Jeopardy: Chad Edition


Chad’s Birthday Mug


Chad, Cousin, Dallas, Trent


Chen-Je, Jen, Jason


Limey, Ted, Fitz, Paul, Carrie, Trent


Chad & Dallas


Chad & Rachelle

In grand family tradition of playing bar games for 40th birthday parties, we all gathered last weekend to celebrate Chad’s big birthday and played Jeopardy: Chad Edition. Remember, for Brian’s party there was the Pub Crawl Olympics and for Jill’s there was Survivor Wrigleyville.


Brian setting up the Jeopardy board.


Jill explaining the rules.


Jeopardy Team Representatives: Carrie, Limey, Ted

For Chad’s 40th birthday Jen rented out the beer garden at Fizz, but since it was raining, we were in a heated tent. We paid $35 for all the drinks we could drink for 4 hours and Jen arranged for some really delicious food to be served as well. At the appointed time, we all gathered to play Jeopardy. When we arrived Jen had given us each a number: 1, 2 or 3. This was to sort people into 3 teams. I was on Team 2: Team Burrito House. We chose Limey to be our team representative. When the answers were presented, Limey had to yell Burrito House to buzz in with the correct question. The other teams and reps were Ted for Team Guthries, Team 1, and Carrie (and later Danny) for Team Syracuse.


Chad


Getting intense!

These were the categories – For the Jeopardy round there was The Man and His Bans, Potent Potables, and Movies & Music. In Double Jeopardy there was Chad’s Sports Follies, Brushes With Fame, and He’s Had a Job or Two. The Final Jeopardy category was Location, Location, Location and the question was about how many places Chad has lived in Chicago. Jill and Brian constructed the Jeopardy board. Jill played Vannah White, flipping the answers open, while Brian did his best Alex Trebec, reading the answers off. Jen was the scorekeeper.


Chad had to charade out one of the Jeopardy answers.


Jeopardy crowd.


Final Jeopardy


Chen-Je with two winning girls, Caroline & Loden

The game got really heated with everyone screaming to ring in and shouting answers. Before Final Jeopardy my team, Team Burrito House, was in the lead by far! We could not mess this up! Well, leave it to Limey…. he wagered something like $4,000 more than we even had, which seems to be breaking the rules to me, and then we lost everything, and then some, when no one on our team know how many places Chad lived in. Wah wah wahhhh…


Cousin & Todd


Baltimore Bomb


Baltimore Bombs


Jill & Dallas

Chad’s high school friend Todd flew into town from Maryland and introduced us to a new shot called the Ravens Bomb. Well, when he’s tailgating at football games he calls it that, but we were opting to call it the Baltimore Bomb. In Baltimore they drop a grape vodka shot into a cup of Red Bull energy drink. At Fizz they only had Monster energy drink, so we used that. Check out the awesome custom shot glasses Fizz had. Perfect for bombs. As for the Baltimore Bomb? It tasted awesome. The grape vodka tasted just like grape soda. Todd did warn me that they will sneak up on you if you are not careful, but I only had two. They were flowing pretty readily, though. I think they did sneak up on some people. Or… it could have been the other bombs…


Chad’s Birthday Cheesecakes


Dessert: Carbombs or Cheesecake?

Of course a night out with all these guys is not complete without Irish Car Bombs. Right as Trent was ordering a round, Jen was in the other room gathering people for cake! Ed (remember The Baked Escape) made two white chocolate raspberry swirl cheesecakes (with a chocolate cookie crust) for the party. So delicious. I’ve had this one a few times. It never disappoints. Just as the cake was being cut the Irish Car Bombs arrived. So, choose your poison: Cheesecake or booze. Or both. Why not? Actually, I only had a tiny sliver of the cake and passed on the bombs.


Todd & Brian


Dancing around the birthday boy.

After this, I don’t know what happened. I didn’t feel very drunk, but there was a lot of dancing. And Ed sent me photos of things this week that I only vaguely remember happening. So yeh. Kind of proud that us old people can still have a good time!

