Well, I haven’t updated in a while but needless to say I’ve been pretty busy. I left Virginia last Monday morning around 7 am EST and arrived in Champaign about 6 pm CST. It did take me just about 12 hours to drive back if you include stops for gas and food.
In Champaign I was spending the week at my friend Kavin’s place who is a poker buddy of mine. We were going to go to Sushi Kame for some low priced but good quality sushi but found that they were closed. We walked the 1/2 block to Ko Fushion instead; they had dollar sushi night and him and I each ordered a combination plate for $10 and I ordered a classic Gin and Tonic. I also had some ‘Pheasant Sausage’ which was very sweet tasting and pretty good; I had to get it because I couldn’t see myself ever being in a situation where I’ll be able to have it again.
After dinner we went back to Kavin’s place and he told me he had gotten into ‘Axis and Allies,’ a pretty awesome board game that I refer to as “Risk on Steroids.” Luckily I was nerdy enough in my college years that I learned to play (and dominate) the game through the hours and hours and hours of time I’ve spent playing. The rules have changed a little bit but the strategy not as much; I ended up winning as the Axis power (something extremely difficult to do and only accomplished once or twice before then if I remember correctly).
The next day I pretty much had no plans and spent it all hanging out with Kavin. We ended up grinding for 4 hours on Absolute and didn’t run so hot, although I’m still trying to adjust to those games. For lunch we went to Lai Lai Wok for their awesome fried rice and Fried noodles with beef (although I have no idea the official name for it). After poker we went to Jupiters for their Special K pizza and played an hour of pool and had some beer. We then made it back to his place and played another game of Axis and Allies, of which I won again as the Axis. That ended late and I went to bed as I knew I had a long day coming on Wednesday.
I was to meet my friend Yana at noon and we were just going to hang out all day. We went to lunch at Bombay Grill (on my suggestion, which is weird) and I had some Lamb Curry (which Marlyn has me hooked on) and that was pretty good. God I miss Champaign food prices, the entire meal was like $7 and I couldn’t even finish it all.
After lunch I went to go pick up wine at Meijer to take back to Virginia. They only sell the Oliver Wine that Marlyn and I love at Meijer or online; I picked up 24 bottles at $7 a bottle which cost me quite a bit after Tax. I’ve already given away 3 bottles of it as gifts and I probably expect another bottle or two to be given away as well, but I think 18-19 bottles of wine should be plenty to last us until my next trip into Illinois.
After that trip to Meijer we went back to play some Wii and kill time before dinner; I finally met her boyfriend and, FWIW, they’re an odd pair lmao. I think I’ve played every Wii game out there BUT Wii Sports which is getting annoying because I hear that’s the best game. The other games that I’ve played are ‘RavMan’ and ‘Party Games;’ we also spent quite a bit of time playing Tetris as that was one game I had a ton of experience on (the matches between me and Yana’s boyfriend were intense!). In the end, I don’t think I’ll end up buying a Wii, as the games were only somewhat entertaining. However, there are two games that I would buy the Wii for and they were on older systems. I could buy ‘Earthbound’ and ‘Secret of Mana’ for $5-$10 each and frankly I’d be super happy with that, although I have a hard time justifying spending $200 on a gaming system for 2 $10 games lol.
For dinner we hit up Radio Maria’s for Tapas and the first of our many drinks. I ordered a Whiskey-Sour with Dour’s which was a drink I haven’t had in forever and takes me back to my pre-scotch days. For dinner, we started with their awesome marinated olives and had a Masa Boat (excellent!) and then split the fried goat cheese on toast with honey, which was also very good. I never tried anything new as frankly, I don’t have time to gamble. We finished it off with some scallop ceviche which was actually not that great (although it was her choice not mine).
From there we went across the street to the Cupcake place (where she works) and we split a Pumpkin Spice as well as a Purple Velvet cupcake with a double espresso. The pumpkin one was real good and I was able to finagle the recipe to try at home (although don’t tell anyone). From there we went next door to the Blind Pig to hang out with the rest of the hipsters and drink some nice beer. Since it was a Wednesday it wasn’t that busy in there; I had a Lindeman’s Framboise which was refreshing. We got to talking movies and she hadn’t seen “O Brother Where Art Thou” so we went to Rentertainment to rent it.
