Yes, I have a 3-day week upon me.  Thursday we are off to Fort Worth for a little R&R.  Things are off to a screaming good start too;  For the first time in weeks I made the light at 51rst street this morning.  Of the 42 traffic lights I go through on the way to work, that particular one is especially annoying.  It turns yellow on me every single morning, and after I’ve just gotten done sitting through the equally ridiculous light two blocks before.  It’s one of those stupid lights that serves no purpose either.  It’s set way too long, and nobody ever goes down 51rst at that time of morning.  Today I finally got a good run at it and made it through.  Small victories, people.  Let’s not go into nit-picky details like how fast I was going when I went through it.  The simple fact is the light was definitely mostly green.  I’m sure this coup shaved at least 3 minutes off my total commute time.

I suppose that was a decent weekend.  I’ve had worse.  On the upside, I didn’t have to mow the lawn, due to the standing water.  Of course that will just make things worse if and when it ever dries out, but I’m all about a little procrastination.  Friday evening, for no particular reason, I spent the evening hanging out at the Brooksider.  It was a “decent” night out, so I just sort of hung out on the deck and enjoyed it.  Watched the Royals get a particularly brutal thrashing, then called it a night.  Donette, meanwhile, got some kind of wild hair and headed out south to see some band with her friend Lori.  That’s two late Fridays in a row for her.  Dang kids.

Saturday I got up pseudo-early and headed down to the airport to meet Munkirs again, for our third round of cycling.  Didn’t up the mileage any this time, stayed at the almost-20 level.  I suppose we’ll have to bump that up a little sooner or later.  We may need to mix up the route a bit too, I’m getting a bit weary of riding in circles.  (Albeit nearly flat circles, which is nice.)  We managed to time it right too.  It started raining as soon as we were leaving.  One more lap and we’d have gotten soaked.  It was lunch time when I got back to the house, so we headed up to the Well.  They’ve got a good enough menu, but for some reason I just don’t care for the place much.  Maybe because we were stuck inside with the rain, I don’t know.  My sandwich was good, the service was good, the price is good…  The place just doesn’t do it for me.  The day didn’t progress much from there, we sorta hung out on the couch and watched the rain come down.  Luckily later in the evening Zim called to let me know he was in Brookside, saving me from totally wasting the day.  I went and met up with the Zims down at the ‘Sider and watched the Royals with them.  Well, at least until the stupid band started their stupid sound-check, and I couldn’t hear the stupid TV’s.  I maintain they should not have bands when there is a local sports event on, it’s annoying.  Meanwhile, they maintain no interest in my opinion.  Fair enough.

Sunday Donette was scheduled to participate in the Trolley Run with Kelly & Susan.  When 7:00 rolled around though, she rather predictably informed me that it was raining too hard and she wasn’t going.  I’m not sure how she managed to ascertain this buried beneath the covers.  Her plot fell apart when I went out to get the paper and discovered it was actually quite dry.  With some help from Kelly, we were finally able to shame her into going, although she stubbornly continued to insist it was pouring, even as we stood outside under the clear skies.  They made it up to the start in time though.  Meanwhile, Gabe and I sat at the end of the street and watched the festivities.  Wow, it was huge this year;  I’m not sure but I think they may have gone over 10,000 participants this time.  Gabe had a big time too, he got all kinds of attention.  After the race, we all headed up to 75th Street and enjoyed a rather gluttonous brunch.  The whole Brown clan made it up too.  (They did the Trolley Run also.)  After that…  Well, not too much.  Watched the Royals game from the couch, and then we rented “Blind Side” for evening entertainment.

That weekend fit into the category of “hit it hard early and then hunker down.”  We started things off on Friday by going out with a bunch of youngsters on a party bus.  Seriously.  Our friend Brooke is headed off to grad school in Texas so her friends got the bus to throw a going away party.  The whole deal sounded sketchy enough, and then I looked closer at the invitation and noticed the fun didn’t even start until 8:00.  Given that is about an hour before my bedtime (maybe an hour and a half on a Friday) the evening had all the makings of a train wreck.  But, against our better judgement, we found ourselves on a bus with a bunch of 25-year-olds heading to Lawrence, KS.  Luckily they behaved OK, we only had to put two of them in time-out and threatened to pull the bus over once.  Mostly they just sat in their seats and listened to their crazy loud music, while we sat up front and talked to the bus driver about the impending Medicare & Social Security changes.  When we got to Lawrence we spent several hours at “The Wheel,” which I found to be a quite suitable place for me.  After that we piled back on the bus and headed back to KC.  I thought we hung in with the children pretty well, I considered the evening something of a success.  Then we found out the bus was headed to the Brooksider to continue the party.  We waited until it slowed down for a stoplight at Wornall & Gregory and jumped out a window, then walked home.  Didn’t want to push our luck.

