strangest. nice job on sporting the Brewers gear, too.