Tracy Morgan at Mystic Lake Casino

Tracy Morgan at Mystic Lake Casino

Todd Swank's Diary Entry for March 1, 2020

We had the opportunity to spend time with many good friends this week including Guy & Jeanine Perera on Tuesday night.  They invited us to join them for "Restaurant Week" at PLate in Prior Lake.  Restaurant Week is a fun event that happens in the Twin Cities where a wide variety of restaurants offer deals to come in and try some of their signature dishes.  We were pretty pleased with our meal at PLate and our good time with the Pereras.

Wednesday brought Miss Sheri and I to Emmetsburg, Iowa.   This is Robert Emmet who is the namesake of the town.  Apparently he was considered to be the most romantic patriot in Irish History.  He was hung by the British back in 1803 at the ripe old age of 25.  I don't think he actually ever visited the town of Emmetsburg before, but the people who started the town apparently liked him quite a bit.

Our reason for the tip wasn't a good one.  Our good friend Ron "Sugarman" Myers' father, John, passed away and we were there for his funeral.  Although it was great to see several of our old buddies, I wish it was under better circumstances.  

Rest in Peace, John!

Friday night connected us with our old pals, Karl & Tina Zitzewitz.  We went to Mystic Lake Casino to see Tracy Morgan on his No Disrespect tour.

I always hate when performers put in strict "No Photography" rules on their shows because it makes it difficult to blog about them.  Usually I try to sneak some shots anyways, but security was especially diligent on this particular evening and I didn't want to risk it.  Silly rules.

I was finally able to sneak this photo at the very end of the show with my phone.  We had a good time at the event.  The first 3 comedians were all very good and had us laughing quite a bit.  We were a bit disappointed with Tracy, however.  He literally was checking his notes every couple of minutes which I've never seen a professional comedian do before.  He was also very surly and a lot of his comedy was kind of mean spirited which surprised me because I always enjoyed him on SNL and 30 Rock.  I know he had a bad accident with a Wal-Mart truck a few years ago and maybe he's still struggling with his recovery from that, but I doubt I'll ever spend money to see him perform again.  

Saturday night brought us to the Zitzewitz home for their annual beer tasting party.

It's a fun event where everyone brings two 6 packs of beer they find to be unique and we all have samples of each to discover new flavors we like.  I found this red beer called Rype to be the most interesting.  It was a bright red ale and had a unique taste to it.  Karl's cousin convinced me to mix it with a different seltzer beer we were tasting and the combination proved to be a winner.