Source: http://frugaldad.com

JANUARY

2011 started off awesome as I was in Japan with Amanda and Lisa (and others!). We got to ride an epic pow day in Hakuba with over a meter of snow. We also made new friends, tried new foods, and went to our first onsen.

Amanda, Lisa, and I left Hakuba and headed up to Niseko to meet up with Team Australia. We pretty much rode fresh pow every day. It was amazing.

We also ate a lot of yummy food. I still miss the udon..and the heated toilet seats!

I got back the US and soon headed to Denver to meet up with Tali for the annual snowboard trade show.

We saw Diplo spin at a private Nike party. I wasn’t impressed.

FEBRUARY

My brother took the whole family to see a Nets game as a Christmas gift. Here is Sly dissin’ Vanessa.

We also celebrated Vanessa’s birthday.

APRIL

My sister Natalie had her big art show at Kean.

The whole family got together to celebrate Easter.

MAY

The New York Public Library kicked off the 100th anniversary of it’s main branch. As part of the celebration I was one of 500 people picked to spend the whole night in the library playing a game called Find the Future. We searched the building for clues that lead us to help write a book overnight.

JUNE

Natalie, my parents, and I headed up to New York for Bike NY’s Discover Hudson Valley Bike ride. Natalie and I did the 30 mile ride and my parents did 18.

JULY

We went camping at Lake Tobyhanna State Park in Pennsylvania to celebrate Independence Day.

AUGUST

My friend Sarah and I joined hundreds of other people dressed in white for a pop-up picnic in NYC’s financial district for the New York City’s first Diner en Blanc.

My friend Lucie from the UK was in Cape May vacationing for a couple of weeks. I had a lovely time visiting her while we went to the beach and biked around looking at the old Victorians.

At the end of August I was supposed to do my first triathlon with my sisters, but Hurricane Irene came and it was cancelled.

SEPTEMBER

My (not-so) little brother Jonathan turned 30!

I was very honored to be a reader at Greg & Claire’s lovely wedding in Milwaukee.

I went to Paris for a week with my mother and my Aunt Peggy.

We had a very special birthday lunch for my aunt at Le Jules Verne in the Eiffel Tower.

OCTOBER

Two of my closest college friends got married on October 1st. I only had the pleasure of witnessing Lincy and JB’s wedding in Montpellier, France. Christina was getting married some 3000 miles away in Baltimore.

After the wedding, Leslie and I traveled to Prague for lots of cool buildings, cheap beer, and good food.

Then we took an overnight train to Poland. We spent our first day at Auschwitz, one of the horrifying places that everyone needs to visit.

We settled into Krakow for couple of days for more good food and the coolest church I’ve ever seen.

We made a quick trip to see Warsaw. It was kinda Disney-like.

My sister Natalie got married during that crazy blizzard on October 29th. The power went out 10 minutes before the wedding began. I was the maid of honor so I have no ceremony photos, but I made the cupcakes.

NOVEMBER

I spent November recovering from the past 2 months.

DECEMBER

Natalie and I went the Devils game on December 16 to watch Scott Niedermayer’s Number retirement.

Christmas!

I’ve been posting on lorenextreme/lorenius since 2003. Here’s my first scintillating post from March 2003 (posted when I finally got on the blogger platform).

A few other highlights from the past 8 years:

• 2010: A recap of what I ate during my flight to Tokyo
• 2009: Lemon Italian Ice Recipe
• 2008: Garden Stuff with Photos!
• 2007: Tahoe Trip
• 2006: Hoboken Jib Spots
• 2005: Super Sunday
• 2004: El Duque!
• 2003: NJ Devils Stanley Cup Finals – Game 5

I’ve been using Google Analytics since 2006, so here are a few fun stats.

• My most viewed page is, by far, Simpsonify Yourself. For some reason when you google simpsonify my page is the top hit.
• My most visited category is gardening.
• Outside of mainstream sites (ie google, twitter) dianarikasari.blogspot.com provides the most referrals. I have no idea why. Seriously, go look at that site.
• In order, the top ten states my visitors come from are New Jersey, New York, California, Washington, Minnesota, Utah, Wisconsin, Texas, Florida, and Montana.
• The states I am least popular in are Alaska and Wyoming

It seemed to take forever to get seated and have our orders taken, but at least it was yummy.

There was a classic car show on the boardwalk but we decided to go and change into our beach stuff and then come back to look at that. My family is not the swiftest at getting ready so this too a loooong time.

The beach cost $7 but it was not too crowded. The water had some algae but was pretty warm for mid-June. We did all your typical beach stuff and no one got sunburn!

We rode back to Natalie’s house ready to eat. Vanessa suggested pizza which sounded good to me. We got ready for food much faster than for the beach and drove to Scala’s over in the West End.  It was delicious! I love white broccoli pizza so I had 2 slices. A nice icy glass of coca-cola totally hit the spot with pizza and after a hot day at the beach.

We also spotted this pink Fiat that was in the car show. It’s tiny and has wicker seats! Later we saw them driving it. It had 2 adults and 3 kids in it!

Then we crossed the street to get some italian ice at Lighthouse ices. I got lemon and blue raspberry. On a side note this was like the cheapest dinner ever – $55 for dinner, drinks and dessert for 6!