Saturday morning I met Munkirs at the Downtown Airport to do some more bike riding.  We upped our mileage one extra lap from last weekend, which put us at just under 20 miles.  (Well I did just under 20;  Munkirs circled the parking lot until his odometer read the full two-zero.)  After that little spurt of exercise, I spent the rest of the day at The Well in Waldo, sitting on their deck with Martin & Brice.  A fine way to waste a sunny Saturday afternoon.  After that I headed home to find that Donette had picked up a couple of nice strip steaks for dinner.  After several weeks of trouble-shooting, we finally got our gas grill operational and were ready to give it a try.  (Turned out it was out of propane.)  We enjoyed a nice steak dinner and that pretty much wrapped up Saturday.

Sunday we got off to a slow start.  Got sucked in by that dang ol’ Internet again, and the next thing we knew it was 1:00 in the afternoon.  We didn’t want to waste the entire day, so we headed outside for a few hours of yard work.  Got the bushes all trimmed up and cut the stupid lawn for the fourth time already.  I kind of felt like I’d earned some leisure time after that, so I spent the rest of the afternoon with “the boys” down at the Brooksider while Donette joined “the girls” down the street at Jalapenos.  They had the TV’s going out on the deck so I watched the Royals game and enjoyed the fine weather.  For dinner we had hotdogs, which was about as surreal as the bus ride to Lawrence.  Seriously, when was the last time anybody had hotdogs for dinner?  Must not have bothered me too much, I had three of them.  After dinner I “watched” some bad Jean Claude Van Damme flick.  (As if there is another kind of Van Damme movie.)  I vaguely remember some guy getting killed in the first few minutes, and then I woke up and the credits were rolling.  Oh well, probably didn’t miss much.

Well that was the last of my long weekends for a while, I’m afraid.  Oh well, it was a good one.   I’d been wanting to go to the Boulevard Brewery tour for a long time, and it’s almost impossible to get in on the weekends any more.  So, I took off Friday and got in the 1:00 tour group.  Our friend Brooke joined us, and we enjoyed a fine lil’ tour-de-Boulevard.  I’ve been on it several times before, but not since their big expansion a few years back.  It was interesting as always, especially to see how much they’ve grown since the last time I was there.  After that we had loosely planned to head down to the Power & Light area for a while, but the weather was too nice to be inside so we opted for, what else, the deck at the Brooksider.  Donette headed to the Royals game for her evening entertainment;  I went home and watched it on the couch with Gabe.

Saturday I got up and headed out to the Downtown Airport to join Munkirs & Martin on a little bike ride.  For some time, our plan has been to start training post-float-trip, so I guess we’re making good on that so far.  I’m not exactly clear what we’re training for, but we can figure that out later.  It was definitely good to get back on the ol’ bike.  I’ve done precious little riding in the last several years, maybe this will be the summer I actually do a little cycling again.  Off to a decent start anyway;  We managed to get in 15 miles or so, despite a rather annoying wind.  We’ll see where it goes from here.  Either we go again sometime this week, or the bike goes back on the wall for another five years.  After that small bout of exercise, I went home and mowed the lawn.  It is in full crazy-growing mode;  I just mowed that stupid stuff last Sunday and it was already way too tall.  I got it knocked down though.  Better hit it again Wednesday.  Around 3:00 we headed out to the Royals game.  It didn’t start until 6:00 but the weather was awesome so we decided to do a little grilling.  Enjoyed some hamburgers, then went in and watched the home team get pummeled.  I was actually a little excited to see Greinke pitch, but I guess it just wasn’t his night.  I was complaining about the fact that they never win when I go to the games.  Donette pointed out that they just never win, so maybe I’m not actually cursed.

Sunday we just kind of hung out and enjoyed the weather.  We took Gabe on a nice long walk, then decided to waste the rest of the afternoon at the Brooksider on the porch.  I have a feeling this weather isn’t going to last long, so I figure enjoy it while it’s here.  We hung out there for quite a while, then hit Jalapenos for dinner and called it a weekend.

Well now there’s a good start to the week;  I got absolutely drenched on the way in this morning.  In retrospect, maybe I could have looked out the window before deciding to ride my scooter in.  Or, perhaps as I walked the 50 feet from the front door to the garage, decided “Well it’s starting to rain pretty hard, guess I better walk on up to the bus stop.”  But no, with my trained meteorological eye, I looked north towards the office and decided the really hard stuff wouldn’t be coming down for several hours.  Made it about three blocks.  The only way it could have been worse was if my rain gear was, say, still packed up with my float trip stuff instead of under the seat where it usually is.  Mmmm hmmmm.  Oh well, I should dry out by lunch time or so.

Well, another Easter gone by, two more DOR’s (Days On River) under my belt.  And a fine float it was.  Aside from a prolonged bout of rain on Friday night, we enjoyed rather sublime weather conditions.  Given the last five years of, shall we say, “less than ideal” weather, nobody was complaining about a few sprinkles.  (OK, six hours of blinding rain, but still.)

