I guess the holidays are 1/2 over now?  Maybe only 1/3 if you count New Years.  The season has officially begun, at any rate.  I’m awfully limited on material this particular Monday, so I think I’ll just go with a mish-mash of mini-info from the last week.  I was oncall over the weekend, and as such spent the vast majority of it sitting on the couch staring at my phone, waiting for it to ring.  Can’t do much with that.

So, backing all the way up to last Wednesday…  Things started off rather rough, as alluded to in the post below.  The day rebounded though.  After rescuing my motorcycle from sitting in the rain on the UMKC campus, I joined a large group of old men down at the Brooksider for the annual pre-Thanksgiving AKL luncheon.  I missed the actual lunch, but I met up with the late crowd, which was still pretty sizable.  After that I went home to find my first Christmas present of the year laying on the front porch;  A shiny new Synology DS-111 from Santa Claus.  After spending way-too-much time trying to make my website run on my woefully underpowered NSLU2, I finally gave up and just bought a new toy.  So far it’s working out well;  This is my first official post on it as a matter of fact.

Thursday, if you didn’t know, was Thanksgiving Day.  We headed out to Mom’s house for a good ol’ traditional Turkey Day meal.  (”Traditional” sans sweet potatoes…  Not sure what happened there…)  We overate in the traditional fashion, that’s for sure.  After that delicious meal we headed back home and watched some football.  I usually head down to the ‘Sider to compare gluttony stories that evening, but I didn’t make it off the couch this year.  Donette went down and checked out the Plaza lights with her sister and niece, but I was too warm and comfortable to go out.

Friday started my oncall stretch;  Booooo.  We went down to the Brooksider briefly, then went home and Donette made a steak dinner.  Not sure what the occasion was there, and I didn’t see any reason to ask.  Just enjoy the steak.  That pretty much covers Friday, and as this paragraph is a little short I’ll just roll Saturday into it too.  Saturday we didn’t do anything.  Literally.  As a matter of fact, I never even got dressed.  We had no intentions of leaving the house so I didn’t really see the point.  We watched the glorious MU-KU game on TV, and assorted other less interesting games, and that comprised our entire day.  Sorta sad really, but rather relaxing at the same time.

Honestly Sunday wasn’t exactly a big upgrade from Saturday as far as accomplishments.  I did at least get dressed though.  We left the house a few times too.  Made a run to Costco, which is always exciting.  After that we headed over to our friend Ronnie’s house to watch the Chief’s game.  That is getting to be the ”Place To Be” on game day.  At one point I counted 25 people there.  Good win too;  That always makes for a better party.

The good news is I finally managed to run my motorcycle out of gas, so it’s ready for winter storage.  The bad news is I was north-bound on Main street at the time,  in a thunderstorm.  The good news is Donette has today off so she could run me a can of gas.  The bad news is my cell phone is dead.  The good news is I was near a bus stop, and had my bus pass with me.  That’s three “goods” and only two “bads,” so I guess that means it’s going to be a great day.

Happy pending Thanksgiving.  Hopefully everybody loaded their freezers with $0.69 turkeys that will invariably stay there until next year.  (Or the year after, or the year after…)

We got a bit of an early start on that weekend.  We actually went out Thursday night for a great dinner at Marina Grog & Galley.  We met Donette’s parents out there to celebrate their 52nd anniversary.  (Congrats!)  Aside from a long drive there and back it was a fantastic meal.  I had a ribeye myself, which was perfectly cooked;  No doubt the best steak I’ve had in a long time.  If I was ordering again I would have chosen a baked potato over the rice, but I was trying to be healthy.  (Which NEVER pays off, especially when you consider I was already tackling a 14 oz. ribeye.  Would a big buttery potato really have made that much difference at that point?)  Anyway, we’ll be going back sometime in the future.  It’s definitely in the “special occasion only” range for us price-wise, but another one will come up sooner or later I’m sure.

Friday we got back into our rut down at the good ol’ Brooksider.  The Group sorta threw me off by sitting outside though;  They are generally a fair-weather group.  I wasn’t really dressed warm enough for patio-sitting, but they cranked up the heaters and it was tolerable.  We stayed a bit longer than usual too.  There was some sort of MMA-related event going on inside so we stuck around and watched it.  I don’t really know what it was, or how to describe it.  They called it a “weigh-in” but there was no scale involved.  Who knows.  It was a spectacle to be sure, and we love a good spectacle as much as the next person.