Happy Father’s Day, Dad!

I had to wait about 15 minutes for my turn to have their “Shoe Dog” fitting. This involved me getting my foot measured – I was told I’m a 9.5. I wear 9 in regular shoes. Then I stood barefoot on a pad that measured foot pressure. There I learned that my right foot is flat and my left foot has a normal arch. I put 51% of my weight on my right foot and most of my weight is on my heels. After that I ran barefoot on a treadmill. You also answer a bunch of questions on a giant touchscreen monitor. When I was done they did video analysis on my treadmill running. I was told my right foot turns out a bit and my left is straight and my achilles is straight.

So I was told to get a neutral shoe and that their custom insoles would be good since my feet are different. However they were out of my insole size so I got a raincheck. I tried on a bunch of sneakers and ended up buying Asics Nimbus 12. With Natalie’s VIP account and coupons they ended up being about $100. Oh, and they’re hot pink. The sales guy was pushing the Nike Vomero 6 as his favorite and they were comfortable but I didn’t like how they kind of collapsed when you stepped on the balls of your feet.

After shoe buying we grabbed lunch at Ocean Cafe. Then we were off to Lowes to pick up some lights for my seed starting. We hit a park up and did a 3 mile run to try out my new sneakers. (They were great). Then we grabbed Kyle and went to the Tinton Falls Golf Center to hit some balls. They had brand new range balls and that’s what I blame for my terribleness. Finally we had a yummy dinner at a seafood place before I headed home.

More photos from the show

#1 Watch the Brewers lose

#2 See some bronze people

#3 Go to Red Dot Schlitz trivia night

Well, I’ll be damned if he didn’t make it happen. However, the man has a 200 room mansion and I still had to sleep in the living room on an air mattress.

Saturday night we went to the Brewers vs Cubs game. I’ve heard tailgating in Wisconsin is legendary – so we had to do it. Pizza and beers on the trunk in the parking lot.

I saw people playing corn hole. Playing that will get you shot in NY.

They must have heard me whining about the roof being closed, because right as we finished off our last beer they opened up the roof. I grabbed a quick photo with the Bronze Bud before we headed inside.

We had great seats except for all the Cubs fans. They guy in front of us was especially awesome. He proudly showed off his University of Phoenix class ring. Awesome! Not much action in the game and the Brewers lost 1-0. However in exciting news the Chorizo won and the scoreboard counts CUTS.

We finished off the night at Kopp’s where I got my first taste of custard. Rumorator and I both got Smile Sundaes and brought them home. Roommate von Rumorstein helped me eat mine but I still couldn’t finish it.

Sunday was even better as we had a nice brunch (after we went inside to avoid the bees). Then we headed North to Two Rivers. The final destination was the Hamilton Wood Type Museum. It was awesome! The museum director, Jim, gave us a fantastic tour. I mentioned to him that I was trying to show Claire how letterpress works and he offered to show us around the print room. Then we were allowed free reign to explore and take photos.

For some reason on the way up we didn’t see any cows (lots of silos though), but on the way back I saw lots. Including horses that RvR declared cows.

Sunday night we were supposed to have gone on a Mariachi Recon Mission, but it got canceled due to lack of Messicans. So the three of us headed to Chez Jacques for a romantic French dinner.

We enjoyed our dinners and RvR brought home a lot of pork. He may have a career in politics.

Monday we grabbed lunch at Palomino’s and headed downtown to visit the Bronze Fonz. He’s short.

We putzed around Alterra by the Lake for awhile. No free wifi after noon. Bullshit.

We were supposed to go visit Moda but they were closed this week. Don’t they know who I am? Bullshit.

Soon the big event was upon us! Trivia night.

There were a lot of expectations going into trivia night. Larsma kicked off one of her teammates to make room for me. After the ritual spilling of 2 Schlitzes, trivia got under way. I dubbed our team Mariachi Recon Mission in honor of our failed mission.

Frankly, we kicked ass at the first scoring round getting 99 points and having 5 perfect rounds. The second round was rough, but we picked it back up in the 3rd to win by 3 points. I got the 4 & 5 point questions right in Quantum Mechanics (see I really am an engineer!) We took home a lifesize Schlitz cutout, $25 bar tab and a Schlitz cooler. Now personally I would have taken the neon light but the group wanted the cooler.

Tuesday I was on my own. I ate my leftover sundae for breakfast. I am that badass. Then I walked along the lakefront to the Milwaukee Art Museum. The Quadracci Pavilion is totally rad. I wish I had my SLR instead of a point and shoot.

The art was ok. I’m used to the MET & MOMA so it was a little small and lacking the biggest artists but they did have a diverse collection. The Bradley collection was pretty good. I thought it was lame that it was called the Mrs. Harry Bradley collection instead of the Peg Bradley collection.

I walked back to Castle von Rumorstein and realized I was starting to know my way around a bit. That’s good since I’ll be back in about a year for a big event!

Thanks all the MKE folks for making my trip super-awesome! Come visit me in NYC!

You can check out more photos over on flickr.

Also, the weekend recap from Rumorator.