OK this weekend REALLY gave me nothing to work off.  I was oncall, so that pretty much screwed up my entire block of “entertainment time.”  Friday was actually the only time I even left the house.  They had a Trick or Treat event up at Donette’s school, so we headed up to check that out.  Basically a bunch of parents decorated their cars and parked in the lot, and handed out candy to all the kids.  I assume the thought there was that they then don’t have to actually walk anywhere, the lil’ buggers can just get all the goods in one place with no effort expended on the part of either kids or parents.  Very efficient, I like it.  We brought a bunch of candy but got there too late to get parked and decorated and all that, so we just walked around and checked out the costumes and stuff.  It seemed to me that it was all a rather elaborate ploy by Donette to have an excuse to buy candy and then keep it for herself.  Hey, it worked.  After that we went home for a late dinner;  Chorizo stuffed poblanos.  If you can’t go out and have fun, I guess staying home and cooking is a reasonable substitute.

Saturday I got up and started on my super-duper Windows 7 install.  I bought it off Newegg at a pre-release price several months ago, and it showed up in the mail on Friday.  Friday night I stayed up executing my rather elaborate back-up plan, so I was ready to go first thing in the morning.  While I’m not ready to give a full review yet, the initial impression is quite positive.  My PC is probably about two years old, and everything worked right off the bat;  I didn’t even have to install a single device driver.  Can’t even say that about my beloved XP Pro.  It did do a few “weird” things…  Maybe “unexpected” is a better word.  Nothing that can’t be worked around though.  My biggest fear was restoring my 80 + gig of music to iTunes, which turned out to be a total non-issue.  That project went on for the better part of the day.  It looked so nice outside that I did get out and mow the lawn, hopefully for the last time.  It didn’t really need it, that was mostly just an excuse to enjoy the weather a bit.  Meanwhile, Donette was in Waldo renting a storage unit for our excess junk.  I don’t really enjoy speaking of this project;  It strikes me as inherently sad that two people can have so much crap that it can’t be stored in a three bedroom house.  But, I will grant that there are extenuating circumstances that make it “convenient,” such as the ongoing basement project.  The plan is to only keep it through the winter while that gets completed.  Truth be told I imagine we will have it forever, but we shall see.

I stayed up working all night Saturday, then got up just in time for the football games.  I kept 1/2 my attention on the game and the other 1/2 on restoring more PC stuff.  Maybe a little more than 1/2 was given to the PC, as the Chiefs game wasn’t exactly riveting.  Meanwhile, Donette was experimenting in the kitchen, whipping up a pot of butternut squash and carrot soup.  It came out very well, and was supposedly even healthy.  Shortly after the successful soup project, we got to work on our third effort at tamale making.  I thought this batch came out even better than last week’s;  I think we’re getting the hang of it.  We filled them with my disastrous brisket from the American Royal, which proved to be a quite fitting use for it.  (After simmering it the slow cooker for several hours.)  That’s about the whole of the weekend.  Next weekend, NEXT weekend is gonna be fun.  Oh yeah, I’m gonna blow it out next weekend.

Well I broke my recent trend;  Went with two lame weekends in a row.  I probably shouldn’t say “lame,” because I rather enjoyed it.  “Restful” maybe.  Friday night sort of set the tone.  We skipped happy hour and walked up the street to Cantina Del Ray (yes, that’s how they spell it…) for some dinner.  That place is probably my favorite Mexican restaurant by now, perhaps on location alone.  The food is certainly solid, and reasonably priced, but at the end of the day I like any place I can just walk a block to get to.  Happily stuffed, we went back home and fired up the Wii for an evening of gaming.  After running all the way through the standard “Wii Sports” game (new record in golf) and a little Mario Kart, we rounded out the night with a few hours of Rock Band.  I always forget how much fun that game is, and wonder why I don’t play it more.  (The Wii in general.)  Maybe if I played too much it wouldn’t be fun anymore?  Hmmmmm.

Saturday we both slept in.  Not too unusual for Donette (part of her daily ritual actually) but I have a hard time sleeping past 7:00 most days.  But, I’d stayed up late honing my drumming skills, and I guess it got the better of me.  It was noon before we knew it, and we had a big fish fry to go to.  Our friend Ronnie (of the “Brooksider crowd”) has an annual fish fry, which always makes for a solid afternoon of entertainment.  As with all Brooksider-related events, it seems to get bigger every year too;  I am guessing at one point there was 25 – 30 people there.  I pretty much stuffed myself on everything…  It’s kind of a pot-luck deal and there was some delicious feed there.  (Not the least of which being the actual fish;  Farmed crappie, deep-fat-fried.)  The party was still going when we left, but I had to work at 8:00 so we took off a little early.  The rest of the night was spent working from the couch while watching college football games.

