Ahhh, another week begins.  Swell.  I am betting it will be a real hum-dinger too.  Plenty of cubicle time to pass the days and rain to ruin the evenings.  Whippee.  It was a decent weekend though.  Friday, given the relatively nice weather, I went down and sat with the boys on the patio at the Brooksider.  Had a cigar, caught up on all their weekly golf scores, the usual.  After a bit Donette came by and we headed to dinner at Kin Lin’s down near UMKC.  I am pretty sure I have never actually sat down and eaten there before;  We always get delivery or takeout.  It was good though, I’d go back for sure.  Well, other than the peculiarly chatty waitress.  She was certainly nice enough, or so it seemed anyway;  I couldn’t understand a word she was saying.  She was quite determined to be conversational though.  There was lots of smiling and nodding involved on our part.

Saturday was pretty full.  I got up, had a little breakfast and read the paper, then Munkirs came by for a bike ride.  There weren’t any “group” rides that we could find, so we picked the route from the Thursday night ride and headed out.  We got in a solid 35 miles at a decent pace.  Now if we could just do that 3 nights a week instead of 1, we’d be making some headway.  After the bike ride I headed up to meet Donette at the pool for some lounging.  Luckily she’d gotten there early and grabbed some seats, because it was packed.  We grabbed some lunch there and hung out for a few hours.  After that we headed back home, cleaned up, and then went downtown to the 3rd annual Brew Ha Ha.  We’ve volunteered to work at this event the last two years, and we signed up this year too.  It was a good time as always.  Didn’t seem like the crowd was quite as big this year for whatever reason;  Maybe the “newness” is wearing off.  The only downside was we got stuck working with a real schmuck.  I’m sure everyone has met the type;  Knows everything about everything and wants to make sure you are aware of that.  Myself, I am quite accomplished at dealing with these people.  Nod, perhaps occasionally offer up a “yep,” and then walk off and do whatever I want.  Donette, well, not so accomplished.  About the 18th time he proposed a new “system,” she finally wore out and there was a minor skirmish.  Honestly, it was very annoying though.  Seriously buddy, we’re filling water pitchers here, not trying to cap an underwater oil spill.  Our system went something like, “pick up empty pitcher, fill with water, set down full pitcher.”  Not very fancy, but reasonably effective.  We still had our fun though, and fulfilled our philanthropic duties for the year.

Sunday was a bit of a bust.  Maybe not a “bust,” because we didn’t have anything planned in the first place, but it was a quiet day for sure.  I started off with a bit of webserver geeking.  I ended up picking up the website and moving it to a new machine.  My favorite little Linux boxes just ain’t cutting it anymore.  I was rather surprised that picking out new packages, installing and setting them up, and moving the site over only took about 2 hours.  The only thing not working (so far) is the poll.  Well, either it really doesn’t work or I’m just tired of draining my creative spirit trying to come up with a new one every week and used this as a convenient excuse.  After finishing that project, and a few hours of random web-surfing, we headed down for lunch at Jalapenos.  My post-lunch plans were to walk up the street and watch the Royals game at the Brooksider.  This idea was derailed when I walked in the door to find the place absolutely packed, and every TV was tuned to the World Cup game.  Granted, our “regular table” was in attendance so I could have joined them, but I just wasn’t really interested in the least with the soccer game.  So, I walked straight through, out the back door, and home to lay on the couch, where I would spend the remainder of my weekend.

I took a night off finally.  I had stuff scheduled, it just didn’t come together.  I took a pretty good rain-dousing on my motorcycle on the way home from work and it kind of knocked the energy out of me I think.  I was actually walking to the bus stop, ready to just leave my bike downtown for the night, when my trained meteorological eye determined I could make it home before the really hard stuff started.  I am now 0-fer in those predictions.  Actually I believe I would have made it last night, if not for all the construction on Main.  For the last few weeks they have been tearing up what little good asphalt remains and pouring decorative concrete cross-walks.  This effectively backs up traffic for blocks, as apparently they can’t just do one intersection at a time.  I can only imagine the reasoning behind this ridiculous project.  They have to be very careful while digging too, so as not to disturb all the pot-holes and steel plates, which I’m sure they have no intention of ever fixing.  Sigh.  Only in KC.

