Choose Your Style
brianhelge.com [blog]

436 Sold

Apr 28, 2008
436 sold


A big congratulations goes out to my parents for selling the 436 in this horrible housing market. I'm sure everyone reading this blog has a memory or two of the great house that stands on Laramie Trail.
0 Comments | Post URL (#)

Our First Anniversary

Apr 22, 2008
Christi and I celebrated our one year anniversary yesterday ... in unusual fashion:

The Build Up: Christi and I both took the day off to celebrate together and spent the past two months deciding what we would do on this historic milestone in our lives. We decided to try to recreate parts of our honeymoon here in Omaha. We had a trip to the zoo planned, fish and chips at the Dundee Dell and much more.

The Reveal: Even though we've been planning this for a while, I was secretly planning a day that she didn't know about. Throughout the whole month of April, I was planning our day and hoping that she wouldn't find out. At 6:00 am sharp, I woke Christi up.

"Why did you set your alarm on our day off?"

"Because plans have changed. Do you remember what the traditional gift is supposed to be for your first anniversary?"

"Paper, right?"

"Yep. Open up your card."

As she was opening up the card there, which I didn't even have time to sign or write a note in, there was a piece of paper inside. As she opened it up, she saw that it was a boarding pass for a flight heading out 2.5 hours later to Chicago. Our engagement city. She was completely surprised by everything, and a few hours later, we were back in the Windy City.

We arrived to a beautiful day (72°) and started walking around the city. We headed to the Merchandise Mart to view home ideas for our future dream house and she was even kind enough to turn down my new fish and chips place I found (to go with our Aussie honeymoon) and tell me that we should eat at Gino's East because you don't come to Chicago without eating some pizza.

Then it was off to the Pier where my heart raced out of my chest 3 years earlier. It's always fun to go back and recollect on how you got to where you are today. After logging a few miles on our feet, we took a break and she graciously let me take some pictures of us. I told her that every year I want to have a picture on our anniversary so we can always look back.

As for gifts for each other, we went down the Magnificent Mile and each bought a new pair of shoes, for a couple of reasons:
  • As mentioned above, our feet were killing us.
  • The insides of our rings are engraved with the saying, "I'll never walk alone."
This brings us to our dinner reservations at Carmine's, the Italian restaurant we first ate at after we were engaged. We decided to take advantage of the nice weather and eat outside. There was an abundant amount of people that knew each other walking down the streets and with the combination of the bouncer next door, we were glad we traded a romantic night for some fun and conversation.

I also researched and called 5-10 bars to find a place that made a Moscow Mule and a Grasshopper. I was lucky enough to find one place near Carmine's, but with dinner running late, we walked back to the "L" (with the thanks of the local firefighters) and made it onto the platform to head back to Midway(with the help of Christi's amazing eyes) to catch our flight back home.

All in all, it was a long but fun day and we were happy to get off our feet and play with Stan when we got home.

Here's to one down and many more to come.

Cheers.
1 Comments | Post URL (#)

One Crazy Sport

Apr 14, 2008
Team123456789 RHE
North Dakota State000000000 071
Creighton200000000 200


What's wrong with the box score above?

Baseball might have more intangibles than any other sport. I'll put down good money that North Dakota State's coach, Tod Brown, agrees 100% with me. His Bison team got beat 2-0 against Creighton ... while throwing a 9 inning no-hitter.

I've heard of teams scoring during no-hitters before, but I've never heard of a team winning the game while being no hit. I talked with Creighton's assistant coach, Jason Shockey, at his younger brother Collin's house on Friday about it, and he was absolutely disgusted by it. I figured that by now the team would joke around and be happy that they won the game, but by the sound of it, everyone is pissed off.

I've never had the feeling of being no-hit, but I'm sure that if it happened and our team pulled out a W, I could crack a smile and joke around about it.
1 Comments | Post URL (#)

Basketball's Over ...

Apr 9, 2008
... but that doesn't mean that we have to stop talking about it. Kansas had a great finish and brought the title back to the Big XII, but what about that other team in their conference?

Oh yeah, I'm talking about Nebraska basketball. Everyone keeps saying how many talented players Doc has, but how talented are they off the court? Ryan "slim" Anderson shows us:



Like every year, we have our basketball student athletes go pro in something other than sports. Yes, that includes you Aleks Maric.
0 Comments | Post URL (#)