casual ultimate » BRs

hey blog! how’re things? i guess its been a while.. a month? well i guess i’m a bit embarrassed. but honestly i haven’t had anything to blog about except love and romance and the total absurd money pit that is wedding planning. exciting yes. affordable? doubtful. poor papa town. at least i’m the only daughter. i’ll try not to post about wedding stuff but i can’t make any promises.

in other news.. guess who won paganello? bjorn. single handedly i might add.

this just in from our casual ultimate quality control : bjorn had a team. a team called scandal. who knew? i figured he just went out there by himself and ripped beach ultimate apart. either way i believe we can now say chicago is the home of the beach ultimate champions of the world.

the entire globe. think about it.

and in even other other news.. mr. brizzle and miss casual are breaking up their happy home. mr. brizzle has bought himself some real estate. a real home for slider which he so truly deserves.

and in other other other news… our own chicago son, mr. chuckworth townington, is headed to chicago. soon even. stay tuned because im sure shennanigans will ensue and we want you there.

okay thats it. i feel so much closer to you now blog. really. this time has been special.

edit: i expect all the people / events mentioned in this post to be blogged about by their respective casual ultimate staff memebers.

so i rode my bike to work today for the first time in like two weeks. it was nice although i thought i might pass out at any moment. i seriously thought i had the flu but i went to the doctor on monday and she gave me an antibiotic so i guess its not the flu?? (this is my marginal understanding of the magic of medicine. if you are a doctor and you want to correct me please do. i dont understand the wonder of the human body because inside me is just a ball of white light. not gross guts and stuff like you see on csi).

i am no good at being sick. as much as i like couch and tv it is only in their capacity as downtime that they truly shine. when they offset the flury of activity that is going to work and the gym and the grocery store they are like a bright brilliant light from heaven. when you havent left the house in 4 straight days because you get winded walking from your room to the laundry it starts to feel like house arrest.

the bright spot in the haze of my illness was definitely watching the premiere of the new american gladiators with the viking and tbrizzle on sunday night. there was a bit too much talking to the contestants for our liking and helga didnt end up being as fast or as mighty as we hoped, (that lady is bigger than chucktown for realz) but wolf and hulk hogan were great. as was seeing akira’s body double win and witnessing the total body shutdown of some of the contestants on the eliminator thing. we kind of hope that wolf and hulk hogan start their own reality tv show where theyre roommates and hulk overloads the laundry with too much bubbles (uh oh!) and wolf’s incessant howling leads to a house meeting.

its good to be back.

its that time of year when you are expected to cough up the dough to show your loved ones you.. well love them i guess. also its the time of year when the blog kind of degrades into open emails between ms. ultimate and myself. what can you do?

i finished my christmas shopping on michigan avenue monday evening (except for tbrizzle which well get to later…) and it was actually very festive and fun. i usually hate shopping here because my office is here and as soon as i get out of work i just want to flee as fast as possible from the parade of babystrollers, tourists, and aggressive 100 pound blonds that make up the shopping public. but monday night it was snowy, i had gotten a christmas bonus (woohoo!) and the lights were on so i bounced along and got into the christmas spirit by spending the evening surrounded in a cloud of bliss and consumerism.

and i got everyone taken care of except tbrizzle. the thing i wanted to get him was sold out. but really.. what does one get for the dude with everything? how about a patagonia t-shirt? oh wait… okay how about something with basset hounds? well… or maybe bike related stuff? okay now youre just being mean.

ill figure it out. meanwhile ms. ultimate is finishing up ivy leaguing to come home and shop, eat and watch tv like the good old days. only a couple days to go! lemmings is already on red alert.

well im back from the town family christmas and i have to say the weather up here is not as bad as the news made it sounds. i thought i would at least get a day or two off because of the ice armageddon that was going on but i suppose i missed the worst of it. certainly not the sunshine state but for chicago its not bad.

family holidays are great because of tv. man we watched a lot of 30 rock and it is so so good. for my money it doesnt get better than when tracy jordan sings ‘imagine christmas wishes shooting out of your eyes’ while dictating his biography. it was a tougher holiday than usual for me for some reason and since i am not open with my feelings and like to use humor and denial to avoid situations that are difficult in any way.. 30 rock really came through for me. as did the flight of the conchords. those dudes are funny too. like check out this french song.

so im just going to relate one scene from 30 rock, mostly for c(b)r because he makes fun of me for saying comfortable looking shoes are for lesbians. not comfortable shoes but comfortable looking shoes. well theres an episode where jack sets liz lemon up on a blind date and it turns out to be a woman. she storms into his office afterwards and says ‘im not gay!’ and he responds ‘those shoes are bi-curious at least.’ so im not alone.

also watching tv last night tbrizzle had an idea for a dating wesbite called ’settle.com’ for the mature dater who’s ready to give up. unfortunately settle.com is taken but were thinking about besticando.com or readytosettle.com. look for our youtube promo to be filmed over ms. ulty’s christmas break.

