What a weekend!

For the first time in close to two months, I had a relaxing weekend. Saturday I spent the morning just playing a game on the computer and getting some small stuff done around the house. Saturday evening however was the kicker. A night filled with Beef, Babes, Booze and Blood!

I went to a friend from works house Saturday night to watch the Ultimate Fighting Championship on pay per view. The event didn’t start until 8:30, but people started arriving around 4:00. We decided last week to grill; everyone was to bring his own choice of meat. Well I told everyone, “I’m bringing a steak”. Therefore, the whole thing turned into a Steak fest. My steak was a nice 16-ounce porterhouse. Porterhouse is what I consider the best cut of meat; nothing tastes better then a good porterhouse. I wasn’t in the mood for a rare steak on Saturday, so I cooked mine to a nice medium rare. This steak just pulled apart with my fork when I was eating it. It was perfect.

One of the other guys there was throwing Miller Lite in the Rusty Wallace special 16-ounce cans to everyone that was nearby. I felt obligated to kick back a couple while cooking and eating my steak. Another guy brought a huge bottle of Captain Morgan’s Spiced Rum and a couple of 2-liters. He was passing out rum and cokes with out abandon. He grabbed my 32 oz Packer mug when I wasn’t paying attention and poured me a 50/50 mix. I love a good strong drink.

After dinner, we busted out a poker set and played Texas Hold’em. Now I didn’t have a lot of cash on me, and I didn’t really know how to play so I volunteered to be the dealer. Which was great, because I’m looking at all of the cards and telling guys that folded they shouldn’t have and stuff like that. The more I drank the more “advice” I was giving. We played until the fights started.

Back in college, I used to watch UFC more often. I remembered when the whole event would be a competition. You had to fight to the single winner position. Apparently, that is not how they do the pay per view events anymore. These were all the final matches. It was still good fun. Plus the ring girls were really hot. Now for those of you that don’t know what the Ultimate Fighting Challenge is. Think of uber-violent martial arts with broken bones and more blood.

On Sunday, I want to visit one of my ‘vous friends, Jim, to go shooting. He lives about an hour and a half from me, but I didn’t mind the drive. It gave me a chance to check out how the truck handled on the highway. When I got to his house, he told me that his club is having a competition today and they closed it off to black powder. That sucked! I was really looking forward to shooting. I stuck around and we cast up some round ball for my musket. Jim generally shoots a .45 to .50 caliber long rifle. He was laughing at the size of the round balls for my .75 caliber musket. I think it’s the only time a heard a guy say to me, “Wow, your balls are huge!” There was much laughter over that statement for a while. We went through a lot of lead to make my “Huge Balls”. We decided we would do a hell of a lot of shooting at the re-enactment this weekend. As it stands, I have like 5-6 pounds of cast round ball ready to shoot. After that, we just chewed the fat and got caught up, shared stories and tried to talk each other into doing some different re-enactments. Jim also gave me a pattern to make a hunters cape for my capote (Coat made out of wool blankets used back in the 1700’s) and he lent me a rotary knife to cut the leather.

When I got back from his house, I went to work making the cape. Measured and cut it out on a piece of leather I had bought a month ago. Then I had to cut the fringe into the leather. Let me tell you something, if you have to cut fringe into leather, get a rotary knife. It’s faster and easier then using any other knife or scissor. I spent 3 hours working on the cape. I decided a while back that instead of sewing on the cape, I was going to have it removable. I made it so it would be buttoned it on. Even though my wife offered to sew the buttons on, I opted to do it myself. I’ve been in an arts and crafts mood for a while now, I feel better about stuff I made myself. It gives me a sense of accomplishment. Even if it looks like complete crap, because it is complete crap that *I* made! I finished it and I think it looks pretty good.

Just to top off this weekend. I found out this morning that I got my Packer tickets to the Home Field opener in Lambeau on Sept. 18 against the Browns. It’ll probably be the only game I get to this year since the Packers have a horrible schedule. Three Monday night games, 1 Sunday night game, Christmas day game and a new year’s day game. Yikes! Only two home games start at noon; one while I’m at an event and another on my anniversary. As long as I get to a game this year, I’ll be happy. I have my ticket confirmation! Now I’m waiting to see how far I moved up on the season ticket list this year.