Month: January 2020

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Weekly Post 12/16/2019

Highlights:

  • Lunch with a highschool friend
  • Started bringing leftovers for lunch
  • Finished The Wire

Lowlights:

Goals for next week: Try to reduce my lunch budget

Following last week’s post and I had another business lunch set up with a highschool friend downtown. Just to talk about the future and see if our forces could align and expedite some progress. This is still a new experiment for me so there is a lot to figure out and organize before these business lunches will start producing some juicy results. Either way, it was fun to catch up and talk about old times and the present comparing stories at how similar and yet different our lives past have been and how we still have a lot of the same experiences.

 For the majority of this week, I broke out the old’ lunch pail and brought leftovers to work to eat for lunch. To be fair these meals were planned leftovers with the full intention to have them for lunch the next day. In my quest to keep reducing my expenses on food this seemed like the next logical step. We quickly found out that usually dinner is the most expensive meal of the day and having the same meal for lunch the next day just doubles my spending. The good take ways for this habit is that I am now building a routine to bring lunch rather than going out to eat five days a week. If I can keep this habit than the next step would be to meal plan for lunch and be mindful of what the food costs are compared to a usual fast food meal. Those meals range between $12 and $8, If I can get my spend down to $7 or $6 I would be very happy. I don’t have a plan yet other than to keep bring meals from home into to work and once that habit it and nature then start to plan out my lunches.

I watched HBO’s original show The Wire. This came out right at the tail end of Highschool and finished up while I was still in college. Never really heard of it even though around that same time I was watching Entourage and Sopranos every Sunday night. Soon after though, this show kept getting recommend both by acquaintances and on my regular websites. I Started this show multiple times when over the last 6 or 7 years and never made it past the 3rd episode for some reason or other. New shows that come out that “You have to watch” it always got put on the back burner. Then I read another article about the 50 best TV shows you need to watch. I can’t remember which article but it kicked me in high gear and I made it past the first season in one weekend. That first season of The Wire was so good I just kept pressing play.

It hooks, line and sinker me in as I made it through the 2nd season in the by the end of the next week. after those first two weeks, I was on roll watching it every chance I got, during lunch breaks, in the morning before work. I was addicted by the time I finished the 4th season I was burnt out. Only 12 more episodes to in the final season… it took the entirety of that next week at that same feverous pace finish out the whole series.  

This was an awesome show. Lots of intricate storylines that build from season to season, yet each season had its theme that leads to entertaining season finales that almost stretched over the last 3 episodes of each season.

Watching this show blitzkrieg style isn’t recommend due to the 60 min length of each episode, If I had to do it again I would have tried to keep it’s at a season a week. That would have probably kept me from having that burnout feeling towards the end of the series. The Wire would be a must much recommendation from me, I’m sad a neve got into this show when it was airing that could have been fun to witness.

The 2019 Bears season is over. What a disappointment, there was so much hype after last year’s level of play and in the supposed progress we made in the offseason. The offense installed the 2.0 version and Mitch was making leaps and bound type progress. All that hype washed away after the season opener loss to our archrivals the Green Bay Packers. To be fair I did hold on to some hope that they could pull to it together but, halfway through the regular season it a was fools’ errand to still believe that this team was going to be better than where it was last season.  

It will be a long offseason, hopefully, I can fill it up with some golf and baseball and hockey.

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Weekly Post 12/9/2019

Highlights:

  • Steak and Cigar night Round 6
  • Family Birthday Brunch
  • Great business lunch

LowLights:

  • Can’t drink like I used too

Goals for next week: Keep inviting people to business lunches.

This was an action-packed week with tons of lunches and dinner and things to celebrate. It wasn’t easy on the pocketbook but lots of fun and some action items to follow up with that should lead to greener pastures hopefully in early 2020.

We celebrated the wife’s birthday with lunch at a new spot in the west river north area called Pacific Standard Time. It had a very west coast feel to the interior which wasn’t overdone and overall it was very pleasing to the eye and had a great contrast with the grey Chicago winter weather that has now settled in for the rest of the year. The brunch menu has the usual staple items that were decently priced for a river north restaurant. 

I ordered the steak and eggs, always nice to have a breakfast steak in my opinion. The highlight of the meal was the hot sauce they gave with the eggs and it was liquid hot magma. Passing this around the table to see who was brave enough to try and watch their face melt after only ingest a small was too funny.

The last big meal of the week was at GT Prime for the 6th semi Quarterly Steak and Cigar night. There will be a full recap post on this meal that will be published shortly that will give a full break down of the most expensive steak I’ve ever eaten. With all the steak, bourbon and cigars mixed with a late-night, I paid the price for it on Friday morning through the early afternoon. I can’t swig them back like I used too, and for the most part, I’m kinda happy about that. I’ve always been a big drinker and now that my life priorities have taken my attention elsewhere not going out and getting blasted every weekend night has been a hard adjustment but one for the better. Both for the here and now and the future. I will now need to learn drink at a pace that is new to me but this will be a necessary tactic to have when I’m out with boys for fun night out and not have to pay for it dearly the next day.

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Weekly Post 12/2/2019

Highlights:

  • Haircut and beard shape up

Lowlights:

  • Feeling all the repercussions on all that thanksgiving food

The goal for next week: Get to the gym

With No-Shave November coming to a close I decided to the beard through the holidays. To get ready for the Christmas and Holiday party season I needed to get a haircut and for the first time, I was also going to need to get my beard cut and shaped. The usual story is that I don’t touch my razor at all for the month of November. As my jobs have been getting more and more professional, walking around with a raging neckbeard was not appropriate. I compromised and kept the neck nice and clean but left the length of the beard as long as it could grow out. This lead to some issues around my mouth, it became very hard to drink anything out of a cup without a straw. The liquid would just run out the sides of my mouth and down onto my shirt making a huge mess every sip. In the era of the war on plastic straws, I am most certainly not going to be carrying around a metal straw in my pocket all day every day. 

The only choice was to get to the barber and let them do their magic. After my guy was done it felt like I had a whole new face. No hair would hit my lips or get in the way of my breathing or tickle my nostrils. The real mega moment though was when I had poured myself a nice big glass of ice water at home. It was an oddly refreshing feeling that I can only describe as one of the most comfortable drinks of all time. I had not realized how annoying drinking was when all the beard hair kept getting in the way my drinks.

For next year not only will I continue to condition from day one of growing out the beard but will also try and trim the edges as well to keep drinking from feeling like an impossible task.