In UWM’s Lubar Hall (the Business School), there are separate study rooms for those who would like to quietly study for their classes. Unfortunately, the asshats that are in here now didn’t get the memo. I could quite seriously go in the hallway right now and enjoy a lower level of noise than the drunk-ass accounting students are emitting.

Man, I’m getting old.

Yesterday, Tracy, Sadie, Luke (Sadie’s boyfriend), and I all went on the Sprecher Brewery tour, followed by a tour of the Cedar Creek Winery in Cedarburg. We had a lot of fun… and a lot of beer/wine.

Check out the gallery:

I have no idea what the hell the deal is, lately, but between home improvement stores and restaurants, I’ve been getting some crappy customer service. I’d write about all of them… but I don’t want to bore you, and it depresses me.

Over the last week or so, I’ve been tackling my kitchen upgrade project. I feel like I could be on “Flip This House.” So far, it’s been going quite swimmingly. I’ll post some pictures later this weekend.

Last week - Replaced cabinet hardware.

Monday - Installed countertop, range hood, new sink, new faucet, and removed tile backsplash.
Tuesday - (had school) Removed old adhesive from backsplash and prepped surface.
Wednesday - Installed travertine tile backsplash.
Thursday - Grouted backsplash.

My plans for the weekend -
Today - Remove trim, pocket doors, and (ick) the carpet from the kitchen. Install cement backerboard. Then I have an appearance at the Mineshaft from 10p - ?.
Tomorrow - After appearance at Keith’s Marina in the WB between 11a and 1p - Install tile.
Sunday - Rest.

Next week -
Grout. Seal and caulk backsplash. Install GFCI outlet, new regular outlets and switches, and my fancy new brushed-nickel outlet covers. Seal floor grout. Paint. Install new window treatments.

Special thanks to Phil and Tracy for their help! And thanks to Claude and OOS for their sage advice. I didn’t imagine that this project would be this easy and relatively inexpensive. It’s pretty fun watching my house transform from a 1960’s carpeted-kitchen nightmare into something that I’m actually proud to live in.

I’ve been busy… too busy to write up the details on our engagement.

You wanna hear it… here it goes…

[UPDATED] - added photos and the story after the jump…
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I need to say “Thank you!” to my neighbor, Phil, whom I railroaded into coming over to my house last night to help me install a new kitchen sink, counter top, and range hood.  Everything looks great and I finally don’t have that ugly-ass counter top and white sink that had been in my house since, oh, 1964. I’m going to install the tile on Saturday (thus removing the carpet from my kitchen) and also a tiled backsplash. Then I’ll be done (and can move over to the bathroom!).

Phil will be rewarded with beer. Or whatever kind of reward Lisa’s cool with.

Thanks again, Phil!

She loves the taste of her Uncle Fuzz’s hand.

Here’s my latest series of photos…

…she said “yes,” btw.

Green energy is surely going to lower the value of my home. Recently I started seeing wind turbines sprouting up around the horizon by my home. Now there are dozens of them scattered about the area. I’m not worried about the geese near the Horicon Marsh getting decapitated, I am worried about the price of my home going down.

Damn you, Al Gore!

Photo credit: Forward Energy, LLC.

Tonight I treated myself to an hour at the local shooting range. Here’s what I found:

1. One of my Glock 27 magazines is all sorts of jacked up. Ever since I bought it, one clip jams on the fifth round. As soon as I’m done writing this, I’ll send an e-mail to Glock’s customer support.
2. I love my Beretta. The PX4 Storm is a great gun.
3. The price of lead is astronomical. It costs twice as much to shoot as it did a year ago. Big Bullets must be raking in huge profits and taking Big Oil out to dinner.
4. I’m a pretty damn good shot.
5. Some old man was teaching his daughter or daughter in law how to shoot his .357. She kept taking her mufflers off because they apparently hurt her head. I would think the loud banging noises would hurt worse, but whatever floats her boat, I guess.

