Norf Shore

Posted on March 29, 2013 by admin

Couple weekends ago (I know, I’m slacking) Em, Step, Alicia, TaterTot and I headed up to that North Shore. BigBernie made the trip for us and it may have been one of, if not the, most beautiful drives I’ve been on. I’ve been been up there before but the weather changes almost ever hour, the lake is massive, and the forestry / surroundings are quite enjoyable.

The four of us ponied up and stayed at a rent-a-cabin that was basically plopped on top of a mountain overlooking Superior. The driveway was the steepest grade BigBernie has ever climbed, I shit you not, 40-45 degree incline – #NBD. The cabin was so cozy and high quality. If I recall, the visitor log had entries starting in 08-09 so it was fairly new.

Emily shot a gun for the first time. It was tremendous. She is actually quite the marksme…markswoman? First she started on Step’s scoped .22, basically a pea shooter. It was quite a jump from that to the .20 gauge but she knocked down a couple clays, did a happy dance, and was only reminded a couple times ‘muzzle awareness Em!’ Once she got all thuglife on us with that 9mm, jaws started dropping. I don’t know what to say, I am not a horrible shot, but I certainly aint like her, ya heard?

Speaking of how awesome Emily is, what a gal she was to spend the weekend up there stone sober while the three of us just drank our eyes out. I gave a toast of recognition to express my gratitude to her but it needs to be said again. Thanks darlin.

Alicia and Adam brought up raclette for dinner, that was stoops delish. Raclette may be one of my new favorite things and if it weren’t for the fact that the last thing the Goon household needs is another sporadically used cooking appliance, I’d book it. To those who’ve not yet treated yourself to raclette, don’t think about it, just do it.

Step and I hit up that sauna big time Saturday night. At the hottest, the thermo was reading 190 degrees. After boozing all afternoon / night, the sauna is crucial to sweat out the booze. On a side note, I am so f’n glad to have Step as my sisters bee eff. I think of him as a brother and he’s just such a damn good guy. All my friends get along with him, he’s always ready to shweel even if he’s hungover, and I like to think we’re similar in sense we both work hard / play hard.

Anywho, pics of our stay here:

Unc is old

Posted on March 12, 2013 by admin

Ever since I was just a young lad, I’ve always looked up to my Unc (Mom’s brother) the police officer. He was such a cool dude, seemed to do well with the ladies, had fun / debaucherous friends and gifted me baseball card boxes for Christmas. This weekend we celebrated his 50th birthday. Hot damn.

Fifty.

How did he get so old so quick? I guess I shouldn’t talk being that I am *gasp* one year away from the big three oh. For his fiftieth, I wanted to make absolutely sure his present was not a let down and this was not an easy task. I found that a fifty year old with a wife and two kids doesn’t really ask for / need much (guarantee this won’t be true when I am fifty. ooompsk)

After conferring with auntie she told me he loves Chipotle when he’s rollin in the black and white. I was hesitant. “Chipotle?” I thought. . . seems so cheap and not personal but then I thought back to my main objective and I ask you Internet, “Who wouldn’t want $50 worth of burrito monies”? It will absolutely positively for sure get used! “Gee, I had a great birthday but I wish I wasn’t gifted so many free burritos from Chipotle” – said no one ever.

Happy Birthday Unc.

A few pics:

Making Pizzas and Drinkin Dranks

Posted on March 3, 2013 by admin

Yesterday, Em and I had a nice lil Saturday. Home Depot, time for Bed Bath & Beyond, etc. Jokes. We hit up the Eagan dog park since it was such a sunny beautiful day to let Tot get his juke moves on (many dogs lost their shorts). Even though he’s not a young spry two year old pup, he still sooo speeedy… for a couple of seconds. I got to test out the new camera a bit and got some great shots of his little Einstein face goin full beast mode. Click on the pic for full gallery:

Later on we hosted Step and Alicia at our place to make pizzas and booze a bit. We sweet talked Carbone’s to get uncooked to-go pizzas and topped them ourselves with chickens, spinach, pepperonis, mushrooms and veggies ++ Step and I got into that Crown Royal Maple a little bit and hot damn is that stuff delicious. Many Scattegories later, Em won *rolleyes*, played hearts till after 1:00 a.m. and Step helped me shoot the moon because it was gang-up-on-Emily time. Yours truly took the hearts W. #Oooompsk

Click pic below for gallery:

Preggers

Posted on March 3, 2013 by admin

So my wife is preggers and I was originally looking forward to blobbing the crap out of the pregnancy but honestly *I am rigorously knocking on wood here* it’s been extremely smooth sailing thus far. I was anticipating the worst and I don’t know if my wife is just cowboy’n up big time or if she’s just really fortunate. I’d like to think a little of both. I mean, she’s married to me AmIRite?

Either way, Em has a good size bump now so I think I’ll start taking pics every other week to document the progress. I mean, you only have your first kid once, let’s make’r a good one.

