A Day, A Week, Hemant, A Year

Since moving back to Saskatoon in 2005 I’ve been hosting the annual Geeks in Basements New Years Eve Extravaganza – a gathering of my closest friends to celebrate the coming of the new year. This also happened to be the first one that would take place in Michelle’s and my new house.

Since Saskatchewan was going through such a bitterly cold stretch we thought it would be a great idea to give the 2009 party a Caribbean theme. Our guests were informed to show up in their best island gear and enjoy some Jamaican style cuisine and groove to some funky reggae beats. We even announced that there would be a special prize for the most impressive getup.

Marla and Charles were the first guests to arrive and they sure did impress us with their costumes. All Marla needed was some suntan lotion and she could have jumped a plane to the West Indies.

Unfortunately as more guests arrived the quality of the costumes diminished. And when I say diminished I mean were non-existent. At least Michelle and I had enough leis for everyone to wear. Besides the “dressing up stick-in-the-muds”, the company was still top notch and everyone had a fantastic time.

As usual I laid out the “community camera” for people to fire off shots during the night.  I actually had no idea that there were so many picture taken until tonight when I pulled the photos off of the camera.

Feel free to check out some of the better shots on my Flickr site by following the links below.

• Thumbnails on Flickr
• Slideshow on Flickr

And in case you hadn’t guessed, Marla won the prize for best costume – a bottle of Malibu Rum.

When I woke up Thursday morning I was absolutely starving so Michelle and I walked to a nearby restaurant for a nice outdoor breakfast.  While sitting at our table I noticed a familiar face being seated at the table next to ours.  Being a sports fan I immediately knew that this guy was Michael Wilbon, a famous sports personality for ESPN and the Washington Post.

From Wikipedia,

In his career, Wilbon has covered 10 different Summer and Winter Olympic Games for The Washington Post, every Super Bowl since 1987, nearly every Final Four since 1982 and each year’s NBA Finals since 1987.

He also co-hosts the sports talk show Pardon the Interruption (PTI) on ESPN.  Since I watch PTI fairly regularly and am a huge NBA fan, I thought this was pretty cool.  But since he was having breakfast, I didn’t want to bother him so I just got Michelle to take a picture of me with him in the background.  Here’s a shot of me Twittering that “I was having breakfast at the table next to Michael Wilbon”.  For those of you who don’t know him, he’s the guy behind me and on the left.

I’m not sure how many people actually recognized him, but near the end of our breakfast one couple approached him and let him know that, “PTI was their favourite show on TV”.   I still wasn’t comfortable with interrupting his breakfast with his two friends.

After breakfast we caught a city bus to what we thought was the general vicinity of the Sears Tower.  As it turned out, we got off of the bus a little too early and had to walk for almost thirty minutes.  You’d think you’d be able to see the tallest building in the continent from anywhere in the city, but when you’re downtown amongst so many other huge buildings, it’s easy to lose.

We finally got to the 110 story behemoth, showed our GoChicago cards, and got in line for the elevator that would take us up to the observation tower.  This attraction is usually lined up for hours, but since we were in the middle of the week, we were lucky to only have to wait for about ten minutes.  After watching a short History Channel movie about the tower, we rode the elevator to our destination.

The view from the top was pretty sweet.  It reminded me a lot of being at the top of the CN Tower in Toronto, but with Chicago being considerably larger, the sight was even more magnificent.  Michelle and I took some photos, and made our way around the observation deck before heading back down to ground level.

Since we had a pretty big breakfast, we decided to skip lunch and catch a bus to Navy Pier, a transformed family entertainment destination on Lake Michigan.  The first thing we did was inquire about the boat tours.  Our first choice was the Shoreline Architectural Tour of downtown via the Chicago River.  It was five minutes to three and luckily the next tour was at three.  Great!  We used our GoChicago cards to get our tickets and figured we’d just get on one of the boats directly behind the ticket station.  As it turned out we needed to make our way to the a different launch.  Once again we got into Amazing Race mode to catch the boat.

Needless to say, we made it in time and the tour was underway.  The one hour tour took us down the Chicago river through downtown while the guide explained many of the architectural wonders that line its shores.  Michelle and I both were incredibly impressed with the boat tour and would recommend anyone in the area to check it out.  It’s totally worth it.  The tour also revealed the origin of the city’s nickname “The Windy City”.  The name is not derived from the city’s apparent high velocity winds, but from of the “long winded” city officials who made their case to host the 1893 World’s Fair.

After the boat tour we walked along the entire pier, basking in the great views it offered.  There is a picturesque fifteen story ferris wheel on the pier which we figured we should ride.  Apparently this Ferris wheel replaced one that was built when Chicago hosted the 1893 World’s Fair.  Each car used to hold sixty people, had built in bar, and a live band.  How cool would that have been?

We were starting to get pretty hungry and tonight was our plan to have a nice dinner on the water.  None of the restaurants on the pier really fit into what we were looking for since they were all family oriented, so we caught a bus back into the heart of downtown.  Apparently during the boat tour, Michelle overheard a conversation about a restaurant called Fulton’s on he River that was supposed to be solid.  Surprisingly we were able to find it.