My neighbors, Phil and Lisa, are from Illinois. They closed on their home here in Maytown on the same day that I did. So, we are both subject to the wrath of the outcast here in our cliquey little town. It’s all good - we’ve got each other.

One night, while searching for some takeout food, Phil and I stopped into this little restaurant that is about a block and a half from my house. Even though I’ve been here for two-and-a-half years, I had never been there before. When we walked in the door, everybody in the place turned and looked at us like we had just walked, uninvited, into somebody’s home. Upon learning that they only serve fish on Fridays, we left.

Last Friday night, Phil, Lisa, and I decided that it would be nice to go out and try their fish. When we got there the place was packed. They told us it would be an hour. We said we’d wait.

I’m glad we did wait, because we had the oddest service experience I think I’ve ever seen:

1. A half hour to forty minutes after we started waiting, a woman came around and said, “Michael Martin - party of four.” I stood up. She quipped, “no, no, no, it’s not your turn yet, I’m just giving you your menus.” Uhm… okay.
2. About ten minutes later, a waitress came by and asked us what we wanted to eat. We gave her our order.
3. Some time later, the waitress came by and said, “your food is ready and waiting for you at table ten.” Yeah, that’s right, we had to go, unescorted, and find table number ten because our food was already waiting there on it.
4. After we finished eating, the waitress cleared off all of our plates and brought us the tab. I gave Phil cash and he was going to pay with his debit card.
5. Phil went up to the front to pay. The woman said, “how much would you like to leave as a tip.” Phil replied, “five dollars.” “How much?,” she questioned. RUDE! Phil should have replied, “you know what - NOTHING.”

The food was okay, but it was nothing to write home about. I won’t be stopping there again - unless I’m in need of some comic relief.

Well, I got my tax returns, and I am about to jump into something that I’m unsure about… it rhymes with bitchen recoddle. I have never tiled a floor, nor refinished cabinets, nor replaced a sink and counter top - but gosh darnit… I’m going to do it.  And after that - it’s the bathroom.

…and hopefully relatively soon after I’m done, I’ll move  away from my 66×66 cell in the Mayville penitentiary.

Holy crap… I’ve felt like garbage for about the last week, now. All I have is a cold (thank God it’s not the flu), but between waking up at 3:30 in the morning, try to speak on the air for four hours a day, and then going to school afterwards - I had just about had it.

Yesterday was about the worst of it. The morning guy at our other station called in sick the day prior, so our only fill-in person was already accounted for. By the time I got home from school, my throat was sore, my body ached, and I was about ready for bed. In fact, sometime around 6pm, I actually decided just to go to bed.

About 15 minutes after I fell asleep, my phone rang. Me, “hello?” Person on other end of the line, “Fuzz… I’ve got a stupid question for you…” Of friggin’ course.

So, then I was awake. I decided for some stupid reason to go for a walk. It felt kinda good to get out and get some exercise. I came home and went to bed again. After waking up again to take advantage of a fit of creativity, and to take some NyQuil, I finally got to bed for good.

This morning I feel tons better. My head is clearer and for the most part I am ready to take on the day. Just in time for a cold weekend. Swell.

I’ll leave you with this tip: the generic Equate brand “Airborne,” (called AirHealth) is a lot tastier to consume when you drink it hot. Just leave a little extra room in the cup because the hot water causes more of a bubbly reaction.

These are a few things that I see differently now than I did when I first went to college at age 17:

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Saturday was the first day in awhile that Tracy and I were going to be able to go on a date, sans children. My plan: go get something nice for dinner (not all out, but better than Applebee’s) then go see a comedian at Milwaukee’s Comedy Cafe.

Here’s how our awesome date really went:

4:00p - Made reservations for two for the 8pm show at Comedy Cafe.

5:30p - Picked up Tracy at her house.

6:30p - Arrived at P.F. Chang’s. It was so packed that we couldn’t see past the front door. A woman walking back in (presumably from her car) said, “it’s a really long wait.” We didn’t have time. Tracy suggested BW3’s.

