casual ultimate

hey happy hour tonight chitown peoples! if you’re reading this then you already know… well probably be at lemmings with cans in our hands to start out… 6ish so holler.

i love you
frank

Good Morning, United States.

Now I will begin vomiting all over this blog, much in the same way I vomited all over the finals of Sandblasty except instead of red gatorade, it will be metaphors. Also, I *think* I can use capitalization and punctuation because my sister is no longer able to stop me. If this sentence and the title of the post aren’t followed by a bunch of commas, then I am wrong. , , , , , ,,,, , ,, , , ,, , , ,,, ,

I’d update you on the West Coast, but what is there to say really? It’s way better than everywhere else, people are open-minded, the straight-male-to-straight-female ratio is 1:10 in San Francisco, and the straight-male-to-gay-male ratio is also 1:10 in San Francisco. In other words: I’m kind of a big deal out here. I’ve been walking around the city, whipping my hair wildly in the summer (50 degree summer) breeze and occasionally turning abruptly to freeze a whole block of Market St. with a little “blue steel”. I usually arch my back when I do that…like a dragon.

Enough about casual though, what about Ultimate? Well, here’s the deal. July out here is for the most part everyone’s break for the season. Players enjoy kayaking, hiking, camping, surfing, and making sweet love on their wives. What have I been doing? Oh, the usual: almost dying at Sandblast, writing profiles for the Brass website (http://brassmonkeyultimate.googlepages.com), and not hating my parents anymore. Yeah, you read that right. I sort of stopped doing that a few weeks ago and by communicating that across the internet, I am making it even more real.

The team I took to Sandblast was called Dago Tea (pronounced “day go tee”) and was dedicated to my mom, Mary Jane, aka Mama Town. We celebrated our Italian heritage and family, and I think that was part of a shift that really took place the following weekend at this thing called the Landmark Forum. Now, Landmark is a little weird, but it sort of gave me permission to make some changes in my life that I really like, and it talks a lot about keeping your past behind you, living a life of possibility, and creating whatever meaning you want, instead of letting your past dictate the meanings of things in your life.

One of the possibilities I created was being responsible for loving my Mom and Dad, exactly as they are and with all of our history. I always have the choice to resent them and in doing so avoid responsibility in my own life. “If my parents hadn’t raised me the way they did, I wouldn’t be such a moody bastard right now.” It’s a fun game with big payoffs and even bigger costs. The costs are that I am not present in my life a lot of the time, and I don’t take responsibility at times for my work, my play on the field, and for my relationships.

…

I feel a little bit like Ron Burgundy after he says, “And that, of course, was our newest reporter, Veronica, Corningstone. She’s really great. I’d also like to share with you that we are currently dating and that she is quite a handful in the bedroom.” Maybe I shouldn’t have broadcast all that to the world, but what can I say. I love my parents, and I wanted to sing it from on top of a mountain, but I didn’t have a mountain, I had a blog and new priveleges from my sister…

So back to disc, Brass starts practices up again next week, ECC (or Spawnfest for the coed division) is in 3 weeks up near Seattle, and the coed division is crushingly good this year. Mischief is returning its all-star cast (including Tyler Grant who played Dago Tea at Sandblast), Shazaam Returns is a Seattle powerhouse team that went out to Boston and dominated for the most part and boasts one of the all-time greats in Steve Finn (Let’s recap his last 3 years of Ultimate, shall we? ‘06 Masters National Champion with Throwback catching a callahan on championship point, ‘05 Mixed National Champion with Brass Monkey, ‘04 Open National Champion with Sockeye), and Slow White is making the trip out from Boston after losing in Finals of Nationals last year to Mischief and beating Brass in semis. It should be a good time, and I hear that they have decided to have Open and Women compete this year as well. How fun for them.

I just joined a new band out here called The Wayside State which you can check out here: http://www.myspace.com/thewaysidestate. They have really good, original songs, and all they want me to do is solo on the fiddle. Perfect.

I’m the CTown Hustler; you stay classy, planet earth.

so some of you probably know that there are some big changes coming to our little blog. lots of our friends have moved our of chicago this year and onto other things and sadly next week ms. ultimate will join the herd of people leaving town. shes headed off to grad school on the east coast and so we had to think… what is the future of casual ultimate? with ms. ulty busy hitting the books and miss casual having no life lately we knew we needed something new.. different.. something exciting.

so we thought hey its not just about us and our quest for ultimate and law and order reruns but about all of us..together! so we are bringing new bloggers on board to talk about ultimate, etc. itll be like the casual ultimate center for kids who blog good and want to learn to do other stuff good too.

you will probably recognize the all star team coming on board if you follow the blog at all. from the west coast we’ll get updates from chuck daniels and dr. welsh. from the dirty south well be hearing from beckhoe. here in the chi we have miss casual (mai oui) who will be joined by gunder the viking, pbgipper our lawyer, bk our chef, akira, brown bear, tbrizzle, and team paulina. also well still be hearing from the lovely and talented ms. ultimate from out east. it should be fun and not just a little dangerous which is how we roll at cu.

so casual ultimate lives on albeit in a new form. if you want to be a blogger or guest post for us email us at casualultimate@gmail.com

otherwise sit back and enjoy.

this summer has been great and all, but it’s speeding along at a different pace than the epic summer of 2006. here are a few things we’ve been missing:

1. frisbee
1(a). potlatch - what a great tourney. we want to put together a chicago n’ friends team for next year. who’s in?
1(b). summer league - the competitive games are great, but we miss playing twice a week.
1(c). briefcase - ms. ulty misses her teammates and sunday practices at uic, and miss casual has no excuse for a manicure since she’s not doing admin.

2. terrycloth
2(a). dresses - last summer we dressed up for a party as good and evil terrycloth, this summer the dresses haven’t even been busted out.
2(b). see (3) below - ms. ulty’s beach towel has only been used once this year. we concede that this is a first world problem.

3. playing in the water
3(a). the beach - every weekend seems so jammed with other stuff, there’s no time for an old fashioned tanning session.
3(b). swimming pools - and the people-watching surrounding them. ms. ulty might have to head up to her grandma’s this weekend for a chlorine fix.
3(c). see (2) - water-based recreation is usually a prereq for wearing and use of terrycloth.

4. good news from the tour
4(a) no more doping people. we cant handle it.
4(b) remember lance? he was so dreamy…

5. happy hour
can there ever be enough? we think not. so in honor of ms. ulty moving to the east coast and tbrizzles birthday and just never having enough happy hour were gonna do something next friday. put it in your outlook.

happy friday

(oh and by the way… how on time are we with the poll about li-lo? she is totally back in treatment by labor day!)

friday was the summer outing for my company so jdot and miss casual rolled to the country club in style. with my heels matching his shirt, listening to black star in the middle of the afternoon after having had a glass of champagne at the house. it was beautiful out and a perfect day to sip on cocktails on the patio with coworkers. however the emergency alarm sounded when the bar opened and there was no bubbly. heres miss casual on the phone to ms. ultimate hoping to get her to call the national guard and get things back on track. this is what is called a ‘first world problem.’ as in ‘gosh i cant decide which overpriced organic grocery store will have the best apples and a copy of dwell’ or ‘there wasnt enough mango salsa on my burrito at lunch’ or even ‘my wireless isn’t working at the house and i can’t catch up on celebrity gossip.’ cause for alarm certainly but only in developed countries.

ms. ulty got back to her briefcase roots this weekend, spending a low-key saturday night at casa(pfil + zales (-pfil)) = casa zales and sunday afternoon at briefcase practice. here are a couple photos from practice on sunday. you know those picture matching games at bars? yeah. we’re going to submit these for the 2008 edition, coming to a peach pit near you. this is the new doctor, he likes this throw and ain’t too bad at it either. watch out for him, moe. i hope you got warmed up beating seiche this weekend - phew!

anyways, sat. night was spent with prof. berg and dube along with new briefcase peeps kim, dave and steve; liz and dp showed up later with jimmy johns in-hand. dp taught ms. ulty and liz how to play Wii while everyone else played quarters and then something along the lines of “ultimate penny,” where you have to get a penny into a can of beer; i’ve never measured the dimensions of a can’s opening, but is it big enough? after bowling we played boys vs. girls tennis doubles with steve. it took some practice, but the ladies were winning games by the time we called it quits. i’m glad it’s taken me this long to acquaint myself with wii, because it could easily become addictive. and, since dube was there, we retired to the roof for a couple rounds of beer pong; i believe dube and i beat kim and her friend, how did we do against the boys? i forgot. i know they staged a major comback, i feel like if they beat us it was by the last cup. we’ll get you next time. the roof also has quite the trailer park (was it white trash?) golf setup. basically their house is like adult daycare. dave even imposed his own naptime.

sunday practice was soooo fun for ms. ulty. i’d really been missing the sunday morning search for sunscreen and cleats and that bike ride down to uic. the team is looking good: old favorites from last year, plus a bunch of new ladies and gents including c.u. interns like carter, the new doctor and mom, a.k.a. allison (we’re so glad you’re back on the team!). all three of the volkfolk were there. maxine is days, nay, hours away from walking and is already being trained to throw leftie.

today is summer league and a sunny sunny roundtrip bike ride. ah summer ultimate, you make everything better.

looks like paris hilton and her gang of toughs have been tagging up the double deuce again. this showed up across from ms. ulty’s pad overnight. scary stuff. she shouldn’t be risking petty crime given her parole and all.

last night team pizza pizza beer, formerly known as team close your eyes, staged a masterful win against our former nemesis, team 7. we’re sure baker would say “they only lost because i wasn’t there,” but really we know he’s too scared of the c.u. staff’s tight game to play on the same field. you could tell it was a competitive league game because there were a lot of picks called, one potentially spiteful travel, and thor and goff ganged up on one of the opposing players at the end of the game. not sure what that was about, but we won and that’s all that matters in this league. our cameras were broken/forgotten at home, so here’s stock footage of our captain looking like the fearless leader he is.

we’d played this team before (seems to be a league theme this year) and it had been a tough and exciting game. thus we were worried when we saw the additions of mel, of teamocil fame, and dr. jason to their sideline. fortunately for us, paul was a long scoring machine on h.o.t. throws; caleb showed his dad who’s the boss; and bradley lived up to his new nickname of ‘b train’ by steamrolling several members of the opposing team in addition to our very own miss c. both teams went on scoring runs during the game, but we pulled it out, inspired in no small part by our halftime chant of “pizza pizza beer.” we figured that if we put our noses to the grindstone to finish the game fast we’d be the first team at piece. and we were right.

we laid claim to a of third of the pit at piece, positioning ourselves for optimal pizza acquisition once the pies came out of the oven. we got some rude glares and comments from other players, but guess what: this is competitive league. you can get a table and talk to a waitress if you want a guaranteed dinner. a couple burned fingers and a stack of greasy napkins later and we were stuffed and sleepy.

miss casual went home, and ms. ulty stayed around just long enough to learn that matt anderson will be moving to south bend tomorrow to start a new gig as a lawyer - sad that you’re leaving, but congrats! is everyone going? lyrica, tiger, eventually thor and liz - who’s next? it seemed like there were a lot of young and unrecognizable faces at the peach pit last night. sunrise, sunset. clearly there’s only one rock of stability and honor you can count on at times like this: rick russell. *vote rick russell for cusl board now!* woo hoo!

our trusty readers may have noticed that we were lacking blogspiration last week. so no posts. but in an effort to get back on track, and since neither of us are playing nearly enough ultimate this summer, we’re going to start posting about just about anything. some of you may be thinking, “don’t you already do that?”. kind of, i guess. but the posts may be more random than usual, maybe not as long, but who can say. for example, this is a picture of a cow on parade in copenhagen - i hope whoever came up with the cows on parade public art idea trademarked it, because they’re everywhere.

ms. ultimate got back from an action-packed european vacation last week. It turned into a sports trifecta when, in addition to hanging out backstage at Wimbledon the first week and getting a prime spot at the Tour de France Prologue in London the last weekend, the european union triathlon turned out to be in Copenhagen the Saturday she was there. who knew? Not to be lost in the shuffle was the bizarre city-wide rollerblade race that was held the following day. Those crazy danes!

after a bit i began to miss you guys and, of course, the ol’ disc. in an effort to keep up my ulty spirits i decided to scope out potential fieldspace in London, Copenhagen and Amsterdam. London has by far the most space, as perhaps Lyrica can attest to, but they have a thing about not walking on the grass that may be hard to overcome. This first one’s a shot of some potential space in Kensington Gardens; lots of open grass area, but big patches were left unmown. good for aesthetics, maybe not so good for ultimate.

these next two were taken in copenhagen. there’s not too much open park space here, and much of what exists is heavily manicured, so field-size expanses of lawn may be cut in two by a path. (those used to playing on sewer grates in washington park may be able to get over this.) this first photo was taken in the rosenborg slot (palace) gardens, which were absolutely beautiful. it’s no surprise hans christian andersen was from denmark/copenhagen, because parts of the city look like an absolute fairy tale. to the right is a gratuitous castle shot; this is rosenborg palace. what you don’t see in this pic is the surrounding moat, complete with mama duck and ducklings. what you also don’t see is the lawn on the other side of the palace: enormous, perfectly maintained, completely flat, guarded by gentleman with a machine gun. three out of four ain’t bad.

last and sadly least, amsterdam. there’s not much room to play in the city proper, although my map showed greenspace just outside of town. i guess they sacrificed grass for canals. or, actually, they didn’t sacrifice grass for anything. heh heh. heh. i’m hilarious *and* mature. anyway, here’s some lawn on the museumplatz, amsterdam’s museum campus. the van gogh museum, the rijksmuseum and the big concert hall surround this park, where i saw folks playing soccer/football in the evenings. the van gogh museum was fantastic, by the way, you should definitely go if you’re in the neighborhood.

sadly, i never actually saw anyone playing ultimate anywhere. i saw some folks tossing with a 175 g disc in Hyde Park after the tour prologue, but that’s it. by that time i almost abandoned my new bike friends to toss, but it was late in the day. i’m crossing my fingers that the rain holds off and summer league happens tonight.

oh, and of course, the finest grass was at wimbledon: the courts looked like the plushest of putting greens. are we surprised that they were already reserved for another sport?

sandblast weekend is drawing to a close. as i type this i am sitting in my living room with the bulk of team dego tea who took it to the finals today and then lost by 3 in a tight game against hurt locker. tyson and georgia’s team took home the title again this year but it was a good day of ultimate for the dego team regardless. the semi final against briefcase was an especially good game. it came down to two points between case and their former teammates and friends. we spotted the lovely maxine on the briefcase sideline and dr. welsh was in town holding it down with the other usual beach suspects.

dego had faced some serious competition from friends and family earlier in the day also. becky scored the game winning point in quarters going up against her own sister with her brother close by. if theres a more gifted family in ultimate we at casual ultimate have yet to see it. the pool play on saturday was a bit more easy going although it was a bit hotter and the water was closed because of ecoli so we almost melted. here’s chucktown pulling down the disc in spite of the heat.

in the final game dego tea was dropping players left and right due to sickness and injury. megin was tough as nails when her shoulder dislocated. kolb was all over the beach until he got sidelined by cramps. even chucktown hit a wall with the heat and had to come back chez casual / brizzle for an ice bath before our current viewing of anchorman. here are two of our chitown peeps who were uninjured - becky working it out on d and bjorn getting up in the air. chicago represent.

outside of the ultimate field… the town kids ate some burgers at kumas on friday night after putting down some dego tea chez casual with bjorn, jess cookie, foxy, brian, and goetz (who you might remember from spring break). dego tea is a concoction developed by bjorn and becky which consists of a special proportion of ice tea and lemoncello. danger. saturday at the fields we established our supremacy in the ‘most parented sideline’ category with the towns and the merce-dogs in attendance. we missed having bjorns mom and pops but theres always next year.

looks like ms. ultimate will be back in the chi-tizzle tomorrow night so well be getting back to bizness as usual around here. it was nice to hang with such a great group of west coasters and southerners this weekend on the dego sideline. hopefully well see them all again next year on the sand.

last night miss casual got a chance to see transformers at 11pm so she jumped on it even though it was way past her bedtime. the movie does not disappoint. i wont go into it too much but go see it. right away. it was worth staying up late even if its going to make today long and tired.

