Ahhhh, Christmas week is upon us.  Already.  We’ve managed our share of celebrating too.  Heck, I’d go so far as to say I am looking forward to Christmas this year.  I’ve definitely been to more holiday parties than usual.  For instance, Thursday night we headed down to the Brooksider for the annual Christmas Caroling event.  Several of the “regular patrons” there go out singing every year, always starting (and ending) the event at the Brooksider.  They hit a packed house too this year for whatever reason, there wasn’t an empty table in the place.

Friday evening was the “official” annual Christmas party at the Brooksider, so we headed down there again.  As usual for this party, it was over-crowded, loud, and nearly annoying.  Free food will do that I guess.  Luckily for me they fired up the heaters on the back porch, so me and a few other guys retreated out there for the evening.

Saturday was, for the most part, spent on the couch watching basketball.  Several entertaining games on, even if they didn’t all come out quite as I wanted.  Around 5:00, we wandered down to the Brooksider of all places.  Our friend Brooke was in town, so she and several friends met up with us down there.  We stayed for quite a while too, later than usual for us old folks. After a while she and her merry band of youngsters headed out on the town.  We, on the other hand, did not.

Sunday we expanded our horizons a bit.  No trips to the Brooksider, whew.  Instead, we went to O’Dowds and watched the Chiefs game.  You really can’t beat the ol’ Brooksider for watching TV, but O’Dowds was certainly a serviceable alternative, and much less crowded.  There was another contributing factor too:  They are in the KC Hopps group of restaurants, and they were running a special Christmas deal where we got $10 off our meal and 100 bonus “points.”  The points are something of a running joke with us.  We like to accumulate them, and if they come out with a deal like that where you get extra points we will show up every time.  But, we never actually use them, just keep building them up.  Who knows, some day we may cash them in and throw a party or something.  At any rate, we had a quite tasty lunch and loaded up our card with yet more points!

Here are some swell gift ideas if you were wondering what to get me, which I am sure is the case.

Tattoo Arm Warmers.  These things are awesome.  Munkirs would be so jealous if I rode in these he wouldn’t know what to do.  I’m hoping they come out with a matching skull cap too, but I haven’t found it yet.  Oh yeah, these things are “me.”  Note that they are, in fact, “inspired by real tattoos.”

New Computer Combo.  I never really had any interest in a gaming computer until I saw this sucker.  The thing that really makes it sweet is that it comes with a set of dog tags and a tee-shirt, which I assume you are required to wear while playing games on it.  Naturally you’d probably want to cut the sleeves off immediately.  The deal-breaker is the shirt only comes in a large;  Bummer.

Welcome to this week’s edition of “what I didn’t do last weekend.”  I have many exciting tales of life from the couch again.  Cold weather is rough on us, what can I say.  Things started off reasonably strong with an evening at the Brooksider on Friday.  I stopped by Diebels on the way and picked up a cigar for the evening.  I even let them talk me into a new selection this visit, a Siglo Limited Reserve.  While a bit trendy for my usual taste, and certainly higher priced than my usual taste, it made for a good “special occasion” cigar;  Said occasion being the last time we will be outdoors for the foreseeable future.  We went home and ate a little dinner, then watched Public Enemies.  I found the movie a bit disjointed, never really following where the plot was going.  This may have been in part because I kept nodding off for 5 minute stretches throughout the show.  I finally managed to work up to some level of alertness for what was presumably the big showdown, as the agents closed in on the gangsters hideout.  Just as the shoot-out was about to begin the DVD messed up and wouldn’t play.  Oh well, another two and a half hours of my life wasted.

Saturday…  Well, Saturday never quite got started for us.  We made a few very half-hearted efforts at getting around, but they never came together.  I had intended to kick around the gym for a while, but the next thing I knew the college basketball games had started.  Victimized again by the television.  After  watching all the games that at least moderately interested me, it was dinner time.  So, I fixed myself some leftovers, and while I was eating I noticed that the weather had turned quite unfavorable outside.  Just what I needed, another excuse to return to the couch, which I promptly did.  Fired up the Netflix and spent the rest of the evening suffering through a few painfully unremarkable films.