Another the baby note, the nursery is done, donezo, finito. I remember the day Emily found out she was pregnet, I could see the look in her eye that she was already all antsy in her pantsy to plan for the nursery. A week later or so she had color samps and wanted help planning at which point I did everything I could to convince her to wait till we found out the sex.

She obliged me, thank goodness.

Fast forward to now, after she only asked me a hand full of times “do you like this” or “would you choose this or this” the nursery couldn’t have turned out better. It’s not at all lame over the top baby blue bleh and I truly love how it turned out. Check out Larry’s new digs:

Out with the old, in with the new

Posted on March 3, 2013 by admin

So tax refunds are here and it’s something I look forward to each year. It’s like a get-out-jail-free card to spend a bunch of money that isn’t ours, even tho it is. Here’s to psyching out myself. #Ooompsk.

I’ve been into (read: like to fiddle with and pretend I’m all pro n stuff) photography since I got my first SLR in ’08. The ol XTi is a great camera still however, it was time to step up my game a bit. I didn’t really want a new camera at all but having a baby coming up, I needed to get a new one, you know, for the baby. . .

Here is the first test shot – ridic detail:

Snow

Posted on February 21, 2013 by admin

It snowed about 4″ this morning. I shoveled, drove into work, and it is still snowing. Have I mentioned how ready I am for spring yet? This spring is going to be so f’n ridic with the hog coming out of storage, and projects that need to get done before May / Emily and I counting down the weeks until my son’s birthday.

This winter, some of my co-workers set up an open hockey schedule. Considering I would have had to purchase a bunch of hockey gear to play, yours truly volunteered to be goalie (and borrow pads). Here is a summary in bullet list form of my short goalie career:

Game one
- Most were impressed that I “appeared” to know what I was doing. Thanks youtubes
- I managed to stop a couple while waving my stick in the air. Yea.
- Didn’t pull my groin. *phew*
- Had my pads on way too tight, couldn’t even stand up for the whole time (yes it was embarrassing kneeling on the ice waiting for the puck to come to my end)
- I was extremely sore
Game two
- Much better in terms of pads & dressing goes.
- Very few got past me (there wasn’t as much action on my end)
- People were starting to refer to me as an “adequate goaltender”.
Game three
- I absolutely sucked.
- I managed to let in moar than twenty goals *smh*
- It’s like I had a sign that said “free goals – shoot into five-hole”.
- It was a very dark time for me as a goaltender
Game four
- My glove was hott hottie hot.
- I stopped three breakaways in a row.
- Considering we were short on numbers and my team played little defense, I did some major work in the net.

Here is a gallery of shots (photos courtesy of the lovely Courtney Anderson @CocoAndTheShow):

Pancake Lake

Posted on February 18, 2013 by admin

Last weekend was the annual trip up to Pancake Lake / Sayer shack. Last year was quite epic as far as fishing goes. I was def. hoping this year would be no different. I ended up toting CFOlson, Step, Cole and I in BigBernie. We stopped in Hinckley for some White Castle (it’s connected to a gas station. . . #merica), Moose Lake for Scrubway with the local fillies, and Cromstomp Muni to pull about $100 worth of tabs (got worked).

There was quite a bit of snow up in Wawina, MN as even Bernadette managed to get stuck here and there (she’s a heavy girl). Regrettably we stayed up till 5:00 a.m. the first night gettin the band back together. CFO and Cole were ripping up the sixstrings while Step and I did major work on vocals & harmonica. Damn we sounded good (to my not-so-sober ears)

Dave and Mooney met up with us Friday morning and we headed out to the ice. It was windy, and balls cold. We didn’t see much action and soon it was time to de-thaw in the cabin while we waited for MountainMan and Kylla to arrive. I took some money from those jokers in a game of hearts, Cole shot the moon with a f’n four of clubs, it was a shitshow.

Saturday was a gorgeous day on the ice (pano).

We had a great time grilling but fishing was a bit slow. We managed to offset the fishing by hastening the pace of drinking #success. By cabin time, after three straight nights of drinking, this old guy was straight cashed. Nothin left in the tank really. I ended up getting just hamsteve’d and CFO went all CFO on me when I thought a king of clubs was really a spade. Now I know what his employees feel like the moment he fires their ass.

All in all a really fun trip. I love that bunch of guys and was telling my co-workers yesterday how it’s just awesome to have such a tremendous bunch of men to have a good ol time with. We don’t even have “that guy” in our group, whom were obligated to invite, but no one really wants there (I just hope it’s not me… ooompsk)

Gallery here:

dgDOTcom – welcome to WordPress

Posted on February 1, 2013 by admin

Just moved the website to WordPress. I no longer have time to deal with HTML coding. This site now looks like many others. *sad trombone* If everything goes to plan, the millions of dgDOTcom readers should see more frequent updates littered with pictures of my son.