I traveled down there Wednesday night after work with Martin & Munkirs.  We took Chris’ truck and made pretty good time;  I think we showed up at camp at 10:00 or so.  Parked the truck next to Zim & Chad, as per our usual agenda, and commenced to campin’.  We actually went well into the wee hours that night;  Guess we were ready to get out of KC or something.  Munkirs eventually set up his tent and called it a night;  I weaseled in on Zim’s camper myself.  I think James got caught up in “new tent” euphoria;  I couldn’t see banging around in the dark trying to figure a tent out when there was a warm, dry couch a few steps away.  And as for Martin;  Well, he’s from Kearney, he ain’t quite cut out for the “sleeping outside” thing…  He always sleeps in a camper.

Thursday morning we got up and enjoyed some tasty egg sandwiches from Zim’s Cantina, then headed for the river.  Since it was shaping up into a fine day, we opted for the “long float,” where they take you up river and you float back down to camp.  It’s advertised on their site as a five hour trip.  That’s a bit…  “Optimistic” I would say, at least where our group is concerned.  We did make pretty good time though.  It was just two canoes in our group that day;  Munkirs & I in one, and Martin & Chad in the other.  There was a much larger group from our campground also, but we didn’t know them that well and Munkirs wasn’t feeling particularly social, so we kept to our own little barge.  (Or, “age group,” as the case may have been.)  It was a pleasant, uneventful float, which is to say we didn’t dump and got back to camp while it was still light out.  By the time we arrived back in camp, several more “elderly gentlemen” had arrived, and dinner preparations were well under way.  We had a fine BBQ dinner prepared by team TFB, and then re-commenced to campin’.

Friday shaped up quite similarly, if on a larger scale.  We went on the lower-half float that day, which despite being billed as an hour shorter in duration actually took about the same time, if not a bit longer.  Hmmm, strange.  (Not really.)  Once again, it was a sunny, warm, dry day, something we haven’t enjoyed in recent years.  We all got through it in remarkably good condition.  I really cannot recall going on two floats in as many days and not losing even one canoe.  Absolutely unheard of.  The only thing different I could think of was that Scotten wasn’t there, de-stabilizing the barge with his stupid lawn chair.  Carl quite inexplicably chose feeding his family over floating this year, breaking a long attendance streak.  (With the exception of one quite controversial incident a few years back.)  That couldn’t have been the difference though…  Could it?

Saturday morning we got up, swam out of our tents, and started breaking camp.  We enjoyed our standard breakfast in beautiful Mountain Grove, MO, and headed back home.  First order of business upon our arrival in KC was a little lunch at the Brooksider, naturally, to enjoy the weather and re-hash the weekend.  After that, I went home and chiseled three nights of camping off me, then went to bed for 15 hours.

Sunday I woke up well rested, if a bit sore.  Little “worse for wear” as the saying goes.  I managed to get around and get out to Mom’s for a delicious Easter lunch though.  As an added bonus, I rode the motorcycle so I got to enjoy the warm, if rather windy, weather for one more day.  We stayed at Mom’s a few hours, then took the “long way” home.  There was still plenty of daylight left when we got home, so I fired up the lawn mower and knocked out the first mowing of the season.  (Booo.)

Scootin’ season has officially begun;  I rode the scooter all last week.  Why yes, it DID rain a few days, and yes I DID get very wet, thanks for asking.  Better soaked on the scoot than dry on the bus though.  (We’ll see how long that sentiment holds up.)  I rode the motorcycle for the first time today.  CHILLY!!  I haven’t figured out the science behind it, but it is a proven fact that 35 degrees on the motorcycle is a lot colder than 35 degrees on the scooter.  I think that little windshield may help out a lot.  Hopefully my teeth will stop chattering in time for the ride home.

I’d rate that about the most boring weekend on record.  Considering my usual mundane schedule, that is quite an accomplishment.  I was feeling rather beat-down on Friday, so I stopped by the Brooksider for about 30 minutes and then headed home.  I got a new (work) laptop so I spent most of the evening getting that all set up.  How’s that for excitement??  I did watch a movie later in the evening, solely because it was Friday night and I didn’t want to go to bed at 8:30.  I can’t remember the name of it but it was absolutely horrible.  It was so bad I ended up rather angry that I had even watched it.  For two hours I stared at it waiting for a plot, or even some vague point, to develop.  Never happened.  I even randomly skipped through it afterward to  see if maybe I had dozed off during some critical scene.  Nope, it was just bad.

Saturday developed in the absolute pinnacle of boredom.  I accomplished nothing what-so-ever.  One perfectly good weekend day down the tubes, never to be recovered.  Didn’t even walk the dog.  I kept telling myself it was due to the inclement weather, but it really wasn’t even raining at our house.  I guess we went to lunch at The Well.  Split a turkey wrap.  Good grief even our lunch was boring.

Sunday I spent the day tethered to the smoker, cooking a brisket for Float Trip this coming weekend.  Not exactly an exciting day by any stretch, but at least I could say I did something with my time.  I dug the motorcycle out of storage too.  That thing has been hard to start the first time over the last two years I’ve had it, so I was ready for a few hours of messing around with it.  This year it fired right up;  Guess it was tired of this winter too.  By the time the brisket was done it was bed-time.  At least I hope it’s done, I didn’t really slice into it.  It was on the cooker 12 hours though, I’d like to think it should be tender after that much time.