6:15 am: slider wakes me up for the second day in a row by repeatedly scratching/headbutting my bedroom door. though drowsy i barrel out of bed, visions of yesterdays rectal explosions fresh in my head, eager to avoid another such incident perpetrated indoors.

the dog seems in fine spirits today, leading me cheerily through the house with a spring in his step and a wag in his tail that i consider cheeky for early morning use. It occurs to me that he may just be waking me up to lead me to the treats bowl; having learned the day before that i will rush to his smallest need when his bowels are threatening. the possibility of this makes me feel like a patsy. am somewhat relieved when he goes past the food bowl to the back door, where i release him to the outdoors.

i follow along to see what i’ve been woken up for. i will keep things mature here and only say that his output in the slush and mud of my backyard as seen during a pre-dawn chicago sleet was admirable, and thoroughly justified my awakening. as he was outside for quite some time executing various maneuvers i went back inside and put on a pot of tea. i decided to make some hay out of this situation and unload the dishwasher, after several precautionary hand washings.

slider evenutally is able to return to the indoors, demand another bowl of water and settle back down to bed. i notice that he is able to fall asleep immediately. fantastic for him.

i return to my bed with a full mug of chamomile tea and my big picture book of fish, thinking that i’m going to need some transitional time to get back to sleep. in my drowsiness i misapprehend the true location of the chair next to my bed thus spilling the very recently full mug of tea all over the fish book and the bedclothes. lacking the energy to care, i wipe off the book and move my better pillows to the far side of the bed. the noise has upset the dog and woken him up and he is once more in my room and wants a treat for his trouble. defeated, i oblige.

moments later i hear him rustle himself back into his premium polarfleece bed upstairs. it is 6:45 am and i am wide awake.

this email discussion happened today and i thought it was appropriate to share. anyone have any others???

ms. ultimate : I thought you prodejiners would appreciate this: apparently my school has its own font. It’s called Yale Design. weird.

miss casual : our office has its own font too. we just call it ‘lucien’. i think instead of christmas presents we should design fonts for each other.

i would like mine to be called ‘jesstown classic’

tbrizzle : cbr and i talked last year about designing family crests for each of our friends—like quartered shields with relevant symbology on each quadrant. i think the russells would be fun:

enormous dog, Ohio State, big sweatshirts, and People Magazine, divided on invected saltire.

volkmans:

brussel sprouts, ham sandwiches, disc golf, and a toyota echo, emblazoned on a cross fitchy.

towns:
great hair, frisbee, tennis, and saturns, on an azure plain with dovetailed fess.

by the way, in the course of my research into medieval heraldic terminology, i came across this image, which clearly must have been the crest of the early Brown family. I can just picture the early Charlemagne Brown, lovable loser that he was, constantly being let down by his friends and family, suffering through the crusades with a wry “good grief!” and getting a rock in his stocking at Whitsuntide.

c(b)r : not sure where Whitsuntide is but Charlemage Brown is awesome.

ultimates’ - recycling symbol, star of David, crucifix and a beagle.

miss casual : b-r’s - a hyphen, a pickup truck, a basset hound and laptop

sheesh long time no post. i tried to verbally assault the blogging staff at casual ultimate for not keeping up their end of the bargain but what can you do? its the holidays. so all verbal harrassment aside heres a pic of our cu dinner over thanksgiving weekend. if you read the blog last year you might remember a similar dinner but this year the role of bjorn was played by our dear friend jason who recently moved into the double deuce. the cu staff bumped into him during our holiday shopping outting the day after thanksgiving in wicker park. sometime between american apparel and a drink at the new bar on division (becky you were right.. not too bad) we found our fifth for dinner.

wednesday night was great. very vintage casual ultimate happy hour style. early dinner at piece with heards of people, some of the newleyweds (the hales’s and the bayers) plus the usual suspects including out of towners (heyo becky and pat were in town!) and then we rolled to lemmings. ah lemmings. ms. ultimate was already there when we finally made it up damen. and not a minute too soon. somehow cbr managed to tell tbr that no one had gone to lemmings and they ended up at cleos for a bit before coming by but it was a good night nonetheless. one thing changed since ms. ulty left town, though: the dress code at lemmings. now our viking and other, undisclosed c.u. staff members didn’t mind this ladies backless shirt (jesus woman, at least wear jeans that fit!), but ms. ulty was shocked enough to ask the bouncer when the neighborhood started going downhill. bjorn and ulty then adopted a ‘if you can’t beat em, join em’ mentality, seen here. slept late on t-giving and then ms. ulty moved into the brizzle / casual residence in time for a screening of elf. smiling is our favorite!

the rest of the weekend passed by quickly in a whirl of shopping, tv, and driving to dinner right down the block. we motherfrickin love this country.

anyways it was sad to be without bjorn but he made it home last night in time to watch some football in bucktown and discuss the phenomenon of flirty girls gym : a place for skanks to work out. this place is an actual gym with more pole dancing classes and pillow fights. probably what cbr thinks women do at the gym anyway.

p.s. couldn’t we have named this post the bjorn identity?

well in the long list of violence done to my cursed bianchi, the insane huge dent and hole that showed up in my top tube at some point on saturday night while we were at the after party for the sadie hawkins day race is certainly the worst. ending the evening by biking home ever so slowly so as to not finish the job of ripping my frame in half was a little disappointing. i cant figure out if someone was trying to steal it and just destroyed the frame before they could get through the lock or what but i always make it a policy to put my bike next to way nicer bikes in the hope that thieves will look at the others first and it still got jacked up. go figure.

the party was great. huge fantastic loft space. everyone we know. tons of cheap beer. plus tbrizzle and sally took it to the house and made it in 10th place out of about 100 teams which is a fantastic finish. they showed those nerdy fixed gear hipsters for sure. its called athleticism and it comes from chasing a frisbee, not wearing tight jeans and a bandana. nice work peeps. also michelle (of chicks and drinks fame) and her new hubby won the best dressed award and jessi came in second at the skid comp. heres a pic of the newleyweds with aaron wearing his fake moustache as a unibrow. all around nice weekend especially dance party central courtesy of andrew.

