Whoa, big weekend for the Kenagys. I feel like I’ve been beat with a stick. The good news is we actually went out and celebrated my birthday, the bad news is I am apparently too old to celebrate.

We flew out to Denver last Thursday with the Martins, for the sole purpose of my birthday. OK maybe not, but I’m going with it. Upon our arrival, we picked up a sleek, sexy minivan rental, because that’s what 41-year-olds drive. We then drove this hot machine over to Ed and Kim’s place to begin the weekend festivities. First on the agenda was the Killers concert. I wouldn’t say these guys are exactly my favorite band by any stretch, but we wanted to check out Redrocks Amphitheater, and that’s who was playing, so that’s who we went to see. The event took a nice upswing when one of Ed’s buddies called him before the show and offered him some passes to what he described as “the best seats in the house.” When we got there we made the rather arduous climb to the top of the theater and met up with this guy, who gave us some “FOH” stickers to wear. It turned out these things were like two steps below wearing a halo. There was no assigned seating, so it was pretty much a “get there really, really early if you want a good seat” kind of deal. With our super-duper stickers though, we waited up until the first band started, then trotted right down to a roped-off section around sixth-row center. So, while everybody else was getting jostled around by 15,000 screaming, bouncing knuckleheads, I had my required 15 feet of space around me on all sides and an awesome view. Perfect!! On the downside, The Killers only played two songs before the lead singer was supposedly stricken with a mysterious and sudden case of bronchitis. However, I would venture a guess that there were some fans in the crowd who were more upset with this than I. We’d been there a few hours, the second band was pretty good, and I think I was starting to suffer some inner ear damage from the excessive volume level. So, we feigned a little disappointment and started the march back to the minivan. At this point I have to at least attempt to relate a rather humorous event, although it likely falls in the “you had to be there” category. During our trek back to the car, Martin felt a sudden compulsion to go wandering away from the group, which was certainly of no surprise to anyone. He saw some markers off on the side of the road, somehow determined that these marked a trail head, and took off full tilt into the darkness. Unfortunately, he quickly and painfully discovered that they instead were marking a rather precipitous drop-off. Unaware of this misfortune, the rest of us continued on to the car. After several minutes of waiting, we started getting a little antsy and began hurling some rather misguided comments back in his direction. Luckily, he was eventually able to pull himself out of the ravine under his own power because I’m not sure we ever would have caught on that something just might be amiss. On the downside, he’d taken such a tumble that it knocked his wallet out of his pocket. It was apparent that we had absolutely zero chance of finding it in the dark, so we had to just drive home. Between this mishap and the header that Ed took in the bleachers, we made up a pretty bruised and bloodied group of concert-goers.

Friday, we started the day with a tasty breakfast at Lucile’s. After laying down a delicious base for the day, we loaded up the van and headed back to Redrocks to look for Chris’ wallet. In what everyone agreed was a certain good luck omen, he found it pretty quickly, right at the bottom of the ditch he’d tumbled down. Plus, we all got a good laugh at his expense looking at the cliff he’d run off; it did indeed look painful. Buoyed by this bit of good luck, we headed on up the hill and explored the amphitheater and took lots of pictures; it was quite a cool place. They have a visitors center with all kinds of history on the place, and you could walk down and check out the stage, and just generally interesting junk. After walking around there for a while, we headed back to the small town at the base of the hill and enjoyed the weather out on a cool roof-top deck. The name of the restaurant escapes me… some Mexican place. Doesn’t really matter, we were just enjoying the afternoon. After a while we headed back to Denver and hooked up with Todd, who had just driven in from a little vacation in New Mexico. We took the light rail down to Coors Stadium and caught a Royals game, and they actually won?!?! Most likely they knew it was my birthday and put out a little extra effort. And speaking of baseball and my birthday, Donette gave me tickets to the Yankees vs. Mets game at Yankees Stadium next month. This has many levels of coolness; It’s the last year the Yankees will play in this stadium, it’s a big “rivalry” game, and we’ll be sitting in the bleachers in New York on a (hopefully) fine June day watching a baseball game.

Wow, that was a lot of typing, but I’ll briefly summarize the rest of the weekend. Saturday we drove up to Fort Collins and spent the whole day up there. We toured Fat Tire Brewery, had a good lunch at a local restaurant, and went to a little festival that just happened to be going on. We managed to find all these fun places with much unwanted assistance from Todd’s stupid talking GPS, which he kept changing the language on to make it even more annoying and useless than it already was. The good news is I thought I wanted one of those things until I spent 3 hours in a car listening to one, so he saved me like $300.

