sleep-out-louies – Nothing to See Here

Weekend madness

Unfortunately, I’ve been entirely too busy this last week to say much, so here’s the brief rundown.

Last weekend was a massive blowout on all fronts. Friday night, I was at Sleep Out’s for the last Friday ever. What a blast. I went in early, hung out to hear the band’s first set, and then headed over to Mikey’s for the housewarming. Mikey’s place is cool. I like it. Mikey got a little drunk, so I left and headed back to Sleep Out’s at about 11 for the evenings end. 4 hours later, I passed out. 🙂

Saturday, I tried very hard to make it to Sleep Out’s for the last day, and I was there that morning, but I had this weird delayed migraine hangover thing going on. It kicked in around 2 and I was unable to move very rapidly until about 10. So my Saturday was spent in pain, with iced tea.

Sunday was a lot more fun. We had brunch at the Majestic, which I like for a couple of different reasons:
a) They always have good food at good prices, and,
b) It’s literally right downstairs from me, so it’s not like I have to walk anywhere for it.
They showed off their new brunch menu, which was fantastic. I had a andouille sausage and cheese frittata that was just incredible. I highly recommend it. Paul had good things to say about his smoked salmon hash browns, so I’ll try those this weekend.

Sunday afternoon was spent back at (now closed) Sleep Out’s, helping Mikey remove some TV’s and such. Kinda sad to see it all torn apart like that. I know I’ve only been going there for the last year or so, but still… That place had character.

Sunday evening I went over to Chad’s place for his and Rebecca’s Oscar party. It was a lot of fun and I drank a lot of Boulevard Wheat and had a really good time. I also got the worst score of anybody else in the Oscar pool (a whopping 2 correct answers! woot!), so that was good. 🙂

The rest of the week I worked. A lot. It’s been a vicious week. I put in almost 60 hours.

This weekend is shaping up to be interesting though. Apparently , we’re having a multi-brunch. There’s the brunch at Texas de Brazil on Saturday, followed up by the Majestic on Sunday. And Saturday night, the trivia team is spending the winnings at the Flying Saucer, so it should be entertaining to see how much beer we can go through.

On the whole, all this drinking is good training for St. Pats, which I’ll be going to in T-minus 277 hours, 23 minutes. So that’s nice.

Birthday fun and a Celebrity Sighting…

Yesterday was my birthday. Yay me!

So I go over to Sleep Out Louie’s last night to meet up with whatever people feel like showing up. I hang out there for about 4 hours before getting hungry. Rebecca was kind enough to bring me a bunch of cookies, which I totally was not expecting, but nevertheless, food was calling me. I suggested Sushi, Rebecca and Chad agreed, so we went over to Bluefin.

I like Bluefin. It’s a really neat place, what with that weird electric fusion type atmosphere. I kinda wish we’d snagged one of the couch areas, because those are cool IMO, but we sat up front, close to the sushi. We ordered a crapton of sushi and Frank got a flatbread pizza of some kind.

All of a sudden, Chuck comes over to us and says “dude, that’s Tommy Lee Jones”. I have to have him repeat it, because at this point I’m thinking that I misheard him, being quite drunk like I am. And he says to me, “Tommy Lee Jones is at the back table having dinner.” So I get up and walk to the bathroom, which involves passing within about 5 feet of that far back table, and sure enough, Tommy Lee Jones is sitting there with a couple of other people browsing the menu and having drinks.

I’m not the kind of jerk who bothers people having dinner, so I wander back to my table and finish my meal. We wonder why he’d be in Memphis and such, but can’t think of a reason. Later I hit the internet to discover that he’s in town to film “In the Valley of Elah“, but at the time, I just thought it was kinda neat.

So we have a hell of a meal, I eat 2 rolls and a bunch of Nigiri, Chad ends up paying for it despite my protests (well, it was my birthday), and then we head over to the Peabody lounge for some end of evening drinks. On our way out of Bluefin I notice Tommy Lee Jones still sitting back there, annihilating what appeared to be a giant plate of sushi, although I might be mistaken on that. It was some distance away from me at the time, plus I had added Sapporo and some sake to my libations at this point. Anyway, we walk over to the Peabody, picking up Paul along the way.

They make some really good coffees at the Peabody, which is why I like it as an evening ending place. Very laid back, some guy playing piano, sitting on the couches and enjoying an Irish Coffee. Nice.