08.08.08


Roscoe Village, Chicago

On Roscoe Street between Kitsch’n and Orange there is a small business with a sign in the window that says “Dogs Understand the Importance of Naps.” Many times when I pass there is a dog sleeping in the window. I’ve taken a few photos of this scene, but they always turn out horrible with reflections and stuff. This photo is no better, but I’m posting it anyway.

I walked to the Addison Brown line and took the train downtown for lunch. It was Giuliana’s last day at Google and, as is tradition, all the old FeedBurners were taking her out to Singha. We did the same thing on my last day and I remember at that time trying to order Phuket beer. I believe that the correct pronunciation is “poo-ket” but of course, our sixth-grader minds thought “fuck-it” and thought it was appropriate for a last day celebration. Unfortunately, the beer wasn’t available for my last day, but it was for Giuliana’s, so a bunch of us ordered it.

After lunch a few people had tickets to see The Dark Knight on IMAX as part of some Google-sponsored event. Someone couldn’t go and there was an extra ticket. No one knew what to do with it. Since I didn’t have anything planned that afternoon, I volunteered to use the ticket. Thanks Google for lunch and a movie! I’d already seen The Dark Knight, but it was amazing on IMAX.

After lunch I ran a few errands. Dallas called to say that unexpectedly his college friend Chandra was in town visiting from San Francisco and he was going to meet up with her and Kristin. I’d met Chandra once in 2004 when I lived in Chicago and she lived in
New York. It was either this trip or this one, they were only a week apart. Kristin and I were both working for Monster back then and we were both visiting New York for the same project. We took Chandra out with us for Blue Ribbon Sushi, some of the best sushi in New York. Anyway, after I got home and changed I met up with Kristin, Dallas and Chandra at Kristin’s house. We had a glass of wine in her back yard before heading out for dinner.. which was sushi. This time at Tank. The photo at the right is not a good quality, but shows how much sushi the four of us pounded through. It was almost as much sushi as Dallas, Kristin and I ate that one time at Blue Fin after the Old Town Art Fair. So good.

After dinner we went to The Long Room and sat outside in the garden, which is fabulous. The beer list at The Long Room is pretty impressive too. Not as great as when we were at Hopleaf, but really good. Danny, Killian and Alden met up with us at The Long Room. Jessica also came and brought her college friend Lizzie who was visiting from the Twin Cities. Randomly there were two of their college classmates at The Long Room. They didn’t even go to school in Illinois, so kind of weird.


Rachelle, Alden, Jess, Lizzie at Sidekick, Irving Park, Chicago

When The Long Room closed at 2 a.m. Alden, Jessica, Lizzie and I decided it was a good idea to go out for karaoke. Alden’s friend Kristen works at a karaoke place called Sidekick out in Irving Park, so we decided to go there. When we arrived we found out that they stop doing karaoke at 2 a.m. Dang! We bought a few shots (mine was buttery nipple) and asked around to see where we could go for karaoke. On a recommendation, we went to Hidden Cove.


Hidden Cove, Lincoln Square, Chicago

I was excited to go to Hidden Cove because of a dumb inside joke we had at Google about a conference room we called “The Cove.” It was everything we wanted. Nice staff, french fries, open til 4 a.m., karaoke. Jess, Lizzie and I sang 9 to 5 and Alden sang R.O.C.K. in the USA.


Lizzie, Jessica, Rachelle at Hidden Cove, Lincoln Square, Chicago


Alden at Hidden Cove, Lincoln Square, Chicago

08.08.08 was a fun day for me. Totally unplanned, aside from lunch, I just went with the flow and had a great time!

The Craziness Continues

If seeing people from my past over the weekend weren’t enough, yesterday I was walking down the hallway in the office and I saw this woman and heard her voice and had to walk back and take another look. I knew I knew her. I looked her in the eye and she looked right at me and I was about to say her name, but had that millisecond of hesitation thinking that maybe it wasn’t the person I thought it was. I looked her up on our internal system and I know it’s her. I didn’t see her last week because all of the sales people were out in CA. I used to work with her at Monster, where she was either an account manager or a project manager. In the system now she has a different last name, but I checked with Jeannette and it’s because she got married. Jeannette also confirmed that she does work here now. I should try to refind her to say hello now that I know I won’t be making a fool of myself. I probably haven’t seen her since 2003 or 2004.