Frankly, I would have much prefered to watch ‘Finding Forrester’ but she got to choose since she was the one paying $1 for the rental (I think I still have a $20 late fee there lol). By the time that movie ended it was getting pretty late; it had been a long day between quality food, drinks and entertainment I was pretty tired.
Thursday in Champaign I was to meet up with Jamey, some with whom I’ve known since high school. He had a final earlier I believe so we didn’t get to catch up with him until during the Bears game. I got up around 10ish or so and completed a poker video for Grinderschool while Kavin was at work. I picked him up for lunch and we headed to Esquire for some good and cheap bar food. I had their steak sandwich with fried mushrooms and diet Coke. I think the whole thing cost like $9 or something; again, I love the cheap prices.
After lunch, I dropped Kavin off for him to go to work then I went back to his place to finish up some Grinderschool work and play in a special instructors-only tournament. When Kavin came back it wasn’t long until we had to head somewhere to watch the Bears game since it was on NFL Network. Apparently he gets the Golf Channel but not NFL Network, which was pretty lame. We went back to the place we went to last year but found that it was packed. We tried Jupiters again next door and we were lucky enough to get a seat.
Since neither of us were into pizza we were kind of limited to the food we could order. They only had salads and appetizers; I ordered an extremely filling Spinach and Crab dip and I could only fish 1/2 of it, even though it tasted pretty good. We were happy that the Bears won and afterwards went back to Kavin’s place to play some FoosBall and then eventually get to bed.
I was leaving Friday for Kiyoshi’s place in Mokena; I was originally going to be there at Noon, then 2 then 4:30 and then finally arrived at 6:30 PM. Before leaving though I managed to make back some earlier losses with Kavin from playing poker and went to the last local favorte: Los Amigos. I ordered their carne asada nachos and finished every last bite, even though it was a ton of food.
In Mokena, Kiyoshi and I ordered some Pizza Hut and got right at playing video games and drinking beer, first Halo then Call of Duty 3 (old school) and finished the night watching ‘Sin City’ on Kiyoshi’s new big screen TV. Jamey ended up coming down and joining in on the video gaming and spent the night (he had to bring the beer though).
In the morning we went right into video gaming, back at the Halo and COD3 and we didn’t even eat until 2 pm. At that point we ordered some Jimmy Johns as we didn’t want to quit playing; I’d say that was the last place I had on my list of places to eat at. I ordered the Italian Club #9 with peppers, something that I used to order all the time when I was a freshman in college, but later ‘graduated’ into more affluent tastes.
After Jimmy Johns I got to test my Rock Band Drum skillz but there must have been something off with the synchronization from what I was used to at home as I was having trouble keeping up with the notes. I still did OK and did fail a couple on Expert, but I hadn’t played it in forever either. I was almost motivated to go buy a couple songs available for download but I can’t usually convince Marlyn to play with me so I decided against it.
Kiyoshi went to a party in Chicago and I stayed in Mokena to hang out with Mickey. We played some Lego Batman and then went to Jewel to buy some dinner which was just as satisfying as going out to eat. We came back to cook our cheap beef steaks and food and then I introduced him to ‘Assassin’s Creed’ and then went to bed.
The next morning I got up around 9 although I didn’t hear a peep out of Mickey until almost Noon. I managed to get a lot of busy work done so I was pretty productive, albeit hungry. When he got up we went to get some breakfast at a local diner and I ordered a 5-egg Chorizo Omelet. Apparently, 3 eggs aren’t enough for them to make an omelet out of so now I can’t have any food for a week because of how much cholesterol I ate. The whole meal was pretty average and it was more entertaining trying to explain to Mickey about how bad the economy is and how bad it could get.
It wasn’t long before Mickey’s girlfriend Sarah showed up and they disappeared for a while, which was disappointing because I had to leave in only a couple hours. I wouldn’t have minded spending a couple more hours with him but oh well, not much I could do. I drove back to Aurora in time for dinner and basically that is where I am right now.