but tonight will be ‘chicks and drinks : the holiday rampage’ so it should be fun and we can all sleep late tomorrow to celebrate the independence of our country and stuff. speaking of celebrating.. the cu staff both missed the rwip party this weekend unfortunately so were trying to get a guest blogger on the event. brown bear might be our man. last night team close your eyes played team brown bear and lost by a heartbreakingly slim margin. from the reports at the game it sounds like rachel was the flip cup champion at the house and at golden nugget, where brown bear matched the upholstery before crawling into bed next to bk. we need details people! we need reports from the scene! send us your stories. its your civic duty.

okay that is all. have a great pre-holiday and maybe when we get back brown bear will be in the driver’s seat.

well as you can see from out super technical map here the weekend is shaping up to be lovely. there is a high crunk system moving in from the west … the rwip party is lurking on the horizon. so tonight theres a slight chance of pbr with the winds shifting tomorrow to bring in a sparxx front at irving park in the evening. with ms. ultimate still out of town it will be a tough weekend for casual ultimate but well get out the rain gear and batten down the hatches.

also we need to send a get well shout to mr. tristan who got hit on his bike yesterday. thats three of our friends who have gotten hit in the last two weeks and hopefully thats the end to this spree. best wishes for speedy recovery and good painkillers to tristan, neil, and jessi (of c’n'd fame.)

your long term forecast is a steady drizzle of antics throughout the holiday week with a hurricane of activity beginning thursday when the dego teas start rolling in from the west coast and the dirty souf. stay tuned for flash flood warnings and torrential shennanigans.

xoxo
miss casual

I am blogging live from Wimbledon. I just nearly ran into Serena Williams on the stairs - literally. i can’t tell if she looks tougher or like a regular (of course world-class) athlete in person. Laura won her second match handily; I would say she destroyed her Austrian opponent’s soul, but I think tennis is more polite from that. but for the record, she did. It’s looking like she’ll be playing Hingis next. I’d make her blog nickname casual tennis but, you know, she’s hardly casual going into teh third round and all. The all-white dress code is also making me think briefcase may want to make Sunday whites an all-weekend thing.

so, yeah, things are exciting here. i have to say an all-access pass is the best way to see the greatest tennis tourney in the world. i feel like i’ve been in the cafeteria line next to every major player; too bad i can only recognize a few of them. i could get used to this. and cheering for laura is so fun!!! i’m her no. 4 fan, besides her parents and sis.

the city of london ain’t too bad either. Meet the london fixed gear boys (of course no girls) for a few pints was fun, of course, and the tour de france prologue et al is going to be a blast. I hear there are some pics posted on their site; I want to say it’s lfgss.com, miss casual please correct me if i’m wrong. sorry no pics, i forgot my cable.

heres a picture, hot off the presses, of ms. ultimate with some friends from the london fixed gear / single speed bike forum. we miss you so much here! and im so jealous of your all access pass to wimbeldon! please slap high fives with andy roddick and report back. also you are no longer allowed to go to yale. i forgot to tell you. we voted and youll be attending u of c in the fall.

in other casual world news… this weekend looks like a throwdown in honor of this country we love so much at the house of the rwip. saturday could be dangerous. bring your beer pong helmet.

and last but certainly not least… the voting is going down as we speak for the cusl board. with all the animated conversations that have occurred in the forum over new policies in the last year… you all better vote. casual ultimate is endorsing our very own russell, the ja rule to miss casual’s ashanti. so get on it people. vote for rick… four times even.

well ms. ultimate left town for europa for almost three weeks leaving me steering this blogging ship alone. judging by the sweaty palms and nervous finger tapping on my space bar… its not going to be good when she leaves for the ivy league. but here goes nothin and hopefully shell post from wimbeldon where shes hanging out with andy roddick and biking around with our london ss/fg counterparts.

this weekend was a parade of bike events. friday night was the ali g cat. j dot and i worked the crunkest checkpoint on harrison and lower wacker. it was all fun and games until one of our chicks and drinks ladies went down in the race and broke her collar bone. here she is looking hardcore in the er looks like wednesday well be hanging with jessi and doing less tricks and more drinks. not that we mind… michelle took second and emily took third for the females so c’n'd still came out way ahead on friday night at gold star at the awards ceremony.

then saturday was track racing. the picture at the top is emily and michelle (on her miami sound machine bike) busting around the velodrome in kenosha. it was hot outside the chi and miss casual needed a nap to recoup for the after party. unfortunately i recovered too quickly and had time for a few beers before i somehow ended doing a sprint against michelle which i only won because michelle was tired from the track. after the sprints adam decided to pick julio up over his shoulders and run around the block and that was how we knew it was time to go home. brunch today at cozy corner with the new humboldt homeboys was just what the dr. ordered to recover from such a fun and tiring weekend. thanks to val and the rest of the velo city people.

happy monday

this is going to be quick because i have to go to the airport in a little bit. if i can i’ll be blogging live from wimbledon and then the tour de france, but more likely miss casual will be taking things over for the next couple of weeks. it’ll be like training wheels for august (sniffle sniffle).

there are no pics from beach last night, so we’re posting this stock footage of sand. a ton of people were out: all the regulars plus some newbies that brown bear and dan knew, and rachel who is apparently the newest addition to briefcase….this is what happens when you don’t go to practice, you have to learn about your former team on the streets. there might have been over a dozen boys out; kind of sucks when you’re playing 5-2, but people we’re trying to attract and retain women to thursday beach, and we all have to make some p.t. sacrifices. tiger asked if we blog about beach: yes, we do, every single week - where do you think your girlfriend got her gchat picture?

after the game ms. ulty, morgan, the viking, brown bear, c(b)r and prof. berg hightailed it over to corcoran’s for some fat tire and burgers. the waitress there was…not good. she forgot the bacon on my burger and got all confused when i asked about it; then she came out five minutes later to bring our beers (finally) and gave me a face/attitude and said, “your bacon’s on the way, they are actually cooking it” - emphasis on ‘actually cooking it’. as opposed to what? defrosting already cooked bacon? anyways, we needed the grub to fuel brown bear storytime…ask him the one about kolb. hee hee.

there was also a bit of talk about sandblast 2007: glass shards in your feet. only time will tell, but briefcase will have a tough time overcoming bjorn/chuck/becky’s team, also known as quite possibly the hottest beach team known to humankind. it should be a killer tournament, definitely worth spectating for the finals/semis/quarters even. too bad ms. ulty will be biking along with the prologue and 1st stage of the tour….oh wait, no, that might be kind of cool too.

so its a big week for birthdays because today there are two more. not only is it my brother’s birthday, mr. chucktown, who is kind of a big deal (better reckidnize), but its our friend amy’s (of chicks and drinks fame) birthday too. miss casual spent an hour on the phone last night with mama town trying to scan and email some baby pictures to chuck in honor of his big bday. clearly miss casual is not cut out for i.t. phone support. happy birthday mr. town. cant wait to see you for sandblast.

also im not sure if we made it clear but chicks and drinks is big in hungary. ms. ultimate better look our for our fans on her european tour. amy’s picture of chicks and drinks last week got some more rousing responses from our admirers overseas. im sure tonight’s photographic evidence will be equally compelling. therell be some birthday shennanigans for amy… and some tricks and drinks of course. since regular tricks night imploded chicks is the new tricks. should be good times.

and i almost forgot… ultimate. monday night team close your eyes faced off against baker’s team in the rain and wind. i believe our entire roster showed up which was weird and we saw a huge rainbow when the sun came out. the disc slipped through lyrica’s hands at one point because it was wet and adam had the encouraging speech at halftime that included ‘just get in front of it. if it slips through your fingers… you have airbags.’ nice. we pulled out a win just in time to get one piece of pizza. thankfully. ciao.

the blog birthday party on friday night was a riot - thank for coming, everyone. the OG crew was there in force: tbrizzle, who brought an amazingly casual cupcake cake, bk, joe, baker, professor berg, hanging with mr. cooper, the boss, akira, roadhouse, candice, hendude, brownbear, anderson, the d.a., liz - all those guys. we saw paulina liz later on in the evening, at pfil’s; she got a little carried away at the air guitar championships. play freebird! kolb played the part of the viking, who had to be at a wedding out of town. poor excuse, but he looked good in the homemade backstreet boys-style t-shirt we made.

unfortunately for the ultimate folks the bike kids got there earlier and drank the lion’s share of the free pbr. adam, oren and public emily initiated a frosting fight with the aforementioned cupcake cake. good times, but a bit of a mess to clean up. you know ms. ulty got into trouble doing something similar with ice cream on her 12th bday at zephyrs. we should have seen it coming, especially since she did the same thing to carlo about six months ago. someday we’re going to play ultimate with ben vc, simon and all the other fixed gear kids so that the blog worlds can truly unite. a few of our respective (former) coworkers rounded out the group - way to represent, ladies, kolb loved meeting all of you. the manager of high dive went so far as to say it was a great group, come back any time. too bad he didn’t show his affection with free drinks.

this is one of the few photos the c.u. staff has of the evening, as our new staff photographer was snapping professional pics left and right. you can check out his flickr album here. thanks triple-a! we’re not sure if it’s reality or the filter on his camera, but take a peek - you all are very good-looking people.

of course we had to pour a little out for the out-of-towners who couldn’t be with us: becky, dr. welsh, denardis, cho and of course chucktown. c(b)r and ms. mmms were out of town too, and rick and ea….well, we’re not sure about them but i’m sure the excuses are good.

the rest of the weekend was recovery and fathers day. saturday night the c.u. staff, tbrizzle and morgan made a fantastic meal that included pork chops draped in bacon and a twenty six dollar apple pie, served a la mode with klondike bars. casualultimate, inc., a subsidiary of let’s get crunk llc, is thinking of launching a brunch spot if only to serve our newest creation: an apple pie with a thick granola crust and a lattice top made of bacon. i think everyone here can agree there aren’t enough places in wicker park to eat brunch. ms. ulty spent sunday in the warm glow of her family and had to miss briefcase tryouts….not like i’ll be playing this year, but i miss playing with you guys. thank goodness for competitive league tomorrow - cross your fingers for no rain.

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!

last night was a good night for chicks and drinks. lots of ladies showed up. and by lots i mean 7. but still thats more than the 5 or so that normally turn out. at dinner we had nine whole people! crazy! we got to check out emily#1’s new bike (which is h.o.t.) and then do some trickery (which i have no photos of right now) and then headed to el cid for margaritas under the stars. rolling up in logan square a group of boys walked up and told us we all had colored rims. which we actually already knew. and then they stole our table. but it turns out it was the guys from boulevard bikes. maybe if they give us a discount well let it go… we still invited them all to the party on friday. looks like the cu bday party is gonna be bananas. dont say we didnt warn you…

also we spent some time last night working on special surprises for some of our regulars on the blog. arts and crafts is obviously our second calling after blogging. but the trip to el cid reminds us of another trip to that culinary powerhouse during sandblast last year. were getting excited for sandblast this year already cause its only a few weeks away! lots of reinforcements coming in for that… better catch up on sleep now…

but not tonight cause its beach and its also tiger’s birthday so there should be some shennanigans afterwards. well keep you posted obviously. if you wanna know about the post title youll have to ask public emily. happy thursday.

edit: thanks to amy for the photo. its an old c’n'd photo but a good one.

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

today’s post title comes from one of chicago’s finest, who was overheard on his bike-mounted radio on our sideline at summer league. even we admit that some things are more important than ultimate. namely, missing children.

last night team ‘close your eyes’ had a crushing 12-15 defeat vs. team ‘baker i can’t believe you allowed our opposing team to form despite the new player rating rules’. it was a great game, though, and playing with all these fun people is beginning to make ms. ulty very sad about leaving chicago at the end of the summer. everyone on team close your eyes had hot plays, and billy only yelled “c’mon! are you kidding me?!’ at one foul call. we probably should have done a better job baiting him. here’s lyrica finishing up one of the coop’s fudgesicles; ask jake why a medical supply company sent him haribo gummy bears instead of enzymes. funny story. also ask about their next family vacation.

last night was also our experiment biking to and from wash park - we’ll be doing it from now on. what a fun ride: we got warmed up and energized to play on the way there, and it was a relaxing and traffic-free way to get home in the evening. at about 25 miles roundtrip, it’s also a nice way to put miles on our majestic steeds. we talked tun into escorting us all the way back to piece, and a chifg’er-turned-cusl’er buddy came as far as the loop. we ran into j.simon from chifg downtown, and he came to piece for a pint.

piece was…piece, of course. the only drawback to that bike ride is there’s no chance of us getting any pizza. luckily we scored some of the jacobs pie and settled in to catch up with friends. professor berg was wearing a necklace he claims to have “found” today during his summer relocation from the ‘burbs to chicago proper, but in fact it was purchased last weekend at a dave matthews band/hootie and the blowfish inventory sale. this is why his students love him.

all this talk of summer league of course means that today’s throwback post has to be dial m for passionfruit. mostly because it features one of the top three baker pics.

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.

today is our one year blog birthday! its difficult to believe we’ve been doing this for an entire revolution around the sun but here we are. it wouldnt have been possible without you. you are the wind beneath our wings.

if you didnt already know from runnning into one of us, a week from tonight at high dive (chicago and damen) from 6-9 we are throwing a happy hour birthday party. the first 50 pbr’s are on casual ultimate. after that 3$ drafts. we even got buttons made to honor the occasion. so bring friends and come help us celebrate a year of shennanigans. all week well be posting links to our favorite throwback posts in the last year so today we’ll start with the very first post to see where it all started.

last night on the eve of our anniversary we went out and saw lots of our favorite people. we stopped at beach and ran into most of team ‘close your eyes’ in addition to baker, vijay, and of course the viking. it was a lovley night for ultimate except for the 50 mph winds and some stray dodgeball hussies who wouldnt get off of our field. the cu staff left a bit early to beat the rain, which never came.

when we ran into the chifggers, oren dubbed the ‘big storm’ the ‘new cicada’ since it was talked about much but never happened. we toasted all our bike friends with free beer at weegee’s one year bday party. coincidence that their bday is one day before ours? we didnt think so either. all us geminis stick together. friendhugger spilled beer all over miss casual’s blinged out feet before we retired to streetside for burgers and champagne. here he is looking innocent. thats how we roll. a year later and still more to come…

with miss casual holding it down in chitown this past weekend/week, ms. ulty traveled to wisconsin to visit sis anna banana (yes she went to carleton, no she didn’t play for syzygy) in beautiful southwestern wisconsin and catch a couple of ballgames in milwaukee with anna, professor berg and some new friends.

spending time in the country is so relaxing, especially when your sister lives miles away from the closest internet machine and cellphone reception. highlights of the trip include moonrise s’mores over an open fire (more authentic than the s’mores we had with bacers), anna’s new puppy, baby bunnies everywhere, sunbathing, etc. we went hiking in wyalusing state park and had the first actual cicada sighting of the year (see photographic evidence, miss casual), saw the monument to wisconsin’s last passenger pigeon and dipped our toes in the mississippi huck finn style. also, ms. ulty learned the hard way that biking is not 100% fun when there are hills involved - it can actually be exercise. a 1.5 mile hill followed by many many other hills taught her that; turns out i need to go running more.

tuesday brought a trip to a ginormous bike store in madison and a long drive to milwaukee, where we met up with professor berg, his roomie, and his roomie’s 10 closest friends who were all attending the brewers-cubs game. we learned a few things in miller park:

(1) the vendors there sell sparks - here’s prof. berg as living proof
(2) it takes 18 minutes to close the roof
(3) tobacco tastes like a farm when you’re in wisconsin
(4) there are almost more cubs fans than brewers fans in the stands when they’re playing eachother
(5) brewers fans cheer for packers during baseball games

and, oh, milwaukee is a really cool town. ms. ulty loves its old industrial stylo and thinks it’s better than madison (sorry georgia). before the day game on tuesday we went to a place called comet cafe for a fantastic brunch. the bloody mary there is super good and come with bacon and a pony bottle of high life. all of our sandwiches were delish, even though our new bestie (bffn, not bff, brian) barely ate half of his mr. awesome (it would go well with piece’s baron von awesome). there are so many cool joints in that city, plus the parks, buildings, zillions of square feet of future loft space - buy real estate now, people. we were having so much fun prof. berg and ms. ulty barely made it to the train station in time. we will be organizing some trips to our neighbor to the north soon.

now it’s back to chicago, where hopefully the rain holds off and we get to play some beach n’ bikes tonight. there’s a rumor the prof. might be joining us. it’s also weegee’s 1-year anniversary and they’re giving away free drafts from 6-10; not sure how that will factor into the night’s activities.

last night was the beginning of chicago summer league and was the first night ever of competitive league for cusl. if you want to read or comment about the ups and downs of this system check out the forum, but id like to congratulate mr. baker and the cusl people cause last night was bananas. maybe its just because we have an overabundance of fun people on our team, or the fact that we won in spite of the rain, or that fact that we got to piece so early there was tons of pizza and no fighting… but summer league is looking good.

you might already know some of the lovely people on our team. bk, from such accomplishments as he cooks a mean brisquet, and joe little, from such quotes as ‘daybreak… chicago’. rachel from such posts as ‘rachel saves our lazy butts at fall league’ or lyrica from such skills as ’shes the best lady with a plastic disc in this city’, and tiger from such feats as ‘he had to guard kolb who’s a foot taller than him and still brought the pain at beach’. or even thor and liz, who youll recognize from ‘they won summer league last year and are the coolest couple ever.’

ive already warned the team that if they dont want to be on the internets they best come up with a new team to play for so its on. ill be passing out waivers next week. ms. ultimate missed our first game but we won in her honor. due to a name game played at the half with our eyes closed im dubbing the team ‘close your eyes’ until we think of something better.

cant wait for next week already.

