Friday morning Steve Andrews and I were joking at 8:45am that both of our weekends were blank canvases. I didn't really have any concrete plans other than to try a new food with Awesome Girlfriend Megan somewhere near Lake Hopatcong. Our travels this weekend took us to Franklin, Vernon, Lake Hopatcong, and more. We had great laughs with friends, and I even tried cheese. More on my cheese challenges later.
Friday got off to a tough start. I had a long day at our radio station where we seemingly kept having technical glitches. By the time I left our radio station, I was in our building for almost 11 hours. I was drained. My goal was to just have a quiet, Friday night in with a couple of strong beverages. By 7:45pm, I had my feet up and was getting ready to change into my pajamas. My friend Borasio texted me to alert me that our sister station Max 106.3 went off the air. YIKES! When radio stations go off the air, it is all hands on deck. I immediately got into my Jeep and flew from my place in Vernon to our station in Franklin. I was thankful to live less than 20 minutes away from our radio stations for circumstances just like this. After 20 minutes of trouble shooting attempts at our radio station, I realized that the problem was likely happening from our radio tower, way beyond my help as a Program Director. I went back to my place and had a Bog Iron Brewery Middle Child IPA (a gift from Padre back home.) High testing and yummy, I had two and then went to bed. I was ready for the weekend to start.
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Saturday morning I had planned to go into work and get myself better organized. Quite often it's easier to get stuff done on the weekends when fewer people are in the building. I was done after a couple of hours, not too bad. After work, then it was time to errand and grocery shop. Adulting fun. I hit a couple of what I call the Franklin Trifecta, hitting Walmart and then Weis Markets. After grocery shopping, with food in my car, I was too lazy to cook anything myself. Ever have that happen to you? I went to The Cottage for lunch, having trouble deciding between buffalo wings or pizza. My buddy Damian from The Cottage said "Steve, why don't you do buffalo chicken pizza?" I'm always reluctant to do Buffalo Chicken pizzas, because I don't want any blue cheese on my pizza or near my existence. Yes, I love buffalo wings, but hate blue cheese. We were able to get it without blue cheese, and it was FANTASTIC. Huge victory. I was then able to laugh and have a beer with our buddy Buckeye Paul. Buckeye Paul last weekend made a gentleman's bet with Awesome Girlfriend Megan, because he was rooting against Rutgers University Men's Basketball Team. As you can imagine, Meg was less than thrilled with him. He promised to buy her a victory drink if RU could pull off the upset, and they did! Meg will be very happy to nurse that victory drink from him in the near future.
After The Cottage, I was able to relax and watch skiers from my deck. It always gets my blood pumping to watch skiers flying by my place all afternoon. LOVE living here. A friend asked me on Instagram (self plug, you can follow me @SteveAllanRadio and I'll follow you back,) if I was on vacation somewhere. She was blown away when I told her I hadn't gone away, but instead was lucky enough to live in a vacation resort community.
Saturday afternoon, my bestie Brad texted our Sunday night group that his son Joey was in town visiting. After being out of town during his daughter's recent visit, I was happy to be able to hang out with his son. Me, Brad, JG, and Joey had some Saturday night fun. Lots of energy at Minerals due to a gymnastic event happening at the same time. I then received a text from bestie Jasen, who has a spare TV that he's giving to Awesome Girlfriend Megan's eldest daughter Caitlyn. Perfect! I left the fun at Kite's and continued to hang with Jasen and Brendan, recapping our Epic Weekends so far.
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Sunday I was able to see Awesome Girlfriend Megan wooohoo! Meg researched some bars on Lake Hopatcong. This is a great spot for us because it's simply so beautiful in so many parts. We definitely need to frequent Lake Hopatcong more when the weather gets warmer. Last weekend we went to Stone Water, and it was fantastic. Slightly more upscale than Meg and I are used to, we prefer simple pub food and their menu was more exotic than our normal tastes. Meg researched a couple more places, and they appeared to have normal pub food woohoo.
Little did we know, that Meg and I would end up channeling our inner Guy Fieri, as we basically were living a Sunday life of Diners, Drive Ins and Dives. We went to Mason Street Pub which had one of the most interesting parking situations I had ever seen. Picture a one way driveway down to the parking lot, and the lot is right on the water. Literally. Normally when you go to a spot on the water there's a fence or some distance between you and the water. NOT the case here. If you drove 10 feet past your parking spot, you would've ended up right in Lake Hopatcong! Ironically our view was of Stone Water where we just were the previous weekend. We had a beer there, then ventured off to Patrick's, an Irish Pub on Lake Hopatcong. There we were able to get wings and pretzel sticks, and I was able to make good on the promise I made on the radio. On Friday I promised that I would try a new food. Meg and I battle planned it out, deciding that I would dip my pretzel stick into the beer cheese sauce. I tried spicy mustard, AND the beer cheese sauce. I didn't like either, but it's still a victory to try new things. Wherever Meg and I go, it seems like we always get a story out of our new adventures. Comedy gold.
Sunday night, time to recap our weekend with Brad and JG, plus our trusty bartender Sam. I told them the story of me hating the beer cheese, which led to me admitting to the crowd how I don't like cheese at all. WHAT? Indeed. I can do cheese on pizza, but that's pretty much it. I'm not a fan of the texture. That being said, it is my goal to start trying more cheeses because there are so many different kinds and styles. If it doesn't taste too cheesy, I'll give it a shot! JG and I were getting heckled slightly for not being cheese fans, lol.
Overall, my weekend quickly became Epic and wonderful. We hope you had a wonderful weekend too. Time to start planning next weekend - Shipping Up To Boston with Awesome Girlfriend Megan for my family's huge annual Saint Patrick's Day Party! #WhatCanPossiblyGoWrong?
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