Summer is (unoffically) here!

After such a beautiful weekend, it's hard to believe that we're still over a month away from the official start of summer. Memorial Day weekend is the start of summer for me and it couldn't have started out any better.

Amber and I had a nice dinner at Fresco, which is the restaurant on top of the Overture Center, on Friday night. It was very nice, casual dining, great view and fair prices. Although, the menu selection was limited.

Saturday morning, my uncle picked me up and we drove to the Alliant Energy Center to pick up our race packets for our race on Sunday morning. After that, Amber and I went to the farmer's market, bought a hanging plant as well as a tomato and basil plants. It hurt so bad carrying that potted plant back to the car. Saturday evening, I met Mr. Camann, Buck and Gary for an intense game of Kubb in Gary's backyard, we grilled kabob's and had a few choice beers. Kubb is a Norweigan game that is too difficult to describe here, but it was an awesome lawn game involving wood blocks and wooden dowels that get tossed at one another. Meanwhile, Amber and her friends had a movie night at our place.

I got a good night's sleep, then on Sunday morning, I got up bright and early for the race. My uncle picked me up once again, drove to Alliant again and then took a bus up to Capital Square which is where the race started. The temp. was perfect and hardly any wind, great day for running. Steve did the half marathon and I did the quarter. It was Steve's first race ever, but he did great, crossing at 2:10. I crossed at 47:59 for the quarter which was about what I was expecting, but I could've done better. My average pace was 7:20/mile, but I was averaging 7:03's for the first 6 miles, then came crashing down the last half mile. Gotta work on that! After that, I went home and then Mr. Andrew W. Dobbins, aka "Midget Todd", aka "Dawg", aka "Old Man Dobbins" dropped on by after a 5 month absence from the State of Wisconsin. It was great to see him in the flesh once again. It'll be a great summer! Then, no Saturday evening, I had to work the sound board at B-Hawk which was easy because everything was set-up from the morning services. Then after that, Amber and I went to Qdoba on State for some late dinner, then we walked to the Union to grab some ice-cream. We got caught in that storm on Sunday night. It probably wasn't a good idea to walk out in the open with an umbrella with a severe lightening storm overhead. Oh well, we're alive.

On Monday, we went to Bratfest with a few friends. Boy, it was sooo packed compared to Friday. Luckily we found a shady spot under a tree and played Domino's for a bit. I tried the "Double Johnny" which is two brats crammed onto a burger bun. It was tasty! They broke the world record once again, so I'm glad to say I was a part of it! On Monday night, my uncle called up and wanted to go fishing, so I drove over to his house in Lake Mills and we hooked up the boat and got out onto the lake at like 8:30 and fished until 10:30 or so. It was a perfect, warm, clear, calm night. The starts were great. We caught 4 rock bass and 1 large mouth bass. We cleaned them as soon as we got back to his place!

Just a great weekend overall! Time for He** Week part two. Stay tuned.