Sunday we finally took it easy and just sat around Ed and Kim’s house, where several of their friends joined us for barbecuing and playing cornhole. It was relaxing but for some reason I still feel pretty beat-up today, likely because we didn’t get to our house until around 11:00 last night. It ain’t easy being 41.

Wow, straight from the monsoons to the 85 degree weather.  Nice.  How about a little moderation for once?  Oh well, I’ll take it over the rain… I think.

Friday didn’t bring a whole lot of excitement for us.  I was ticked off because I lost yet another auction on eBay and it made me pouty.  I just don’t get why people pay so much for junk on there, I haven’t seen a good deal yet.  I was bidding on some handlebars for my motorcycle, which finally went for $102.  You can pick them up brand new any day of the week for $125, why pay that much (plus some ridiculous S&H charge) to buy somebody’s scratched up junk?  Crazy.  Luckily I got so mad I blacked out, fell out of my chair and missed the end of the auction or I’d have probably gotten caught up in the excitement and bid too much.  After that mayhem, we went up north and picked up the scooter from Martin’s house, where it had been stranded all week because of the rain.  It was a pretty dicey ride home in the KC pseudo-rush-hour, but I made it in one piece.  Once I got home, we shut down for the evening and watched a movie.  “Bruce Almighty” was the selection;  It wasn’t bad.  Better than the last several choices we’ve watched.

Saturday we slept in a bit, then took a little ride out to Lee’s Summit to that nightmarish shopping district on Chipman Road.  Normally I would prefer to avoid such congested areas, but the MPR people were having an adoption event so we wanted to check out the pups and say hi.  After finally escaping the gridlock about an hour later, Donette rode the scooter on down to the Plaza, where she met Kelly and Lori at the Classic Cup for lunch.  Meanwhile, I kind of aimlessly rode the motorcycle around, eventually ending up at Knobtown Cycles.  I’m still trying to find somebody to work on my motorcycle, and they just kind of caught my eye on the way by.  It was an “interesting” place, and their rates were cheaper than the dealer, but I sort of got the impression they prefer the American bikes.  Who knows, I might take it there anyway.  They’ll probably take a crowbar to it, but at least I’ll save $10 an hour labor costs.  When we got back home, the temperature in the house had hit like 80 degrees, so we broke down and turned on the AC for the first time this year.  Bummer.  Since we were paying for it anyway, I sat inside and soaked up the cool air for the rest of the afternoon.  Stupid weather.  Martins came over for dinner;  We grilled some fajitas and sat around making some initial plans for our upcoming European adventure.

Sunday was mostly taken up with an unplanned work-a-thon.  Never shoulda logged on I guess, what can you do.  We did sneak out for a little lunch at Jack Stack, which was solid as always.  It was a little more crowded than anticipated, presumably because of Mothers Day, but we were able to snag a table in the bar area right off.  That’s always a roll of the dice, sometimes you end up getting stuck next to a bunch of smokers, but we did OK this time.  I had a short end dinner and Donette had the baby backs.  I might have been just extra-hungry, but I think that was the best ribs I’ve ever had there.  They were no TFB product, mind you, but they certainly served the purpose.  I spent the rest of the afternoon logged on to work, while Donette went out for some shopping.  She brought home a new boom-box for our ipod’s, and a new gas grill.  I got the grill put together that evening; steaks tonight!  It had gotten so late by then that we missed the Sopranos, which throws my whole week out of sync right off the bat.  We did catch Entourage though.

I had a good weekend but a rough morning…  I’ll do my level best to slop through an update though.  The main event for my weekend was the Saint Joe BBQ contest.  I headed up north Friday afternoon on my trusty scooter and met up at Martin’s house to get ready, stopping by North Oak Quality Meats on the way to pick up a few briskets.  From there we headed even farther north to the beautiful metropolis of St. Joe, where Zim and Chad were already set up and waiting.  I’d say we had a pretty solid party Friday night, although Martin, Brice and I kind of stayed away from the action.  Moody artists, you know.  The TFB margarita machine was a big hit as always.