thank god i made it through this weekend in one piece. things are shaking up at the office and the fact that im still employed and might eventually afford replacing the bike that was trashed is, in itself, a cause for celebration. if im going to get fired however, it might as well be for blogging. happy monday. and happy belated bday to dr. tanguay. and congrats to the hales-es.

miss casual

p.s. can we get a role call of who is in for black wednesday night mayhem thanksgiving weekend on the forum? i cant wait to see everybody.

well all our friends are back from nationals by now but after playing their butts off all weekend in sarasota im sure they need a day or two to recoup and collect their thoughts… check email, call mom, check in with their tivo, etc. hopefully well get some recap and highlights after all that but to give them a breather heres what happened in chicago this weekend.

the race. it was awesome. went off basically without a hitch. check out simon bringing the pain to his checkpoint in the video above. we had 29 teams and we raised a pile of cash for cornerstone plus everyone was in costume and the afterparty was a hit. big thanks to dave and rodan for putting up with all of us. the only minor snag was that 20,000 war protestors were in union park right when our race was starting. it was a little confusing to say the least. why couldnt they have their protestacular another day? oh well. heres some of us getting swarmed by them as they began their march downtown.

another minor miracle was this guy from one less car clothing just swooped in (literally swooped) out of nowhere and brought us a bunch of shirts and stuff for prizes. we are now best friends forever with those guys. the Brs and ms. mimms did the race and said they had fun. cbr’s porcupine costume was interesting to say the least. you dont often see an architect dressed in all black and covered in clothes pins riding a bike.

meanwhile i was watching scores on the upa website and clenching my teeth. i was on the war phone to mama town during brass monkey’s face off to the death with tandem that took it to double game point. i almost died of the tension but brass pulled it out and went on to semis. the talk in the forum was the big upsets in the open bracket in pool D with furious going 0-3 the first day as the top seed in that pool and chain lightening going 3-0 as the bottom seed (ATL represent!). madness.

anyway wished we could’ve dusted off our press passes and joined you on the sidelines. congrats to everyone who played on finishing great seasons. cant wait to hear your stories.

hugs

miss casual

Hey, while all you cats were in Tulsa playing frisbah in awful weather, I stayed in Chicago to take part in this live design competition called cut and paste. A live iron-shef style illustration showdown, with an audience of around 800, sponsored by the big names in design software/hardware and taking place in 11 cities around the globe. The deal is that you get 15 minutes to create a design based on a specific theme, judges vote on the winners, and you advance bracket style to a championship round. Awards include about 8 grand worth of software and hardware.

The good stuff: I was happy as a clam in mud. I would do this every weekend if they let me. I had a most enjoyable night and was very entertained by all the goings on. I made one pretty sweet image right off the bat and got the crowd on my side. First category was themed “currency”; and for no particular reason other than it had to be a crowdpleaser, I decided to render my currency concept in the guise of a TRON lightcycle metaphor. Even better, the crowd got it the joke, freeing me from my nightmare of having a Chief Wiggum moment (Treehouse of Horror VII). I was one of the guys chosen to continue on to round 2, got some nice compliments from the judges and one aggressive skinhead in the audience, and all was well.

Hmm. Then came round 2. I had planned to create an underwater image for the “Through the Looking Glass” theme (required integration of a digital photo taken on site). For some reason it took me forever to get through with taking, importing and arranging that photo, at which time i felt very behind in my work and made a series of bad decisions that led to a completely ugly result. I swear that it looked good when i did it at home. Audience comments included “what the fuck is that”. Honestly, I had no good answer. Sometime in the last minute I just gave up and laughed at the monstrosity, hoping my casual attitude would endear me to the judges and they’d advance me for reasons of pity. Didn’t work.

Spent the rest of the evening watching the finalists go at it. Some things I was impressed by, others not so much. One thing I’m pretty sure of is that 15 minutes ain’t much time to create anything worth looking at, even with prep. Oh well. All in all though I got a big kick out of the idea of a photoshop duel, and it pretty much made me want to hole up in my basement and get faster at everything. One other good thing; at the close of the evening they announced the “audience award” based on american-idol style text message voting from people in the room (or in Tulsa…) and I did win that thing, so either people really like TRON or there were alot of bored frisbee players waiting by their phones. In either case, thanks to those who contributed, I got to leave with some self respect and a pile of new software at least.

So when I walk into the gym (every 3rd month unless it’s got a tuesday) and head for the locker room during busy hours, I run into this same scenario. Locker rooms are fully of sweaty naked men, and while that’s fine and necessary after a fashion, I like to give them their space while I’m changing. So as I enter the room I do a quick, eyes-above-belt level sweep of the space to see where the nudists are in order that I may pick a little private space and not have to have some guy’s junk hovering a biscuit away from my forehead while I’m furiously tying my shoes (velcro was made for these situations). These calculations are quite black and white: any garment is acceptable; a towel, a pair of pants, even jockey shorts will suffice to prevent that scenario from happening.

