It appears that the past few weeks (months?) of eating out at the Brooksider more often than not has taken it’s toll.  I don’t know exactly where mini corndogs and waffle fries fall on the nutritional scale, but apparently not very favorably.  So, Monday morning I started… A new diet.  Not a very fancy diet, mind you.  It loosely consists of “eat less and don’t go out every night”.  Shouldn’t be THAT hard.  I also (gasp) took up jogging.  Maybe “took up jogging” is an exaggeration at this point… I’m “testing the waters” of jogging.  I’ve been hitting the treadmill at the gym for about a year, so I figured it’d be roughly the same thing.  Not really.  You’ve got wind, hills, (albeit very slight ones,) and nothing to tell you how fast to go.  The whole “pace” thing is definitely a new concept for me.  It’s kind of like driving; when you’re a few feet behind somebody, the natural tendency is to go ahead and pass them.  Well, that’s fine when you’re in a car that’s powering itself.  If you’re relying on lungs that haven’t seen fresh air in umpteen years… Not such a good idea.  So far it’s going pretty good though.  It’s exactly 2 miles down to the Brooksider and back, so that’s been the route every night.  And, I do manage to avoid the sirens call and turn around when I get there.  My favorite part is the wacky thoughts that start creeping into your mind at about the 1/2 mile point.  Bizarre, wacky thoughts, but with the lack of oxygen and extreme fatigue, they seem perfectly lucid at the time.  Provides a lot of entertainment to pass the time.  Some of my favorites are:

1. I wonder if that lady would notice if I sat in her stroller, and she could just push me back.


2. Hey, look at that, some kid left his bike unlocked…


3. I bet I could jump in the back of that pickup truck undetected.


4. Hey kid, I’ll give you $50 for your scooter.

Ever been to www.googlism.com?  Kind of an odd site.  You can put your name in and it will tell you all kinds of fascinating stuff.  I learned things about myself I wasn’t even aware of.  Some of my favorites:

• phil is a top bloke


• phil is basically the only one to blame if you don’t like the comments on these pages


• phil is as charismatic as can be but he cannot will a cure with one heartfelt admonition


• phil is “getting real” and helping you unlock your root core and create your life the way it was meant to be


• phil is not an acronym for some new dynamically streaming cross


• phil is a committed calvinist, with a decidedly baptistic bent


• phil is crowned king of the jungle by simon holden


• phil is reputed by townspeople to be more than 100 years old


• philip is quite a challenge at home and at childcare


• philip is more the victim than the villain


• philip is a name common to both bulgaria and america


• philip is said to have been martyred at hierapolis of phrygia


• philip is not fond of his english teacher miss narwin


• kenagy is manager of kenagy family farms in albany and is an innovative vegetable


• kenagy is free with museum admission


• kenagy is checking out

Unfortunately “Phil Kenagy” doesn’t return anything.  Try “Chris Martin” though; there’s some good ones in there.

Whew.  I’m glad that weekend is over.  That was one of those weekends that was fun, but there was junk going on all the time so it was kind of tiring.  I think we did go to the Brooksider Friday night for some relaxation… Other than that it was all running around.

Saturday was the big wedding reception for one James Munkirs.  He managed to barely sneak in under the wire on his vow to find true love before his 40th birthday.  It was a great event, albeit an indoor one, on the day of what I am labeling “The Single Nicest Weather This Year”.  I’m getting a lot of kick-back on that label, but I’m standing by it.  That could have very well been the only Spring-ish weather we will see all year.  Oh well, gotta make sacrifices.  Other than what shall hence-forth be referred to as “The Susan Incident”, the party was a rousing success.  (I shouldn’t say “other than” because it actually contributed to my enjoyment of the event immensely.)  Afterwards we went to a nice little Yuppie place around the corner, Nick & Jakes, and then we all hooked up over at our house to “make a plan”.  A good, if a bit overwhelming, crowd showed up; Martins, Belangers, Frerking, Browns, and Scottens.  Oh, and Todd and Susan were there too.  Wait a minute, weren’t they supposed to be… uhhh, never mind.  Anyway, after kicking back and relaxing in the beautiful weather for at least 90 seconds, it was decided that we should go to dinner at 75th Street Brewery.  I’m not a huge fan of that place, so Martin, Todd and I hung back while everybody else went.  After that they went to Bobby Bakers, and then back to our house.  Man, that’s a lot of people for our 500 square foot house.  It was a fun bonding experience though.  Sat around and talked about how fun James used to be.

Sunday we slept relatively late, then went to the Hereford House for lunch with Doni’s parents.  Man I had a killer KC Strip.  That’s not actually my favorite cut, I just went with it on a whim.  Getting a little wacky in my old age.  My cutting-edge gamble paid off; excellent steak.  After that, we did a little shopping on the Plaza (bleah) where Doni bought a new pair of shoes for her trip this week.  She’s in Cincinnati all week for work, so I’m bacheloring.  We closed out the weekend over at Susan’s with Episode 2 of the Sopranos and a great pot of spaghetti.  I tried to watch Six Feet Under again but couldn’t pull it off.  Man that show is horrible.