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.

last night the cu staff regrouped chez ultimate to plan our attack on tricks and drinks at its new way up north location. after checking in with the kittens and battening down the hatches we proceded on bicycle to kumas in order to fuel up for an evening of skids. however it was super packed and we waited almost an hour for our burgers. ms. ultimate almost went blind with hunger. luckily our bartender was mr. kuma himself and he bought our burgers since they took so long. let me tell you… a burger never tasted so good. in a shocking triumph of will, miss casual annihilated her mastadon.

the wait gave us plenty of time to discuss the late-breaking competitive summer league news whereby games are switched from wednesday to monday night and south side kids have to play some games up north. switching days is no big whoop, but we’re bummed that we’ll probably have to miss some of the up north games due to work hours (miss casual) and transportation issues (ms. ulty). and it’s sounding like lady numbers will be very tight on the teams. perhaps we can organize some sort of complex carpool system. anyone have room for a bike in their car on the way home? we considered trying to switch back to regular CUSL just to ensure we’d get to play enough games this summer, but we know baker would kill us for even making the request.

well, with an after glow from red meat and alpha king we booked it up to t’n'd. we drank some beers and practiced our tricks with most of the usual suspects. miss casual had a scary skid that ended up going off road and we had some adoring fans from the surrounding neighborhood chatting us up all evening. it was a beautiful night under a blue moon and we are looking forward to another fun night of tricks with the ladies tonight.

the people were fun, the food was veggie, the birthday was ultimate. the c.u. staff plus out-of-town reinforcements plus zibsters and agatha celebrated ms. ulty’s b-day (21, finally!) with a chic dinner at the green zebra, followed by drinks at fulton lounge and the new fulton lounge (what was that place’s name? not sure it was filled with loud music and crazies) before realizing we weren’t meant for that kind of class and finished things off with a pbr at gold star. green zebra was delish, but we were surprised by the repetition of certain ingredients throughout the tasting menu (lots of asparagus, fennel). we were also hungry about two hours after dinner because of the total lack of protein - real vegetarians couldn’t eat that way. we also think they could spruce up their decor a bit - too much grey. all in all though, good times and it’s fun getting dressed up every once in a while.

that was only the start of the b-day weekend, though, as ms. ulty and bacers hit up the batting cages on saturday afternoon and won exciting prizes (bouncy balls, paddleboards) at skee-ball. we ran into mel; actually she was something like the sixth person we’d run into in 24 hours, with schultzie, sfolk, ruth, liz and even old family friends out and about in the double deuce. of course we also saw pirates of the caribbean on friday - good, go see it, but watch the 2nd one on video first. no the out-of-towners are gone and we’re back to the usual. it’s sad, but we’ll see everyone again soon, and bacers had to go take care of her kitties.

and speaking of our usual antics: happy hour, a.k.a. balloon time! we’re thinking of doing a regular balloon time this friday, but put *friday june 15* on your calendar: it’s the blog’s 1-year birthday and we’re having a party at the high dive on chicago near damen. it’ll be at happy hour time, of course (6-9), and we’re buying the first 50 beers for our friends and then it’s $3 drafts from there on out. everyone’s invited. be there or be in the spirit division.

have you ever seen anything so pretty as a million skittle colored bikes like this? this is where miss casuals holiday weekend ended. well i guess technically it ended doing laundry and icing my ankle watching law $ order but really michelle and aaron’s super badass cupcake and bicycle filled bithday bbq was my last stop so well retell the weekend memento style and start at the end.

pulling up to the birthday bbq it was easy to pick out the house as it looked like a parade of pretty bicycles. michelle and aaron were great hosts and amy made some fierce vegan cupcakes. it was nice to drink some sangria and lounge with the ladies of c’n'd. we at casual ultimate feel very lucky to have met such wonderful ladies with such similar interests as ourselves. amy and miss casual are mentally preparing to race our first alleycat on saturday. we need to think positive. theres no ‘i’ in win. but before then there will surely be some tricks as miss casuals skids need work and ms. ulty wants to perfect her skid hop move.

previously the cu staff and stacy had stopped by a bqq thrown by dp and liz. looks like hales is back in town for good and is our new neighbor. baby audrey came looking like she meant business and the boss’s neice was the envy of miss casual in ruffly pink socks and perfectly fluffy hair. with all the babies around it occurred to us that briefcase could easily be renamed ‘team earmuffs.’ good to see the letter j out and about and again we were glad to have friends that appreciate grilling and beer the way team paulina does.

all the bbqs came after recovery brunch because stacy, brooke, and the cu staff started at piece the night before with malt liquor and determination. crunk or die. miss casual had bumped into nat on armitage and he let on the it was going down at dannys so off we went. stacy bought us a shot and it was ON. super dance party all night til stacy looked like she might be napping at the bar. we havent danced so much since… well since the last time we were at dannys probably. a stranger had given stacy and ms. ulty ballons on the walk over from piece so we tied them above our table to indicate clearly ‘this is where the party’s at.’ balloon time.

ms. ultimates bday needs its own explanation from the birthday girl. she also is in further photographic evidence so ill leave it to her. back to the architectures. lates.

theyre out there. i can almost hear them through the doors. and the duct tape over the seams in the doors. and the plywood over the windows. cicadas have come to chicago. i know because i watch the news. its been three days since i holed up chez casual with slider, a box of saltines, two bottles of champagne and cable tv to wait out their brief lifespan. i have my tennis raquet in case one sneaks in and i looked for goggles but couldnt find any so im just wearing my sunglasses. i called tbrizzle and told him to stay with mk because i couldnt risk a security breach by opening the door for him to come home. ms. ultimate offered to bring us some food and lemonade but theres not much that can be slid in the hairline space between the door and the metal threshhold so were gonna have to hold out on our own.

im halfway through the second bottle of champagne trying to get my courage up to leave the house tonight. it is going to be an epic evening. not only are we celebrating ms. ultimate’s day of birth but we also have reinforcements coming to our bacchanal of eating at green zebra and who knows what after that. plan A is coming in from brooklyn. bacers (as shes knows to ms. ulty) has already arrived from the west coast. we also get the pleasure of zibby von tramp coming to 21 year old us. only the strong will survive. and thats just friday night. holler at us this weekend if theres shennanigans happening near you.

im going to watch one more episdoe of law $ order svu and then unpeal a bit of the tape around the back door and see if i hear any buzzing. i mean were running out of champagne anyway…

we’re posting this 2006 pic of lucky’s new hi tops because (1) it’s too hot to do anything blogworthy and (2) parents are writing to us that their children are getting frightened by brownbear’s ’stache. guess it’s just too awesome for them to process.

a lot of folks have been complaining about the heat recently - but isn’t this what we’ve been waiting for? beach weather? and isn’t it going to get much, much hotter and more humid? ah, chicago summer, i love you. at least the zibster’s back home and we can set up our lemonade stand in wicker park. it will be part performance art, part commercial venture. seriously though zibby: i’ll give you 10% of profits, just like in the old days. remember how fun it was?

no cicada sightings yet for miss casual. i feel like tomorrow’s gonna be the day. please send us your updates on cicada watch 2007. hopefully they don’t come out tonight, because ms. ulty’s going to the sox game. the cicadas love america’s favorite pastime.

well this weekend was quite a marathon of frisbee and beer so we need to break it down into three pieces. hence the post title courtesy of the king of r&b, kels. (when is that new album dropping anyway?)

the show

baker had told us very directly that we were not allowed to get crunk the night before the tournament so friday night the cu staff prepped for the spring league tourny by hanging with the ladies of cnd in the double deuce and neglecting bike tricks in favor of dinner and lively conversation. jessi’s newly finished bike is so pretty it makes unicorns jealous. then saturday am it was road trip dance party with dp and liz and the cu staff. all of team paulina was singing my humps by 830am. the first game for teamocil was a close one which we lost by a single point inspite of heroic leaps by rory and rob. so into the loser brakcet we went to face off against our own it dept. and his partner in crime ms. angela. baker tried to psych us up by performing some sommersaults on the sideline and yelling and jumping a lot but to no avail.

thats when the beer came out.
and then it was on to our last game which we won long after everyone stopped caring. our only sustenance was old style and pizza that tasted like cardboard. it was hot and we were tired. however in spite of all the hardships and the fact that we are the most underperforming team in cusl history, we had more fun playing with teamocil than we deemed possible. funnest. team. ever. we watched the finals in which there was briefcase on briefcase action, mr. phillips vs. the volkmans (or team earmuffs as we like to call them). team ledonne took it to the house and won spring league again. nice work people. must be in the dna.

our team’s spirit award went to mel (seen above avec beach towel even thought she ditched us later on) and the league spirit award went to teamocil although it was totally unmentioned and apparently means nothing at all. our cu spirit award goes to vijay and his bumble bee shorts and new moustache, seen here flexing for the camera. on the way home listening to my humps again, the part about mixing ‘your milk with my cocoa puffs’ came on and all that could be said was ‘im not sure what a cocoa puff is, but ill bet ive seen vijays.’

the after party

after being comatose and icing the heck out of various body parts we lost our ride to the lee-martins wedding celebration. congratulations to you two. you are the best and most fun couple ever and were sure you have many more years of love and happiness and winning summer league together. we ran into some people coming from oak park at twisted spoke. the spring league party ended up being very nice. beautiful night out. great location. fun crowd. we spent the evening chatting with the coopers and baker and rob. lets just say middle names were changed in leaglly binding contracts and im getting a package in the mail which i am not allowed to open at work. the real insanity began after miss casual went home to dreamland so im gonna let ms. ulty explain since she brought her a-game to the hotel lobby portion of the evening.

the hotel lobby

…that two-hour dinnertime nap must have done the trick, because after closing down the party at twisted spoke ms. ulty followed rob, jake and much of the spring league committee (sans baker) to carol’s for some country style dancing. technically we dragged jake, by dismantling his bike and putting it in sparks’ car before he knew what was happening. we’re tricky that way. man carol’s is fun. we even ran into one of ms. ulty’s former neighbors; we couldn’t be friends because our parents were feuding like the hatfields and mccoys, and now whenever we run into eachother it’s some sort of awkward hello. but what’s more awkward is when rob and jake start yelling her name in a bar. repeatedly. there was dancing, pitcher beer drinking and even sleeping on tables. not sure whose idea it was to stay until the 5 am close (probably the friend of the blog who wished to remain nameless), but it almost killed poor devin/david. next it was an ill-advised trip to the burrito joint next door and then over to chalet sparks for a sleepover party. thank goodness sober was driving - you’re the best, not sure if we told you that enough on sunday morning. i’m still not so sure how i feel about going to sleep when the sun is coming up and the birds are chirping, but it couldn’t have been with a better group of kids (unless miss casual had stayed awake, of course).

this might be my new favorite picture of ye olde beache ultimatee, even though it’s just the viking and miss casual waiting for everyone else to showe uppe. the cold weather didn’t keep the faithfuls away, and we had five-in-five almost all night. a fun time was had by all, with baker and tun showing up to everyone’s surprise. it took a while to get tun to take off his bike helmet and shoes, but he eventually joined the game. our team was the c.u. staff, baker, tun and sally, so other than sally it was good warmup for the tourney this weekend. way to squeeze in that extra practice, teamocil. baker, we promise to be good girls and not go out tonight (other than chicks n’ drinks, which is wholesome fun and games) so we’ll be ready to rock tomorrow morning, 9:00 am sharp.

the c.u. staff ducked out of beach early discuss 1st birthday party plans with the manager at lemmings. he told us something lame, like we’d get a quarter off of drinks for our friends, but we’re going to bargain with them until everyone drinks for free. or, for a dollar off drafts. ms. ulty is going to put together a posterboard matrix of bars at which to hold this party, then we’re going to do the hard work of visiting each one and weighing the pros and cons. we might have to visit some of them more than once just to be sure. quenchers, the green eye, cleos II and high dive are all on the docket.

after dinner at pennys (of course), ms. ulty persuaded miss casual to come to tricks n’ drinks by using the kryptonite-like powers of champagne: casual can’t resist it no matter how hard she tries. it’s good she came though, because her skids are dead on and we’re about ready to have a ladies skid comp. we finally met andrew, the owner of the bike baby that our bikes would make, last night at Tn’d. i know that doesn’t make much sense, but luckily we have this pic to illustrate [photo credit: morgan]. ms. ulty got the very basics of a bunny hop down and we’ll be practicing all this and more at chicks n’ drinks tonight, top secret location, etc. tricks are fun, we’re getting good at them; soon enough we’ll be able to do the two backwards circles and 720 front wheel spin that steve may or may not be able to do, we haven’t seen the proof yet. speaking of steves, work steve stopped by with the fiance while walking their pup. remember this at your desk today, steve: the only thing better than working any good job is working no job at all.

it was a tough decision to put up another post since chucktown’s was so entertaining and actually, you know, about ultimate, but life goes on. and so do we. how we do it is no mystery - we blog.

beach is tonight at north ave. 6 pm sharp. we’re hoping the weather cooperates; it’s actually pretty cold outside. ms. ulty attempted to go yogging this morning and had to wear tights. the general plan is to head from there to lemmings, and we might be going earlier rather than later if it’s too cold and no one shows. but we’ll at least be tossing for a bit. there might be some tricks n’ drinks in the works, but we’re not sure yet. ms. ulty’s just about over her fear of bike tricks and miss casual’s numerous and inexplicable injuries seem to be on the mend.

for those of you who will be heading out to the polo fields for the spring league tourney this weekend, we couldn’t help but notice that this weekend is naper settlement’s civil war days. if your team gets eliminated early, you might be able to catch a discussion on fashions of the civil war (1 pm), or the Gettysburg address delivered from the paw paw post office porch by none other than abe lincoln himself (130 pm). unfortunately the big battle is on sunday. thank you, free subscription to timeout. team teamocil will be missing the festivities, however, since the finals aren’t until the end of the day and surely we’ll have to stick around for the awards ceremony as well.

in other news, el presidente shared this story with us last week and we thought you’d want to hear it too. true story:
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This woman that works with my child therapist friend was a chaperone on a special education class trip to the Shedd Aquarium a few weeks ago. One of the boys in the class disappeared for a while, and the teachers couldn’t find him. He mysteriously returned to the group towards the end of the trip, and his pants were wet. No big deal, they thought, he probably wet himself…special ed….blah blah blah. They didn’t say anything to him about it, and put the kids on the bus to go back to the school. As they drove away from the aquarium, a police car pulled the bus over. The police boarded the bus, and asked the teachers if they had any students on the bus with wet pants or shoes…a penguin had gone missing from the penguin exhibit at the aquarium! The teachers interviewed the boy with the wet pants, asked to look in his backpack, and….there, among his pencils and notebook was the missing penguin!

How do you steal a penguin and your teachers do not notice? Didn’t it make noise? Maybe even smell fishy or something?

