Tag: Cigars

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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 11/18/19

Highlights:

  • Quick Family trip to Disney World

Lowlights:

  • Cold and overcast in Florida
  • Bears Lost to the Rams
  • Horrible Mochas

Goals for this week:

    • Breakfast smoothies all week and find a place for lunch salads

The family and I headed down to Orlando to spend some time at Disney World and get some good extended family time in before the holiday gauntlet comes barreling down. Having two families within driving distance means that every Holiday equals 2 holidays. 2 Thanksgiving in one weekend is fun but a lot of time spent in the car when all you want to do is sit on the couch and digest lol

It’s nice we can get together before all that starts and enjoy our time together without being time-crunched in a natural spot where everybody can chillax and have a relaxing time without the usual hosting pressures.

The highlight of the trip was Brunch with Mickey and Friends. Tons of great photo ops with the OG Disney crew, they all came by one by one once the table had finished their 2nd plate of the buffet. The actors did a great job handling all the little children and the varying age of the groups. They mad sure every guest that wanted a picture got one and we’re very aware that I had the Sony A7II camera and not iPhone and the charterers made sure to give me the majority of the poses so my camera could do all the hard work and send off the pictures to everyone after the brunch.

I was pretty happy with how most of the pictures came out. I can tell that I am getting better at composing my pictures. I am starting to see how a picture should be framed before I raise the eyepiece to my eyes. In turn, I’m becoming a lot more efficient at taking pictures. I use to take 1000 pictures and the only handful would be worth editing or post right out of the camera. Where now am constantly moving to be in the best shooting position resulting in a better sample of pictures without having to wade through 95% to find the better-looking pictures. Now it’s about 20% decent looking pictures with about 1/2 the number of total pictures taken.

There happened to be a coffee shop that masqueraded itself as a full-service Starbucks when I did my trip due diligence to figure out my food, drink and golf options for the trip. I was very stoked to see there was a full-fledged Starbucks on a property within walking distance to get my Mocha fix all week. As soon as we walked up the first time I knew something was up as there were no building architecture ques of the usual Starbucks look. Then I saw it, the sign that put me in a 5 min depression “Starbucks Coffee Proudly Served Here” I didn’t have any hope for the Mochas after that, but since I’m a glutton for punishment I went ahead and got a Mocha each morning I was there. The mochas scored 5 to 6 out of ten on my scale with major points being deducted due to the overuse of nasty chocolate syrup. The other major factor was the expresso tased like it was over roasted burnt and gave some off-flavors that I didn’t enjoy. I was happy to get back to the airport to have a decent Mocha at a real Starbucks.

The weather did not want to cooperate while I was in Orlando. It just happened to be record-breaking cold weather while we were in Florida, seriously it was low 50s and high 40s on one of the evenings. There was one night when it wasn’t freezing, but still pretty chilly I was able to sneak away and hit the hot tub and smoke a cigar.

It was a fun night to smoke one on vacation but it was most certainly against the rules to be having one in the hot tub. I was on edge the whole time, all nervous that I was going to get busted and ruin the family vacation. Looking back what were they going to do? Lock me up and kick my family out of the Villa?? 99% sure they would have just told me to put it out and leave the hot tub.

Overall this was a great trip and something I look forward to all year. Yea the weather could have been better but if you need nice weather to have a good time- change your fun parameters and start having even more fun.