Four states in three days, and that ain’t bad.

The saying goes, “what happens in Evansville, Indiana, STAYS in Evansville, Indiana,” and this is especially true when you are attending a wedding and reception in a casino.

Yes, this past Friday, Jazzy A, Foxy Sunshine and I took a road trip down south to attend the much-anticipated nuptials of college friends Allison and Mathew (spelled with only one T, a lesson I learned the hard way after I had already addressed their card in black ink).

In our down time, Foxy, Jazzy and I crossed the bridge into neighboring Kentucky in hopes of hitting up the county fair (this means that in the course of three days, I was in Wisconsin, Illinois, Indiana, AND Kentucky. 4 states in 3 days! Now THAT’S living!). Unfortunately, the fair was an evening thing, so the girls and stopped for lunch (corndogs!!) at a Sonic Drive-In burger joint before heading home to get ready for the wedding.

As you might imagine, the nuptials were lovely. With a 7:30PM start time, this was to be an evening ceremony. The church was illuminated by candlelight with the last bits of light from the setting sun streaming through richly-colored stained glass windows. The bride wore an elegant champagne-colored gown and long flowing veil, the groom was dapper in his black tuxedo, and the wedding party looked wonderful in tuxedos and floor-length, chocolate-colored dresses.

After the ceremony, the newlyweds marched out of the church to songs from the original Starwars trilogy, a choice that surprised me until I glanced over and noticed an audience member had donned a Chewbacca mask. This, I later learned, was a tribute to the groom.

Next it was onto the Aztar Casino for drinks, dancing and warm appetizers.

All in all it was a wonderful weekend! I got to spend time with some of my dearest friends, and I was able to attend a really fun wedding, with lots of personal touches (see: Chewbacca mask).

The one down side was the total of 16 hours I spent in the car, because, as I can assure you, road trips are not my favorite thing. Here are some photos from the 12-hour portion of our drive that we spent in the winding, and ever-varied landscapes of Indiana:

Congratulations again to Allison and Mathew! And as I signed in your official wedding guest book, "May your lives together be filled with happy endings, and may you always live by a Super Target." Also, thanks again to Jazzy and Foxy for an unforgettable weekend of fun-can't wait to see you in Milwaukee in the upcoming weeks!

Try not to panic...

I have been warning people about THIS GROWING THREAT for months, maybe now people will finally start listening to me!

A land war has truly begun.

Happy Monday!

Charlotte's Web 2: The Reckoning

For the third summer in a row, there is an outbreak of spiders in my apartment.

That’s right, spiders. And for the past three years I have bravely weathered this annual infestation with the type of fortitude and courage that is exhibited in absolutely NO other aspects of my life. Usually, when faced with a dilemma, I tend to approach the trouble as a toddler might weather a trip to the mall: with a lot of whining and/or pleas for hugs.

That’s not happening here though. No sir! These days when I spot a spider, I fight every urge to whine; and instead, immediately jump into action with the help of my Bissell hand held vacuuming device. Search and destroy! I am an unstoppable force.

At this point in the story, some of you (the LOSERS) are probably feeling sorry for the spiders. You are probably thinking that these little guys are just minding their own business on my ceiling, and have done nothing to deserve such a dramatic and (likely) painful death within the churning underbelly of my electronic cleaning products. Well stop!

These mini-nemesi are far less disadvantaged than you might think! Far from it! In fact, the spiders in my apartment have two major advantages going for them, which often make my size advantage a lot less advantageous.

Spider Advantage One: The spiders in my apartment are sprightly, and can often jump into a good hiding spot long before I even have my vacuum cleaner out of the closet.

Spider Advantage Two: I have unusually poor hand-eye coordination for someone my age, and even when I do get my vacuum out in time, it is often a short-lived victory, as I usually miss my target by several feet on my first offensive attack. At that point, the spider will flip its little legs off of the ceiling and fall somewhere behind my refrigerator and wall, or directly onto the top of my head.

As you can see, neither of these scenarios could be considered a victory for yours truly-by ANY stretch of the imagination.

All in all I have to hand it to the little guys. Considering I am around 1,000,000 times their size, they usually put up a pretty decent fight. If something 1,000,000 times MY size tried to vacuum me; well, let’s just say there would be a SIGNIFIGANT and noticeable drop in the number of postings on this blog…..

Summer Rental

In less than 60 days, I will be escaping my daily chains of employment and joining the entire Westchester Family in a cross country journey to Cape Cod, Massachusetts.