All in all, a good night, I’d say. Not the strangest birthday I’ve had, but one of the more laid back and entertaining ones.

New Years 2007

Well, I have discovered that my camera phone is not good at night shots. Check the photo album below for evidence.

New Years 2007

On a plus note, I had a really good time and got really drunk. Started out the evening meeting everybody at Sleep Out Louie’s, made it over to the Majestic for dinner, then made it back to SOL’s for the final nightcap. You can get the complete story and better pictures over on Paul’s blog.

Quite a good evening all around.

Word from the scene

Okay, so I go out tonight mainly to fuel my hunger and thirst. While I have plenty of stash packed away to fuel the thirst, I’m sadly low on foodstuffs. It’s been an interesting couple hours.

First, I head over to Wang’s. I’d just like to state, for the record, that this is the best named Chinese place, ever. Forget the play on word places, Wang’s doesn’t mess around when it comes to suggestive names. Wang’s.

Wang’s is right up the street, less than a block away. They used to be over at #1 Beale, but that old building got demolished (nobody seems to really know why), and now they’re over at the corner of Main and Gayoso. They’ve been there for a few months, I’ve just been too lazy to stop by. And I must say, their new digs? NICE. They have possibly the best stage I’ve ever seen in a restaurant. I may drop back over in an hour or so to hear whatever band is playing, because they did not skimp one bit on the sound system, or the stage. It’s huge, takes up like a quarter of the place, and looks like they could put on one hell of a show.

Anyway, I get some chinese food and a couple of chinese beers, and notice that the place is practically empty. This naturally concerns me, because I like the places around here to do well. Doing well means they stick around which means more fun for me, because I ain’t leaving anytime soon.

So I finish my meal, pay the extremely reasonable tab, and head over to Sleep Out Louie’s, or as Paul calls it, the Union Avenue Branch Office. They have a couple playing in there that I had not heard before. Pam and Terry or some such thing. I cannot recall. In any case, they’re pretty good. I listen to them a while, while playing some NTN Trivia and drinking mixed drinks, since I’m not quite trusting their beer dispenser system yet. Seriously, I love Louie’s, and I make it a point to go every Sunday morning if possible, but the beer taps need a major overhaul. First they had to clean the lines, then the fridges went out so it was warm. And IMO, it was never really cold to begin with. Still, they have very cheap liqour, so I tend to stick to the mixed drinks and we get along just fine.

In any case, Louie’s is dead too. There’s like three tables full, and nobody at the bar, and this is unusual for 7:30 on a Saturday. So I pay my cheap tab, and head to the Flying Saucer, (aka Paul’s Second Avenue Branch Office). And they’re practically empty too!

I have one beer, then ask around, and appearantly there’s not only a baseball game going on tonight, but some kind of concert. Looking around the intarweb, appearanly Widespread Panic played last night and is playing again tonight. I had no idea. That’s what I get for working hard all week and not paying attention. Not that I’d go and see them, but still, I like to be in the loop on this sort of thing.

So here I am at home, enjoying a Red Bull and Ketel, and typing this worthless drivel. Oh well. With any luck, Mandy will stop by later in the week on her way to NC, although I am doubtful at this stage. It’s kinda out of her way and all. Yes, this is a blatent attempt to guilt Mandy into showing up anyway.

Enjoy the links.

Fireworks tip for the future

Little tip for those of you into the whole “explosives” thing…

When having a bottle rocket war, buy the cheap ones. Yes, the good ones have a more reliably burning fuse and thus are easier to aim and fire correctly, however they also have a much more powerful thrust to them, and thus the impact is more likely to leave serious wounds. I was pretty much pwned by my brother at our little rocket-fest last Tuesday, and the wound has turned into a fairly ugly scabbed over hole in my shoulder, along with some colorful bruising around it.

This is all from the impact of the rocket, mind you. The rocket itself rebounded off behind me and exploded a good distance away, as they always tend to do. Usually the cheap ones will have just enough thrust to tap you and possibly to burn your T-Shirt, however these packed a bit more of a wallop. They even bruised my leg through my blue jeans, although not nearly as badly and that wound has now healed entirely. The shoulder wound is recovering much more slowly and with a nice yellow jaundicey color patch for a bruise.

But despite my disfigurement, I had a good weekend. Got my drink on at Sleep Out Louie’s. Nice place on the weekends, especially with brunch until 2. I love those crab meat omelets. Also finally got some shopping done and all that jazz. Looking forward to September though.