Meanwhile, you should know that I hear the penguin is okay and has been returned to his little penguin friends and family.
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Hi, everyone. Mr. Town here, Miss Casual’s brother. Check out our new site:

www.casualtown.com
: ist das Community Browsergame FORREALZ-ischlagen!

Let’s catch up real quick: How are you doing in Chicago? Nice. Yeah, good to hear; I was going to ask you about that, so it all worked out then? Oh, it didn’t. Sorry to hear that. Well she wasn’t right for you anyway. Oh she was, and it was your fault? Yeah, well I mean, I guess life goes on. It doesn’t? Listen, I didn’t want to get into a whole discussion here, but seriously, we used to be friends and I remember that.

I’m doing fine out here in SF. I live in the city now, and let me tell you something: dudes love some dudes out here. I mean, I think it goes deeper than friendship in a lot of ways, especially one way. It’s not affecting me though. I’m straight as an arrow, and nothing will change that. I don’t even give awkwardly long hugs to guys more than once a week or so. That’s a fact.

Anyway, here’s a day in the life so that you can get an idea of what my life is like these days (Midwest translation is in brackets so you can follow what I’m saying): I get up at 7:30 (9:30 CST) and take a shower. I hop on my normal bike for losers (fixed-gear bike) and hit the road. I’m hella tired (tired), but I hop on the downhill slope (like the Midwest but kinda slanted) and just coast for a while. I realize that I forgot to shave, and then notice a few girls (lesbians) riding bikes alongside of me who also forgot to shave…their faces. It’s cool though. I breeze by a couple Carl’s Jr’s (Hardees) and swerve to avoid hitting an old Asian women (black guy). I work for 8 hours (10 hours), and then I marvel at the beauty of the Bay Area on my way to watching the Warriors (Bulls) go down 1-3 to the Jazz (Pistons). I then go to sleep in an 800 sq. ft. 3 BR apartment (3500 sq. ft. 4 BR) while my openly gay room-mate (…errr…) watches South Park.

Here’s your pre-season scouting report for Ultimate out here in the Yay Area:

COED:

Brass Monkey: Sweethearts, great leadership, returning their core for one last go of it. Expect a good year from them. I may roster up with them again since it was such a great experience last year, and they have a spot at representing the US in VanCouver in ‘08 if they finish at the top this year.

Mischief: Defending National Champs in the coed division. They have one guy that wins all their games for them: Tyler Grant. He is back again. They will win again.

WOMEN:

Fury: They picked up five really good players, and they just happen to have an amazingly good coach: Matty Tsang. He’s the reason they will win again when it counts.

New Team: This other women’s team that is a mixture of Homebrood (RIP) and Skyline. They have no identity and fragmented leadership (a la Justice League last year). They will probably have a tough year.

MEN:

Jam: Idris is captaining again this year, and Hollywood and the Body (aka Greg Husak and Brandon Steets) are coming up from the Condors to join an already stacked team. These guys don’t seem to play with a lot of heart, but this team has the players to win a title if it all comes together. They’re also no longer pretending not to be Jam. I’ve been trying out with these dudes, and it’s a lot of fun.

Revolver: Lot of ex-Stanford on this team. They play small ball, breaking the mark, taking high-percentage passes, and really grinding with teams. There’s some great chemistry on this team, and they are looking to add some height (possibly me) to their roster. We’ll see if it’s a fit. Nick Handler is something else. I’ve never been impressed with dump cuts before or seen a guy who is 5′7″ go deep as well as he does. Rivaled maybe only by Josh Wiseman (same team, same height, almost solely a deep).

I guess that’s all there is to say. I will be at Poultry Days with USDA, getting there early on Friday and staying Sunday night if you wanna hang. I’ll be at Sandblast (Thu-Tues) with Dago Tea, a really fun crew mostly from the Bay. Let me know your plans for those two. Unless you’re Jacob Dee. Then just sit tight and wait for your spanking.

Chuck

sure it was 7 on 5, but at least mr. serious showed up this time. he and his band of illinois brothers couldn’t throw a cup strong enough to contain teamocil’s desire to win that game. too bad not a single woman on their team felt like playing ultimate on the most beautiful day of spring league. props to the one lady they had, who was speedy and savage. arguably the turning point in the game was mr. serious’s soul-crushing turnover in front of his endzone, which was immediately followed by a swing and a huck to ms. ulty for the score. congrats to team teamocil on our two wins (isn’t it fun to win?). this is our fearless leader doing a victory dance, thinly disguised as g.o.b.’s chicken dance [stock footage]. drink lots of water and visualize success for the tourney this weekend - if we don’t win spring league we’re nothing! thanks to our #1 fan for watching both games and going on a beer run - we’re nominating you for the spirit award.

thank goodness for vitamin i, or else miss casual and ms. ulty might have missed all the action saturday morning. both ladies were crazy sore from the inaugural meeting of chicks n’ drinks, whereby ladies with shiny bikes practice their tricks away from the boys in an undisclosed location. here are a couple pics of the members of team unicorn practicing their skids. next friday, everyone on the team will receive a self-destructing notice of location and tricks to be practiced 90 minutes before meeting time. miss casual informs ms. ulty that holding a cloth soaked in white vinegar to a bruise “sucks the bruise out” - doctors, any truth to this? because we’ll try anything at this point to be able to wear shorts again.

sunday was a day for culture and legal education. after calling their respective moms, the c.u. staff brunched it up at toast and then rode to the art institute to catch the last day of the cezanne to picasso exhibit. good show, but approx. 300,000 mom-and-child pairings had the same idea and it was a little crowded. given their bike- and ultimate-induced injuries, we went back to home base to relax on the couch for a bit. “a bit” turned into “seven straight episodes of law $ order” and one plate of nachos and a frozen pizza later it was time to call it a night. too bad we couldn’t make it to beach, but we were dying. oh, and ladies, there’s a pair of hot pink pedal cages on the market if you’re interested.

ah, wrigley field. there’s nothing better on a summer day. i suppose it would have been more fun if they had won. turns out wrigley has bicycle valet on the northwest corner of the stadium, which is pretty cool. not sure if it’s better than just locking your bike up, though, because you have to wait in line to retrieve it after the game.

after the game we convened for a little beach ultimate action. turns out you can play with just cones, and they’re a lot easier to carry to work (thanks miss casual!). it was ladies night for a while, with the c.u. staff, lyrica, leah and annie representing; cobb was there on the boys side. soon enough the rest of the regular crew showed up - ms. mmms, tbrizzle, the viking bk, etc. c(b)r, where were you? the games were pretty good - so nice to run around on an uncrowded beach on a nice day.

misses casual and ulty gorged themselves on penny’s while watching the bulls game with tbrizzle and the viking - or baby bjorn, as we’re calling him now that he’s shaved his beard. oh bulls, why do you do this to us? ms. ulty tore herself away at the start of the fourth quarter to practice her skids at tricks n’ drinks. given ulty’s sore legs and miss casual’s potential major ankle injury, we might have to take it easy at the inaugural meeting of chicks n’ drinks tonight.

as far as spring league, team teamocil is getting fans and maybe even cowbells tomorrow morning, so our opponents had better watch out.

our post title is courtesy of ben friendhugger…it’s hard to explain, especially on a family-oriented blog such as this.

where to begin? tuesday night: we forgot how much fun it is to hang out at chez tbrizzle, now chez tbrizzle-casual. if you haven’t seen it yet the apt. looks awesome; who knew lucite lamps that cost more than rent go well with cogs and pistons found in old hardware stores? the c.u. stay, the (b)r’s, j dot and ms. mmms all shared a delicious meal while watching the bulls bite it; these pistons don’t look good with our bulls.

Wednesday was happy hour at the peach pit with some new customers. we forgot how good that pizza is. we were also surprised to see a new beverage on the menu: malt liquor. it’s actually quite good, and comes in a paper bag. it’s about time a classy microbrewery gave o.e. a run for its money. order the dolomite next time you’re in there - we think it would go well with the bbq chicken pizza. there’s a chance we’ll be back in there to test that theory before the weekend is up.

we’re not sure if it was the dolomite or the cubs win that went to everyone’s heads, but there was quite a bit of storytelling. two stories tied for weirdest, and only one of them is appropriate to be put into words. we’re saving el presidente’s story about pee pants and the shedd aquarium for tomorrow. morgan’s story could best be titled, “peanut butter and ladies,” and is the tale of one man’s desperate attempt to entertain himself with….perhaps we should call the story, “i love crepes,” because there were actually no ladies involved. it can’t be put into words, but let’s just say it’s related to today’s title and is also the name of the collegehumor.com summer softball team. speaking of which, if bryan plays his cards right we’ll get him one of these t-shirts to wear while blogging.

dinner was followed by a skidding lesson - my. ulty can go two and a half feet, so watch out boys. she’s hoping that learning every bike trick in the book will mask the fact that she still can’t do a track stand.

this afternoon ms. ulty and el presidente are heading to the cubs game, then booking it to beach at 6. be there or be square - word on the street is tbrizzle may be back on with casual ultimate. we’re not sure where this leaves the blog, but it does mean miss casual only had to lug cones to work today.

a haiku to working overtime

work is not so fun
tomorrow looks to be nice
lets get our beach on

I wish this could be some kind of epic post about cinco de mayo hijinx and the first weekend of the rest of ms. ulty’s life, but the fact of the matter is that the biggest accomplishment of the weekend was a 4-hour nap on Saturday afternoon.

Friday was ms. ulty’s last day of work, and the ladies and gents of her workplace made sure it was a night to remember. or forget, depending on how you look at it. toasts were given with bottles and bottles of veuve at bin 36, and louise convinced some of the youngins to club it up rusky style after cocktails and dinner. ms. ulty was rather moved by the may day immigrant rights march, but louise taught her how some of the p.y.t.’s of eastern europe earn their citizenship solo. upon seeing one of our inebriated coworkers getting his groove on with a beautiful and scantily clad young lady, she observed, “she took one look at him and said, that’s my greencard.” god bless america. narwhal, we need to go dancing again soon when i’m not carrying a vase of flowers.

Saturday was spring league, of course. it felt like we played well - seemed like mel was open all day, of course rory was catching (almost) everything, hendude had some nice weaving once he and treemboat felt like showing up, miss casual made a sweet trailing edge catch in the endzone - but still, losses. it’s getting a bit frustrating, but at least we have fun, right? right? it’s been decided that we’re going to have the most fun team BBQ in the league, to be hosted by liz sometime in the next couple of weeks. details on that to follow.

the c.u. staff had lunch at kumas; it must have been the burgers that put us in comas (which sounds like kumas…coincidence?). soooo good; eating all the beef on their menu clearly has to be a summer goal. saturday afternoon was ms. ulty’s aforementioned 4-hour nap. miss casual, against all odds, stayed awake and even had dinner at the new cleos with the russells, TBR and julio. unfortunately even a restful afternoon didn’t give us the steam needed to get the most out of otherandy and baker’s mayo5 par-tay. luckily andy represented for teamocil, as evidenced by his expertise with the pinata. lesson learned saturday night: adults don’t get enough smarties and sweetarts.

sunday was dp’s surprise b-day party, which turned out to be not such a surprise. still, good times were had by all. their yard has a grassy area that is *perfect* for bags, so that’s where you’ll find us between frisbee games and bike rides.

that’s about it. let’s get our toss on this evening, it’s perfect outside.

Ms. Ultimate just got a beautiful bouquet of bright yellow flowers from miss casual, tbrizzle, the Viking and c(b)r. you guys are the greatest friends ever!!! I wish I had my camera hookup thing so I could take a picture because they’re so pretty. Also, we don’t have a picture for today’s post.

today is ms. ulty’s last day at work before a summer of fun and games or, as our post title inspiration and future guest columnist chris put it, I’m about to be funemployed. it’s going to be weird not coming to work every day, but the transition to full-time blogging, ultimate playing and bike riding should be a smooth one. the only thing needed to make a 14-year-old boy’s dream summer perfect is daytime access to the cartoon network, which miss casual is reputed to have at her new pad. please make me an extra key this weekend.

last night we got things started off on the right foot by hanging out in an empty parking lot, watching bike tricks and getting champagne crunk on a school night. Miss casual is still the trackstand master, but ms. Ulty has the rear dismount down to a science. Eh, it’s a way to stop so it works. Tbrizzle and the Viking showed up for a few minutes before heading to the peach pit for dinner; tbrizzle’s going to tweak his derailleur so that every time he shifts a little electronic voice is going to say “gears are magic.” It sounds complicated but luckily the viking’s an electrical engineer/dejiner of some sort. Thanks for coming, because ms. Ulty was scared to be hanging out with so many strangers and misses the comfort of the c.u. nest.

Lucky for us, the tricks kids are the nicest bunch ever. And a little bit crazy too, but a good crazy: friendhugger and others are going to bike 160 miles on Saturday! And we thought two morning games of ultimate was a lot to handle. Evan tried convincing ms. Ulty she could do a social century in the near future but she’s going to leave that hardcore riding to miss casual for now. After the fuzz came we all hit the no-name bar across the street for a nightcap and a little chris isaak.

And the best part of it all is, the weekend hasn’t even started yet. It’s gonna be packed with playtime and cinco de mayo hijinx. Miss casual just downloaded fergilicious….things could get crazy.

people who know casual ultimate will know that miss casual is not an ‘overtime’ kind of girl. she is more similar to that chubby helmet wearing stunt kid in the bud light commercial who says ‘im going to work 2 minutes passed 5… on a friday!’ then watches the clock tick passed go-time and breaks into a sweat and hand tremors.

living the casual life is a full time job in itself which very leaves little time for things like ‘commitment to one’s career’ and ‘dedication to work’ and ’staying at you desk past 530.’ once upon a time, (i believe they called it ‘the 50’s’) people defined themselves by their life’s work… and at casual ultimate we still do. its just that my life’s work is clearly organizing happy hour and writing about it in a self aggrandizing fashion. what can i say? its a gift and i have to maximize my god given potential. so while others toil at their desks, miss casual takes to the streets of the double deuce looking for ms. ultimate, trouble, and a good glass of prosecco, in that order, so that the real ‘work’ can begin. to use a phrase often heard in our house at the holidays, she heads out to ‘work. you. dog.’

so here at my ‘real’ job at 7:02 on a beautiful wednesday evening i just thought id check in with the blog, my one true calling. when the book deal comes through it will be sad to leave all this ‘architecture’ biznass behind but for tonight i will relish my smug feeling of satisfaction at working late into the evening for a change… or at least for another 28 minutes until my boss will pay for my dinner.

this weekend was so much fun. thank heaven for sunshine and blue skies. we thought the summer of 2006 was the best it can get, but 2007 is shaping up to be fantastic.

friday night worlds collided at happy hour (hereafter to be known as h60), where bike and ultimate friends drank beer and discussed the land ethic in harmony. everyone was laughing, having fun and the bartender even poured the c.u. staff a couple of beers on the house, but a shadow was cast over the evening when we learned of a death in the family. The death of ameri-can, that is. Lemmings has *stopped serving American beer*. You heard it here first. The replacement is milwaukee’s best. Replacing American with the beast is like replacing ultimate with freestyle. If freestyle tasted like water and hated democracy, that is.

saturday was spring league, and we went 1-1. we’re still not sure what’s up with teamocil; even a saturday night viewing of “switch hitter,” our inspiration, didn’t provide any usable strategy tips. (other than sending miss casual to work for the competition for a week.) regardless of a frustrating loss, we had a ton of fun. rory showed up, finally, and turned out to be at least six inches taller than you might think at first look. baker and casual did their best chicken dance impressions; we’ll see if we can get the video up later. in the end, though, miss casual’s threat of “no burritos for losers” didn’t inspire the masses in that first game, although we rallied for the second. the c.u. staff, dp and hendude still went for burritos after the game, though. note: lemming’s may be out of american, but the margaritas at chipotle aren’t half bad. new h60 venue?

by nighttime we were too pooped from daytime fun to do anything crazy, so it was packing and a.d. for old time’s sake. it’s sad that c.u. HQ will no longer be the 1200-1400 blocks of paulina, but miss casual’s in a better place. the set-up at the former br ranch (the k-br ranch now?) is awesome, and slider’s already learning to love hip hop. miss casual already taught him to bark ‘wamp wamp’.

