Hey it cooled off a bit today, I guess thanks to the torrential downpours yesterday.  Good thing, I was about to literally melt riding that scooter around.  Before I get around to my always-fascinating weekend coverage, I’ll throw out another bit of excitement from last week.  Martin and I traveled to beautiful Garden City, MO, last Tuesday to attend a KCBS barbecue judging class.  It was an interesting event;  We pretty much sat there and ate ‘que for about 3 hours.  They went over what to look for, what not to look for, proper judging etiquette, blah blah blah.  Interesting stuff, if maybe a bit lengthy for my stunted attention span.  My plan now is to hopefully go judge a few contests, to kind of survey the competition.  I’m going to give everybody top scores, to lull them into a false sense of security.  Sneaky.

Anyway, for our weekend entertainment, we traveled to Mahoney State Park for my sister Sharon’s surprise 40th birthday party.  (Made even more surprising by the fact that her birthday isn’t until December…)  We got there Friday afternoon and got our campground all situated, then settled in to wait for the party.  Actually, we stayed in a room in the Lodge, complete with A/C and wireless Internet access.  But, if I want to call it camping, so be it.  I was in a State Park, so I musta been roughing it.  The party was a big success;  Anything with a fried chicken dinner is a big success in my book.  We turned in a bit earlier than most though, because 1) There was a large constituent of little people there and they were giving me a nervous tic, and 2)  We always turn in early.

Saturday the vast majority of the revelers went to the nice water park which was on site.  We, however, lamely opted to take a side trip into Omaha and do some shopping.  Again, the little ‘un population was a bit dense at the water park.  Anyway, we just kind of shopped around anywhere that looked interesting, including a Big Dog Cycle shop, Cabela’s and Bass Pro.  Our lone purchase was some new BBQ gloves, although we did shop the GPS’ pretty hard.  After that outing, we enjoyed a very tasty buffet dinner back at the lodge, and then went and saw a play at the local Melodrama.  (They have a very wide variety of entertainment options at this place, especially for a State Park.)  It was a pretty amusing diversion;  If you’ve never been to a “Melodrama” (I certainly hadn’t,) you boo the villian, cheer the hero, and other such assorted silliness.  You also pelt the villain with popcorn, which the all the kiddies seemed to enjoy immensely, to put it mildly.  I think there were about 100 people under the age of 6 in our group, although there might have been closer to 20 and they were just moving really fast.  Hard to tell.

Sunday we got up early and hit the road.  Ronda was watching the dogs again so we had to get back and provide some relief there.  After a good mauling by the mutts, I headed directly down to the Brooksider to watch the Royals and soak up some peace and quiet.  Whew.  I didn’t make it all the way through the game;  If you watched any of it, it was very evident early on how it was going to end up.  Not to mention, my quest for peace and quiet was somewhat dimmed by the fact that they were sanding the floor in the next room.  Good grief.

OK, my “always-optimistic” outlook on the weather has waned considerably since last week.  I have progressed from “Well at least it was a mild July” to considering a move out of country.  Nowhere particular, just as long as it’s 30 degrees cooler.  It’s so hot out I couldn’t wait for the weekend to end so I could get back to work, where they keep a nice meat-locker temperature going all day.

That was a pretty lame weekend.  I was oncall so I kept a low profile.  Friday night we went to see “West Side Story” at Starlight.  I made it through dinner, but didn’t stay for much of the show.  As in, my butt never even hit the chair, I walked straight from the air-conditioned dining room to the air-conditioned car and drove home to watch TV in the air-conditioning.  Donette and Kelly sat through it though, and said it was pretty good.  I’ll take their word for it.

Saturday didn’t bring much more in the entertainment arena.  I took the scooter out on a ride in the morning, before it got too hot.  I stopped by Scooter World to hang out with all the other cool kids, and then went to Microcenter and bought some new PC speakers.  I’ve the same set of Altec Lansings for about 12 years, they are without a doubt the oldest piece of computer equipment I still use.  They had developed a seriously annoying hum though, so I decided it was time to retire them.  So, I bought another set of Altecs.  They don’t sound nearly as good as the old set, but then again they were only $15 and they don’t hum.  That pretty well covers Saturday.  About the only other thing we did was go to Costco.  We were out of coffee, which rates as something of an emergency.  Unfortunately our car is acting up again, so we had to ride the scooter.  Boy THAT was a nice comfortable ride.  Nothing like putting on a full-face helmet and climbing on top of a burning hot motor, then zipping around in a blast furnace.  It’s not really that bad when you’re moving, believe it or not, but when you’re stopped at one of the 600 traffic lights in midtown you pretty much bake.  But, hey we got our coffee so all is good.  By the way, on the off chance that you care, we bought a bag of Parisi beans this time.  I’d never heard of them, but they are right here in KC, somewhere down by the Roasterie.  I’ll be darned, learn something every day.