Saturday I crossed The River for the second time in as many weeks.  Getting a little wacky to be sure.  Martin had generously offered to fire up the smoker(s) again and sent out an email to the world in case anybody wanted to smoke up some holiday fare.  It turned out to be quite a popular offering too.  For my part, I had a nice brisket to do which will be going out to Mom’s this Thursday.  There were also 6 turkeys, 8 slabs of ribs, 4 other briskets, and two pork butts.  Wow.  Yeah the smokers were full.  They are big though, so there was plenty of room.

We stayed the night up at Martin’s, sort of like a little mini-vacation.  If you’re going to drive that far, might as well make it worth the while.  We had a lot to do Sunday though so we got up and scampered back across the river bright and early.  As it turned out, “a lot to do” turned into reading the paper, watching football, and surfing the Web all day.  We did take a brief foray up to the gym but it was a rather lackadaisical effort.  We made a weak attempt at working out, then sat in the hot tub for the better part of an hour.  Hey, we can still say “We went to the gym this weekend.”

I rode the motorcycle in again this morning;  Brrrr.  I think the riding season has about come to an end.  Of course, I’ve been saying that for several weeks now so who knows how long I will stretch it out.  I’m definitely switching back to the scooter if nothing else, I know that much.  While the motorcycle might have a few style points, the scooter is infinitely more practical for the morning commute.  Matter of fact, I rode it the vast majority of the time this year.  For one thing, the windshield makes it much more comfortable in the chilly weather.  I didn’t think it would make a huge difference, but over the last two mornings I found out it most certainly does.  You can carry a lot more stuff on the scooter too.  It has tons of storage space;  The motorcycle is limited to whatever fits in my backpack.  And then there is the drive itself.  The scooter is exempt from all those pesky driving rules and regulations, which comes in handy, especially with the dozens of brutally un-synchronized stoplights I have along my route.  Bus lanes are fair game for scooters too, as well as a few other unmentionable maneuvers that might be considered gross violations of the law for any other vehicle.  Mind you, all these exemptions are purely in my mind, hopefully karma doesn’t catch up with me.

I got my money’s worth out of that weekend for once.  We were busy pretty much all the time, which makes the weekend seem a bit short perhaps but at least I didn’t feel like I wasted it again.  We even went out Friday night, a bit of a rarity.  I’m usually too beat down on Fridays, but this time around we had volunteered to work at a poker fund raiser so that got us out of the house despite the driving rain.  I ended up being a dealer, which was fun.  I had no idea how to deal poker, but as it turned out it was easy enough and none of the participants seemed overly concerned with the details of the game anyway.  We were there well into the night;  Quite the late Friday for us.

Saturday we got up, slowly got around, and headed up to the Northlands for a day of cooking at the Martin’s house.  Donette’s family was stocking up on food for the holidays, so we had two briskets and two pork butts on for them, and Martin did another two pork butts, a turkey, and a slab of ribs.  Might as well load the smoker up if you’re burning fuel.  While all that was sitting happily in the smoker, we worked on a mojo-batch of gumbo too.  With all the roux-stirring and chopping and boiling, it took nearly as long as the briskets.  We came out of the day with a fridge full of food though, so all the effort was well-spent.  After all that work the night rather strangely morphed into an evening of impromptu parties.  I don’t know if that is typical Northland behavior or not, hard to tell without more data.  At any rate, we ended up at the neighbors house for quite a while, and then a small mob descended on Martin’s house late at night, and a party developed over there.

Sunday we got around even slower than Saturday.  First we dealt on all the food from the day before.  Got all the pork and brisket divided up into more manageable portions and food-saved it all, and froze the gumbo for some future event.  After that Donette promptly retired to the couch, and I went over to Ronnie’s house to watch the Chiefs spectacle.  Despite the less-than-entertaining game we had a good time of it.  These events are getting to be quite the “thing” lately.  Everybody brings a dish and we make a decent party of it.  Beats sitting shoulder-to-shoulder in the Brooksider all afternoon, where you can’t even hear the TV.  Heck, yesterday Ronnie even turned on the heat in the house, I imagine for the first time this year.  It works very well too…  It got so hot in the house I spent the better part of the game on the front porch watching the TV through the window.