sunday morning was moving and brunching, respectively. miss casual cleared out the last of her household goods while ms. ulty brunched with bike friendlies. you wouldn’t think it, but oval waffles are actually better than round ones; maybe because they hold so much fruit and syrup. after brunch, while casual and tbrizzle were setting up the new place, ms. ulty peeled off ot spend the afternoon at the velodrome in northbrook. it was *awesome*. it’s like a rollercoaster you make yourself. there’s a very small chance ms. ulty might even start a new blog, www.seriouscycling.com. if you see her in a bike shop considering the purchase of spandex anything, please try to stop her. here’s a picture of two speedracers going faster than pegasi.

some briefcase peeps and the usual beach suspects played at north ave. sunday afternoon, although c.u. missed out. it was a tough call, but guiding movers and going to the track won out. this is only just the beginning of summer; there will be plenty of days wash the sand out of our toes in the coming months.

so wednesday night (the new thursday) found the cu staff antsy and ready to explore a new and exciting location. and by location i mean bar. so we went to cleos for pizza and grilled cheese because ms. ulty had never been there and then retired after dinner to high dive, which you might remember from such posts as ‘revenge of happy hour : who will survive?’.

miss casual, who we all know works in a very high design snooty pants architecture firm, was explaining to ms. ultimate the intricacies of the design process in the firm. ‘this kid who sits across from me was playing with jenga blocks at his desk all day because he like their proportion’. ahem. ms. ultimate suggested knocking them all off his desk and screaming ‘jenga!%^@’ in his face. sad but true revelations from the world of the pro-dejiners. so we played our own jenga with ashtrays and candals much to the dismay of the bartender.

and speaking of pro-dejiners check out these people at the milan furniture show. seriously. look at that guy. ugh ’shudders’. miss casual decided she will become this girl by getting a severe haircut and straightening, continuing her all black rampage in wardrobe, adopting an austrian accent and going by the name ‘jesika taunhaus’.

also discussed was the fact that when working overtime at the office the people with kids always have an out. like ‘i havent seen my kids in days’ blah blah blah. hey buddy…i have a kid too. its called the blog. and i havent posted in days so lets not all cry about our life stories. just because you chose to procreate and we chose a loftier goal, total internet domination, doesnt mean that your problems are any worse than ours. so can it.

on this dreary friday morning miss casual is giggling about our weekday antics and wondering how ms. ultimate’s night went last night watching some track bike race at friendhugger’s and then celebrating with aaron for his big bday. also we are looking forward to spring league tomorrow am and an epic happy hour tonight in honor of ms. ultimate’s last week at work. get on the party train people. you know where its headed. the land of ameri-CANS and shennani-gans, lemmings. hope you all come out. holler at us.

xoxo
miss casual

p.s. hey rob why did you move to mke from chicago again?

Things are slow at the c.u. ranch, where we’re still recovering from our earth day hangovers. Brutal. Teamocil went 1-1 this weekend in spring league, although ms. Ulty was in Wisconsin and miss casual was in Michigan, so we can’t take any credit-blame. Ms. Mmms, wanna fill us in on the action? There was a mini briefcase scrimmage in smith park on Sunday, too – sad to miss everything, the weather was unbelievably gorgeous as anyone with 4 out of 5 sense already knows. Ms. Ulty did run into Biz (briefcase 2005 fiscal year employee) in a Culver’s in Wisconsin on Sunday, though, heading back from a tourney with her high school team. And yes, carlo, she’s totally beefed up – it looks like she’s been drinking protein shakes and lifting weights all winter. Watch out for that girl.

Last night while ms. Ulty was eating sea bass and drinking decaf with titans of industry and finance, miss casual was at home drinking beer and eating waffles. It was Oberon, though, so that evens things out. Miss casual is moving in with tbrizzle this week, which is a pain and seriously detracting from time that should be devoted to engaging in blogworthy events. We hope tbrizzle likes pink razors and bar tape as much as we do. Speaking of pizzazz (that’s what we’re talking about, right?), what about this grassy banner for the c.u. summer site….we were looking for grass when we set this thing up at the end of last summer, but it never happened.

It may seem early, but put happy hour (hereafter to be known as “H60”) on your calendars for Friday. This Friday is ms. Ulty’s last real excuse for a Friday happy hour, as the following Friday is her last day of work before a summer of relaxation and fun. Probably lemming’s, no need to fix it if it ain’t broke.

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.

We’re a little worried about our target audience given we seem to think about bikes more than discs lately, but so it goes. Wednesday night was no exception: after scoring free passes at the cycle smithy, misses c and u went to a premiere of ‘the flying scotsman’ with some chifg friendlies. This is the UK-made film about Scottish cyclist Graeme obree, who built his own track cycle out of old bikes and washing machine bearings and went on to set world records in the 1-hour and 4-km sprint races. I think I got that right. Overall it was a good flick, but word on the forum is that the book is better. Ms. Ulty thinks it could have been improved by better character and plot development, while miss casual thinks putting ‘eye of the tiger’ on soundtrack repeat would have made all the difference. After the movie we bike-ganged it the map room, where we made friends with Ian, who is coincidentally a buddy of our very own adam of briefcase and c.u. banner fame. You kids are fun, we should hang out and drink beer that tastes like salad all the time (3 floyds rabid rabbit – learn it, know it, love it).

It was an inspiring sports movie to be sure, and we’re totally gearing up (or down, I suppose) to hit the racetrack in northbrook in the next couple of weeks. We hear it’s relatively flat, so it should be a good starter track before we hit the majorly banked walls of the velodrome in Norway to set world records of our own. It’s gonna be fun.

The movie made us think of putting a dramatic ultimate story on the big screen. It would follow a scrappy Chicago co-ed team from the first spring practice, where we are introduced to the main and supporting characters, and follow their development over the summer months. We would explore the motivations of a few key players, and how those motivations combine with love of the game and team politics to create an explosive performance on the field. Needless to say the storyline would lead up the finals at nationals, where The Flying Suitcases win in a nailbiter, only to be disqualified by the UPA because the game disc was of their own design, 175g and all the right geometry but carved from a 1978 samsonite instead of manufactured by discraft and available in the commercial market. Soundtrack will involve ‘eye of the tiger,’ ‘here I go again on my own’ and ‘rock you like a hurricane.’ We haven’t nailed down an ending yet, but suggestions are welcome. Since madam zibby’s going to be in town this summer instead of working on ‘where the wild things are,’ she can direct the action. Let us know if you’re interested in producing.

ms. ultimate: phew, i’m exhausted. what did you think of today’s games?

miss casual: well, i got mauled by a cougar, i didn’t learn anything about ultimate, and i ruined my crystal gale shirt. how do you feel?

ms. ultimate: like committing harey carey.

miss casual: take me out to the ballgame?

ms. ultimate: no, like the samurai suicide ritual.

that pretty much sums up saturday’s performance on the field. we’re not sure how it happened because our team is actually stacked full of ballers, but there it is. it might have been a result of ms. ulty’s boxstep and miss casual’s broken fingernails. a bit frustrating. needless to say other performed like a squeaky bionic man; tun came out of nowhere to handle like a maniac; we found out matt is on our team; mel was everywhere; and we caught just a fleeting glimpse of roadhouse, thanks to the end of tax season. baby you know we call you that because you love it. it turned out that joe was a good trade, 85% because of the hat he was wearing.

it all started off so positively, with dp, liz and the c.u. staff carpooling to save the planet and fueling up on victory twizzlers. they soon turned to bile in our stomachs.

we had given up the weekend as a lost cause, but then rob called ms. ulty to say that he and the benders would be in the city in an hour. she was on the couch in her PJs in the dark when the call came, but against all odds she rallied. miss casual was long gone. luckily mini, doobs and rob brought fun back to town, and we went to annette’s party in logan square. it’s a little known fact that playing shoulders with the rodells is the best way to de-lame oneself. it was all fun and games until ms. ulty got voted off the table in survivor cups. one northside and an underdog later, she had recovered.

sunday brought sun, taxes and potstickers. lookout for mayhem as that guy rob is abandoning us for milwaukee next weekend. this week may be dangerous.

Another weekend is here, which means another Saturday afternoon playing spring league games in sub-par weather. It’s looking like serious competition for team teamocil, however, with our first game vs. feats of strength. Both teams will be playing down some good players, with teamocil missing rob and dan (without these two, who’s going to serve as captain? Ms. Ulty?) and feats sans one j. Ferrari. we’d worry it could devolve into an outright carnival of turnovers if we weren’t so sure that teamocil is ready to win. other andy’s drinking OJ to get healthy as we type. Miss casual mentioned getting to bed early tonight so as to be able to bring her a game; ms. Ulty is finally going to see blades of glory for inspiration. Someone may be showing up to the game with sequins tomorrow. sadly miss casual lost her ‘members only’ jacket; that thing was so f*ing cool.

See you in study hall.

24 is like a security blanket. even if i forget about it sometimes, when i come back to it, it always makes me feel safe. even when things are looking bleak for jack bauer, he is a hostage of some kind of chinese terrorist organization and has a nasty looking beard and greasy hair and is wearing funny looking chinese pajammas, in the next scene he is clean shaven, wearing a t shirt and dejiner jeans and biting off peoples’ ears in order to save our country. some things i have noticed about this season of 24 in no apparent order just because its tuesday and nothings going on.

jack bauer never eats.

does jack not notice that nothing really scary happens until 10 til the hour every hour? i mean going back to my first point youd think he could stop for a mcmuffin at about 25 after because a life-threatening explosion / abduction / shooting isnt gonna go down for another half hour at least.

they must’ve run out of middle eastern actors to typecast as terrorists because this years bad guy, abu fayed, looks just like that french head-butting soccer player zidane or whatever his name is. look out frenchies and italians, youre the new terrorists.

did they have to kill off kumar in the first three episodes? he couldve been great comic relief. maybe he and fayed couldve gotten orange mocha frappucinos and made the characters a little more ‘human.’

anyway thats all. i still love 24. and jack bauer of course. especially now that hes started a man purse trend.

clearly my friday will not be as good as ms. ultimate’s since she is already sleeping late and planning on throwing a softball and biking to hyde park. miss casual, however is holding it down at work. however we at cu, as well as our buick driving friend here, that a good friday comes down to happy hour. so after work itll be off to a going away party for my one friend at work, yoo joung, and then who knows? it could get crazy. all i do know is that tomorrow team teamocil is playing against the volkmans and then cu and that guy rob are going to the ritz carlton for cupcakes. seriously. cupcakes. like a diabetic coma’s worth of pastry and champagne. hopefully well behave ourselves. but probably not. but at least well be wearing cute shoes.

lots of our faithful readers are in italy enjoying beach ultimate at its finest so well have to make do without them this weekend but hopefully well do them proud. signing off.

miss casual

first off, congratulations to team teamocil, again captained by captain berg. apparently only three team members showed up saturday but we only had to forfeit once. capt. berg negotiated a 13-13 tie for the second game. ms. ulty missed had to miss the games because she was hanging in the big apple with her little sis and dan the man. miss casual needed to, uh, taper so as to bring the pain next weekend.

the weekend started friday with dinner in little italy; it was supposed to be little india, but we couldn’t make it that far. we ended up not going to this restaurant, although the name alone promised culinary treasures beyond imagine. word on new york: new yorkers like to defend the fact that they leave piles of garbage in the street by saying that real estate is too valuable for alleys. truth is, it just makes all the streets smell and look like alleys, but actually even worse because there aren’t enough garbage cans. points to chicago on this one. anywho, after dinner we walked past an awesome bike shop; ms. ulty thought of miss casual and wanted to go in, but it was 11 pm so no dice. there were some late-night phone calls about bikes that had our rims (miss casual, i saw yours too. sugarbomb is cuter though). z&u hopped the train to williamsburg to hook up with some of zibber’s friends and go dancing. i wish i could have spent more time there, because it’s the wicker park of nyc and vice versa. we tried to convince zib’s friend shawn to move to chicago and produce a double-deuce based version of the burg - so far we have ‘the park,’ ‘wickertownvillage’ and ‘22′ as working titles. auditions will be held next weekend. it will be a wealth dejin, inc. production. in other acting news, zibbers may not have provided a law$order walking tour, but the big news of friday night was that she’s friends with a special victim. unfortunately ms. ulty didn’t have her season 7 dvd bixed set with her, so no autograph. new york is clearly the celebrity capital of the world.

saturday was shopping in soho and coffee. ms. ulty pondered buying miss casual these shoes as a passover present before trudging across manhattan to chelsea to go gallery hopping instead. someday perhaps she’ll be able to afford the works of art on display. until then, she’s going to rely on zibby becoming a famous filmmaker to hob-nob with the artistic elite.

saturday night was off the heezy thanks to dan the man, a former obie and ultimate playa. and by “off the heezy” i mean we ate mexican food and then played settlers of catan for three hours with the hil formerly known as gerson and mr. mike. according to tony, bk and little have this game and are mildly obsessed with it. there’s a reason why. this game might make an appearance at future happy hours.

sunday brought a little moma action and late afternoon naps. zibby has fallen asleep in the course of writing this post. it’s probably a sign that this should be the end. i hope the weather improves in chi-town and we can get back to our frisbee ways.

well this weekend with ms. ulty out of town yours truly didnt. do. anything. spring league? nope. sunday bike ride? nah. make it out to the sprints at the bar on saturday? heck no it was raining. heres a picture of jdot bringing his a-game at the sprints while i was at home watching florida finish off ucla. actually watching the tournament was about all i did accomplish.

cant that noah boy cut his hair? im surprised his mother doesnt make him since hes on national tv. im sure this is the kind of raw sports reporting our dear friend j only dreams of.

saturday afternoon that guy rob was in a frisky shopping mood and miss casual never argues about a trip to barneys coop so off we went with dennis in tow. turns out shopping after a cocktail (or two) at lunch is difficult. its almost as difficult as doing math. somehow we started talking about the square roots of numbers and it devolved into a long stretch of quizzing each other about our times tables. embarrassing but necessary for the furtherment of science. yeah i said furtherment. what?

quotes of the day
1. dennis at barneys - ‘chain mail is totally my thing’.
2. rob at active endeavors - ‘this store is for all the std swappers.’

i cannot compete with that. i did in fact see blades of glory but i was underwhelmed. i am not questioning the comic genius of will arnett and amy poehler or my total devotion to everything will ferrell ever does but my ribs didnt hurt from laughing afterwards as they did upon witnessing the awe inducing splendor of anchorman.

so hopefully ms. ultimate will fill us all in on her rowdy weekend in nyc hob nobbing with ivy leaguers and hey lets ragers. im sure her post will not be as half assed as this one.

with ms. utly out of town exploring her ivy league options, i am holding it down solo at headquarters. it is difficult having to not only follow the plot of law$order but also order thai food with just one person but so far there have been no major incidents. this weekend will be a little hectic though. i’m still recovering from milwaukee but blades of glory is opening so there will be at least one viewing, hopefully there will be bicycle brunch again sunday, and saturday night there is some crazy bike sprints competition at a dive bar called the mutiny. sounds sinister. and this is all aside from spring league, basketball on saturday (i hope ohio state just wins the whole thing at this point) and many naps.

last night was tricks and drinks. good times but miss casual fell doing a seated trackstand and now has an enormuos bruise on her right leg. the viking even came out since the weather was so temperate and we drank some slovak beer called the golden pheasant. lovely. no one broke anything (i dont think) and j dot and tristan were doing one legged over the bars skids like no ones biznass. this bodes well for summer.

this is an email exchange between ms. ulty and myself today. our friend, that guy rob, who you all know by now, said he was going to start a business involving wealth design of some kind. i just thought we’d share a little of our day to day at casual ultimate.
___________________________________________________________________

subject : wealth dejin intern position

i am writing this email to inquire about the internship position for wealth dejin, inc. i have experience as a pro-dejiner in an architectural firm however i have been reconsidering my career lately as i have been working on area plans all day that i feel could be generated by a high powered computer machine of some kind or drawn by a very intelligent primate / remedial high school student.

my qualifications are that i am a world renowned blogger with casual ultimate, a crunk life company, affiliated with ‘hey lets rage’ corporation. i can drink sparxx at 8oz per minute (7% alcohol by volume) and have a history of leadership experience as i have arranged happy hour for upwards of 20 people on very short notice.

also i make excellent coffee.

i think you will find my record of excellence speaks for itself. i look forward to being a part of the wealth dejin empire.

yours
jess ‘miss casual’ town

____________________________________________________________________

Dear Ms. Town,

Thank you for your inquiry regarding our open intern position for the summer of 2007. Your cover letter is compelling, although you may have forgotten to attach your resume. While a formal resume is not necessary, a list of 2-3 references, along with brief descriptions of your relationship, would be appreciated. Website submissions will be accepted as a weak substitute for references.