I felt I worked my brisket plan a little more effectively than at the Royal;  I put a new dry rub recipe on them around midnight and bagged ’em, then snuck in the trailer to catch a little nap.  Brice woke me up at the unholy hour of 3:00 to take over fire duty, so the briskets hit the smoke at 4:00, precisely as scheduled.  I must say, I was in rather high spirits all morning, dare I say even a smidgen excited.  There was no hint of trouble until I pulled them at noon, and one of them broke in half when I picked it up.  Overcooked AGAIN!!  I was so frustrated I seriously decided I was done with the sport.  I didn’t even want to turn it in, and if not for the fact that it has some rather negative implications for the team I would have thrown it straight in the trash.  So, I cobbled together the best shreds of beef I could find and dejectedly took the march of shame up to the turn-in.  As it turns out, it placed seventh.  Not exactly great (there were only 24 teams) but not too shabby either.  I honestly was almost a bit perturbed, as by the time Chud phoned us the results I was quite at peace with my decision to hang up my tongs.  So, I guess I’ll live to burn at least one more hunk of beef.  Overall, the event was a good time had by all, and team TFB didn’t do too bad in the standings… Better than the Royal anyway.  After the ‘que contest we headed back to Martin’s house.  They were having a Cinco de Mayo party that night, so Chris and I snuggled up on the couch and caught a little shut-eye.  (How long will it take you to get that visual out of your head?)  Donette and I managed to hang in there at the party until 10:30 or so, then we bailed back to the safety of the southlands.

Sunday was kind of a washout, literally.  We had a neighborhood party planned up the street, but their basement flooded so they were busy bailing out the mess.  We bummed around Costco for a bit, then headed back up north to pick up my junk I’d left at Martin’s.  The good news is I recovered all my BBQ gear, the bad news is I took off my rain jacket and left it there.  Dang, ANOTHER trip north in my future.  Other than a rather unfortunate incident involving the dogs, our muddy back yard, and our previously light tan carpet, it was an uneventful day.  I even took a few pictures, in case we have to turn this one in to insurance.  Sigh.  That’s just the steps in the pictures;  The carnage continued into the bedroom, the office, and the majority of the downstairs.  Actually nobody saw them in action, so it may have been the cat.  Right.

Wow, that was a pretty busy weekend, at least for us.  Especially since we didn’t really have anything planned.  Friday wasn’t anything special, but fun I guess.  I started off after work with another round of the now-hated physical therapy on my shoulder.  It is really doing some good, but at the cost of some rather extreme discomfort.  Should just be another few weeks though;  I’m going to run out of money or patience soon.  After that I met Donette at the Brooksider, where K.B. and Bruce joined us briefly.  I wasn’t in much of a mood for that place though, so we went down to Carmen’s for some dinner.  It was solid as always;  We had calamari and salads to start things off, then split a plate of linguine diablo for dinner, which is probably my favorite item on the menu.  The big plate of pasta effectively ended us for the night, we went straight home and went to bed.

Saturday was looking like a fine, fine day out, so I rolled my motorcycle out in the driveway for the first of my planned “updates.”  I was wanting to clean up the rear fender in some fashion, and finally decided on using the directions I found on this page.  I followed the directions very precisely, even using the same color masking tape, which may or may not have been important.  Can’t be too careful.  As with every other project that involves me and tools, it took a lot longer than advertised, but I managed to get everything back together and functional.  I also took the opportunity to meet the guy across the street, who is something of a gear-head.  He was out working on his huge mud-mobile 4×4, so I strolled over to chat.  Compare manly mechanical projects, you know.  I’m sure he was duly impressed;  For a second I thought I saw him roll his eyes but it was pretty bright out, probably just the glare.  Actually I was hoping he had some kind of tool I could use, but no luck.  He excitedly pulled out some air tool that looked like it would be more appropriate to sawing the bike in half than trimming up a little plastic.  Thanks but no thanks, I’ll just run up to Sutherlands.  Anyway, I dubbed the project a success.  Pretty minor update but I was excited about it all the same.  If I had it to do again, I would definitely pay a little more attention to the way things came apart, particularly what electrical connection went where.   (Yes, for those of you trying to recall, I was an electronics major at CMSU.  Nine years of college down the drain.)  Luckily there were only six connections, a little trial and error got everything working.  I even put up a few pictures of the project in the photos section.  There was still plenty of daylight left when I got done, so Donette hopped on the scooter and we rode out to Martin City to enjoy a limeade at Sonic.  After Sonic we took a rather circuitous route home, stopping by to visit a co-worker and just generally enjoying the day.  We didn’t do much that night, just watched “Anger Management.”  I would say it’s probably the worst movie ever made, we didn’t even make it all the way to the end.  It would seem that, in our quest to select movies that both us might enjoy, we keep finding ones that neither of us can stand.