There was a thirty minute wait since we wanted to sit outside on the water so we were told to sit in the bar and they would come find us when the table was ready.  After inquiring with the hostess after nearly an hour had passed,  we found out that they thought we had left and gave our table away.  After that we were supposed to be next on the list.  Next we saw another party of two walk in and get seated after about two minutes.  Michelle approached the hostess.  It seems that this caught the attention of the head restaurant dude, so he swooped in and took control of the situation, seating us immediately and “taking care” of our drinks.

The rest of dinner was awesome.  The smallest steaks they had were 16oz.  As they say, “when in Rome”.  Something that I found pretty cool was after our waiter had explained  the items on the menu to us, he finished off with this statement – “And if you don’t like anything on the menu, the chef will make whatever you want”.  How awesome is that?  For the record I got the 16oz New York Strip and had no problem eating all of it.

After dinner we decided to go for a nightcap and dessert at the top of the John Hancock Building – Chicago’s third tallest building, known for it spectacular view of the city and America’s fastest elevator.  The view did live up to all of the hype, and looked extra impressive at night.  The funny thing is that the best view is from inside the lady’s washroom.  Michelle can vouch for that.  The men’s washroom had no windows.

You can see more photos from the day by following the links below.

• Thumbnails on Flickr
• Slideshow on Flickr

Since buying our house back in February, Michelle and I were planning on throwing a housewarming party. We initially were hoping for May, but that just couldn’t happen. Who’d have thought owning a house would make one so busy?   Before we knew it summer had arrived and we figured we better have the party now, or it would never happen.

When we started putting together the guest list, it didn’t take long to realize that this could end up being a fairly large shindig. We figured the more the merrier and sent out the invites. Most people RSVPed in some acceptable manner, but for some reason clicking “YES” or “NO” in the Google Invites continues to confuse people.

Michelle and I spent the few days beforehand getting ready for the party – buying booze and food, and getting the house and yard ready to accommodate a barrage of people. When the day arrived, it was also on the day of Saskatoon’s big Sidewalk Sale so Michelle was obligated to help her mom at her store for most of the day. I spent the day prepping everything, then my parents showed up and were able to help me out. Luckily Michelle got off early so she was able to put together all of the food platters.

Before we knew it people started showing up in waves. I was planning on BBQing at a nice pace, accommodating people as they arrived throughout the evening. How wrong I was. Everyone seemed to show up right at 6pm on the nose. I was BBQing like a madman for over two hours, trying to keep people fed. I guess you live and learn, but at least everyone got to eat.

The evening went really well, and I think everyone had a pretty awesome time. I know I did. The final count was about 45 people including myself and Michelle. It was pretty packed for a while, but luckily the weather was nice so people were able to hang out out on the deck and the backyard. It was also great that Michelle’s and my parents (and a bunch of her extended family too) were able to meet for the first time. They didn’t get a chance to visit much, but there will be much more time for that in the future.

I just want to end off with a big thank-you to everyone who showed up to help celebrate the purchase of our new house. We also really appreciate those people who were there until the bitter magnificent end (4am), and helped us get everything cleaned up. It really made Sunday morning a joy to wake up to.

As many of you know, Travis and I share the same birthday – April 13. We generally don’t do anything to celebrate this historic date, but this year we decided to round up a group of friends and go out for a nice evening filled with food and spirits. The plan was to go to the Freehouse, but I had trouble booking a table for 20 since they already had a couple of large groups reserved. The Barking Fish was our contingency plan, and I was eager to go since I had not yet been there.

Dinner was great, and the atmosphere was exactly what we were looking for. We spent the majority of the evening at the lounge, and due to a majority ruling, we ended up at Whiskey Jacks – a place I am not a fan of. Being good sports, we followed the crowd to the bar, but could only take it for a few minutes before Michelle and I decided to call it a night. The evening was great and I’d like to thank everyone who came out to celebrate my birthday. You can check out some photos from the night by following the links below.

• Thumbnails on Flickr
• Slideshow on Flickr
• Thumbnails on Picasa
• Slideshow on Flickr

I was going through the pictures on one of my cameras and I came across this doozy. Jeffrey and Devin introduced us to the “Man Pizza” a little over a year ago and it has become somewhat of a Sunday tradition. Curtis and I made some recently and this particular one turned out incredibly well so we just had to take a picture. Plus we thought it would be a great way to show Jeff what he was missing while in Montreal. He truly does love the “Man Pizza”.

You may be wondering why it is called the “Man Pizza”. I can’t even guess how much this thing weighs, but it’s heavy. The dough is homemade (I bought a fancy new breadmaker just for this), has two cans of pizza sauce, nearly a pound of pepperoni, loads of mushrooms, and a ton of cheese. But the real kicker is the habanero Tabasco Sauce that is added to the pizza sauce. This stuff is HOT, but it tastes delicious. Devin added so much once that he was genuinely scared that people were going to get hurt. He was so concerned that he couldn’t even eat his pizza.

Since friends who cannot handle the “Man Pizza” have started to join us during our pizza nights , we have created “Little Boy Pizzas”. They too are delicious (you can actually see one in the background of the pic), and lets us experiment with different recipes, but they will never compare to the “Man Pizza”. And they don’t have quite the same effect the next morning.