Best regards,
Clara Ultimate

Chief Financial Officer and Executive Recruitment Associate
Wealth Dejin, Inc.
1444 N. Paulina
Chicago, IL 60622
(312) 123-4567 (312-get-crnk)
- Show quoted text -

____________________________________________________________________

Ms. Ultimate
My references include :

one mr. robert. pro-dejiner and member of the aia young and crunk subcommitee.

also one mr brown bear. he is studying for a phd in pants free living as well as heading up the flip cup special interest group.

I have enclosed pictures of my references for your convenience.

Yours desperately
jess town

_____________________________________________________________________

These are impressive references, Jessica. Brown Bear has served on our board of directors for a number of years. You will be hearing from us shortly.

Best regards,
Ms. Ultimate

so after our lovely evening with girl talk the cu staff split up to cover both fair cities - ms. ulty took off at the breaka breaka dawn to bring it at spring league and miss casual stayed in mke to ‘race’ in her first alleycat and see the city with our most gracious hosts evan and emily.

ms. ulty and team teamocil went 2-0 beating vijay and finn’s team and taking us to week 2 undefeated. miss casual got coerced into racing in the milwaukee messenger invitational with a fantastic group of people including a couple from mke on a tandem and some other chicago natives. we did most of the checkpoints but got lost somewhere just north of evanston and stopped for directions (read: beer) at a bar called buck’s on the south side of milwaukee. the ride back was a breeze and we made it back in time to eat ourselves silly at buck bradley’s (how many dudes named buck live in milwaukee anyway?) and drink some pbr.

sunday was a meteorological miracle and upon arrival back in chicago miss casual got on sugarbomb and met bjorn for a ride to rogers park to have brunch with monica and tbrizzle. aside from our surly waiter and a flat which j dot and bjorn fixed, it was a perfect summer day…albeit in the middle of march. milwaukee was fun but its good to be back in the chi.

were trying to be quiet because julios watching star wars and evan is in sleepy town. girl talk saved the day, after 3 hours of amateur djing he brought the pain to our friday night. we discarded clothing at this at this bar in order to facilitate our dance mayhem and yet thats just the beginning. we stopped three times looking for our orange and black can and came up empty handed. unless you count friend ship with a lovely youngster who pointed us to a liquor store and a one legged gentleman who ensured ms. ultimate that she need not pump her own m’fing gas. thats chivalry such as we havent seen since the boss ushered us around bucktown.

this is complicated and well talk to you later. we love you.

im staying put, ms. ulty is coming with her a game to spring league. better reckidnize.

xoxo

cu

photos later

okay so this isnt the girl talk were goign to see tonight but it might be an image of the cu staff getting prepared for our invasion of milwaukee. i believe ‘milwaukee’ is from the german meaning ‘lets get crunk’. and thats what were gonna do. we are piling into papa john’s jeep and hitting the road with an i-trip, some three six mafia, and the kittens for company.

last night miss casual got pink bar tape put on her bike to complete its total barbie-fication in time for the trip. also her bracket is kicking some major arse. look out denardis. im coming for you… itll be good for spring league to start up again. itll get us in good shape especially now that the league went 4-3 so well be playing savage every week. by summer well be fast as pumas.

have a great weekend. well try and post an update sometime saturday on our take no prisoners friday night and biking / ultimate saturday am. team teamocil faces off with vijay and finn saturday morning and its gonna be wet and wild judging by the weather forecast. but weve got our tuxedo t-shirts and were ready to party.

Life is moving fast at casual ultimate headquarters these days and it seems we may have left a few loose ends lately in our posts so today’s a wrap up. (In our defense Ms. Ulty is ivy league bound and miss casual is busy at work making every building going up on the near south side look sexy in pictures. But as we all know losers make excuses, winners make it happen… its happening.)

Our last night in sunny florida was spent in a bacchanalia of carbohydrates and singing plumbing. The dolphin in the walls at the town house was in rare form and so was the insane homemade ravioli and cake with seafoam icing. Chuck and Mama town even played a little something while the kids were at the pool. We didn’t get to spend enough time with nick, a self proclaimed ‘considerate little f^&*er’ but im sure well run into him next year when we might even play Frisbee.

Last weekend was ‘ride and die’ as we cruised around the northside… from watching basketball on Lincoln, to mike d’s going away in wrigleyville, finally ending up at a bar called the California clipper where there was swing dancing and a few champagne cocktails. We wish we had been getting green margaritas made in our mouths with becky but alas mostly it was basketball and naps.

However on Sunday miss casual learned how to trackstand like a pro. Is it too late to quit my job and be a professional bike trick do’er? Since team bon vivant lacks a practice schedule miss casual enlisted a private tutor and took off for a sunny spot at the zoo to practice. Before long she was standing for almost a minute! Hopefully bon vivant will a. get a new name and b. start meeting regularly now that tbrizzle and miss casual will be roommates. We will need to correspond with our sister bike gang on the west coast (captained by dr. welsh) to coordinate jerseys, names, handshakes etc.

Lastly sugarbomb, miss casual’s iron steed, got a makeover with some pink deep v’s last night courtesy of our friends at rapid transit. While sugar will never be as pink as mr. tristan’s bicycle, it still looks pretty sweet. The cu staff celebrated by adjourning to HQ to watch law $ order (it ended up being c$i instead) and discuss strategies at getting on thats show ‘the amazing race’.

Thats enough for today. Expect an excited, high pitched, squealing post about girl talk, spring league, etc tomorrow. Lates.

yesterday was the spring league draft, the official start to 2007 ultimate for the c.u. staff thanks to a canceled tourney a couple of weeks ago. ms. ulty and baker are captaining team teamocil in the seinfeld division; we decided to name the team after arrested development since seinfeld is so 1997. baker was a little upset about getting hosed in the draft pick order, so ms. ulty, vijay and finn had to take turns giving him shoulder massages. vijay and finn’s gloating negated their massage effects, though - just wait until we play you!

we added a few briefcase peeps to the core, chengstein and rob, along with their buddies, and some new names and faces. it was touch and go at the end of the draft but we got treemboat, our secret weapon. he’s been running with that new-fangled nike ipod gizmo all winter and is ready to open a can of whoopass on the fields. baker and another captain pulled the ultimate friendship test by calling their mutual friend joe o-r and asking him who he liked more and wanted to play with (the other team had gotten him and bakes wanted him). apparently we’re not the only ones who think baker’s a swell guy, because joe picked him without hesitation.

we can’t wait for frisbee to start. this friday is girl talk in milwaukee, but ms. ulty is torn. does she go to girl talk, brunch, ride bikes and miss the start of spring league on saturday? go and drive back to chicago saturday morning (morning games)? skip girl talk so she can spend all of friday night watching rocky, friday night lights and bring it on to get herself psyched for the games? hmm…sounds like a good poll topic.

with all the excitement and 5 full hours of sleep behind us friday night, we pushed on through to saturday and our trip to miami. after a few hours on the sand in fll we packed up and drove down to our ho-tel, mo-tel, bad ass days inn… which conveniently had metered parking and the most unhelpful staff on earth including such highlights as chrisnise, who couldnt give us more than 2$ in quarters at a time, and funny joking concierge guy who tried to call miss casual a fiend when she asked where the closest coffee shop was on sunday morning. ha frickin ha ha.

everyone did their hair and fluffed their dresses and we were off. alaina and the cu staff adjorned to the delano hotel for a foo foo cocktail and awed at the beutiful interior and crowd before heading to dinner and meeting the rest of team extreme… to the max. we got more food than we knew what to do with but thankfully we had chucktown, who wasnt too full of thai donuts to help out, and tucker, who ate a shrimp tail off ms. ulty’s plate and earned the title ‘trash eater.’

then we set off south to find trouble / a bar / the meaning of life. we stopped at some kind of tiki bar for frozen cocktails and phone calls to long lost friends. expect matching outfits this weekend from our favorite twist cone, brown bear and ms. ultimate. heres alaina in the junlge looking more composed than the rest of us. after that we kept walking in search of more trouble / fun / flourescent booze. turns out though its tough to pick a destination when we have 9 people and a buzz on from drinks mixed in an alley. so we walked to the end of miami. almost to cuba. aliana threw pennys at a stranger, tucker got on a strangers motorcylce (that was coincidentally a ‘cbr’) and then the cu staff tried to break off because of massive blisters on our high heeled feet. we ended up coming back to join our cohorts, post tgi fridays, at teds hideout. what a fun sexy time for us.

ms. ultimate made friends with the new zeeland cricket team before miss casual dragged her away from their accents and big blue eyes to reconvene with our group somewhere around 5am at free spirits. another night of good times and 5 hours of sleep.

we needed to get some material out of this trip so we made the ultimate sacrifice for the blog. we went for 24 hours without sleep (besides the occasional cat nap) to pack as much awesome into our first day as possible. heres how it broke down.

day 1, part un
daybreak : chicago. 4am the casual ultimate staff is up and getting ready for our trip to ohare. 510 am. we gave a rousing cheer for denardis when he sauntered up to us at the gate for our flight. 645 cat nap on plane. ms. ulty does unibomber impression. 10am touchdown in the fll and grab becky before heading to the house and waking up chucktown for scones and coffee. 1123 first trip to the pool with papa town, the cu staff, becky, denardis and chucktown. also in attendance were various residents and their visiting grandchildren. it reminded ms. ulty of her grandmothers pool in willmette what with the old people and whatnot. miss casual lost a game of marco polo to the biggest midget in the game. 1217 pulled pork time. thank you mamatown.

day 1, part deux
146: trip to walmart for sunglasses, towels, special ed sandals for denardis, high life, and best friend forever necklaces for the ladies. 228: cu staff tosses disc for first time in four months. we forgot how much we love this game (even though we were not technically playing a game). it felt good, real good to throw again. our admittedly fantastic skills made us realize we should rename the weekend team, from el camino to team extreme. now say ‘team extreme’ like ’shake and bake,’ with the wavey arm motion and finger pistols. you could do that 100 times and i wouldn’t get tired of it. it riles me up. because we’re doers and not thinkers, we’re going to spend the rest of the trip finding a place that will make us t-shirts that say ‘team extreme’ on the front and ‘to the max!’ on the back. preference is for hypercolor, but we’ll settle for airbrush with dolphins. here are some pictures of our first trip to the beach. denardis got his hat stuck in a palm tree trying to be a smartass and it required 3/5 of team extreme to extract it. then ms. ulty and d destroyed a little boy’s dreams, and his sand castle, and buried ms. ulty in sand. it was cozy.

day 1, part trois: interlude
604 pm: we get back to the house after driving around a bit. chucktown at the wheel was delirious from lack of sleep. 617 pm: we eat denardis’s body weight (playing weight) in beef fajitas and fresh guacamole. ms. ulty declares this best vacation ever. 7:14: showers and talladega nights. lainers came over around 9 and got us off the couch with mike’s help.

day 1, part quatre
1130: lainers leads us to coyote ugly; we owe her an apology for doubting her skills at finding a bar, because we end up at this awesome place with swinging bench seats overlooking a lagoon and a freight train route, but this place is frightening when you first drive up people. ms. ulty thought there was nothing but prostitutes and college boys on the streets, but apparently that’s the way they roll down here during spring break. jesus. 131 am: ferrari’s flight lands at fll, and the rest of team extreme heads to mardi gras. 213 am: all eight members of team extreme are together at the same swinging bench for the first time. we elect tucker rookie of the year for suggesting we drink a couple sparkers to get the party started. (note: the original five had already done this in the parking lot about 3 hours before. there are zero laws regarding alcohol consumption in florida; there actually might not be any laws at all, but lainers actually works for a judge so we know that to be false.) 247 am: discussion of whyte noise, the club immediately behind us. ask us about this one when we’re off the clock.

day 1, part cinq
318 am: c.u. staff gets margaritas made in their mouths at a bar called bricks, shortly before almost getting vomited upon by a total stranger. you’re going to have to go to the vip folder folder to see these pictures, because they’re going to get us kicked out of the miss america pageant. i motherfucking love this country. 357 am: we steal denardis for a minute, much to the dismay of his new dance partner, and flee from the scene. the gps system leads us straight to the mcdonald’s drive thru before heading home for the night. 423 am: sleep at last.

and that was only day 1. needless to say we bailed on any ultimate-related activities previously scheduled for saturday morning. just ask yourself this… what does the dolphin want?

miami is going to be bananas. i think george micheal bluth said it best when he gave us our post title. at left youll see an actual dramatic reenactment of denardis and ferrari coming up from the pool. while the casual ultimate staff failed to get airbrush tans we are still bringing our a-game to this weekend of sun, naps, eating and naps. oh and frisbee. i think theres gonna be some frisbee. and naps. on the beach.

monday night we had an installment of casual dining with bk, akira, and the boss playing the part of an under the weather ms. ultimate. while the wine was lovely and the vegetables were yummy, a curtain that was supposed to be ‘ambiance’ was all up in miss casual’s grill and our waitress was like pat with a weird little purse she carried around. over all i give it a b-. thats right b m-i-n-e-s. i didnt even study. but im partial to la sardine. look out for a more articulate review on our favorite food blog.

mama town is already cooking and papa town is undoubtedly laying on the couch napping and watching golf so its on. we’ll try and post from south beach and by ‘try and post’ i mean well drink a margarita with becky and giggle about something blog related and then forget all about it.

you can tell from our surrealist poetry post that we had a good night friday. any night that starts with andrew trackstanding in the kitchen with a sparxx in his hand wearing ms. ulty’s white sunglasses couldn’t be bad. even though this photo is the last time anyone will ever see miss casual’s enormous phone the night was bananas.

beginning with sparxx, champagne and thai food chez ultimate, we moved on to the clipse show where there were approximately 120 dudes for every female in the audience. it was a sweet show and the cu staff made every effort to keep brown bear posted on the progress via voicemail. when the show was winding down ms. ulty looked me in the eyes and we both knew what we had to do - get ourselves to carol’s pronto. after phoning the boss and mike d in the cab and losing the phone, we drank some pbr and danced til the breaka dawn. there are some more photos of the aftermath at ms. ulty’s involving more sparxx, a candy hamburger, and sass in the gallery if anyone is curious.

the next morning we made some pancakes and bought miss casual a new bougie phone before recovering with arrested development season one and naps. new ringtones include : milkshake by kelis, aint no fun by snoop, and get low by lil jon and the eastside boys but ballin outta control was a close runner up. last night we went to see zodiac with the boss which was long but also quite a good way to wrap up the weekend.

it is 3:56 am. we tried to make contact with the boss but he was out of range. we made it to carol’s after seeing the clipse however we needed more sparxx to get miss casual to dance with any skill. it was sad. the boss was the only one who could dip her, its sad but here we are. outkast, leftover pizza, cocktails, we called vijay big time, etc.

hamburger cake biatch.

We’re not particularly religious here at c.u., but we’ll concede this much - God, or the gods, made three things with staying power: the planet, ambrosia and sparxx. Rumor has it we’ll be ringing in the Sabbath in style tonight with celestial gift number three, lovingly bestowed upon miss casual and ms. Ulty by their new best friend, Andrew. And this had better be 7% a by v, Andrew, not the orange can circa 2005. this should be just what we need to get rolling for the clipse show at the metro – this and our hi-tops, of course. As the photo to the left proves for life, these gentlemen like ice cream just as much as we do. There was talk of outfit coordination but it looks like we’re running out of time. Ms. Ulty got new kicks that are either the most fun or ugliest shoes she’s ever owned, we can’t be sure yet. It’s gonna be a good night for sure though. maybe we’ll even talk about the new CUSL gender distribution policy, who knows. Things could get crazy that way.