Sunday we got up bright and early and walked up to Waldo to take part in the Trolley Run.  We met John & Susan and enjoyed the leisurely 4-mile walk down to the Plaza.  Last year we made the critical error of semi-jogging;  This year we walked the whole thing, which was infinitely more enjoyable.  After the “race,” we went over to Todd’s apartment for his post-party, featuring his Mom’s breakfast casserole, donuts, and a beautiful arrangement of fruit and yogurt.  Todd didn’t even make it to the run this year, apparently he was too busy working on the spread.  After breakfast, we all agreed that despite our casual pace, we were a bit sore.  So, we went our separate ways for nice afternoon naps.  After that I washed my motorcycle, then Donette and I spent the evening on the back porch separating out her large collection of state quarters.  She had a gallon ziplock bag stuffed with quarters, so we filled up four of the little books they make for them, with plenty left over.  My job was smoking a cigar and separating them all into the “D” and “P” mint categories.  Ahhh, another wacky night at the Kenagy’s;  Does the madness ever end?  Later John & Susan came over and joined us watching the weekly Sopranos and Entourage episodes, both of which I thought ranked rather high in entertainment value.

I believe Spring has finally arrived with some consistency.  I was able to ride assorted two-wheel vehicles all last week, and this week is looking good too.  As for our weekend entertainment, things started off rather lame on Friday with my first visit to a physical therapist, in an attempt at fixing up my bum shoulder.  My right arm has been a generally useless appendage since Martin maliciously injured it last August…  I figured it was about time to do something about it.  The Doc agreed with my assessment;  He even thought it might be just a few months overdue.  Things went very well, I was quite pleased with the results of our first session.  (Everything but the bill, that is.)  I can actually raise my arm over my head for the first time in eight months;  Remarkable!  The good Doctor did infer that I might need to work on my communication skills before our next session though, which I wasn’t entirely clear on.  Apparently he felt I wasn’t adequately expressing my discomfort levels to him, to the point that he actually seemed a bit frustrated.  OK, now I’m not the one with all the degrees hanging on the wall, but it seems reasonable to me that if you take a metal object and drive it between some muscles, it’s going to hurt.  If you grab somebody’s arm and twist it until it pops, it’s going to hurt.  Do I really have to say “yeah that hurts”?  Come on now.  I guess I’ll just sit there and chant “ow… ow… ow…” next time.  That little torture session effectively ended my day.  We stayed home for the evening, grilled up a rather tasty dinner, and then watched “Hitch,” which we actually both agreed was a pretty lousy movie.

Saturday morning looked like a good day for a motorcycle ride, so I rode up north to Barry Road and visited the Red Buffalo BBQ team.  They were entered in a small competition, so I looked over their shoulders for any free ‘Que ideas.  Hopefully I took good notes, because they did pretty well in the standings, including a fourth place finish in brisket and fifth place overall.  I enjoyed my little ride too, except it was so dang windy it tore up my license plate.  After that, we spent the rest of the day sitting on the deck at the Brooksider with Ed and Kim, enjoying the weather.  Later in the evening they went to a party, and we headed back home for another night of TV.  The dogs had been left alone all day, so we had to give them their “social time.”  Sigh.

Sunday looked to be another great day.  Although I wasn’t aware of it, Donette had declared it a “work in the yard” day though.  Apparently she had invited Ronda and Josh over to help till up the back yard, which we are trying to level out and re-seed.  Much to my dismay though, my aching shoulder prevented my from assisting in the project.  Darn the bad luck.  They made big progress though, and even managed not to tear up the sprinkler system.  Now we just have to see if we can actually get some grass to grow…  Something tells me that is going to be rather challenging with the dogs.  Watching all that work had made me rather hungry, so I made some blackened fish for dinner, which came out rather tasty.  We closed out the weekend in the usual fashion;  Watching the Sopranos and Entourage, both of which received high marks on the entertainment scale this week.