Sunday, for the third time in as many weeks, I spent the day smoking a brisket.  Anybody want a sandwich?  We’ve got about 10 lbs of leftover beef in the freezer by now.  I think my technique is coming along nicely though;  I am pretty happy with the progress each week.  I also nearly threw my entry at St. Joe in the trash but did rather well with the judges, so what the heck do I know.  I think it’s a crap-shoot.  While the smoker was doing it’s thing, I sat in front of the PC and got some pictures up.  I finally got some more pictures from our big Europe trip posted, if not nearly all of them.  I put up a few from Seville, Spain, and some from Portugal.  That leaves only the New York pics still to go.  I also put up some random photos that I snapped over the last few weeks, just because.

I guess the brutal weather finally got here.  If it waited this long I guess that’s a bonus.  That’s my always-optimistic attitude shining through there.

We had a weekend o’ parties;  Can’t beat that.  We started off Friday down at the Brooksider, where they were having a party for our friend Ritchie.  He had just retired from Hallmark, with some ridiculous amount of years.  I had 25 years in my head, but the more I think about it I think it may have been even longer than that.  I guess you get to know lots of people working somewhere that long, because it may well have been the biggest crowd I have ever seen down there at 5:00 in the afternoon.  They had all kinds of good food set out, so that covered dinner too.  We stayed there a few hours, and then went over to our neighbor’s house for a party they were throwing.  These girls just moved in next door a short while ago, and I’m sure they were just giving us the “courtesy invite,” but we decided to actually show up for a few laughs.  It did indeed provide quite a few chuckles.  I’d say the average age was 21 – 23;  It was like a college flash-back.  We kind of stood on the edge and marveled at their skills until 11:00 or so, when they were circling up to head down to Westport.  As for us, we circled up and headed to bed.

Saturday we actually ventured out into the oppressive heat for a short while.  We walked the dogs, did a little shopping, and that type of practical stuff.  We also stopped by Jalapenos for a little lunch.  I mention that only because I decided to stray from my usual order (pork burrito) and get a chile relleno.  I had been to Fiesta Azteca Friday afternoon and had the same, so I wanted to compare their offerings while the memory was still fresh.  Jalapenos was good, actually better than I remember, but I still give the edge to Fiesta Azteca.  There is lots of supporting reasoning to this opinion, but I’ll spare you the details.  After all that excitement, and I really hate to admit this, we went over to John & Susan’s house for…  A couples baby shower.  Yeah, yeah, admit it, you’ve been to one too.  I have weaseled out of several previous situations, but this one was conveniently located and I was promised that there would be absolutely no games or similar tomfoolery.  It wasn’t too miserable, considering the situation.  There was a ton of good appetizers, and none of the guys were too thrilled about being there, so we just kind of slunk off to the kitchen and ate.  We didn’t stay long either;  I had to work all night so we bailed pretty early.

Sunday was once again “brisket-practice” day.   With my notes from last weekend providing a solid base documentation, I fired up the smoker and went to work, again keeping a detailed brisket-diary.  The Martins came over and product-tested with us, and I have to say it didn’t come out too bad.  Definitely an improvement, which is my main focus at this point.  The bad part of all this practice is the associated obligation to improve on my actual contest scores though.  See, as it stands I can always just do poorly and then say “Guess I shoulda practiced some.”  Now if/when I score horribly, I will just flat suck.  OH THE PRESSURE!!!  Actually, after a little thought, I am fully prepared to fall back on my secondary “This isn’t the smoker I practiced on” excuse.

We turned it down quite a bit after our big trip last weekend.  Just can’t hold that pace at our age.  Friday we went down to the good ol’ Brooksider, which is something of a rarity lately.  That’s probably a good thing though, because it makes it seem funner when we do go.  And, case in point, we must have been having fun because we stayed a lot longer than we intended.  Actually we’d gotten up and were walking out the door when we ran into one of our old neighbors and ended up staying a few more hours.  That was a night-ender;  We finally left around 7:30, went home and watched the rest of the Royals game on the couch.

Saturday we moped around the house until it got good and hot, and then went on a motorcycle ride.  We were headed for the Lee’s Summit Perkins to get some breakfast, but when we realized it was 11:30 we changed plans and went to Fiesta Azteca in Raytown for some lunch.  That’s my favorite place for Mexican food lately.  I like the big menu for one thing…  Most places I have one, possibly two items I’ll order every time, but at this place I have a rotation of like 5 things to choose from.  So far my bottom-line favorites are the carnitas burrito and the chile relleno burrito.  The latter option is quite interesting;  It’s a chile relleno (and a good one at that) rolled up in a flour tortilla with beans.  OK, maybe not the healthiest option in the city, but good.  After lunch we rode around a bit longer, stopping by Knobtown Cycle to look at some helmets and then meandering around a while longer before ending up at home a few hours later.  Maybe it was the hot weather, but we never recovered from the ride;  The rest of the afternoon was spent laying on the couch watching television.  For evening entertainment we went to Starlight to see “The Wizard of Oz” for the fifth time.  It wasn’t a bad show, but I pretty much knew what was going to happen.  The element of surprise was definitely lost.  It was a relatively nice evening out though, and ended up being the first show this season that I had to stay for the whole thing.  Errr, I mean “got to” stay for the whole thing.

