National Pickleball Month Recap
Posted on May 14, 2025 by Ching under Pickleball.
I got to play quite a bit of pickleball last month in honor of National Pickleball Month. I organized several open play and ladder events at Chicken N Pickle, Tap N Paddles, and at Seneca Park.
I also got this giant cardboard paddle and used it as a guestbook.
Here are some pics from the kickoff event at Chicken N Pickle.
Jenni participated in a leadership program at Wichita State University and invited her cohorts for beginner pickleball at West YMCA.
Here’s a picture from our April Chicken N Pickle ambassador open play.
Laurie Hagen from Overland Park and her friend Jenn came to visit.
We tried to have all day open play at Seneca Park on April 26 to wrap up National Pickleball Month but Mother Nature was having none of it. The rain started about an hour into the event. Anyway, we’ve decided to have a do-over (a literal rain-check) on Sunday, May 18. Incidentally, May 23 is the 3rd anniversary of the Wichita Pickleball DUPR club so there are plenty of reasons to celebrate. I hope you can join us!
Comment on This
Trading Points for Gift Cards
Posted on May 12, 2025 by Ching under Food and Drink, Free Stuff.
Those who know me are fully aware that I am neurotic about rewards points. Lately I have been so obsessed with Fetch that I’m actually letting it dictate where I eat lunch. It also helps that I’ve had some pretty good restaurant offers recently.
I had this offer from McAlister’s Deli which led Brian and I to try all the McAlister’s locations in the Wichita area. We even went to the one in Derby, which was our least favorite. Not only was it the smallest location but the service was horrendous. But either way, we got what I came for, which was Fetch points.
The one positive thing that came out of the adventure was that it allowed Brian to rediscover that he actually really likes the ham and cheese sandwich at McAlister’s. He had written McAlister’s off due to his own set of bad experiences but now we’re actually open to eating there again. We’re just not going to go to the Derby location.
Amazingly, out of the three locations we visited — Maple and Ridge (West Wichita), Greenwich (East Wichita), and Derbt (South of Wichita) — the location that impressed me the most with their efficiency and attentive service was the West location which is the location that was responsible for making Brian hate McAlister’s to begin with; however, that was back when he worked for Edward Jones so it had been a few years. Maybe they have new managers and new employees there and that has made all the difference. They were the best out of the three locations. The only thing I don’t like about the West location is that parking in that strip mall is a complete mess. Brian said he used to watch cars crash into one another all the time in that parking lot when he worked for EJ and they had their office in that same strip mall. So I guess that part hasn’t changed. LOL.
The latest Fetch promotion I’m chasing is the Il Vicino 30 points per $1 spent offer. It didn’t take much to convince us to go though because we really like Il Vicino and we would eat there anyway. With or without getting bribed with Fetch points.
It was beautiful yesterday so we ate outside on their patio. This was at the Bradley Fair location. Brian and I split a caesar salad and a pizza this time instead of our usual vespa (our most favorite thing to get there).
I like it when we can agree on food to split because, not only does it save us money, but it also saves us from having to take home a bunch of leftovers.
Here’s what the vespa looks like. We had gotten it just a few days prior when we had lunch with our friend (my coworker and coffee/lunch buddy) Chris Townley at the College Hill location.
This is half because we always split the vespa when we order it.
As per usual, we also split a caesar salad on that visit. If I were there by myself and couldn’t split with anyone, I would have gotten the lunch special which gets you a small salad of your choice (probably caesar for me), small pizza, and drink for about $16. It’s an excellent deal. You can’t beat it.
However, the best deal is that all of these points I’m earning from my Fetch receipts get turned into Amazon gift cards once I have enough of them. You can choose gift cards from a variety of stores or restaurants but I always just get Amazon because Brian and I order almost everything from there. If you’re not already a Fetch user, I highly recommend it. You can turn basically anything you do into gift cards with Fetch. Download Fetch with this link or use code BKNPBF to get a bonus when you submit your first receipt. Happy Fetching!
Comment on This
Training Academy with Brady Randall
Posted on April 28, 2025 by Ching under Pickleball.
Year after year I always struggle to figure out what to get for dad for his birthday. Often, he just has to settle for a birthday card or a gift card of some sort (if that) because I can never figure out what to get him. This year I thought outside the box and got creative. I booked a Training Academy session with Brady Randall at Tap N Paddles for both mom and dad as an early birthday celebration.