In between all that, I managed to make a successful conversion to my “new” server.  The site is now running on a 500 Mhz has-been PC, with 128 Meg of ram and a 40 gig hard drive.  And doing so quite well, I might add.  This frees up my other PC to… Do something else.  The Red Hat Linux debacle, part II, was another complete and utter failure.  Let’s see, I can struggle with this stupid thing for weeks on end trying to make it even remotely functional, or I can put Windows on it and have it fully online in an afternoon.  I chose the latter.

Slackin’ AGAIN  Unacceptable.  I’ve been busy, what can I say.  No, seriously, I have.  Problem is, if I wait too long into the week, I either forget what the heck I did on the weekend, or it doesn’t sound nearly as fun as it did Monday.  So I’ll just skip the “weekend wrap-up” all together.  Actually, one thing does stand out: the end of the Sopranos season.  We have the whole weekly dinner thing over at Susan’s house, see, where we watch the show and eat some grub.  But, since the Sopranos is over, we decided to keep dinner rolling and watch Six Feet Under.  What a bust man.  Maybe it wouldn’t have been so bad if everybody (those who had seen it before) had hyped it up so much.  Man it stunk!!!  What a horrible show.  Just a bunch of people kind of… Doing stuff.  And being extremely dramatic about it.  If they would have put a laugh track on it, it may well have taken over the #1 spot on my “Stupidest TV Show Ever” list.  Since it didn’t have one, Seinfeld still holds that spot.  Ed and Kim, a.k.a. “The Kids”, did buy pizza though, so at least we were full while watching The Second Stupidest Tv Show Ever.

Other than that, I guess I’ll just run down some meaningless drivel about the website.  If you haven’t noticed, and you probably haven’t, I updated the “Welcome to Phil on the Hill” page.  Little more current info.  I also set up a web cam, but it’s not full production yet.  Actually it works fine; it’s just that I set it up to watch the cats, and cats really don’t do much.  Doesn’t make for a really exciting web cam.  I’m also now fully rolling on the project to build my “new” webserver.  It’s up and running on Red Hat Linux 9, and seems to be working fine.  I don’t know how to make it “do” anything though… The website comes up, but I can’t figure out how to edit it or even where the heck it is.  Good grief.  Linux is over-rated, I tell you.  Gives me something to mess with though.  I’ve also got a few “sub-domains” going… my favorite at this point is “angusbulls.pkenagy.com” I believe.  Yes, I am going into the cattle business.  Well, not really, but supporting it in any fashion I can.  I’ve got a line on a “less-than-perfect” Angus I might buy… If it works out I think I’ll make a new website on him.  Track him all the way from being a youngster in the fields of Lathrop to the Charbroil.

Man, my PC is broken again.  Got me bummed out.  Dang thing eats hard drives for some reason.  So, I been messing with that for several days.  Ended up wiping it out and starting over, and losing lots of good stuff in the process too.  One of these days I will start backing up my drives.  Not this day though.

Friday we went to the Royals game again.  Good stuff man.  If they are only going to win one game in a series, it might as well be the one I’m at.  Plus, being a Friday, we got the bonus firework show too.  Bueno.

Saturday was kind of a mess.  To make a long story short, I ended up at the Brooksider at 3:00 in the afternoon for some inexplicable reason.  One thing led to another and I just kind of ended up there.  We (Munkirs, Martin, Todd and Brice) hung out and watched the horse race and the ball game.  What can I say, I like that new porch they set up.  It leads to excessive loitering.

Sunday morning we went and had breakfast with Doni’s parents at Perkins.  One of my favorite breakfast places.  Corned beef hash, pancakes, and hash browns.  Now THAT’S a breakfast.  Then I went back home and kind of tried to work on the broken computer all day.  I tried everything to keep from wiping it out, all to no avail.  That night we went to over and had a party at Susan’s house to watch the finale of The Sopranos.  She wasn’t home, but graciously lent us her HBO so we wouldn’t have to miss an episode.

That’s all I got to say.  I’m sure my level of disinterest is highly apparent, but that’s OK.  I’m serious, I got the blues over the whole PC thing.  Don’t want to see one, don’t want to type on one.  And the bad thing is, it’s acting kind of like the last one did before it totally died on me; so there’s a 50/50 chance I’m just wasting my time re-doing it all.  Sheesh.  In other random news, my second niece was born over the weekend, to my younger sister Sharon out in the wilds of Nebraska.  The niece-and-nephew count is now at four.  Crazy.  And, a happy (number omitted) birthday to Susan W!!