Sunday afternoon was spent smoking a small brisket.  Not too much to go over there;  Put on some coals, played with the dogs, listened to the Royals…  A nice relaxing day.  I am determined to practice a bit more for the upcoming barbecue “season” so this was my first effort to that end.  I took notes every hour or so on the temperature, when I added heat, etc, so maybe all that info will pay off.  The Martins came over for dinner, but we didn’t even try the brisket so I don’t really know how this attempt turned out.  It went straight from the smoker to the ‘fridge.  It’s on the menu for Tuesday night so I guess I have something to look forward to.

Man driving vacations are GREAT, I’m never flying AGAIN!!!  OK, just a hint of sarcasm sneaking in there.  I’d say that was my longest stretch in a car since the Angel Fire trip several years ago.  Honestly it wasn’t that bad, especially considering all the money we saved over flying, renting a car, etc.  This overlooks the minor detail that we spent $1500 getting our 10-year-old vehicle ready for the trip, because I’m assuming it is now good for another 10 years.

The trip I am referring to is our 1200 mile jaunt to Loveland, OH for our second Pigfest.  We went last year and had such a good time that a repeat was definitely in order, but after the bashing our checkbook took in Europe last month we decided to make the dreaded I-70 run instead of flying.  We took off bright and early Friday morning on a blistering pace, and made pretty good time until I passed a State Trooper in Illinois at roughly Mach II.  I can’t even begin to explain why, but when I glanced ahead and saw a big white car sitting in the median with lettering all over it, all I thought was “Student Driver.”  It had a light bar and everything, it’s not like it was cleverly disguised.  One of those inexplicable optical illusions I guess.  Anyway, for whatever reason he didn’t even give me a glance, although I was conservatively 30 mph over the limit.  I took it as a sign that I’d better dial it back a few notches though, so we took it a bit slower the rest of the way.  When we got to Cincinnati, we checked into a hotel downtown, met up with everybody, and spent the rest of the evening at the Hofbrauhaus on the Kentucky side.  We were pretty spent from the drive so we didn’t make it as late as the rest of the crowd, but it was a passable effort, especially for us.

Saturday morning (OK it was “early afternoon”) we got started with a good breakfast at First Watch.  I always thought those were exclusive to KC;  Apparently I thought wrong.  After a tasty omelet, we continued even further East to the Paff Entertainment Complex in Loveland, OH.  (At least I think we were going East…  You would do well to ignore my comments on geography in general.)  The weather was perfect for an all-day outdoor party;  The high was right around 80 degrees and it was mostly sunny all afternoon.  After spending the whole day with whiffleball, cornhole, soccer, volleyball, and assorted other activities we had a huge dinner (roast pig, naturally) and then enjoyed a backyard concert by MER, out of Chicago.  It was a great show, and ended on a much better note than last year, when the police unceremoniously cut things short.  We made it a little later into the evening, and then snuck off to our tent to call it a day.  Unfortunately the unseasonably cool weather that we had enjoyed so much all day had dropped into some very unseasonable temp’s for the night.  We didn’t have any sleeping bags or blankets or anything (why would you need them in July???) and after about 30 minutes our teeth were chattering.  We called no joy and low-crawled into the house, where we scored a premium spot on a comfy hide-a-bed;  It pays to turn in early I guess.

Sunday I got up early and tried to wake Donette up;  I thought maybe we could sneak back out to the tent before anybody noticed.  Couldn’t roust her up though;  I think we were busted anyway.  We had a tasty breakfast, packed up our tent, and started the trek back to KC.  On the way out of town we stopped by Kim’s parents house and visited a while, and enjoyed a second breakfast.  (Hey, it was getting close to noon.)  We found that Ed may have been exaggerating the horrors of the West Side all along;  We didn’t get mugged, shot at, or even car-jacked the whole time we were there.  We chatted for a while, then headed out of town, stopping by Skyline Chili on our way for one last breakfast.  The drive home was as uneventful as the trip out.  Our plan was to stop in St. Louis, but we were so enthralled by the beautiful scenery of the Interstate that we just kept on going all the way to KC.  Actually we really weren’t all that tired and getting home sounded good.  Plus, “the kids” were being taken care of by Ronda and we didn’t want to push our luck with that.

Today we just rested up, washed the car, and miscellaneous stuff like that.  In a rare burst of energy, I even got my Pigfest pictures posted already.  Yes, I’m aware I don’t even have my pictures from last month up yet, so don’t bother reminding me.  For a bit more comprehensive photo coverage, check out Claire’s (Ed’s Mom) album.  You can get more wrap-up and picture links on Ed’s site too.