Anyway, I was about three miles north of home when the driving rain caught me.  Ouch.  Thank goodness for sunglasses, although a windshield would have been nicer.  Oh well.  I got home, dried out a bit, and turned on the TV for a night of nothing.  Donette was out helping Dakin with a fund-raiser activity, so I seized the opportunity to watch some TV.  I fired up Netflix and after a little searching decided on “Best of the Best 2.”  (Because the first in the series was so good the public demanded a follow-up I guess.)  It was a pleasantly dreadful show.  I don’t want to be a spoiler, in case you were planning on watching it this weekend, so quit reading now if that’s the case.  Basically, “The Team” from episode one has opened a martial arts school.  All is hunky-dory,  but behind their backs Chris Penn has been doing some underground fights at “The Colosseum” in Vegas.  Naturally he comes up against The Bad Guy, who kills him in the ring.  The other two Good Guys spend the rest of the movie training out in the desert (always the desert) for the Big Show-Down, as well as trying to coach Good Guy #1’s son through earning his black belt.  (Which, oddly, he never does;  I think in all the excitement they forgot about it.)  Believe it or not, they do eventually come up against the Bad Guy, and kill him.  The best part?  Bad Guy #2 was none other than Wayne Newton.  Awesome.  After that I watched Zombieland, which was actually remarkably good.  Sorta disappointing.

It’s been raining so much it’s starting to affect my quality of life.  Yesterday I had to hunker down at John’s Deck for a while until the streets dried enough to ride my motorcycle home.  “A while” turned into 4 hours somehow or another.  Well, the streets were good and dry by that time.  Tuesday I had to ride the bus to work it was raining so hard.  Ohhhhh the agony.  Hey, at least we got to turn off the sprinkler system for a while.

After much deliberation, Donette & I have decided to go vegetarian.  I’ve messed up one too many briskets in my lifetime.  Heck with it, I’m just giving up meat all together.  To kick off our brand new lifestyle, we made black bean burgers for dinner last night.  Our original plan was to grill them, but the rain rolled in right when we were getting started so we cooked them on an indoor cast iron grill.  Our side dish was sweet potato wedges, done on the cast iron grill also.  It all came out quite nicely.  Next time we’ll probably add a little more zip to the burgers, probably in the form of some chopped jalapenos.  The ‘taters were a hit, I’m sure we’ll be adding them to more meals.

OK so we’re not really going veggie, we just saw the recipe on Ed’s website a while back and thought it sounded good.  We like black beans…  We like burgers…  What the heck.

An abbreviated posting is in order, as I have the day off and I don’t want to spend it frivolously on my computer.  I’m thinking maybe on the couch watching movies or something exciting like that.  Hey, it’s raining, what else can I do.  Plus the paper put me at a two-star day so I better not push my luck.

Good weekend, all in all.  Friday, believe it or not, we stopped by the Brooksider.  Our best intention was to wish our friend Jerry a happy birthday, then get on home.  It didn’t work out exactly as planned, but that’s the way it goes.  Jerry wasn’t even there, but Martin & Brice were, so I ended up staying much later than I meant to.  Then, our friend Brooke made an unannounced visit to KC and dropped by the ‘Sider, and we stayed much much later than planned.  It happens.

Saturday I starting paying the price of my unscheduled later nighter when the alarm went off at 5:00.  Munkirs was picking me at 6:00 to drive out to Independence for a bike ride.  No, this wasn’t a last-second event, we’d been planning it all week.  I was well aware of the plans when I stayed out Friday night, it was just an exercise in poor judgement.  Anyway, I managed to drag my carcass out of bed, get some breakfast in me, and for the most part be ready when my ride showed up.  Martin met us out there, and we all three were actually in relatively good shape by the time the ride started.  (They had coffee and donuts on site;  Probably a life-saver.)  The ride was a cancer benefit called “Freedom Ride.”  We opted for the 40 mile route.  I’m confident we could have survived the listed 50 mile ride, but it wasn’t an option listed when we got there.  It jumped from 40 to 70, which sounded a bit optimistic.  The forty turned out great though, it was really a good route.  I haven’t gotten to ride on any open roads in a long time.  Everything around here is all stop signs every two blocks or so;  Gets pretty old.  This was just long stretches of uninterrupted riding, much nicer.  The only downside was a few listed “rolling hills.”  I wasn’t aware they had mountains in Independence;  Now I know better.  After that nice bit of exercise, I got home to find Donette getting ready for the pool.  Sounded good to me, so I joined her for an afternoon of lethargy.  We got rained out around 5:00, so we headed over to a nearby friend’s house for bit, then home to watch the Royals game.

We took it easy on the holiday.  Just don’t celebrate the Fourth like I used to.  We puttered around the house all day doing a little cooking, and that was about it.  My Uncle Roy & Aunt Joyce stopped by for a nice little visit, so we got to catch up with them.  Then, around 3:30 or so we headed over to our friend Ronnie’s house for a “gathering.”  (He didn’t want to have a “party” due to the work involved with that, so we all agreed on the term “gathering,” with the understanding “You want it, you bring it.”)  It was a fine gathering, indeed.  He’s got a huge front porch, so about 15 of us just sat outside and enjoyed the relatively decent weather and some good food.