Believe it or not, a 24 hour drive to the East Coast in a conversion van is FAR less glamorous than one might think. Especially when more than half of the people in the car are boys.

Smelly boys.

Smelly boys that have nothing to lose, and are far from trying to impress any of the other inhabitants of the van.

For 24, long hours.

Good God.

In Westchester Family tradition, our little band of beach enthusiasts (plus one dog) will crowd into the family van at around 4 in the morning in a strategic bid to beat the Chicago traffic. For the next 6 hours, my dad will single-handedly pilot the van towards the sunrise-refusing to stop for any reason until Indiana. Knowing glances from toll booth operators serve as his only company, as the rest of the Westchester brood is dead to the world in the back seats-legs jutting at every which angle in a failing bid for comfort.

My strategy has always been to try and sleep for as long as humanly possible, because as you might imagine, absolutely nothing good can come from waking up. Either I am quickly reintroduced to the harsh realities of the McDonald's breakfast menu, or I get forced into taking a turn behind the wheel. Luckily, the van comes fully-equipped with a small TV and VCR; and something tells me this car trip will serve as the perfect opportunity to expose my family to the horrors and mass genocides of Uganda-via The Last King of Scotland….perhaps I will wait to pop that bad boy in until just before it is my turn to drive.

On the plus side, once my family reaches our coveted vacation destination, all is right with the world, and you better believe the most work I will be doing for the next two weeks will involve walking to and from the beach, and MAYBE shucking some farm fresh summer corn for dinner. Other than that, I am as close to “good for nothing” as a person can get.

Thank God for vacation!


(The Last King of Scotland's James McAvoy/#5 on my top ten list of celebrity crushes)

Weekend Smackdown and/or plea for readers.

I have been in a creative slump.

I am not sure what exactly contributed to said slump, but I would be willing to guess it had a little something to do with Company X. Coworker X, on the other hand, is just fine. In fact, just the other day, we had an animated talk debating which of us was the better athlete; and, like so many of our chats, this one ended with a threat from me having a little something to do with a shiv and Coworker X in a dark alleyway.

Moving on, I had a great weekend. On Friday, I met some girlfriends at The Hi Hat for cocktails and people watching (cough, judging). The next day, I awoke early to get ready to attend a bridal shower for good friend, Beaker Callahan. This September, I will be proudly standing behind Beaker as the maid of honor in her wedding, and this is the only shower (aside from her bachelorette party) that I will be able to attend. During the course of the shower, I dazzled the crowd with performances of my entire magic trick repertoire. The more impressive of my two tricks involves the disappearance of a sugar packet, followed by its immediate reappearance in someone’s bra. This usually goes over well with adults, but perhaps should have been altered for the sake of my singular audience member- Beaker’s six year old niece.

Saturday night I met up with Petal Personality, Keanu Personality, Darling Peterson, Wakefield and Franklin Serious for a birthday celebration for Wakefield. I brought Wakefield a birthday card that prominently featured a little boy picking his nose with a note inside explaining that I had picked the card myself.....perhaps this joke really is only funny to me.

At around 3AM, I traveled the road less taken (acting responsibly after a long night of drinking) and declined invites for a late night snack at Ma Ficher’s so I could catch some much needed shut eye before hitting Sunday morning’s 11AM boating trip that I had committed to weeks before.

No sooner was I home, than I made an executive decision to take a brief nap on my couch in order to muster up the much-needed energy I would need to cross the last 10 feet of my apartment into my bedroom.

The next morning, I awoke to discover that my couch is not as comfortable as I had once thought and that I can nap, afterall, but only after I have been subdued by a heavy combination of Miller Lite,a big glass of Vodka and Cranberry juice, and exactly three Ego Waffles.

As you might expect, Sunday came fast for this little blogger, and I was slightly less than thrilled at the prospect of boating on the Milwaukee River. But, I hosed myself down, ate a few rice cakes/chugged a can of Diet Coke and headed off to the marina. After 5 hours on the river-two things are now clear to me.

1. Farmer’s Tans can affect anyone at any time-even the pale, closeted bloggers with a penchant for shiny objects and nothing short of SPF 55.

2. The Milwaukee River smells a little bit like fish and regret.

Well, now that I have broken that writer’s rut-o-mine, perhaps you can look forward to some more updates from your’s truly; or at the very least, some carefully-executed Microsoft Paint art!!!!