TheSchmek

So my good friend Kevin D. Burris was way cool and invited me to go see game one of the Red Wings series against Anaheim last weekend, and then later invited me to go see game two of the series as well.  It was a great time and my friend Drew even strolled into town for the second game. I started writing a post about this earlier this week and then forgot about it, but had time today so I figured I would mention it. I have a picture from game one on my phone and will upload it later. The other cool thing about last weekend is that Kevin and I met this guy Ken at Gators after game one, and he ended up beeing pretty cool.  He is a good dart player and does tournaments and leagues.  He introduced us to a new bar called “The Bowery”, in Canton.  It’s a nice little place not to noisy and not to crowded, and then have nice dart boards too.  It’s definately nice to have a different place to go to when Gators gets a little monotonous.

So for the second year in a row I had a spectacular time in Tennessee spending a weekend in a cabin in the Smokey mountains. It was a little different from last year because our cabin was not as far up the mountain and it was not as secluded because it was in the middle of a sort of village of cabins. That being said it was a sweet cabin. It was bigger than last year, had two hot tubs instead of one, and had way more balcony space. The views were not as spectacular as last year, but they were definitely beautiful. There were also a lot of new people to meet this year. I thought I would know most of the people on the trip, but a lot of the people that went last year were unable to go, but the newbies were cool. We swam in the river rapids in Smokey national park again this year, and almost survived without injury. Unfortunately Billy Kangas sprained his ankle right at the end of our time in the river. I did some shopping, for the first time in a long time, while I was down there, and bought my first pink shirt(It’s official: I’m a prep). We spent a lot of time in the hot tubs and the other guys and myself smoked many a cigar seeing as they have several nice cigar shops in the town we were near. Other than that there was just a lot of relaxing and enjoying the peace, tranquility, and beauty of nature. But now its time to get back to the real world. I have today and tomorrow off from work still, although I do need to go into work tomorrow night for 2 hours or so to run the child center book fair, and then it’s back to work on Thursday!

So today is my last day at work before I have a nice, and very much needed, 9 day vacation.  I just have to work 8am till 7pm and then its off to Grand Valley for the night for Jana and her roomies going away party.  Tomorrow I just have to be back by night time to play in my golf league, and then on Wedensday I will hopefully get tons of sleep and maybe make up my raquetball game that I will be missing tonight.  Thursday will be another day of realaxing except for a little babysitting at night, and then Friday its off to Tennessee for a 4 day weekend.

This will be my second year going to tennessee with the St. Luke College Ministries group and I am really looking forward to it.  We just go down for 4 days and rent this huge cabin/lodge out and just do whatever we want.  Its an awsome place.  It has big screen tvs, a pool table, a ping pong table, fooseball table, 2 hottubs, and amazing views seeing as it is located on the side of a mountain in the Smokeys.  Last year we spent our time going gocarting, swimming the rapids in a river near our cabin, hiking, and just generaly relaxing.  If any of you ever get the chance to go to the smokeys you should definately take the oportunity and run with it.

So this weekend I went out to U of M to meet up with Jessie, who I have not seen in a long time, and was graduating.  I met up with her and her friends at the Brown Jug in Ann Arbor, and then moved on to a bar/club called PJ’s.  I was a little hessitant at first because my normal idea of a night at the bar is going to gators, which is never packed, and playing some darts or pool with a few buddies, and this was a whole nother ball game.  It was graduation weekend at Michigan so everywhere we went was packed.  Also, for those of you who don’t know me very well, I am NOT a good dancer, but it turned out to be a lot of fun.  Jessie and her friends were cool and all in all it was a fun evening.  It was a great way to blow off steam after a long week/weekend at work.  Hopefully I can start hanging out in A2 a little more often to add some variety to my weekend adventures.

Last Friday Kevin and I decided to go out to the bar when I got off work, and decided to try a different bar than the one we normaly go to.  We decided to go to a place called Baileys which is right down the steet from where I live.  I had been there once before for my birthday, on the night before thanksgiving, but that is no night to use as a judge for whether or not a bar is good because of how busy it is on that night.  I like the layout of the place because it is big and has pool and darts, which is what Kevin and I generaly do to entertain ourselves, but that is about the end of the things I liked about the place.  When we walked in I noticed that the average age of the place had to be about 40, and the wait staff didn’t seem to be to eager to get our drink orders, but I was excited because I saw that they had a humidor with cigars.  I enjoy an ocasional cigar, and it had been a while since I had had one so I looked forward to buying one to enjoy while we were out.  It took me about fifteen minutes to get someone who could actauly open the humador to sell me a cigar.  When I fianly layed down the $12.50 for the cigar I chose I was given a cheap little cutter to use to cut the it, and this is when things went down hill. I tried to use the cheap cutter on the cigar and the cutter broke halfway through the cigar, at first I thought the cutter was just worthless and borrowed another from a guy sitting near us, but when I finaly got the cutter to work, the whole dang cigar fell apart!  It was extremely dry and hard as a rock.  I was a bit upset to say the least, and after mentioning it to the person who sold it to me I got even more upset because the response I got was just “oh.”  No one appologized, no one offered to replace it, no one offered to get me my money back, a free drink, nothing!  This is just poor customer service, and because of this night I will never again return to Baileys of Canton.  The night did take a turn for the better when we left and headed for our usual hand out, T.C. Gators, but I was still, and am still upset about the abhorrid service.  So if you are ever bar hopping in Canton, I suggest staying away from Baileys.

Hello everyone, its been a long time. I have not had a website in many months, and actually lost my old domain, theschmek.com, but I am getting back into website development, and need something to kill some time. I am going to start with WordPress seeing as I have never used it and everyone else does, and then see where I go from there. But I hope that at least a few people look at this as I redevelop my website.