Sunday brought a limited more amount of entertainment.  We spent the better part of the morning convincing Kane that he is, in fact, a feline, and as such is well within his rights to use a litter box.  For whatever reasons swirl around in his little pea-brain, he had abruptly stopped using it last summer, insisting instead on being let outside for his business.  Hey, all the better for us, who wants to clean out a litter box anyway.  This convenience hit something of a snag when the temperature dropped to the single digits and a few inches of snow fell, though.  It was an amusing situation, if also a bit annoying.  He would repetitively come upstairs and loudly voice his discomfort, only to wail even louder upon stepping out the back door and immediately retreating back inside.  Any effort to show him the litter box was met with an indifferent stare and more wailing.  The deadlock was finally broken when Donette, rapidly nearing insanity after the tenth trip down the stairs, forcibly set him in the litter box.  He looked like one of those cartoon characters when they get a bright idea and the light bulb comes on over their head.  He’s been perfectly content to use it since then, like it’s some wonderful new kitten invention…  One that he hadn’t consistently used the first seven freaking years of his life.  Cats are odd.  Hopefully he switches back to the great outdoors next spring.  After spending our morning re-training our cat, we headed over to our friend Ronnie’s house to watch the Chief’s game.  The “theme” of the day had been declared a chili pot-luck, and as such we had four or five excellent variations to choose from.  Naturally I sampled them all too, much to the dismay of my ever-aging digestive system.  Aside from the uninteresting, embarrassing debacle masquerading as a football game on the TV, we had a fine time of it.

As anticipated, I wasted my day off yesterday.  Outside of a remarkably exciting trip to Target I sat in front of the computer and watched my day go by.  Rounded out the boredom with Monday Night Football, which culminated in the defeat of my fantasy team.  All-in-all, a rather uneventful, if relaxing day.  I cooked Doni a birthday dinner, such as it was;  Mahi-Mahi and salad.  Today, though…  TODAY I shall do a little something with my time off.  I am relaxed and ready.  I dropped Doni off at work this morning, so I have the car, giving me the rare luxury of mobility.  To get things started, I drove up to the grocery store and bought some short ribs.  I’ve never had short ribs before, at least in my shaky memory.  I’ve been seeing them on TV a lot though, and they sure look good.  So, I brought them home and gave them a good browning in the cast iron skillet.  Then I sliced up a sweet onion and threw it in, deglazed all the goodness with a Schlafly Oatmeal Stout, then tossed it all in the slow cooker with some ‘taters and mushrooms.  Now my plan is to go loiter at the gym for a few hours, and possibly even go meet the boys at the Brooksider after that.  Then, all things going well, I will come home to a nice dinner waiting in the crockpot.  It’s a good plan anyway…  My plans rarely pan out but we’ll see how it goes.

I’m in the middle of an extended weekend, so pardon my brevity.  I’ve got all kinds of really important, fun stuff to do on my day off and I don’t want to waste too much time typing this.  Going back to bed is pretty high on the list, and after that I’m not really sure what to do with the rest of the day.  Anyway, as to my weekend…  Friday I stopped by Diebel’s and took advantage of their two-fer-one cigar deal.  I picked out a nice little number from Partagas, then continued on my way to the Brooksider and fired it up.  By the time I was done with that, it was getting uncomfortably chilly on the patio and it was dinner time, so I headed on home.

Saturday we got up early-ish and headed up to the gym.  Got that knocked out, then headed out on a shopping extravaganza.  Neither one of us are very big shoppers, but you wouldn’t know it from that afternoon.  We wandered Cabela’s for quite a while, and I picked up a cheap-o red dot sight for one of my pistols.  It was a good deal, but not much to show for an hour and a half of wandering around.  After that we went next door to Nebraska Furniture Mart, where we spent a longgggg time.  Donette picked out a remote start for her car, which she has been wanting since the day we got the car.  They made her a good deal on it too;  An offer she just couldn’t refuse apparently.  After she picked that out, we spent about two hours looking at surround sound systems and loveseats.  Never found just the right deal on either of those though, so that was just time wasted I guess.  For evening entertainment, we headed up north to the Martin’s house once again.  I swear, I’ve crossed the river more in the last two months than I have in the last two years.  They threw a party for the Schmidt’s, who are getting ready to leave to country for an extended time.  And a fine fiesta it was;  Got to see all kinds of people.

Sunday was another fine day.  In a bit of a departure from our usual routine, we headed down to the Flying Saucer to watch the Chiefs game.  They were having their annual Christmas Party at the same time, which we decided to go to this year.  It was a good time, if a bit packed.  We had to stand up the whole time, but that was OK.  We ended up watching the entire game there.  They are a bit more limited on the TV’s than the Brooksider, but we could see fine.  Good Christmas party too;  Now we can say we did something Christmas-y, so check that off the list.  After that we headed back to our usual entertainment locale.  Donette met up with “the girls” at Jalapenos, and I popped in the Brooksider to watch the late games with “the boys.”  All that revelry wore us out apparently, the evening ended on the couch watching TV.