Three Days in April

Cards v. Cubs this weekend, and the heat was on, both literally and figuratively.  Kristen's sister and her fiance came into town on Friday night to stay with us.  Also, Justin and Lacey came in and they brought some friends from KC who are - oddly enough - Cubs fans (check the comments for THAT story).  They stayed with his mom, of course, we don't have the room for all those people...  We all had tickets to the game on Saturday; however, AND Ray was there with his bandmates, AND Weltigs sat with Justin, AND Kristen had a high school friend (who now lives here and is a Cards fan) that was at the game.... so Saturday was a nice showing and an all-around great day for a game.  Little warm, but that's to be expected.

First on Friday - Kristen picked up Jaime and Dan from the airport and they went to the mall and then back to our house.  They called me when they got there about 4:30pm and I left work to meet them.  Dan-o was a few beers deep by the time I got home, so I couldn't let him continue without his StL drinking partner!!!  So I popped a cold one as well.... happy hour!  We sat around for a while, answering trivia questions on "Cash Cab".  Then we decided to go to eat and I thought Three Monkeys would be a cool place to take them and we could watch the Cardinals beat on the Cubs.  Well, when we walked in there the tables near TVs were all full, so we thought we'd try a spot at the end of the bar, but it turned out not to be the right ambiance, so we jetted and headed to Columbo's instead.  Jaime commented that the hole-in-the-wall atmosphere was more her and Dan's speed, so we were pleased.  I had a Chicago-style Italian beef sandwich, which I thought was somewhat ironical.  After the Cards pulled it off in the 7th and held on to win the game, we headed back home.  A few more beers later, we decided to play Scrabble, since we're always playing WordScraper anyway on Facebook.  After I had to defend a few words that were in my Roget's dictionary, I ended up winning the game.  Dan and Jaimbo were good competition but I can't speak too much for Kristen who fell asleep halfway through the game and yelled at me when I (somewhat abruptly) woke her up.. haha!  I think we were all ready for bed after that.

Saturday we knew we wanted to get an early start, so after Jaime and Kristen took a jog and we all took showers (4 people, 1 shower, 4 different showering sessions) we hit the train headed for Busch Stadium.  We started at Paddy O's so we could have some cost-effective (sort of) beers and cost-effective (definitely!) food.  I had a burger AND a brat and they were both delicious.  Kristen's high school friend and Ray met us over there and we all walked into the game together.  At about the 4th inning when the game was really out of reach for the Cubs, Kristen and I went to visit Justin and his gang.  After getting yelled at a few times by the usher, we decided to just meet up and chat later.  Oh, and Albert Pujols hit a grand slam...

Afterwards we all met up at Hrabosky's and that was awesome!  Just a bunch of us hanging around, drinking, and having a fun time chatting.  After dark, Justin and the Weltig's had to leave to go eat, but the rest of us stayed and hit Paddy O's again.  A few more beers and a lot more amateur photography later, we caught a cab home.  I was in bed and asleep promptly upon our arrival, so I have no idea what the party did while I was out...

Sunday we woke up and went to our usual lunch spot when Jaime and Dan come to visit - Hacienda.  That place is so good and they love it too so its a win/win.  We went back home and watched a little of the Cardinals game - this one was not as good as the first two, so we watched the Bulls game instead.  Dropped those two off at the airport and headed to my sister's for my niece's birthday party.  We were a little late since we had entertaining the houseguests already planned for that afternoon, but we had time for cake and catching up with the family, so it worked out.

The weekend left me tired as shit, but I got a sweet sunburn on my ever-growing forehead so I was so hot that I had a hard time sleeping last night.  A little groggy still today, but I mustered up the energy to tell you all about it.