Then today I was having a horrible morning. My bed had no blanket at the hotel I moved to yesterday so I got a horrible night’s sleep, someone set the clock for an hour earlier than it actually was so I was running late, I jumped in a cab to rush downtown for a meeting and I had no cash to pay the driver, etc. I finally got it all sorted out and was rushing into the door of our building but had to stop because “HOLYCRAP there is Matthew walking the cutest dog ever!” Man, I haven’t seen Matthew since his birthday party in 2004, I think.

I feel like I’m participating in some kind of “Rachelle, this was your life in NY” reality TV show or something. I wonder who I’ll see tomorrow.

Maybe it’s not so bad.

cheese_curds.jpg

The photo is of cheese curds I’ve been enjoying today. My mom picked them up on her way down from WI on Monday. They squeak in your teeth so you know they are fresh.

Today was my first day unemployed. I’m trying to enjoy it because I know that no one really is looking for people for the next few weeks and that most people are on vacation. I slept off a hangover, finished some Christmas shopping, bought groceries, made chocolate covered peanuts and pecans, and made potatoes au gratin.

Work Holiday Party


John & Joe


Greg & Ken


JoAnn


Marie & Jared


Greg, Jared, Peter


First of Many Shots – Jen, John, Jared


Joe


Ken & Jared


Nate, Susanna, Jared, Peter


Jen


Neal


Joel & Peter


Joel & Peter


April


April, Jamie, Peter


How many people does it take to put on a coconut bra?


Joel, April, Peter, Jamie


Joel, Nick, April, Peter, Jamie


Jamie, Nick, April


More shots


Peter, Joe, John, Ken


John Manhandling Peter


Nate


John & Nate get their photo taken


Peter takes Susanna for a spin


Peter & Susanna dancing


Nick, April, Nate, Norm, Jamie


Jamie, Sheila, April


JoAnn


JoAnn


Sheila


April, Nick, Jamie


Rachelle & April


DJ, Ken, Jared


DJ, Ken, Nate


Ken Finally Gets Lucky

Last night was our division’s holiday party at Trader Vic’s. I’d never been there before but I was kind of glad to go because it’s closing down in January. The Harry Carray restaurant group bought them and they’ll be relocating. In the space that’s Trader Vic’s now, in the Palmer House, there will be high-end shops not to accomodate tourists, but to support all the people that are moving downtown.

As you can see from the photos, everyone was pretty drunk and had a good time. And most everyone wore the coconut bra at some point during the night.

A Night Out & Wrigley

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Wrigley Field, Wrigleyville, Chicago

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Gabe, Jen, Barnum, Rachelle, John, Tom, Peter at Wrigley Field, Wrigleyville, Chicago

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Roger the Parking Attendant :: Wrigleyville, Chicago

My colleague, Tom, is in town visiting from Boston so my coworkers and I took him out for a night on the town. Let me clarify.. I’m new to town and Jennifer and Gabe just moved here from Dallas. .. and Tom was visiting .. so a couple Chicago natives took us all out for a night.

We started at Cubby Bear, which is a huge sports bar kitty corner from Wrigley Field. On the way out we had a parking attendant take our touristy photograph. But this wasn’t any parking attendant. This was the perfectionist parking attendant, Roger, who spent 10 minutes shuffling us around trying to make the photo just right. He was cute though. Well.. not like CUTE cute, but he was trying so hard. Most of us then continued on to dinner at Tango Sur, an amazing Argentinian steak house. I had some huge fillet mignon and some spinach mashed potatoes. After this Barnum, John, Tom and I continued on for a couple more drinks and a shot at The Union Tavern where we met up with Brian With 45 Nicknames. And then a quick snack and more drinks at Iggy’s and somehow it was past 3 am and WAY past time to go home.