Golly am I glad to be back at work, with the free air conditioning and all the other good stuff.  The free a/c is all that jumps to mind right now, but I am sure there are other perks.  All in all, I guess that was a solid weekend.  Friday I stopped the Brooksider after work for Happy Hour, but the heat kind of drove me off after about 30 minutes.  Yeah, I could have gone inside, but I haven’t actually been through the door in over a month and I hate to break a streak.  I hear they have remodeled since I was last in there;  Guess I should at least check out the new digs some time.  After that short social interlude, I went on home for dinner.  Grilled chicken, if you care.

Saturday I spent the better part of the day over at Brice’s house, participating in a semi-official BBQ practice session.  I guess technically I didn’t actually participate, unless product sampling counts.  Remarkably we stayed outside the entire afternoon, despite the rather stifling heat.  Gabe came with me and joined in the fun too.  As it turned out, he and Bob’s dog Smokey probably aren’t going to be bestest buddies any time soon, but they did OK.  He got good and worn out at any rate, which is good for him.  The rest of us played some cards, watched the smoker…  Played some more cards…  Yeah that’s about it.  It must have been entertaining though, I ended up sitting there all day.  Granted, I’m pretty easily entertained.

Sunday I waited until it got good and toasty out and mowed the lawn.  On the surface that probably sounds like a foolish plan, but it’s actually part of my new diet that I’m developing, which is sure to make me rich.  Sure enough, after I finished the lawn I weighed in at an all-new low, proving that my diet actually works.  Some people refer to this condition as “severe dehydration,” but I prefer a more healthy-sounding spin on it.  After I recovered from the recurring waves of nausea, we spent the rest of the afternoon doing a little grocery shopping at Costco.  That’s a pretty solid summer Sunday afternoon there:  Cold a/c and free food samples.  Like I said, I’m easily entertained.  After that exciting outing, we went back home and got to work on some dinner.  John & Susan came over and joined us for some grilled hamburgers.  Last time we got together for dinner with them they fixed lobster, so we had to show them life on the east side of Wornall.  Of course we did grind the burger ourselves, for what that’s worth.

So I guess my vacation for the summer is over.  I’d say we pretty much maximized our time off though;  I’m absolutely worn out, and I definitely don’t have that feeling of having just left a few days ago.  As I mentioned briefly last week, we started things off at a two-day music festival in Denver.  It was all things that your standard music festival should be:  Brutally hot, exhausting, loud, and crowded…  But in an entertaining kind of way.  About the only bad thing I could say about it was that I didn’t like the four different stages;  Way too much walking for an old man.  This setup resulted in me missing the Black Crowes show entirely, as I was just too worn out by that point to walk across three soccer fields again.  And, I didn’t even know The Whigs were playing until just now as I was scanning the list…  Guess I missed them too.  Can’t complain though, we heard plenty of music.

After Denver, we headed further west to Vail to rest up.  I didn’t envy Ed & Kim having to work on Monday after the festival, I don’t think I could have done it.  We straggled into Vail late in the afternoon and got checked in, and proceeded to do not a whole lot for the next three days.  I don’t know if there just isn’t that much to do in Vail during the summer, or we were all worn out from the Denver trip.  (I suspect the latter.)  About the only “activity” we did the entire three days was renting some bicycles and coasting down from Vail Pass.  That little jaunt started off kind of rough, as it rained on us pretty hard the first 1/2 hour or so, but then the sun came out and we had a nice little roll down the hill.  The Martins rode the bikes a few other places during our stay, but we stuck close to the hot tub and pool ourselves.  Other than that, I guess we walked around a lot, ate a lot, and enjoyed the 75-degree weather.

Thursday morning we got up and started heading back east.  After dropping the Martins off at Denver airport, we kept on driving to Lovewell Lake in KS, a trip that took us a rather unexpected ten hours all together.  When we finally got there, we met up with the “old army buddies” for a reunion of the 295th Ordnance Company’s tour of Germany during Desert Storm.  One of the guys brought a boat, so we got in some lake time;  I even did a little tubing for the first time since my last ill-fated outing.  All my joints stayed together this time though, due mostly to the fact that we never exceeded 3 MPH, and the tube was so enormous I don’t think it could have flipped.  The rest of the weekend was spent grilling, and sitting around a fire re-telling our “war stories.”  The weather wasn’t quite as nice as Vail, but the company was a lot better so it made up for it.  (Thinly disguised stab at Martin there.)

Sunday we headed back to KC, which didn’t take too long.  We picked up Gabe from his Aunt Ronda’s house, then headed back home for a much-needed shower and nap.  The house looked the same as ever, with the exception that my Aerogrow garden had quite a growth explosion;  It now occupies the better part of the dining room.  I don’t know what’s on the dinner menu this week, but I imagine it will all have lots of fresh herbs in it.  I put up a quick 50-pic synopsis of our journey in the photo section…  How’s THAT for timeliness?

We just pulled into Vail, CO, after a three-night stay in Denver.  While in Denver we pretty much rocked our faces off for two days straight, at the Mile High Music festival.  We probably hit it a little too hard for old folks like us;  We pulled into the hotel well after 2:00 both nights.  It was definitely a good thing though;  We saw some great shows, and I think the people-watching was even better than Silver Dollar City.

And now, I am off to the hot tub.  I may or may not relate more detail of the weekend at some later point.  Right now I have a hot tub and free WiFi access for the first time in three days, so I ain’t got no time for this.