I think they both enjoyed it. I mean, what do you get someone who already has everything?
Here’s a picture of the instructor, our friend Brady Randall. You might remember him from the Tres Palapas trip last November.
You can catch Brady every Saturday from 10:00 AM to 11:30 AM at Tap. Here’s the full Training Academy schedule:
-
2.5 – 3.0 Training Academy
- Tuesdays at 5:30 PM with Parrish Gumeringer
- Thursdays at 12:00 PM with Ed Egan
- Mondays at 5:30 PM with Dave New
- Saturdays at 10:00 AM with Brady Randall
- Mondays at 10:30 AM with Cindy Egan
- Thursdays at 5:30 PM with Ramon Lozano
3.0 – 3.5 Training Academy
3.5 – 4.0 Training Academy
4.0+ Training Academy
There are lots of options for lessons, and all the instructors are great. I hope mom and dad sign up for a full series.
Comment on This
Itzcali Tapas & Tequila Revisited
Posted on April 25, 2025 by Ching under Food and Drink.
The first time I tried Itzcali Tapas & Tequila, I really didn’t like it. Fast forward to one year later and I’m kind of changing my tune.
Chris Townley and I ate there for lunch a couple of months ago. This time I decided to try their horchata, which was super creamy and really good. It pretty much set the tone for the meal.
I ordered the elote and it was also excellent.
Normally you would have birria as a taco but Itzcali offers it in different forms so Chris and I had it two different ways that day. I had the birria soup and Chris had the birria flatbread pizza.
My birria soup was delicious. This lunch is truly what changed my feelings about Itzcali. So, when Chris suggested we have lunch there again a few weeks ago. I was like, sure. I really liked it the last time — thinking of our most recent visit and not the first one (which I didn’t really like).
On this next visit, I opted for the cucumber aqua fresca. It was amazing. It’s now my most favorite drink to get there.
I had the bowl with pork al pastor (above) for lunch. The presentation was 100x better than the first bowl I got there. Chris had a quesadilla (below) but I cannot remember what meat he chose. He said it was good, though.
Anyway, I like Itzcali so much now that I actually didn’t mind eating there twice in the same week. The same week that Chris and I had lunch there, I met our friends Grant and Susie Ternes and Brian there for lunch too. Chris and I went on Tuesday and I was back again on Friday. Grant and Susie had been there before but it was Brian’s first time.
Here’s a picture of the restaurant interior, which is interesting and unique. There’s no other place that looks like this in Wichita.
This was the day of Brian’s follow up with Dr. Chris Dakhil, when we found out the results of his PET scan. Everything looked good.
I had to get my favorite drink!
Susie went for something stronger.
The rest of the pics that follow are pictures of our lunch.
We don’t really have a lot of tapas places here in Wichita so I am grateful to have found one I like. I feel like this place struggled in the beginning but it looks like they’re finally finding their groove. It’s now on my permanent rotation. Let me know if you have other tapas places you like that we should check out.
Comment on This
A Pitch Perfect Saturday
Posted on April 23, 2025 by Ching under Food and Drink, Movies, Things to Do.
The day started out how most of our days start – with coffee. I finally got Brian to try Adelitas Coffee Co (formerly Las Adelitas).
While there, we were joined by our good friends Jay and Becca Dill. And then, sure enough, Chris Townley my coffee-run bestie from work, comes walking up. The five of us ended up hanging out for a bit that morning. Jay and Becca had just returned from their European adventure. It was nice catching up.
Later that night, I had some friends come over for a Pitch Perfect movie night which all came about because I found out my friend Susie Ternes had never seen Pitch Perfect, one of my most favorite movies of all time.
From left: Cindy Egan, Megan Phillips-Nighswonger, me, Monica McGehee, and Susie. Cindy had the idea to make it a pajama party.
Susie said she wanted to be there for Brian’s first bite of Ziggy’s pizza post cancer treatments so we decided to serve Ziggy’s pizza and wings that night. Brian fixed himself some food before retiring to the office to play video games.
We only got through 2 movies that night — Pitch Perfect and Pitch Perfect 2 — so we still need another movie night for Pitch Perfect 3. Although, I did watch the third movie a week or so later because I just couldn’t help myself. LOL.
Comment on This