Sunday was similarly modest in the entertainment arena.  After once again sleeping in (this time because I worked well into the wee hours of the morning) I spent a good part of the day on the couch watching football.  Donette had crossed the river to go to Josh’s birthday lunch, but I didn’t get up in time to make that trip.  So, I watched the rather tedious Chiefs game.  So tedious, in fact, that I mixed in some garage-cleaning for entertainment.  Winter is coming quickly, time to clear some space so we can stuff everything in there for the cold months.  After the 3:00 games, Donette got back home and we spent our evening making tamales.  This was our second attempt (well my first, Donette made the first batch alone) and I was rather pleased with the results.  Since the first try, we had quizzed several “in the know” resources, and found out that “ready to use” masa really isn’t.  As a matter of fact, I am still a bit mystified as to the purpose of the “ready to use” stuff.  I don’t get it.  Anyway, this time we used dry ingredients, with a generous helping of good ol’ lard, and the results were much more satisfactory.  Our next project is “smoked brisket tamales” in the near future, maybe next weekend even.

My record of “Busy, Lame, Busy, Lame…” weekends has continued.  Either I am too old to physically handle two party weekends in a row, or I just don’t have that much to do.  Friday sort of set the tone;  I was going to drop by happy hour and see what was going on, but ended up just going home and hitting the couch.  Couldn’t even summon the energy to crawl across the room and pop in a DVD so I just clicked through the channels all night.

Saturday I guess we did get a bit of entertainment in.  We started off by heading out to Lucky’s out in KS for a little lunch.  That’s not really where we intended to go;  We thought there was a Barley’s out that way.  Upon our arrival, a check of the Garmin showed Barley’s wasn’t even close to there, so we scrapped that plan and just went with Lucky’s.  Good enough;  Solid hamburger and plenty of football games on.  We loitered there for a while, then headed on to our intended destination, the Price Chopper just north of there on Roe.  Why did we drive that far just to go a Price Chopper?  Well it’s a “special” Price Chopper, if there is such a thing.  They sort of cater to the Hispanic community, and as such they have all kinds of ingredients that you won’t find at, say, the Wornall location.  It was well worth the trip, just for the meat counter alone.  We were on a mission to make some carne asada, so we interrogated the meat-counter guy for a while.  As it turned out they had a sale on some flank steak that they had pre-marinaded for just such a purpose, so we picked up some of that.  We wanted to try our own marinade too though, so we got some thin-shaved sirloin as well.  Then we headed over to the deli counter to beat them up for tamale technique, and bought a dozen fresh tortillas.  All that chit-chat wore me out, so then we headed back home to lay down for a bit.  Around 7:00 or so, we rallied and went out to dinner with the Martins.  We had a gift certificate for El Patron down on Southwest Boulevard, so we decided to try it out.  Well worth the drive;  As a matter of fact I had the carne asada, just so I could have something to compare our upcoming experiment to.  As we were driving home, one of our (much younger) friends called and was headed to the Brooksider, so we veered off and went to meet her there.  Being after 9:00, of course we didn’t know anybody else there, and the doorman had the gall to try and charge us a cover.  Donette berated the poor kid with her “Do you know who we are???” speech, but he was unmoved.  Eventually we headed up to the front door where the commoners enter, and found one of the managers, who waved us on in.  We pretty much said hi to our friend, stood around for about a 1/2 hour, and then continued home.

Sunday was an afternoon of football watching from the couch.  Prepare to see that sentence copy/pasted in for the next few months, I don’t forsee a lot changing.  I did spend several hours whipping up a big pot of BBQ Gumbo, which came out rather well if I do say so my darn self.

Triple Fat Back BBQ wrapped up another season this weekend, with our big American Royal BBQ party event.  I am still somewhat out of sorts from lack of sleep and over-partying, so forgive my lackadaisical effort at this.  I am definitely envious of the team members who had the foresight to take today off, that was fine planning on their part.

The event started (for a small part of the team) on Thursday afternoon, when a few of us showed up at the site to start setting things up.  By the time I got there, we had two big campers already in place, all the electrical work done, and the big tents were being set up.  That pretty much took the rest of the afternoon.  For dinner Firehouse Subs (one of our proud sponsors) showed up with some sandwich boxes.  Apparently they had just taken a guess at how many would be needed, which turned out to be “way too many.”  (Were they a little more familiar with the workings of our “team,” they would have known that a very small portion of the members show up when there is work to do.)  Not being ones to waste food though, we managed to take care of all the sandwiches, which put us all in food-comas and effectively ended the work for the day.  For the rest of the evening we sat around and rocked to the sounds of “Guitars For Christmas” and tried to stay warm.

Friday was spent getting ready for the big party of the evening.  We usually have around 300 people show up throughout the evening;  That’s a lot of BBQ to get prepped, tables to set up, decorations to hang, hair gel for Scotten to apply, etc.  I can honestly say we are getting better at it every year though…  By now (our sixth year) we have a rather effective process for getting it all done by the time people show up.  Other than some uncooperative weather I think we had a great fiesta.  Unfortunately it was ridiculously windy, which we had to fight all day, and by the time the party got going the temp had dropped to a somewhat uncomfortable level.  I walked around a bit throughout the evening though, and I really think we had one of the larger parties in the area.  I had my fun to be sure, and that’s really all that is important at the end of the day.