But every so often I run into this same guy (and I’m never looking too carefully at anyone in the room, so I’ve never learned to avoid him) wearing a big sweaty t-shirt around and looking like a sane, rational human being with no outward signs of exhibitionism. Trustingly I end up grabbing a locker next to him, and proceed to pack, unpack, hang things up, turn off my phone, and basically go through the small ritual tasks that prepare one for exercise. And at some point, near the end of all this, I sit down to tie my gym shoes. And inevitably, without fail, this guy, this hairy sweaty, clueless, racquetball playing hog of a man standing adjacent to me, chooses that moment to lean in and reach up to his top-row locker extending his apelike arms to remove his pants from their hook or grab some deodorant or pluck an imaginary apple from the sky and, in doing so, suddenly hikes up his enormous sweaty shirt which reveals his complete nudeness below the waist. And once again, the eerie silence of his junk just hovering there for that infinite stretch as he roots around, unable to find what he’s looking for, perhaps unable to remember why he reached up in the first place, and me getting tunnel vision on my shoelaces, which refuse to behave and end up as one massive jumble of failed knots. And though I know I need to look up at this guy, to look him full in the face so that I know who he is and can avoid him in the future, I don’t—I can’t confront what I might see there. I assume that face to be lined with the creases of guilt for the torment he wreaks on those around him, but just as likely it might be devoid of any recognizable human countenance whatsoever, simian and dull, empty, waiting for the world to change so he doesn’t have to. In the end I sit there until I see his feet shuffle a few steps away, stand up by rotating myself away from him, kick my locker shut and bolt out the door to sort out the mess of my shoes in the stretching area.

I know this may smack of some immature phobia or inability to accept the human body, but I maintain that what this man is doing is just wrong, and violates an unwritten rule of the gym. Men should not wear shirts as their only garment. Absolutely unacceptable. A shirt alone offers no practical function to a man unless it is there in cooperation with pants. I submit that those who violate this simple concept should be universally shunned, kicked out of the gym, and made to wear cutoffs at all times.

I have nothing useful to report but i wanted to post this pic of Slider being our test subject for our first in-office green screen shoot. He’s even happier in person than he looks in this photo. If that’s possible.

last night was a monumental success. congrats to michelle for organizing and aaron for making the best frickin trophies known to man. below is a pic of one of the winners accepting their prize. they were forks (like bike forks) with stuffed kittens impaled on them with chain rings as name plates. so funny. first place was a team in clown costumes and burkhas. our very own little ben won third with his team. nice work friendcrusher.

the race itself drew a huge crowd. 110 participants! 30+ teams! at each chicks and drinks run checkpoint teams had to do tasks to get points and they could return to the same checkpoints as many times as they wanted. j dot and i got the ‘find the bubblegum in the flour without using your hands and blow a bubble’ checkpoint on division and damen. the thursday night bar crowd on damen enjoyed the screeching breaks and clouds of flour im sure. the trick was to blow the flour everywhere cause if you took a big mouthful your chances of blowing a bubble were slim to none.

the after party was great too. weegees never disappoints. every time i go there it gets tougher to leave. i think they put something in the water… or beer. or whatevs. this morning came early.

tbrizzle got home last night which was a nice surprise. hopefully he’ll post about his life altering epiphanies on the road. hes skinny as a rail. seriously. ms. ultimate is also back on the radar after spending a week in the woods with the yalies. the weekend looks like a circus of napping, biking, and movie watching. superbad anyone? plus the bike film fest of course. good luck to our friends headed out to cooler this weekend. we’re hoping for a post from our favorite viking next week to recap the action. happy friday yall.

last night was the kickoff party for the bicycle film festival in chicago. unfortunately it started passed my bed time so instead of partying like a rockstar the chicks and drinks ladies gathered chez casual to make spoke cards for tonight’s alleykitten. the triplets of belmont is a bike film festival sponsored scanvenger hunt and michelle and jessi are co-chairing the event so we all got together to drink some beers and do arts and crafts. everyone should come out and participate in the shennanigans. its gonna be lots of fun and its free for goodness sakes! the teams will have to do all kinds of stunts to earn points plus theres extra discretionary points for badassity. and the after party is at weegee’s, a cu favorite since july.

therell probably be some film watching this weekend too obviously and hopefully a long ride at some point since i got my confirmation for the apple cider century at the end of september. looks like tbrizzle’s return to the chi is imminent so also house cleaning is on the agenda. what does one buy a br for their birthday? i have an idea but any additional thoughts are appreciated.

I saw this Muppet show once where Dr. Bunson Honeydew makes a machine that can combine things. Shortly following the exposition of this novelty, Beaker ends up sticking his arm in at the same time a puppy dog is placed inside; machine turns on, and suddenly Beaker has a living puppy head instead of a hand. The effect was disorienting and horrific, and left me, as a child, rather afraid of the inarticulate Beaker thereafter.

Today I experienced just this same sort of shudder when I came across this pillow resting on the windowsill of my hotel. And while I like to think that I support innovation in nearly all it’s forms, my heart goes out to the unfortunate pillow, stuffed lion, soccerball and crucifix that were jammed into Dr. Honeydew’s machine this time around.

(i am putting together some of tony’s updates from the road. i think hes just leaving traverse city. for those who dont know… our very own tbrizzle is biking all the way around lake michigan for two weeks with only his iphone for company. he has all his stuff in a trailer and is camping half the time. -miss casual)

late as usual

minor crisis this morning, the skewer that holds my trailer to my bike was unfit. i couldn’t find a shop that sold only the skewer so i bought a whole new trailer and left everything other than the skewer hanging in the window at rapid transit. so i have $350 in store credit if anyone needs anything…
classic.

many thanks to jess and claire for hanging out this morning and especially to mr. rick russell for supporting me emotionally through my tomfoolery.
leaving…now.

mile 32

Flat tire in Gary, in.

