downtown – Nothing to See Here

Game night tonight!

Go Tigers!

Planning on watching the game tonight over at the Red Rooster, should be a good time. The Rooster is a nice place, good food, cheap drinks, handy location… I give it the Otto Seal of Approval. This is much like the Good Housekeeping seal, except that it means less housework and more drunken stumbling.

Watched the semi-final games over at Chad’s condo on Friday, and had a much better time there than over at the Flying Saucer. Here’s the thing, watching a game at the Saucer just really sucks. When it’s packed, yes, there is a lot of energy about, but it’s also freakin’ packed. It’s virtually impossible to get a waitress to bring you a beer, if you’re sitting inside then it’s too hot, if you’re sitting outside then it’s too loud from all the crowd, and in either place you can’t see the screens worth a damn. The audio is desynched from the projection screen because of the delay on the non-HD broadcast (and all the screens around the outside are non-HD), it’s hard to see the projection screen anyway during the day because it’s not bright enough… The list goes on. I’m sorry, but when I want to see a game, I kinda want to see the game. Crowd energy is nice, but pointless cheering when I can’t see or hear the damn plays is rather stupid.

This is why I think the Rooster is a better choice. They have a larger bar area with three bars, so getting beer is easy. All the screens around the place (dozens) are widescreen HD. The bar is dark even in the day, so the projectors show up nice and bright. The beer is cheaper on game days than even the Saucer on a Monday, and it’s good beer too. The crowd is just as large, but more into the game (it’s much more of a sports place), so there’s not as much idiocy as the Saucer has on those days…

Don’t get me wrong, I love the Saucer, but it’s not a place I think of when I think of watching sports. It’s a beer bar, in the truest sense. I go there to drink beers and play darts and sit at the window and play trivia… and that’s it. I wouldn’t go there for sports. I wouldn’t go there for food (often). I like the Saucer a lot, but I know its limitations.

Snowing in Memphis

It rarely snows in downtown Memphis, but it’s doing a pretty good job of it right now.

I left work a bit early to avoid the insanity on the streets, and my car was fairly covered by that point. So I quickly came home and took some shots out of my window and on the rooftop.

Unfortunately, the rooftop shots show that there is basically zero visibility. I can’t even see the downtown core from here.

Ah well. Still, I expect some snowballs to be thrown tonight. 🙂

Have fun in Phoenix, Mandy!

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.