Saturday was sort of a down day.  Relax, recover from the party, and get ready for a night of cooking.  I actually left the spot for a while even.  Our friends David & Jill had flown in from Dallas for the party, so Donette came down and got me and we all went to have breakfast at the Corner Cafe before they flew back home.  After that I went home and cleaned up a bit, then headed back to the Royal and got down to business.  Cooking conditions were somewhat less than ideal:  The temp dropped to the low 40’s, and still a little on the windy side.  Martin set up a TV outside for me though, and I managed to stay awake all night, feeding the smoker wood every 30 minutes in an effort to keep the temp up.  My efforts were rewarded with by far the worst score I have ever turned in.  I will say, I went in to the weekend not really caring how I did in the competition, but even given that attitude I was a bit embarrassed at doing that bad.  (In all fairness, it was a pretty bad brisket though, so I won’t argue the results weren’t deserved.)  On the upside, our ribs and chicken did well, pork was respectable, and the sausage came in a staggering eleventh place.  The brisket was easily our worst product, with the exception of the beans, which earned us our first-ever ZERO, although I doubt anyone cares enough to find out why.

Sunday we got the site torn down, then I went home and crashed on the couch.  I tried to stay awake so my “clock” would get back in sync, but I think I only made it about 30 minutes before dozing off.  So much for that plan.  I slept well knowing that we had finished what was (supposedly…  maybe… hopefully…) our last American Royal event.  It has been decided that it’s just too much work and money for old men like ourselves, so we are retiring from the event, much to the delight of the organizers I am sure.  Despite that ultimatum, even as we packed up on Sunday there were rumors of a possible merger with one of our neighboring teams that we party with throughout the weekend, things that we should do differently next year, etc.  Stay tuned next October…

Now this is weather.  It would be this way all year if I had any say in it.  Hopefully it holds out for the big BBQ this weekend…  (Jinx.)  By the way, I know everybody has been on the edge of their seats waiting for status on my web server instability issue.  Well, after turning on some logging here and there and watching things for a while, it turned out there were about 150 or more spam-bots hitting my message boards every twenty minutes or so.  Given the rather anemic specs of the little server I use, it would just puke all over itself.  After ciphering on a few different solutions for a while, I took the easy way out and just deleted the message board.  Bah, nobody (except the spammers) has used it for several months anyway.  Done.

That weekend was definitely a bit toned down after last.  That was a good thing, I need my rest.  Friday, case in point, I didn’t do much at all.  I stopped by the Brooksider for a bit and sat out on the deck, enjoying the fine weather and catching up on the latest local news, then went home and watched TV.  Donette, meanwhile, stood in as Susan’s date to a highschool reunion.  She stayed out quite a bit later than I, and that’s all the info I was privy too…

Saturday, after sleeping in just a bit, we headed down to Brookside & joined John and Susan for breakfast at Sharp’s.  I had the biscuits and gravy for about the tenth time in a row;  Probably need to branch out a bit.  Then again, I like their biscuits and gravy, so why risk it?  We ate breakfast, then walked around the Wayside Waifs event for a little bit, checking out all the puppies.  (I didn’t know that was going on or I would have probably gone elsewhere for breakfast…  It was pretty crazy with all the streets blocked off and mutts everywhere.)  After that, with a nice full belly, I headed to the wilds of the northlands, to join Martin and crew (skeleton crew, I might add) working the smoker up at Chris’ house.  Brice & Zim showed up to help out too, and I think we got everything pretty well prepped for next weekend.  Of note, while we had the smoker running, Chris turned out what could have been the best slab of ribs he has ever prepared.  Bold statement, but quite possibly true.  Deeee-licious.  Fluke, or can they be duplicated next weekend under the pressure of competition?  Time will tell.  (If we even bother turning in our entries…  Time will tell that too.)  After all that, I headed back home for another evening of nothing.  I had been snacking on ribs and chicken all day and wasn’t even hungry, so I skipped dinner and just hit the TV again.

Sunday, after the previous evening of nothing, I was well rested and ready to enjoy the day.  I drove over to Mark’s house and picked him up, and we headed to the shooting range out by Parkville for a few hours.  Can’t beat that for a fine Sunday afternoon’s entertainment.  We killed a few dozen pieces of paper, then scurried back to midtown.  There was still plenty of afternoon left, and the weather couldn’t get much better, so Donette and I made the arduous .5-mile trip to The Well to enjoy the weather.  I had the best pastrami sandwich I’d had in recent memory, and Donette gave her burger high marks too.  That was the first time we’d eaten there, and I must say it easily rivals 75th Street for food.  The downside is that every time we’ve been there, (admittedly not many) there has been something a little “off” about it that almost, if not quite, ruins it.  For instance, last time we were there, one of the neighboring businesses had some kind of sewer issue going on, and every so often you’d get an overwhelming whiff of rotten eggs.  (It was still there yesterday actually, but we had a more favorable breeze.)  Then yesterday it was the bees;  Friggin’ honey bees everywhere.  What the heck?  They even kept getting in our tea, which wasn’t even sweetened.  It was a bit unnerving.  But, the pastrami was excellent and I didn’t get stung, so I guess in the end it worked out OK.