Also on tap this weekend is a trip to south bend, at least for ms. Ulty. Miss casual is storing up his mr. briefcase fun reserves for the season. Dubes, hoffman and george Clooney will be hosting what promises to be the Party of the Weekend. Any briefcase players who have been on the fence should check their oil and wiper fluid and hit the road tomorrow evening. I hope there’s time to celebrate treem’s hott news about getting into his program at northwestern for the fall. He’s the PhDizzomb.

oh how miss casual misses that guy rob… work is such a lonely place without him. so for the second night in a row yours truly rolled up to map room on a school night. how is this place so packed on tuesday and wednesday? apparently when im home watching law $ order the rest of the world is drinking exotic beer on armitage.

tuesday night worlds collided over maudite when our chifg friends and our ultimate friends all ended up at one table by sheer coincidence, nay destiny. then the next night rob and his pro-senior-dejiner friends and miss casual went back for more unibroue. too bad rob had an allergic reaction to awesome and we had to leave early so he could get an emergency traecheotemy in the cab. rob actually works out at depaul gym and spotted our favorite viking there last week but he says its not okay for guys to approach other guys at the gym. is this true? i mean they’ve met over beers before and stuff… i am putting this up for discussion since girls obviously play by other rules.

worlds colliding… as bg says ‘a casual divided against itself cannot stand.’

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…

with bryan not yet in the picture, most of us slept until 11 to conserve calories. thank the sweet lord for thor & liz, who hooked us up with egg scrambler, french toast and sparxx (7%). sometimes 2 cups of coffee just doesn’t do the job when you have a full day of waterslides ahead of you.

the c.u. staff arrived in the dells around 4, but had to stop by the outlet mall to look for hi-tops before buying copious amounts of booze and heading to the lodge. thank goodness we arrived before the blizzard, unlike bjorn, who has never hard of pythagoras or his theorem and therefore went through milwaukee instead of the clearly shorter madison route via 90. tbr and monica did the same thing but had a reason (custard). they arrived just in time to join us for law $ order (that was intentional, it’s money) and a coloring contest at the loose moose bar and grill. ms. ulty ordered the fettucine alfredo despite our waitress’s warning that “to be honest, it’s not as good as olive garden.” ms. ulty couldn’t figure out if that was a good or bad thing.

fast forward eight hours, when the rest of the crew arrived. it might have been the blizzard, the long drives or the blackout blinds, or all of them, but for some reason people thought it would be a good idea to stay up until 4:30 in the morn watching bad boys (1). we love early will smith as much as the next blogger, but no one wants to wake up that and a loud game of ticket to ride.

with the cyndi lauper playing, bathing suits dried and sparxx in our system, we’re ready to get this party started. joe just started dance party 9000 and it’s only 12:21.

great wolf is many-splendored thing.

you’re going to have to turn on your speakers and go here to understand the title.

we here at casualultimate are more than a little excited about going to great wolf with 13 of our closest friends this weekend. it’s been a hectic week at work for ms. ultimate, and miss casual is still reeling from playing magical desks in the office, so we need to unwind. and what better way to unwind than in a plastic log cabin condo watching bad boys 1 and 2 while bk whips up yet another fabulous meal? it’s going to be so fantastic that ms. ulty had to buy blog cabin long underwear for the big sleepover; that’s a close-up and, yes, those are brown rhinestones.

the general itinerary is something like: drive up at noon on friday, buy beverages once we get across the state line, arrive at aforementioned plastic cabin, take off clothes and go on the waterslides (we’re wearing our suits underneath), go in hot tub, jump on floating lilypads, eat dinner, drink beers, watch movie, play scattergories, repeat. we might bring a disc to toss if it’s nice, but why go outside if it’s always 84 and sunny inside the lodge. mini was upset there was no blogging from baker’s party last weekend (although we hear phone calls from dube are more than entertaining enough–dube, meet me at the military base in two hours), so we’ll try to get it together in the dells. we’ll be coming to you live from the top bunk.

Our dear friend the letter j who you might remember from such posts as ‘too much sparxx at rwip’ and ‘we guest posted on his sports blog’ is taking over our space today to talk about the oscars and other fun movie stuff. hes an actual writer in real life so it will probably blow. your. mind. so with no further interruption from me…. heres jeff

_____________________________________________________________________

I know this might go against some deeply help rule, but I am using capital letters. (edit: i think our blog is actually not set up to recognize capital letters and yours will be edited out when it posts automatically. sorry. - miss casual) Again, I apologize if this hurts your eyes or defeats the true nature of being casual. I’m just used to typing with the big guys and that’s that.

I mainly talk sports and movies. I have this sort of time on my hands since I am 95 percent retired from ultimate. I break out the cleats for a reunion tourney, Poultry Days and Sand Blast (though technically I remove the cleats for the latter and just complain about how sensitive my feet are to the hot sand).

Anyway, on to the movie talk …

I will be watching the Academy Awards, like I do every year. Sometimes I like to think of it as my Super Bowl. Not this year though, the movies I love didn’t get nominated enough, the host is good (Ellen Degeneres) but not great (Jon Stewart) and the Bears made the Super Bowl, which made my Super Bowl the actual Super Bowl.

Dp and Liz will be able to give anyone insight about how I view the awards afterwards. For the first time, they are joining a small group of friends to watch. Denardis will also be there before he leaves us all for the East Coast.

I will be doing a running diary for beep central and hopefully everyone reading this has already voted for the Scorecard Movie Awards … but here, now, before anyone else gets to see it, I present my Top Ten Movies of 2006 … with a couple extras thrown in … and in the true spirit of being casual, screw the capitals.

1. the departed - everything felt intense - suspense, laughter and violence
2. borat - no comedy has made me think more about the ugliness of America
3. little miss sunshine - it’s nice, with just enough cynicism
4. thank you for smoking - really might be the smartest spin in the group
5. notes of a scandal - it’s a drama where you sit on the edge of your seat
6. last king of scotland - great performances
7. children of men - sci-fi done really well and i didn’t hate Michael Caine
8. united 93 - for the subject, this movie couldn’t have done any better
9. mission: impossible: III - i don’t hate tom cruise’s acting
10. brick - high school crime noir, sounds awful but it’s not

close:
stranger than fiction
the heart of the game
inside man
an inconvenient truth
the painted veil

That’s it. That’s the list.
special guest - Jeff Schwister - signing off.
jschwister.blogspot.com
thedailyscore.blogspot.com

younger siblings today: what are they thinking? first i find out my very own zibbers is a vimeo star (zibbo i’m disappointed you don’t know all the words to lovefool). but this is nothing in comparison to the fact that lainers’ little bro is never going to work in this town again. dude that’s disgusting; i judged the scavenger hunt back in the day and nothing like that happened. maybe i’m getting old and boring, but it seems like things got out of hand.

don’t these kids know that employers google?

friday night miss casual and ms. ultimate broke out of our normal social circle to make friends with some chifggers. we found them to be very philosophically similar to ourselves. nat (the one in the front there) even gave us this post title, which was so good we should’ve said it. after trading glasses and drinking some high life at gold star it was time for dance party 9000 around the corner with andrew tending to the music and everyone else tending to the pbr. miss casual made instant buddies with tristan whose bike is so pink she fears she will never be able to compete.

then saturday it was all about alaina and dan baker. yes mr. baker turned 30 and we all got to celebrate. plus we had reinforcements in from florida in the form of ms. ulty’s oberlin buddy. we started at club lucky waiting quite a while for a table and making plans for carols with mike d. unfortunately our full bellies made us too sleepy to swing dance with denardis and we were punished for it by repeated verbal abuse via text message. heres a picture of ms. ulty in her swank new headwear being charmed by our favorite south bend resident tom carter.

sunday the ja rule to my ashanti picked me up and we checked out the cusl town hall meeting. i think im gonna leave the recap and debate to the forum. lets just say baker wasnt making a lot of sense in the wake of his bday.

There’s been a lot of back-and-forth on the upcoming CUSL planning meeting on the c.u. forum over the past few days. CUSL, after reviewing the league survey results and talking with “previous UC leaders” is proposing format changes that fall into the following general categories (from CUSL website):

———————
Competition/skill appropriate play
Many people have stressed a desire to play in more or less intense environments from how some of the current leagues are formatted. As a result, we would like to add a “tiered league” system across all seasons. This is already happening in Spring with the two divisions. In summer, it will likely involve adding a “competitive” league to run concurrently with the standard CUSL league. In the fall, it may mean dividing teams into and A and B division.

4/3 gender play
All leagues will play a maximum of 4 men and a minimum of 3 women. The large majority of survey respondents preferred a 4/3 split to other options. This will likely mean that some men will not be able to get into some leagues unless they bring a female player. If there is a large enough pool of people unable to get into a league, we may try to organize and open league or individuals league for those players.
———————-

Does this 4/3 rule mean that the number of women in the league will magically double from previous years, or does it simply mean that hundreds of men will be forced out of the league, even if it is stratified? Will it spur formation of an all-men’s league? If so, what will be the consequences?

Yours truly thinks that everyone should be free to play or not play in whatever capacity they wish, but having the option of a men’s league will suck the majority of the male talent out of the co-ed league, leaving it full of mediocre players (um, myself included) and, possibly worse, a lot of women who we’re conned into playing so that the guys they know could get into the league – I’m worried these women won’t show up at games. what about keeping it 5/2 and stratifying based on skill level instead of making both those changes at once?

Moreover, women already end up playing savage in league *all the time* - wouldn’t making it 4/3 instead of 5/2 make that worse? My attendance at leagues has always been good, but the times I don’t show up to games it’s because it’s hot out, I’m tired from playing earlier in the week, and I know I’ll be playing savage (again). If the quality of play in the co-ed league is degraded, where will that leave the good ladies? Will they opt out of the league, too?

What’s the best way to build ultimate in Chicago, either as a recreational activity or a competitive sport? Can a citywide league accommodate only one of these goals?

I just got the following email from the godfather of CUSL himself:

“Dividing CUSL into two division is a very bad idea. It will suck the talent from the league and will keep the new players from learning. It will eliminate the party together concept that we enjoy. Women will move adding to an existing problem. The elite players and those who play the Fall Series should enjoy CUSL as a casual alternative before the competitive season.”

casual or serious? will league format make the decision for us? Throw down your thoughts in the forum if you’d like, and show up at the blackrock (3614 n. damen) at 4 pm this Sunday for the league discussion.

the best valentine ever is still undoubtedly the one that ralph gave lisa in that episode of the simpsons but in the absence of decorated shoe boxes and valentines with choo choo trains on them, this post will have to serve as my valentine to our readers. as you could expect i love valentines day because im a big sap. much more so than ms. ulty so i am putting none of the responsibility of this post on her for the record.

even inspite of the 8 ft of snow outside on the sidewalk and some drama with our battle of the beach plans, miss casual is in a fantastic mood. how can you not love a holiday about cupcakes and pink? i mean that’s what its about right?

cricket cricket

well whatever. anyway on this cold and snowy valentines day, miss casual has lots of love for all of our casual ultimaters, near and far, who make this blog remotely readable and wishes you all hearts and puppies and professions of undying affection from handsome, witty suitors.

a little while ago we posted some of the search terms that lead unsuspecting surfers to the land of c.u. we’re still getting some relatively logical hits that aren’t “casualultimate blog,” such as “wicker park best diner” and “pajama boxer briefcase gallery,” but they’re getting stranger. the foreign ones are particularly intriguing. here are some recent searches, in no particular order (joe, apparently you have a fan/stalker out there):

fun and flirty business casual
casual beer season pants
her pointy ones…photos
i’m not gonna lie it’s gonna get weird
you can take girl out of ghetto
the bat cave WI
messy casual bun
your dirty mind VIP crew
spiderman girlfriend name
chicago machine ultimate joe ferrari
VIP Crew - you know how we do it…. (Germany google)
munition metal piercing (france google)
embarassment after a drunken night (UK google)

well this was one of the less blog worthy weekends in memory. the cold weather and lack of biking is really starting to send yours truly into winter hibernation mode. as soon as the sun goes down, which is at approximately 3:30 you can find me on the couch watching arrested development. thats pretty much my saturday night in a nut shell although at least ms. ulty braved the cold to see aaron and treem and celebrate aaron’s new job. there was some mexican food friday night and a bit of shopping saturday but other than that the only thing worth mentioning is seeing volver last night. great movie. i was not a big fan of penelope cruz in general but now i am. we are going to hold regular seminars in ms. ulty’s living room to try and get her perfectly messy, half up, half down hair thing happening.

also since its almost time for the oscars and weve been attending the cinema regularly of late, check out the scorecard movie awards brought to you by our good friend the letter j. better than your average awards show since you have a say in the out come. (the dixie chicks won everything? thats the best we had? is this what the kids are listening to these days? sigh….) if someone had a fun weekend, say, designing currency for dogs and cats to use, or participating in a traditional viking winter sport ritual, email us at casualultimate@gmail.com. you can guest post.

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.

what could follow a night of such magical wonderment as friday? well saturday i guess. the cu staff recovered by hitting bongo room for brunch followed by light shopping and naps. the evening found our team split between two neighborhoods with ms. ulty throwing down for martha’s bday in wrigley and miss casual and the boss taking the lovely ladies of the er out in bucktown.

dr welsh had finished her test and freshened up before coming down to meet us at piece. (in a side note, the cu staff, inspired by ferrari’s manuary, will be throwing femuary, a midwinter celebration of being girls, and it will involve lots of freshening up for sure, as well as manicures, sleepovers, and romantic comedies.) then we moved on to rodan for icicles and hot toddies. do you know how much heat a person gives off? 150 btus per hour, which was enough to partially thaw out the window at rodan.

after all that we barely had enough energy to bake a mountain of cookies to take to the boss’s crib on sunday to watch the superbowl. the callaways were nice enough to bring their little one for ms. ulty to gush over and tbr was nice enough to bring thanksgiving. turns out the cu ladies would make excellent lesbian mothers. witness miss casual helping ms. ulty with her beer while she holds audrey.

the game itself was a bummer since our team lost and the ads were all sinister and depressing. the boss dubbed it the ’superbowl of crying’ after an ad with a sad robot almost brought miss casual to tears. she recovered in time to discuss the referees’ high waisted pants and what to do about them with tbr and monica. the only reason we remember any of this is because we transcribed our notes from the evening off of miss january.

even though the bears lost it was a good night and it was nice to watch nick swardson like 4 peas in a pod after the game. tv makes us feel safe.

at some point around 2am, ferrari was wearing cho’s speedo over his jeans doing pushups by the fire. he stopped to beat denardis with a belt. (miss casual was thinking this bodes well for the mayhem to come at BOTB)

joe little in his disturbing pink shirt received the best dancer of the party award from timmy.

the guest of honor was getting sick in the bathroom upstairs while an unnamed couple got busted in his room.

denardis fumigated the living room with cho’s secret stash of axe. thats where the party ended. with the axe.

after a huge brunch we are looking forward to an afternoon of tv. holler if you want to join us.

we hope to god were not still logged in on bk’s computer.

we heart RWIP.

we’re just not sure what to write at this pioint. it’s whatever time; cho ripped off jor ferrari’s underwear and it’s on tim halt’s head. and then ms. ulty threw up a little bit in her mouth and ad to run to the toilette.

cobb pushed bjorn down, there was no struggle for supremacy, which is in fact surprising. it is difficult for me to type on the keyapd at this time,

tyson has a mustach drawn on his face

we;re not sure ifthe stains on on cho’s shirt are going to come out. we’re also not sure if we’ll make it out of here alive,

thor just stampeded thru,. this is potentially not good.

after having six people in cho’s bed everyone had white powder in their lungs. gold bond powder actually.

tyson’s reasoning for problems in vegas last weekend : ‘we didnt have liquor. just beer. and mushrooms’

cho replied to vijay’s criticisms of his plan to move to china by pleading ‘wait jayadev don’t leave. don’t be mad.’

apparently the boys get emotional over the water show at the bellagio.

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

i have tb! i can give it to you right now! you don’t have to go to china!
- vijay, 2.2.07

10:20 pm CT

someone brought cho pussy (cat). but given the “free samples” of axe he had in the room, we can be sure it’s gonna stay in quotes until tomorrow morning.

we’re working to get cho to 7% al/vol, per the new sparxx. all we know is: we’re not leaving until we see that smooth, smooth chest. thankfully we have a doctor on hand.

