You gotta love any city that takes an Irish drinking holiday like St. Patty’s Day so seriously that they are willing to risk environmental disaster by dying the river green. You will also find just about everyone dressed in green, waiters wearing green bagels around their necks, and lots of green beer being consumed.

My good friend Katie came down from Milwaukee, we met up with some other friends, and even managed to make a couple of new friends through the night. At one point, Katie and I decided to commemorate our trip 6 years ago to Ireland with a couple of Irish car bombs. One problem: The bartender said they were too busy to take the time to actually pour the shots. So here’s how the conversation went:

Me: Can I get two Irish Car Bombs.
Bartender: Sorry, we’re too busy to do that.
Me: Hmmm…can I order one Guinness, a shot of Jamison, a shot of Bailey’s, and get an extra glass?
Bartender: Yep. That I can do.

So then Katie and I mixed our own Irish Car Bombs. You can see what I think is a hilarious reenactment of this process here: mixing, mixed, drinking, done.

All-in-all, it was a very successful night out in Chicago. I highly recommend everyone makes the trip and gives it a try some time.

One thing no one will ever accuse me of is keeping this blog up to date. For a long time I’ve been meaning to get a whole bunch of photos back up on this site and reorganize some things. This dates back over two years to a trip I took to Italy! Basically, I wanted to update my Travels, Outdoors, and Friends pages to contain all necessary photos as well as my usual witty banter.

Things that have been missing:

• My recent solo tour of Europe (Amsterdam, Berlin 1, Berlin 2, Munich, Vienna, Southern Hungary, Budapest, Prague 1, Prague 2, Dresden, Krakow)
• Snow and sledding in Seattle.
• A two-year old trip to Italy.
• A year old trip to London, England.
• A year old summer camping trip to Neah Bay, Washington.
• A backpacking trip last summer to Mt. St. Helens.
• My Seattle going away party.
• Christmas 2008 in Madison.

I would promise to keep all of these pages much more up to date but we all know I’d be lieing. So you’ll just have to check back regularly to look for new updates. I promise to try to keep my life exciting for all of you out there living vicariously through me.

Coming soon: St. Patty’s Day in Chicago, Snowboarding on Revelstoke, and my going Seattle going away party. I know you all can’t hardly stand the excitement.

Monday night I decided to go out with someone to see a comedy show. The comedy was fantastic, the date, mmm…not so much (nice person, but, well, nice). Before the show, we discovered an incredibly fantastic restaurant called Vines on Clark. I won’t discuss it here because I’ve already blogged about it on my cafe/restaurant blog.

Let’s talk about the comedy. It was put on by the iO (improv Olympics) to honor the theater’s founder Del Close 10 years after his death. Okay, somber reason for the show but it was hysterical. If you’re ever in Chicago or you live in Chicago and you’ve never been, do yourself a favor and go check it out. These guys were a riot. One of my favorites was from this guy that hadn’t done improv in 10 years and was an old roomate of Tim Meadows from Saturday Night Live. He told a story of scoring pot for Del Close, some guy from Monte Python (whose name I can’t remember), and Bill Murray. Then making a joke as he handed Bill Murray a joint and a bottle of wine: “Cannonball comin’ at ya.” (That’s a famous Bill Murray line from Caddy Shack for those of you that don’t know.) Bill Murray then turned his back on this guy and shunned him the rest of the evening. The story loses a little something in my retelling, but trust me that it was hysterical.

Then the night ended when they played an old clip from Del Close. I’m assuming it was shortly before he died and it was a great philosophy. I will paraphrase as best I can here but trust me that he was inspirational even if I am not:

“A man jumps from an airplane and does all sorts of crazy acrobatics. Then, a few thousand feet above the ground, he pulls his shoot. It doesn’t open. He pulls the emergency shoot. That doesn’t open either. Seeing the ground rushing at him, he uses all of his years of training and practice to perform the greatest acrobatics of his life. Then, splat, he hits the ground. That man had style. I hope I can find such courage in my own life. After all, the ground is rushing up at us all, and in the end every one of our shoots will fail. So have the tenacity to develop some skill at something and the courage to put it to use your entire life.”

Amen, brother.

It’s been an eventful past week for me. I’m finally getting out and really exploring Chicago. I’ve been out with a number of people the past week to a few fine restaraunt establishments. Feel free to read some insightful and witty restaraunt reviews of some super cheap Chicago eateries on another blog of mine. Seriously, I’m hysterical…and these places are super cheap.

But this blog is about bowling on Friday night with the Dresslers, the Graff’s, some IIT fluid mechanics graduate students, and my friends Paula and Sue. We started at one bowling alley called Southport Lanes. Rumor has it this place is so old-school that they actually hire people to setup the pins after each turn. On top of that, rumor has it, that if you stick a dollar in your ball when you throw it down the lane, they guarantee you a strike. I say these are rumors because there was a private party there that night so we didn’t actually get to bowl. Instead we had a beer and then walked down to some other place (the name I can’t recall) where we had dinner. Then we all headed to Diversey Lanes for Rock ‘n’ Roll Bowl…

Yes, Rock ‘n’ Roll bowl came complete with black lights, big haired 80’s music, and lots of cocktails. I was on pretty good behavior because I was planning a trip to Milwaukee the next night with a bunch of old friends from Pedro’s Mexican Restaurant in Madison (”can I get you some Tortillas with that?”). But my friend Sue was in no such predicament. Let’s just say that 8-10 beers/cocktails leave a fit, 135 pound woman, well, not so fit anymore. I will hopefully have pictures to post soon. Of course, I’m not sure that anyone will want the incriminating evidence readily available for the rest of the world to see…

Speaking of incriminating photos, I went to Milwaukee the next night for a party my friends Bryn and Jessica were throwing. Needless to say, my political career may official be over before it has even begun. It involves a pair of biking shorts, a pair of white tights, a Hawaiian towel, and a can of Pam pan spray. There was also $18 spent on two beers at one point that I’m still a little bit miffed about. I hate to break this to you Milwaukee but you’re not cool enough to charge $18 for two crappy Pilsners. Despite the legalized robbery, it was still an extremely successful and fun evening. Everyone should go to Bryn’s angry BBQ party next year.

Bryn, if you’re reading this, please send me the angry BBQ picture so I can post it - that is an incredible photo and probably belongs in the Louvre. Everyone else that was there with a camera, please burn them all and I promise serious kickbacks when I’m elected a senator some day.

As many of you may be aware, my friend Tom and I run a small online company doing mail-in cell phone repairs and accessory sales. Every time we do a repair for someone, I send them a follow-up email a couple of weeks later asking how are service was. Just today I got the following response back from a guy:

I was enormously impressed with your service, organization, and responsiveness. The screen replacement was fast, 100% successful, reasonably priced, and completely “user friendly”. I just wish the Obama administration would give you guys all the bailout money and have you reorganize the economy…

I couldn’t stop laughing for about 10 minutes after reading it. Whether you agree or disagree with the politics of the last line, how random and hysterical is that?

Alright, back to work…