Fixed, but still a bit annoying.

first day

78 miles through chicago indiana and a little of Michigan. Dinner with mom and monica. Tired.

mile 242: alonzo gives me the rest of his pizza

Day 3 was long, but finished well. Made it to silver lake mi, land of the dune buggy. My campground is packed (on a Monday no less) with every kind of 4×4. People have been consistently friendly (e.g. Giving me pizza). Looked silly strapped to my bike but no chance I was going to turn that down.

mile 304: smoothie break in manistee, mi

There’s coffee shops and wireless everywhere…what an age we live in

day 5: reality check

Tired today. Arms more sore than anything else. Roads terrible, no shoulder. Only 50 miles today but I’m beat…rewarding my capitulation with a night at the grand old wellington inn, traverse city, MI. Wifi, free beer, and tight next to downtown.

Starting the ride again will be hard.

i am a manly man

my hotel room

last night was a great night for beach. lots of people came out which was very nice indeed. also it was tigers birthday and the weather was perfect. i mean perfect. the only issue was that herds… troops… armies of people who used our beach field as a path to the sidewalk. no matter that we asked them to go around the cones, or that dr. liz had to pick a child up at one point and carry her to the sideline to avoid being run over, or that we were all running at high speeds… sigh. we needed sidelines last night for the first time. definitely.

highlights… lyrica skied colb. no joke. ripped the disc right out of the air in front of him even though hes like a foot taller than her. all the guys who play for duffy’s dodge ball team are now in love with her. mr. cooper was not wearing underwear. hence the post title in which ms. ulty gave him the nfl butt pat and got more than she bargained for. tbrizzle and the boss both had some sick nasty layouts. at the top is a picture of hellyer (who is the total package) and lyrica (who runs so much liz and i are convinced she is, in fact, a cyborg of some kind) facing off nemesis style.

tonight is the casual ultimate birthday party as you already know. its gonna be bananas so come early if you want some of the free beer. and to fully celebrate this first year of the blog we figured we better throwback to our first post. thanks to tbr we really brought our leisure time into focus in the last year. and tonight will be no exception. cant wait to see you all!

its so good to lay around the house when youve had a hectic week. so last night the cu staff chatted on the couch chez ulty before miss casual pealed out to do laundry and ms. ulty took off for a bbq at morgan’s. sunday afternoon proved nice on the homefront also since bjorn and tbr were working on bikes and the cu staff was lounging and making frozen cocktails. we messed around a bit and while tbrizzle was looking at old posts we remembered that haircut of carlo’s and dropping the boss’s couch over the front of his new house which is our throwback post of the day. ahh casting the casual ultimate movie. why has that not hit the big screen yet?

actually i think what brought it up was a picture of new kids on the block in which joey mcintyre looks just like cbr. check it out. guy on the right? cbr? separated at birth?

looks to be a busy couple of days with chicks and drinks tonight, beach and tiger’s bday tomorrow, and the cu birthday party friday night. lots of fun surprises are in the works for friday so you better reckidnize and come on out.

alright lets hug it out.

xoxo miss casual

heres a typical sunday chez tbrizzle / casual. the girls of cu are in the kitchen, making frozen cocktails out of lemoncello and lime popsicles and the boys, tbrizzle and the viking, are in the back yard stripping the paint off their bikes. watching wes anderson movies and making fruity cocktails was all we had left after an eventful weekend.

miss casual had adam in town from nyc to squire her about town and explore the edge of culinary art. friday night the 25+ courses at alinea changed our lives. i cant even begin to truly describe how perfect the whole experience was so instead ill just post some photos of things that we ate. maybe therell be an in depth analysis on our brother site, scrumptulesence. well keep you posted. after four hours of nausea nirvana miss casual will never be the same again. the next night however… we went to moto and honestly… i want my money back. maybe alinea is too tough of an act to follow… or maybe the bread didnt really taste any better from being dyed in squid ink, frozen in liquid nitrigen, and set on fire tableside. whoever said moto was as good as alinea is dead to us.

but overall a fantastic weekend which harkens back to this other moment in our casual ultimate past. a culinary adventure of another sort… our throwback post today is that time we went out for ribs after cho came to beach drunk. drunk cho, our video game winner, we miss you.

friday evening started with some chicks and drinks with the usual ladies plus a new amy, simon’s wife. we messed around for long enough for miss casual to fall and skin her entire right side from a bad skid before retiring for dinner at handlebar with simon and amy. ms. ulty stopped for a beer with the boss, the hales, and the viking along the way. we waited out the rain discussing the phenomenon of surly waiters at handlebar and then went across town for saturrday night’s race preparty.

we were worried approaching a club in the gold coast called funk, but hey, free drinks from 9-10? we drank a few. and then took over the dancefoor and then the stage with the rest of the chifg crew. who knew coyote, adam, friendhugger, amy and emily had such fierce moves? unfortunately ms. ulty was out for the race because shes visting her sister but amy and miss casual took the viking and barreled through traffic for a couple of hours on saturday night. heres a pic of bjorn and amy with their race faces on at the last checkpoint. the viking rolls with sparxx natch. team c’n'd finished the whole course and definitely earned the beers that flowed freely at tumans. tbrizzle came out to meet us and the picture at the top is of all the racers bikes on the fence at the bar.

