Tis the season to sit around and watch basketball and not accomplish a whole heck of a lot.  And wow am I good at it.  I would claim that I took it to a whole new level, but I’m sure there are many who out-sloth even me watching the games.  I have the day off, so I will need to be a bit brief in my weekend summary;  I’ve got lots to get done today.  Shovel the drive, build a snowman…  The usual late-March activities.

OK I had an absolutely riveting update typed in here, and for whatever reason it is all gone.  That first less-than-riveting paragraph is all that’s left.  Maybe a few too many comments about the KU fans and bad karma got me?  Not likely, as it was all well deserved;  Guess I’ll just chalk it up to bad luck.  At any rate I am not inclined to try and duplicate it.  I’ll just list an overview of the weekend:

1.  Friday we watched the MU game at the Brooksider and then went to dinner at Cantina del Ray.

2.  Saturday we ate breakfast at Amigos with Mark, Anne, Don, & Katie.  Then we went to the Bullet Hole and wasted some ammo.  Watched basketball the rest of the day.

3.  Sunday we watched basketball all freaking day, mostly at home.  Went to the Brooksider later in the day, after the crowd had cleared.  Made corned beef & rutabaga for dinner.

Geez that’s all I can remember.  I’ll spare you the admittedly witty commentary regarding Those People and their less-than-graceful exit from the area.

Another down-ish weekend.  I’m still oncall so I kept things rather subdued.  Not that unusual really, but at least I feel like I have an excuse.  Friday we went out for our semi-almost-nearly-traditional happy hour, but this time we went to the Peanut on Main instead of the Flying Saucer.  Downtown was an absolute madhouse with the Big 12 tourney going on, and I didn’t want to risk being jostled.  We met up with John & Susan and a few of their friends, and hung out there for a while.  Went home in time for dinner, and so went Friday.

Saturday I got up to find my website all messed up, so I spent my morning on that.  Before going to bed on Friday I decided it would be a good idea to try the “automatic upgrade” feature;   Didn’t turn out to be such a whippy idea after all.  Oh well, that’s what backups are for I guess.   About the time I got that mess straightened out, it was time to head down for the St. Patrick’s Parade in Brookside.  We generally don’t go to it, but the school where Donette works was in it and she was supposed to take pictures for the yearbook.  It turned out to be a fine parade indeed, despite the rather sketchy weather.  The last several parades I’ve bothered going to consisted of sixty pickups with magnetic signs on the doors driving by one after another, maybe with a balloon tied to the bumper.  Weak.  This one was a lot more festive;  Clowns, firetrucks, floats, costumes, and tons of candy.  (Carefully and safely handed out, naturally;  No throwing.)  It was a good time, and Donette got lots of pics.  I even posted some of them already.  OK, maybe not the most exciting photo album ever, but I figured it’s March already and I haven’t put up a single picture for the year.  After the parade we stopped by the Brooksider for a short bit, mostly to warm up.  It was crazy crowded though, and steadily getting worse, so we bailed.  Donette went out with Susan to some kind of fund raiser later in the evening.  I stayed home and worked all night.  Sigh.

I stayed up until the wee hours working, so the better part of Sunday was spent sleeping.  I’m getting too old for those all-nighters.  I finally got up around noon and proceeded to do nothing for the rest of the day.  We did go down and say hi to everybody at the Brooksider and watch the brackets on TV for a while.  Around 5:00 or so, Donette caught a ride to the airport and headed to Las Vegas.  She and our friend Lucy are staying there for a fews days to catch some sun and throw some money away.  I’m gonna stay home and work.  Sigh.

I don’t know what that title means.  I am aware the Oscars were last night, because Donette watched them over at a friends house, but I wasn’t able to fit it into my busy schedule.  Compounding the issue, my online paper isn’t working this morning (again) so I don’t know who won.  Gosh, hope I can make it through the morning.

All things considered, that was a rather entertaining weekend.  I was oncall so that kept me tethered to the PC a bit more than I’d have liked, but I think I made the most of it.  Friday we stayed in;  Kind of get into the swing of oncall, so to speak.  I can’t remember what we did for dinner but I’m sure it was absolutely wonderful.  Enchiladas perhaps?  After that we drifted off to our respective TV’s and watched movies.  For my part, I saw “Blood Snow” & some other movie which was so awful I have purged it’s name from my memory.  “Blood Snow” wasn’t exactly riveting (it was in German and didn’t really make sense even if I could have understood what they were saying) but compared to the second one it shoulda been on the awards show last night.  I would’ve just turned it off in disgust, but being Friday night I felt I should stay up until at least 10:00, so I stared at it until the bitter end.

Saturday worked out to be a decent day, all things considered.  I worked through the afternoon, with half an eye on the disappointing basketball game, and then about 3:00 I walked Gabe down to Brookside.  Our friends Troy & Laura were down there for an “event” that’s been on the calendar for a long time.  Laura has been writing a childrens book called Escaping the Tiger for the better part of the last decade, and it finally got published, shipped and released.  They had a big “book signing party” down at a store in Brookside, and Troy was grilling out back, so I went down to hang out and enjoy the day.  It turned into a rather huge event.  There were conservatively 250 people packed into the little shop, and unfortunately they sold out of books a bit early, but there was plenty of food and everybody had a good time.  And, once again, I got to see still more high school friends I hadn’t seen forever.  (Laura is a proud Grandview alum.)  The crowd was a bit much so I stayed outside with the grill, helping Troy shovel chicken.  He ended up churning out 60 lbs. of drumsticks and several slabs of ribs.  I stayed until they finished up around 9:00, then went home and watched “Duplicity” with Donette.  Weird movie.  Not quite sure I ever figured out what was going on.