Well my current funk continues;  However, I have a nice vacation on the horizon so we’ll see what effect that has.  It’ll take things to the extreme one direction or another is my guess.  Hey, that week was nothing to complain about though, I’ve had worse.  We ate out nearly every night, which, if not necessarily in the budget, is certainly fun.  We started that trend off Monday night with dinner at 75th Street Brewery.  It was solid as ever;  We split a dinner in true old-people fashion, which worked out well.  Tuesday night probably bears a recap too.  We ordered takeout from Waldo Pizza, a perennial favorite.  For reasons that even I cannot explain, I came up with a combination of roasted chicken, bacon, and anchovies for my toppings.  Wow, I’m getting a bit unsettled just thinking about it.  I must say, the pizza was really quite good.  So good, in fact, that I ate the entire thing by myself.  (It was “buy one, get one 1/2 price” night, so Donette had her own combo.)   The phrase “All things in moderation” comes to mind.  My stomach was really quite out-of-sorts the rest of the night…  And I think I’ll leave the recap of Tuesday at that, for everyone’s sake.  Wednesday night was at Jalapeno’s, and Thursday we went to the Brooksider.  I’ve had everything on the menu (several times over) at both of these places so they really don’t bear re-telling.

Friday, I met Donette and her parents up at the Brooksider for lunch.  Although I just finished saying I’d had everything on the menu, that proved not quite true.  Actually, in truth, all I ever eat there is the chicken strips.  They aren’t exactly known as the culinary epicentre of the area, but the chicken strips are solid, (not to mention 1/2 price before 7:00) so it makes for an easy decision.  Friday, though, I branched out and ordered the “lunch special.”  This monumental event, combined with the fact that I never eat lunch at the Brooksider, added considerable excitement to my daily routine, needless to say.  The lunch plate was a large chicken-fried steak, with mashed potatos and green beans on the side, smothered in a considerable pool of gravy.  Quite delicious, although I had some trouble staying awake at my desk the rest of the afternoon.  That night for dinner, we cooked at home for the only time the entire week, fixing a recipe I’d seen on Robin Miller earlier in the week.  We fixed it on the grill though;  Too hot to be firing up the oven.

Saturday, the event of the day was Kelly Martin’s 40th birthday party.  Another one bites the dust, so to speak.  After dropping Gabe off at Aunt Ronda’s, I took Donette up there to join several other girls in a big stretch limo. They then drove over to the Martin house and picked Kelly up.  They drove around all afternoon doing whatever it is that girls do when they get together, and then came back to the house at 6:30 for a big party.  This whole episode was a surprise event, facilitated by Chris believe it or not.  It looked to be a big success, but I found myself just as entertained by the planning as the party itself.  I have watched all these girls email back and forth for several weeks, plotting and scheming how to best lie to their good friend Kelly in order to conceal their true motives.  It was troubling how easily they came up with these elaborate hoaxes, and how straight-faced they were as they told them.  Just as unnerving was the obvious glee they took in this whole act of deception.  I have seen evil my friends, and it lives among us.

Oh, another positive from last week was that I finally got my “tax rebate” check thing.  I don’t really know why mine was so late, something to do with how we filed through Turbotax.  Unfortunately, now that it finally got here, I’ve pretty much lost interest in the things I had planned for it.  I ended up ordering a new iPod, which I really don’t need.  It’s nicer than my old one though, and I thought it in the best interest of the economy to do something with it.  I also got two tickets to a “Brewmaster Dinner” at 75th Street this Tuesday evening, which I thought sounded festive.  The rest went in the checking account to pay overdue bills;  BORING!!

Wow, it seems like I’ve been gone much longer than a week.  Guess I got my money’s worth.  I spent the better part of my vacation in Branson/Silver Dollar City with my family, including all eleven nieces and nephews.  Actually there were only four little ‘uns, but they were really fast;  Seemed like more.  It was a good get-away, made even better by the choice of lodging.  Mom rented a “cabin” at a place called Stonebridge, about ten minutes from Silver Dollar City.  Ahhhh, camping at it’s finest.  If I had researched it a little better I would have brought a fishing pole, as our cabin backed right up to a stocked lake.  But, it backed up to a nice swimming pool too, so that worked out fine.  Most of our time was spent at the amusement park.  In two days of attendance, the rides I went on included the train.  That was it.  Oh, and the tram from the parking lot.  It was too hot to stand in line for the rides so I just hung out.  I had plenty of amusement watching the kids ride everything, and counting the teeth on the locals.

We got back home on Thursday, and started planning for a nice long weekend in the ‘hood.  When Donette woke up on Friday though, she got it in her head that she absolutely had to be at Kim’s bachelorette party that night… In Cincinnati.  What the heck, she was still packed from the Branson trip, so she threw her suitcase back in the Pilot and headed east.  She was sort of upset about missing Pigfest this year, so she got to hit that also.  Sounded like a good time, although I don’t have all the lurid details yet…  She hasn’t made it back home so far.  Last I heard from her, she was too tired to drive and was holing up in some seedy hotel in Illinois.  I thought I heard another voice in the background, but it was probably the radio.

Left to our own devices, Gabe and I did a whole lot of nothing over the weekend.  Let’s see…  I did some cooking, including a practice brisket that took up the better part of my Saturday.  We went for a few walks.  I had dinner at the Brooksider and Tanner’s.  Mowed the yard.  Went on a short bicycle ride.  You get the idea.  Oh, and I watched “The Fast & The Furious:  Tokyo Drift” three more times, bringing my total to somewhere around 27.  I really need to drop HBO.