tomorrow night marks the beginning of summer league so heres hoping competitive league starts with a bang.

im dedicating today’s post to that guy rob because of his outstanding achievements in disregard for health, the laws of chicago, and the laws of physics and his continuing excellence in the field of troublemaking. i believe he, or colonel sanders, said it best when he said ‘im too drunk to taste this chicken.’

last night was no exception. turns out rob has siblings. and they are also awesome. his brother and rob talked miss casual into after work antics at the tasting room which wasnt difficult because it is one of her favorite locations. after the second bottle of champagne things degraded quickly. its not worth recounting all the details but robs brother told out waitress she had nice eyes while we contemplated his upcoming weekend driving ferraris and jumping out of airplanes in san diego. clearly we need a guest post. long after miss casual peeled off to stop by tricks and drinks the mayhem continued it seems because she got a txt at 730 from rob leaving his brothers house. not a good sign for a happy well rested friday.

ms. ultimate was all tuckered out so she didnt come join the fun because as she said ‘we all know robs goign to wake up four months from now in milwaukee, realize he made a huge mistake, and be back here within 6 months.’ so true.

lastly in some other business (not the kind liz deals with at work) the cu staff will both be out of town this weekend so teamocil will need baker and rob to step up to the winning plate and hit us a home run in our absence. also this week miss casual is moving off of paulina. sad to leave but she is the new BR as she will take cbr’s spot in tbrizzles apartment. at left is a picture of casual friday at tbrizzles office submitted by the vessel boss himself. it looks like a good time surely but not a safe place for children.

after our monster brunch on saturday we hit the waterslides and played tube crawl in the wave pool. plus there were hours of water-basketball. tracy made us all look bad with her outside shooting, especially joe little shown here trying desperately to guard her even though shes half his size. bk didnt make it this year, what with sending cho off to china, so we almost died of starvation. luckily he had made dinner and sent it with akira so we just had to assemble it. sounds simple but actually it took three pages of email, me, joe, liz, and bk on the phone talking us through the more difficult parts. thankfully the tupperware full of ‘pure flavor’ arrived undamaged.

then it was time to get in our jammies, watch bad boys 2 on the projector and drink some beer. liz and miss casual had a private screening of some old 30 rock episodes which is now cu’s favorite tv program next to law and order. i wonder if we could get tina fey to guest post… the next morning we all said good bye to fireplaces with on switches and log themed furniture. actually i think cbr said something like ‘i wish slider couldve been here’ or ‘oh look at the bears in that painting’ or something but i figured he meant ‘gosh this was the best time ever. thanks guys.’ it warms my heart still.

its always tough to leave great wolf but this year was especially challenging what with the 11″ of snow and all. it took thor, ms. ulty, and two strangers plus a community shovel to get us out of the parking lot. thanks to ea for the photos. til next year…

last night the cu staff and c(b)r decided to get our culture on by attending a lecture at the art institute by one of my (s)hero’s, winka dubbeldam. the work is certainly impressive and we are looking at hiring winka and her band of ragtag wonder interns to design us a headquarters, “the manor”, if you will. god knows miss casual doesnt have time for extracurricular architecture what with the blog and training for BOTB.

but seriously, why is it that contemporary architects feel such a need to stress that their work is not ‘formally driven’ when it clearly is at least in part. one does not chance on a bathroom that looks like this without some intention at formal architectural gymnastics. do oblique angles like that occur by chance or out of a material concern? miss casual thinks not. but hey just say ‘i wanted to make a bathroom that looked cool.’ why is that so bad? making things that are cool and actually get produced is no small accomplishment in these days of mediocrity and value engineering.

all that theory made us hungry so it was off to rodan where ms. ulty got her design on by setting the table and encouraging our waiter to sculpt our rice. c(b)r even acknowledged ms. ulty’s latent design prowess. it was tough deciding who the sexiest players on briefcase were but somehow we managed and ended up full and sleepy before heading back to paulina. its almost friday. hang in there.

ferrari offered miss casual 5$ to punch denardis in the face and denardis offered me 5$ to kick tyson in the… shin, yeah shin, with my gilded pointy toed shoes

joe little is predictably violent and the boss needs a new belt buckle

bk yells out ‘wait ill tell you when we’re starting. its in my pants,’ and ms. ulty responds by doing a plie in the kitchen.

joe little says rachael is knitting and its getting too real on the futon

little dick.com is actually c(b)r’s online alter ego

see you in 30

xoxo
casual

last night the ladies of casual ultimate went to maproom to expand our minds and drink some hefeweissen. the topic of cafe scientifique (or ’science cafe’ if you need a translation from the french) was climate change so naturally we had to make an appearance and assert ms ultimate’s obvious intellectual superiority over the presenter. here at left is an actualy picture of science. bet ya didnt know…

miss casual gave an exclusive interview to the tribune at the event but probably got edited from the story becuase she was giving her attention to the georgia tech / duke game rather than the issues at hand. it was fun drinking some good beer but going out on wednesday is confusing because i think today is friday but its not. wednesday is the new thursday. which makes friday the new monday according to the mind blowing logic of a guy at the bar last night. no wonder we wanted to go to lemmings so badly. we had our days confused.

anyway the debate in the forum over bikes and gears and wheel sets (oh my) is heating up so check it out. tbr (bless his heart) is bringing his a-game. makes for an interesting thursday…or is it friday… whatevs.