6:40p - Arrived at BW3’s and we were immediately seated. The waitress didn’t get to our table right away, but we placed our order as soon as she did.

7:25p - Still waiting for Tracy’s nachos and my popcorn shrimp. I called Comedy Cafe and cancelled our reservations.

7:30p - Yes, 50 minutes later our food finally arrived. The food wasn’t terrible… but the service sucked. Had we known we were going to miss the comedian for dinner, we would have braved the crowd at P.F. Chang’s.

7:50p - Having enough of BW3’s, and now having no time to get to the east side of Milwaukee, we decided we would see what movies were playing at Mayfair’s AMC.

7:55p - Arrived at AMC. There were no photo representations of the movies that were playing like they have outside at Marcus cinemas, so we had to ask the pimply-brace-faced (seriously jacked up grill, yo) teen-aged girl behind the counter about the movies. It came down to Jack Black’s, “Be Kind, Rewind,” or Will Ferrell’s, “Semi-Pro.” We reluctantly went with “Semi-Pro.”

8:00p - We order some Junior Mints from the concessions counter.

8:05p - I’ve never had crunch Junior Mints before… but about one in every ten of the candies were crunchy. Ick!

8:45p-ish - I nodded off… it was that boring/dumb of a movie.

9:30p - We were leaving and some douchebag girl who was driving and cackling at something blew through her place to stop and nearly wrecked us. Beotch!

11:00p-ish - We got home and promptly fell asleep.

Seriously, I’m glad that Tracy and I both have good senses of humor. It was funny in that everything that could go wrong basically did. We got to a certain point in the night that had something actually gone right, it would have ruined the date.

I just bought a humidifier from Wal*Mart, and when I opened up the box, the humidifier was wet and the filter was utterly disgusting. Seriously… what a pain in the butt. I’m not a cappy little hamper right now.

It’s been awhile since I’ve done any community service. So, I’m kind of excited that Tracy and I are joining the Red Cross FAST program (First Aid Service Team). She’ll be a helluva lot better at it than I will (she’s almost an RN for goodness sake) but I’m sure that she’ll be able to teach me a lot, too.  And first-aid knowledge is never a bad thing to have.

Oh, and I’m not doing it just to be able to ride on the first-aid golf cart at the State Fair and Summerfest! Haha!

Every Tuesday I carpool to UWM with a woman named Aimee. She’s nine months pregnant. Her due date is today, actually, and it also happens to be my day to drive. I have been hounding on her to have her baby before today so that she doesn’t mess up my car!

As a joke (but not really) I gathered up some towels, plastic bags, and puppy pads to cover my seats today. I mean, Hampton Avenue is extremely bumpy, and I’d feel bad driving my car if she would have to have my car detailed.

Well… she just sent me a txt message to tell me that she and her husband are on their way to the hospital to have the baby delivered. Darnitall! She also told me that she was planning on pulling the same seat-protection joke on me. DOH!

Good luck, Aimee & Ty!

The woman that I love was a teenage mother. She never let herself be typecast in this life, though. And although it seems that certain people try to knock her down at nearly every turn, she’s going to be a registered nurse, soon.

She’s vocal when she knows she’s right. If you don’t believe me, try proving her wrong. I dare you.

She’s a woman who stands up and says what she needs to say.

She’s an excellent mother who cares about her son’s future more than her own. She knows that getting through school will provide her monkey with a great example of how to overcome adversity and beat the odds.

She’s a thinker - and trust me, it’s nice to be around somebody who “thinks too much,” like me.

She’s stylish, classy, and intelligent - it’s a very sexy combination.

She’s my best friend.

I’m extremely proud of you, Tracy. Happy Valentine’s Day.

I know that the Bible says that I should not covet my neighbor’s wife… but Lisa just snowblowed my driveway. Haha! Thanks, Lisa. Oh, and Phil, you can keep her… I hear she snores. j/k.

If it weren’t for Phil and Lisa, I’d have gone insane in this craptastic town.