Sunday we slummed around the house all morning, then headed out for an exciting walk through the aisles of Costco around noon.  We loitered there for an hour or so, and then decided to catch some lunch somewhere.  We decided on the new Blanc Burgers down on the Plaza;  Well, new location anyway, it recently re-located from Westport.  I can’t decide if I liked it or not.  It was most definitely good, but a bit on the pricey side for a hamburger.  But, it was one good hamburger.  (As well it should have been.)  After lunch I took Gabe for a nice long walk, to reward him for destroying our living room while were gone.  Then, for evening entertainment, Donette & Kelly went over to Susan’s house for a big Oscars party.  Boys weren’t invited this year, drat, so I stayed home for a little cinematic entertainment myself.  My showings included the soon-to-be-famous titles “Severance” and “Killer Klowns from Outer Space.”  Definitely Oscar-worthy.  Oh and I played some solo Rock Band and Big Game Hunter too, that entertained me for a few hours.  I found the “shooting arcade” portion of the latter, where you just blast stuff and don’t have to do any thinking.  Perfect.

I am quite excited, it looks as if I just may be able to dig the scooter out of storage this week.  Might be pushing it a little bit, but I am so sick of riding that bus I’m willing to knock a few degrees off my “low temp” rule for riding.  We shall see what the week brings.

Not a bad weekend, all in all.  We kicked off Friday with a bit of Happy Hour celebrating down at the Flying Saucer.  Just the two of us, for a romantic game of darts.  We hung out there for a  short bit, and then went to yet another “Grandview High School Get-Together” thingie.  Geez I’ve seen those people more in the last few months than I did in High School.  This time the location was “Howl at the Moon,” which is a piano bar down in the Power & Light district.  It was OK until the piano players started;  That’s just not really my kind of entertainment.  Must suit a lot of other people though, because it was packed.  We didn’t stay very long after the music started though.

Saturday we got up and headed out to Cabela’s for a little light shopping.  Picked up a copy of “Big Game Hunter” for our Wii, a few new chairs and some disposable propane bottles.  Good sales!!  After that we stopped by Amigos in the ‘Dotte for a little lunch, then went home and played the new game for a while.  (It’s fun by the way, if you’re thinking of getting it.)  For evening entertainment, Donette headed down to the Sprint Center for the Billy Joel & Elton John show, with her friend Katie.  Meanwhile, I headed out to (gasp) Overland Park and met up with some out-of-town friends.  My ol’ Army buddy Scott & his wife were in town for a meeting out off College Blvd, so instead of trying to describe how to get to our area of town I just drove that way.  I stayed quite a bit later than I intended, but what can ‘ya do, we were having fun.  After that I headed back home and closed out the evening with some solo Rock Band.

Sunday I slept in a bit, relatively speaking, then headed out to the big gun show with my buddy Mark.  YEEEE HAW!!  Good grief.  I think I’d take the “bus crowd” over the “gun show crowd” any day.  I thought the admission price was a little steep but after checking out the quality of the people-watching, I felt it was well worth it.  Just remember to strictly heed the “no touch, no talk, no eye-contact” rule.  We must have found the show (or the people-watching) pretty engaging, because we wandered around looking at stuff for 3 hours.  Bought a grand total of nothing too.  I had myself talked into a fancy new flashlight, but just couldn’t part with the cash.  Mark dropped me off at the Brooksider after the gun show, and I walked in to find the place was absolutely packed.  I wouldn’t have guessed it, but everybody was there to watch the big hockey game.  They were fired up too;  I can honestly say I have never seen a reaction down there anything like when the USA team scored that goal at the end of regulation.  Unfortunately it didn’t work out in the end, but it was still pretty exciting to watch and I was glad I lucked into seeing it.

That weekend was definitely a bit… “subdued” after last weekend’s escapades. Don’t guess we can count on friends flying in last-minute to entertain us every weekend.   Rats.  It was fun enough though, I’m generally more easily entertained than I used to be.  Friday we went to an auction at Donette’s school.  We went last year and had a great time, so we figured what the heck, try it again.   We got there around 5:00, so I could help out in the kitchen.  (Now aren’t I just the good hubby?)   They were having a shrimp boil, so I offered to lend a hand if they needed it.   They really didn’t need any help, but it was fun at any rate.  As a bonus, I ate my weight in boiled shrimp.  After dinner several of our friends from the Brooksider joined us upstairs at the auction, which was a blast.  We actually stayed all the way to the end, whatever time that was.   For whatever reason, I like watching the auctioneers do their thing.  They have Nigro Brothers do the auction, and those guys really know how to wring coin out of people.  Pretty amusing.  We had pretty good luck in the raffles too;  One of our friends won an Ipod off his $2 ticket, and our friend Katie hit the final four on a cruise but then lost out on the final drawing.

Saturday & Sunday I can quite easily lump together into one paragraph.  Matter of fact it might be difficult getting more than two sentences out of them.  I watched quite a bit of the Olympics on Saturday afternoon, then in the evening I headed down to the Brooksider to watch the Missouri game.  Alas, it was all full of (loud) riff-raff from the earlier game.  “Those people” were all over the place, taking up valuable Missouri chairs and being generally obnoxious.   I made it about fifteen minutes and then bailed.  Opted instead for a nice steak dinner at home.  Sunday we considered ourselves “snowed in” and didn’t really do anything.  More Olympics, and then Donette made an almond-crusted pork tenderloin, with pear stuffing on the side, for dinner.   Deeee-licious.  After that we watched “The Taking of Pelham 1 2 3.”   It was OK;   Mostly I just wanted to watch it because it was on Blu-Ray so I could use my nifty player.  Pretty cool picture, I must admit.   I rounded out the weekend with a showing of  “The Death Factory; Bloodletting,” which was appropriately horrible.