after a mostly uneventful weekend, the exception being an excursion out of the double deuce with the boss and dp where ms. ultimate was placed in charge of the boss’s wallet, there was much activity on sunday. in a daring coup miss casual convinced ms. ultimate herself to come over to the dark side and buy a track bike. we had previously planned on a point-counterpoint post debating the merits of gears on bikes versus single speeds. however now we will only post the fixed gear team’s argument and allow tbrizzle to post an empassioned tirade against our position. watch the fireworks in the forum.

even though we fall on different sides of the argument, we still come together for bike practice. our new cycling team, bon vivant, is taking applications for new members. the core is composed of the cu staff, tbrizzle, and our instructor, crash mcgee. you might recognize him from such posts as ‘the viking crashes again for the second time in two days’ or ‘bg skies cho’. we plan on riding, learning tricks like trackstands and bunny hops, and on foul weather days watching bike videos to gain inspiration for new feats of greatness on our bicycles.

so now when you see the cu staff tooling around wicker park youll see miss casual on sugar bomb, her chromed out bianchi, and ms. ultimate on her bike redh.o.t. with the lovely white wheel set that you see joe working on in this picture. joe and nick at cycle smithy on clark are our new best friends forever. we know weve said this before but the circle of friends at cu knows no bounds. they showed us a hot pink tandem track bike that we almost mortgaged our souls for but instead ms. ulty found her valentine in this hot machine.

our friday was spent with the boss and dp in old town or west town or lincoln park as miss casual calls it. we called it scary-ville. cu was wary of leaving wicker park but the boss talked us into an out of zip code adventure. unfortunately our dates, two large gentlemen wearing replica jerseys, were tied up with pfil and dp’s dates, who had quite a lot of blue eyeshadow and a three digit rating code ending in 8.

well it seems we’ve been away a long time so we need to play catch up. the other night the cu staff celebrated christmas and surviving the holidays with the BRs and bg. heres a picture of us all pre food coma at scoozi. it was a lively event since we hadnt seen bjorn in like a month. it only got more crazy when the boys thought up an office themed strip club which miss casual dubbed ‘the screwbicle’. with nerdy but flirty i.t. staff, a dominatrix boss, a vip lounge called the break room, and a list of names for the different screwbicles (the spreadsheet, etc.) the place just needs a financial backer. anyone anyone?

after that madness we wound up at piece. ahh piece… it was like summer time again when you could just show up there in the evening and run into everyone you know. billy bought us some heavenly festivus and pfil, dp, and monica (the newest piece employee) were posted up at the bar when we got there. the boss is always brining his a-game and becky showed up along with our roll call from dinner so it was like homecoming. the basset hound cookies were bananas and even though the casual staff had just eaten at piece the night before the pizza was tempting.

we’re back on track here at cu headquarters. the manor is churning with ideas for the new years party that is sure to bring down paulina and maybe all of the double deuce. a team of elves is working on decorations and libations. you know how we roll. parties and cu go together like cocaine and waffles.

at 830 am saturday morning tbrizzle called miss casual to go to an old furniture factory on the south side where they were selling off everything by the pound. after figuring out what day it was and that it was indeed the crack of dawn, she threw something on, they picked up russell and they were off. it was an adventure filled with pieces of chairs, drill presses, and mountains of foam. it resurrected the disussion of the loft casual ultimate needs to get in humboldt park. itll be like hansel’s loft in zoolander (’we’re so hot right now’) with small living pods for each of the occupants. miss casual and ms. ultimate would live in a lucite lincoln log structure called the ‘blog cabin’, while tbrizzle would inhabit a ship like pod called ‘floatoshop’ and cbr would live in the ‘maison d’etre.’

after the morning festivities, the BR boys, slider and miss casual got back in their jammies to head to RWIP. with a lifesize snow globe and every imaginable warm spiked holiday beverage, it was quite comfy. pajama king and queen go to hellyer in her blue fuzzy onesie and bk in his santa boxers. vijay made quite the play for runner up in david-inspired bicycle shorts. at least it wasnt the real thing this time but youll have to see the photos in the vip gallery album becuase of the parents. the br boys gave the cu staff their holiday gifts early - matching t-shirts that say ‘im blogging this.’ amazingly they werent custom but we cherish them anyway. there was an isolated effort towards serious partying with the cu staff shotgunning beers with the ferrari brothers and bk and akira. akira lost.

as the party drew to a close the cu staff attempted to get something going as an after party with pfil and dp but we quickly realized that it was in fact 730 and nothing fun had started yet outside the house. in defeat the cu staff stopped at our favorite bar, lemmings, on the way back to paulina in our jammies for a beer before our 930 bed time. its tough partying like this all the time but we do it for the blog, natch.

xoxo
c and u

the other night the cu staff along with angela from ccx and cbr went to hear ms. ultimate’s boss speak at the mca about climate change. ms. ultimate asked a very pointed and intelligent question which lead to a debate on the role of imagery in influencing changes in behavior in the general public towards progress in responsible practices for the conservation of energy and natual resources. all that social consciousness made us hungry so we did what any redblooded american tourists would do and went to cheescake factory for mounds of black pepper shrimp and carrot cake. the pic at left is a train town in the hancock building that has a store named after ms. ulty’s family. coincidence??

ms. ultimate was wearing her brand new marc jacobs sweater with little owls on it and carlo made a comment along the lines of ‘looking at ms. ulty’s chest makes me think of how much i love hooters.’ good times. he also later referred to the sweater in question as ‘TDF’ in an email… ‘to die for’. who knew boys thought of sweaters as TDF? you heard it here first.