- end transmission -

well its friday but i swear this was the longest. week. ever. i don’t even know if ill make it to 530 when ill pick ms. ulty up in the casual mobile and head back to the double deuce to start the weekend with a manhattan and a fresh kitten chez ultimate. last night we regrouped to plan our attack of the weekend with the boss and treem at sweet alice. why have we not been to this place? it has good greasy food, fat tire, and a bald bartender who calls me hon. what more could we want? since it is a stone’s throw from paulina im sure we will be playing a lot of foosball there in the near future.

the boss has a cold so it’s lucky for him that dr. welsh is in the heezy this weekend. she is in an aeroplane right now headed towards chicago to help us throw down for the super bowl. it has been a week of stressful showdowns at casual ultimate headquarters but it didnt even give miss casual cause to buy a pair of gucci sandals so it couldn’t have been too bad. however stressing out is against dr.’s orders so we well be putting an end to that and say a little prayer for our friday to go smoothly.

dear lord baby jesus, in your tiny golden pajamas watching baby einstein videos and learning sounds and colors, please let us last through our workday and bring the pain to this weekend with dr. welsh. also please let the bears beat the living tar out of the colts and let our hangovers, be they from food or 40s, be mild on monday. also because of a contract which stipulates that i mention happy hour at every grace id just like to say that it will be delicious and that i hope the boss’s surprise for ms. ulty involves video games. amen.

with five weeks left to go before battle of the beach, miss casual and ms. ultimate decided to kick our workout into high (fixed) gear with a grueling triathlon on saturday, which lasted until the wee hours of sunday morn.

Stage 1: Wake up at 8:00, don’t eat breakfast because it makes you fat and slows you down. we’re trying to convert 100% of our winter energy reserves into lean muscle by march 10. drink coffee to get your heart racing, and then jump on a high-performance bi-cycle racing machine for a 15-mile ride in frigid temperatures. luckily about 20 other people had this same idea, and we met up with the lady and gents from chicago fixed gear for a ride from montrose to the planetarium and back again. here’s a pic of some of the tri-athletes at the start of the ride, courtesy of our man fro. upon completion of this stage, it is acceptable to have a light brunch of bagel and cream cheese (as pictured here) or almond croissant, followed by a repeat of the same after some book shopping at myopic and quimby’s.

Stage 2: After a quick shower to warm up, we went for a consultation with one of our trainers, monica, where she was working the gatorade table/hostess desk at the peach pit. she advised us to drink a beer each (full frontal and double d are choice selections this time of year) and consume a pizza as quickly as possible. this kind of training will prepare for between-game hydration and bagel consumption in florida. we then turned to an endurance sitting session by watching seven episodes of arrested development season three in quick succession. when you’re watching this many episodes on DVD, it’s important to conserve seconds on the clock by fast-forwarding through the credits and opening song of consecutive episodes. we had to sit through the first five episodes only to get to the sixth, which contained steve holt (steve holt!) gems of training wisdom. our favorite adages include the post title, as well as: “don’t ask ‘can i’, ask ‘i can’” and “no blood, no oil”. words to live by as we moved into the all-critical third stage.

Stage 3: stage three was all about isolating muscle groups that will be necessary for beach ultimate dominance down in florida. we chose to focus on the quads, abs and glutes - “wind your waistline to the bass line” was our battlecry as we rolled up to the darkroom for a merciless three-hour dance workout. it’s important to dress appropriately for this stage, particularly for the quads, so we had to wear our heels. one of ms. ultimate’s dance partners showed what a great workout dancing could be, as he refused to dance without holding his shirt up and fondling his six-pack. someday that will be us. just as miss casual was beginning to wonder, “can i?” she ran into inspiration in the form of an old college buddy, j dot. his drunken posting makes us think he’ll be guest posting about dance moves here in the near future.

it was an arduous 16-hour marathon, but that’s what a girl’s gotta do if she wants to play serious ultimate. we plan on repeating this every weekend between now and botb: stage 1 with our chifggers, stage 2 switching it up each week, and stage 3 at various venues including carol’s. we’re going to run out of arrested development, though, so anyone who bought season two of the office is welcome to join the workout. we’re looking forward to an update on the weekend in arizona, gentlemen, so don’t let us down.

xoxo,
c & u

well this week has actually sped by and its already time for another wicker park weekend. this time though most of our peoples are out of town in tempe playing ultimate of all crazy things. pfil, dp and chucktown will be bringing the pain to arizona and hopefully some of it will make it onto this blog come next week…although were not sure itll be b-rated. other friends of cu will be posting soon about their time in acapulco last weekend. if you don’t know already, the trip has spawned its own very funny blog about food, one of our favorite topics here at casual ultimate. theres even a thread about food happening in the forum right now….

the cu staff, holding it down at the manor, will be inverting our normal pattern of ‘take no prisoners’ friday followed by ‘recovery’ saturday. we’ve got a nice little saturday planned. tomorrow morning we are getting up early to ride bikes with some of the fine people of chifg and then napping to rally for dancehall mayhem at the darkroom tomorrow night. we might even huff kittens…i dont know. i dont know if we’ll have time… so it looks to be a chillax evening on paulina but tomorrow night we will be ready. i am going to get my nails done like this so that people know we mean biznass. holler.

we were just alerted to the practice of kitten huffing and felt the need to share this tragic story of animal abuse with our readership. thanks to stacey the bronze goddess for the tip - and keep your kittens away from lainers.

what a weekend. friday night we started out at handlebar with a paulina sub-committee meeting. dp, liz and the cu staff talked weekend strategy over samosas and alpha king. we were joined by other vips and discussed future party themes such as ‘the rubix cube’ and the ‘2007 is like a tuxedo t-shirt’ before settling on turtle races in two weeks. ms. ultimate noticed a mailbox with the name ‘p. frisbey’ on it so we left them our card assuming their first name is ‘play’. before leaving for lemmings we made friends with people we already knew at the bar through cookies and bicycles. the guys at boulevard bikes are the best. they didnt even need the cookies cause theyre already so sweet. also we think in ms. ultimate’s future senate run ‘peace through cookies’ could be a powerful foreign policy.

but her main campaign slogan, ‘i motherf%^king love this country’ was born of ameri-cans at our next stop, lemmings. ahhh lemmings. packed though it was it always brings the best crowd and beer that tastes like freedom. we stood at the bar next to some people we’d end up going to the bulls game with the next night strangely enough. the cu staff discussed the attendees later and realized that we had a perfect storm of a guestlist… all our favorite regulars plus some new people to keep it interesting. ms. ulty’s cool uncle and mac (an old nemesis cohort of dr. welsh) turned out. and the professor and vusi showed up just in time to debate the winning potential of bears vs. snakes with miss casual, the boss and a very unfriendly ‘young’ lady. our conclusion? snakes by two.

it was a winning weekend in many regards… the bears, lots of friends old and new and cookie distribution seem to be the major themes. we laughed, we cried, it was better than ‘cats’. in conclusion miss casual has to print a retraction of a previous comment regarding payton manning and if you want to know about the post title you’ll have to ask the staff or the boss since it is not b-rated (safe for blogs).

if you want to know what’s going down in this picture you’re gonna have to check out our friend jeff’s blog, the daily score, since we are guest posting over there today. sports by the letters c and u, if you will.

not much else is new in the casual ultimate universe. thai food, cookies, and law and order… you know, the usual. the bright spots in our otherwise standard wednesday evening were miss casual getting to have a drink with her other friend claire after work and some oberlin alums, jesse and rachel, are staying at chez ultimate. they took our wednesday from a 4 to a 7. but look out friday cause we’re looking at you for a big 10.

we just booked out tickets for battle on the beach in west palm. awwww yeeeah. we miss the flying plastic, and the sand, and the sun, and the warmth. The team is going to rock, and we’re staying with the towns. Ms. Ultimate is looking forward to mamatown’s legendary meals and v-neck sweaters and loafers on the sideline. Rumor has it lainers is going to resume her role as #1 fan. And most importantly we are going to win. Apparently it’s usually a bunch of college teams, but we don’t care – let’s win, people. Start Q1 2007 off right.

last night the cu staff dropped in on some of our favorite people, the original briefcase baby and her lovely parents. that makes two weeks in a row that weve shown up uninvited on a monday night on someone’s doorstep for a housecall. look out. our next monday night housecall could be you. heres a photo of the clocktower at the end of the block in printer’s row that made us feel like we were having a dickens moment.

over onion rings and pinot nior we discussed childrens books, ms. ulty’s new profession as a nanny, and just add water family planning. maxine is almost too much for us to handle. she’s so cute we couldn’t take out eyes off of her until she called it a night. we all agreed that we are eagerly anticipating dr. welsh’s return to the midwest in a few short weeks and that stuffed cheeseburgers are what life is really about (if the bacon and cheddar are inside, they don’t make the rest of the condiments slip around on the bun). allison turned maternal and gave us advice on how to keep boys in line, and we saw her strategy in action: ‘nate, you’re putting music on, right? nate, are you opening a bottle of wine?’ usually you have to pay someone for insightful observations like this but we get it for cheap. thats where the post title comes from. nate admitted that sometimes he just lets allison drive. are we in the trust tree?

the house, the baby, the parents are all warm and lovely. what a great stop. we’ve had two great monday nights in a row and who knows where we’ll end up next week? you might wanna be home with some hot chocolate on the stove in case its your house.

xo
c and u

With the awful weather cramping our cycling style, c.u. is looking to branch out to indoor wheel sports. this guy went 85 straight hours on the stationary cycle, with only one 5-minute break allowed for every hour of biking. wouldn’t necessarily give up my day job in pursuit of a Guinness record, but that seems like a weekend well spent. certainly more productive than c.u.’s weekend, where our greatest accomplishment was returning a keg and picking up ms. ulty’s old bike from the shop, and we needed hot cocoa, fresh biscuits and two hours watching talladega nights to recover from that. ms. ulty’s now wondering if “i’ll come at you like a spider monkey” would be an appropriate threat for her commuting nemesis.

to be fair, the weekend started out strong, with ms. ulty chowing down on killer cuban food with treem, el presidente and hendude. the pork-based lipids went to straight to her head, though, and things got crazy by the time el presidente led the charge to innertown pub. miss casual had just witnessed a knockdown dragout fight that ended in three people getting dragged out of the bar and the bouncer doing shots to dull the pain of getting punched in the face. is no corner bar safe for democracy? saturday meant biking and let’s pet puppies; *do not* let ms. ultimate near that store because the next time she goes in, she’s coming out with a puppy. on the way out we ran into our top economic advisor and biggest workplace fan, coach. schultzie’s party capped off the evening, but we were too tuckered out by leisure to see it through to the end. the fact that we made it to the party at all was a triumph of the human spirit, a feat just slightly less astounding than breaking a guiness world record. any crazy stories? who won dice cups?

Fate has presented me with what could be the biggest revenge-seeking opportunity of my life – should I take it?

We all get to the point where we recognize our fellow commuters; the woman who carries a small piece of luggage instead of a laptop bag like a normal person, the guy who air drums while listening to his ipod, etc. I may be the only person out there, though, with a commuting nemesis. There’s this one girl – long dark messy hair, tragic eyeliner, worn-out boots, funky clothes, art institute canvas bag – who is often on the same blue line train with me and gets on at division, as I do. One day about a year ago, the car was packed to the gills as usual and the clark&lake stop came up, where 70% of the passengers get off. This girl – let’s call her Bitch - was standing right in front of the door, and I was packed in behind her (the folding doors, not the sliding ones which allow much more room for people to get on and off). The doors open, and she doesn’t move at all. I’m getting pushed from behind, I’ve said “excuse me” and she doesn’t move at all, and she basically gets pushed out of the train (along with me). I guess I stepped on her foot, and of course I say “sorry” as she flashes me an evil look. We both get back on the train, the next stop comes up and she gets off, but as she does she looks back at me and snarls, “fat ass!” fat ass. Who even says that anymore, and is it really applicable to someone who weighs less than 300 pounds? Unbelievable. Some other commuters look at me and we chuckle about it, but still – who does bitch think she is?

Of course, I see her often on the train platform, looking angry at the world. Just yesterday morning, in fact, i needed to sit on the platform bench to rearrange what I was carrying and the only seat available was next to her. I sit down, she gives me a dirty look and gets up and walks away. Whatever, we’ve established that she may be psychotic and it must be difficult to carry around that much rage all the time. But again – who does bitch think she is? I feel like it’s part of being a citizen in a large city that you have to treat strangers in your path with at attitude neutrality if not outright graciousness. Apparently she’s in a different camp.

And then, last night, fate stepped in. I’m taking a continuing education biology class at northwestern to improve one of my grad school applications, and **bitch is in my class** I’m 95% sure it’s her – I had looked her in the face that very morning, same boots, same stupid canvas bag. But it class she is sugary sweet with the professor (leading me to think that she may actually have some sort of bipolar mental disorder, I wasn’t just calling her names).

So what do I do? Do I let her be a crazy asshole in the morning and then sit in class with her at night? There are, like, a dozen people in the class so individuals can’t be anonymous. Do I accuse her of cheating on an exam so she gets kicked out of the degree-seeking program she’s in? do I just confront her and ask her why she thinks she can treat strangers the way she does? Do I do it in class or on the el platform? Whatever it is, I want her heavy black eyeliner streaming down her face along with tears of remorse.

- ms. u

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.

so last night a couple of the team bon vivant members decided to spin their wheels to break in redh.o.t., ms. ulty’s new steed. after we passed logan square and then belmont, we realized we should drop in on our peeps at the real world house. joe little, ever the gracious host, answered the door ‘bryan’s making dinner. you cant have any.’ feel the love.

but bryan made plenty so the cu staff stayed and tore into some chicken and the best broccoli lyrica’s ever eaten. not to mention some rare blondie that miss casual opened up. it seems joe little may be interested in joining bon vivant in the spring when he gets a road bike. he and miss casual are going to be doing centuries by the end of the summer.

so it truly was the good life last night becuase over red wine, pointy soccer, and parsnips the cu ladies got to enjoy the company of cho, who will be leaving us soon becuase of his 10 year life plan. we will miss him but hopefully he’ll guest post on the blog from china, or brazil, or someplace weird. then on the way home we stopped by the Brs to show off the bike to carlo and got to meet sally’s new puppy who is a barrell of energy, kind of like ms. ulty herself.

the argument for fixed gear bikes went up in the forum so check it out and add your two cents. we’re looking forward to a rebuttal from tbrizzle.

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.

This morning I was riding to work and saw a girl sprawled in the street, face down, after getting hit by a cab while riding her bike. She was not moving and I honestly thought she was dead. Eventually she started moving a bit but was in a lot of pain; she was only moving her arms and everyone was just waiting for the paramedics. and you know why I thought she might be dead? Because she wasn’t wearing a helmet. Wear your damn bike helmet and be safe, people, it’s not that hard and no one cares how you look. This is especially disconcerting since a certain casual Viking was hit by a car yesterday, and also wasn’t wearing his helmet. Thankfully he’s fine but geez people, just do it. I started wearing my helmet regularly because I got sick of lying to my mom, who asked me if I wore a helmet every time I told her I was riding my bike (yes, even though I’m 25). Now I wear it because I know people getting killed while biking is not something your pediatrician said to scare you, it happens. According to the Bicycle Helmet Safety Institute (seriously) even the safest riders can expect to crash every 4,500 miles. Careening through major thoroughfares at rush hour cuts that mileage number significantly. Clearly getting blindsided by a cab is going to do some damage with or without a piece of plastic on your head, but a good hair day seems a small price to pay for avoiding head trauma.

a number of items were found in the aftermath of the new years party. shoot miss casual an email if any of the following belong to you:

- digital camera with incriminating photographs
- one asian man, face down on couch
- lone leather glove
- zt’s dignity, believed to have been lost in k-dog’s closet
- Brian (tall male, blonde)
- lamp, found in ~1,000 pieces (thanks, jerk)
- one pizza cutter, covered in cake
- approximately 80 champagne bottles, empty
- one case sparxx - found, currently in fridge for this weekend
- Schultzie’s countdown watch
- lipstick, found on C(B)R’s collar
- new c.u. careers as party planners
- determination to make 2007 even better than 2006
- lost: ping-pong balls; found: beer pong ingenuity (champagne corks-genius or crazy? you decide)
- lost: underarmour; found: well-dressed ultimate players - who knew?