and speaking of ‘tdf’ clothing options this saturday the cu staff will be posted up in our jammies at the real world irving park house for their afternoon holiday pajamma party. if you’re skeptical, check out the overwhelming argument in favor of midafternoon mayhem on the forum. you wanna be there. trust us. if you need info holler at us at casualultimate@gmail.com. i was thinking of coming in my ‘post-ice cream coma passout sleepover at claires on the futon’ sleepwear which consists of : cookies and cream still stuck to my face, the imprint of the button of the futon cushion on my cheek, a big knot in my hair, and mascara all smeared under my eyes with a black sweater, jeans and heels but i think im gonna get super casual and just roll up like an american apparel ad in all fleece and shower sandals.

whatever youre sleepwear choice weve got a nice little saturday planned. its gonna be like an ultimate frisbee j crew ad with people in long johns and pajammas and white teeth and merlot colored sweaters with hot chocolate and cho in a bathrobe. maybe we’ll all smile lightheartedly and throw snowballs in the yard. i dont know… i dont know if well have time.

see ya there…
xo
c and u

well the weekend after nationals was a nice way to begin working on our winter weight gain. last night we discussed a competition in which the winner would be the person who put on the most weight and then subsequently lost it all by a set date in the spring. it was easy to imagine eating our way to stardom last night chez B-R, since cu was treated to a pre-thanksgiving thanksgiving feast. looks like bk might have a run for his money with tbr’s heavenly mashed potatoes. baby maxine came along to flirt with bjorn and things were going fine until cbr scarred sally for life by saying that roger moore was the best bond.

saturday was the fall league tournament. news team lost to gary’s team first thing in the morning but won our last two games and we had lots of fun dispite ms. ulty not being there. her other obligations on saturday have ensured an ongoing coldwar with rick and bk. the post title refers to miss casual throwing a hammer to matt, mr. charcoal lambswool himself, to score the winning point of our last game on saturday which was maybe the only highlight reel worthy moment of her life thus far. it certainly helped her recover from the ‘your brother wouldve caught that’ calls that plagued her day. brady brought us all hot chocolate and donuts and after starting false rumors that liz is pregnant the season ended and cu took a looooong nap during which time nate and his team pepe went down in the final to the syndicate.

saturday night cu rolled up to crobar for an iron chef style photoshop competition with bridget the birthday girl and the BRs and monica. it was weird but kind of fun to watch. each person went up in head to head combat with a laptop and a blank screen with 15 minutes to make ‘art’ related to a specific theme. how fun could it be to watch people mask layers and run filters on text you ask? the place was packed and one of the dudes we were rooting for was wearing a nacho libre mask. crazytown. cu is hoping to sponsor tbr in the competition next year as he would have dominated the contestants we saw.

the rest of the evening was wiled away eating deep fried burritos and pity shakes and discussing plans for cbr and miss casual to start a wicker park young republicans chapter. it would be a fun social studies project to roll up to rainbo with a pink sweater set and pearls on with cbr in loafers and no socks. or it would make a great spring league team with the uniforms being pastel sweater vests embroidered with ‘WPYR’ except we know the BRs dont play causal ultimate… heres carlo modeling the potential uniforms.

fun weekend people. keep it trill.

any good birthday lasts a whole month and in the interest of continuing the revelry last night miss casual went out for another in a series of birthday dinners to celebrate with her chitown peoples. marya and the birthday girl did a little networking at parlor before heading to club lucky to meet c(b)r and tbrizzle, our casual brothers from another mother. tbr didnt have to teach last night becuase of this fire at left. with forces of nature aligning to get everyone together the night was sure to be a success.

tbr also brought the birthday girl a barbie tiara which she wore faithfully throughout dinner. it made it easy for ms. ulty to find us when she rolled up on her way home from a trip for work. it was nice to see everyone and catch up before the exodus to sarasota happens this evening. the fans are waiting on pins and needles to see what happens when brass monkey and mr. briefcase go head to head tomorrow. will chucktown be playing? will anyone be able to stop him if he is? will mama town bring her accordion to the field? will briefcase come up with a cheer befitting one of their former colleagues? who will come out on top? stay tuned. good luck to all our people headed to florida. reprazent for the chi-tizzle.

since this will be our first official post on the new site i thought id tell the story of how cu got started.

we owe this strange and wonderful blog adventure to our dear friend tbrizzle. one night early in the summer over beers at bucktown pub, we got to talking about beach. faithful readers will realize that thursday night is c.u.’s favorite night of the week when the weather is warm and the sun stays out til late in the evening because of our game at the beach. no one loves to get sand in her ears more than miss casual. plus it gives us an excuse to drink lots of beer afterwards.

but the responsibility for the beach field lies with the BR’s… usually tbr. he was confessing that work was really busy and that he was worried that he was goign to have problems leaving vessel early enough on thursdays to set up the lines. in an attempt to suggest a solution to this problem miss casual suggested that we play with cones instead of lines.

this suggestion was met with some… criticism you could say. you could also say tbr wheeled around and very quickly attacked the idea of playing with no lines like a fat kid attacks cake. ’sure jess why dont we just play with no rules at all then? id rather just toss than play with no lines. im done with casual ultimate.’

and so the blog was born out of a desire to play ultimate, and stay casual (natch). so if you dont know, now you know. thanks to tbr for his never ending inspiration and welcome to the new phase of cu.