That was a nice “relaxing” weekend.  Friday night we actually went out on a pseudo-date.  Donette had the rather edgy notion of leaving the circle-of-comfort.  I was none too keen on the idea, but being the accommodating type I agreed to branch out a bit.  She drug me well outside the Brookside area to meet the Munkirs for some dinner, somewhere at or near the edge of the earth.  Our first choice for dining was McBride’s, but by the time we got there the Munkirs had already checked it out and been quoted an hour and a half wait.  (I might point out that I have never, ever, ever had an hour and a half wait at the Brooksider or Hoopers.  Not really relative, just thought I’d mention it.)  That wasn’t happening, so we bailed out to Jason’s Deli.  Donette loves that place, and there was no waiting.  I give it a thumbs up; Honestly it’s pretty hard to go wrong with any place that has a soft-serve ice cream machine.  After a big ol’ sandwich and about 4 bowls of soft-serve, we headed over to the Munkirs and played some cards.  Hearts was the game of choice, which turned out to be a bad choice because I lost.

Saturday we woke up early and met my Mom out in Grandview at the IHOP for breakfast.  Yes, that makes two long drives in one weekend.  Sigh.  Well worth the trip though, I kinda like IHOP.  I had the dieters-special plate: Chicken fried steak with gravy, fried eggs, and three pancakes.  And yes, I did eat it all, thank you very much.  Mom and Donette ordered a bit more conservatively with the omelets, but there was plenty of food on their plates too.  Good way to start a day.  That night we had to stay home, having already used up our monthly allotment of car mileage.  Ed and Kim came over and we cooked up some chinese food (complete with fortune cookies and sherbet… nice touch) and played hearts again.  Apparently the game the previous night was a learning experience, as I won this time rather handily.

Sunday Donette went up north to help her sister paint, and I took Gabe to the park for a little exercise.  All the rain on Saturday made things a bit muddy, but he didn’t seem to care.  After that I spent several hours rebuilding a messed-up PC that has been sitting in my basement for months.  Probably wasn’t the best choice of activities, given the nice weather outside, but it needed done.  For the evening entertainment we went over to Susan’s for her annual Oscar party.  After enjoying a big dinner of homemade spaghetti, I sat riveted to the TV and watched one spellbinding acceptance speech after another, and marveled at all the beautiful dresses.  Or I sat on the back deck and smoked a cigar with Todd, Munkirs and Martin; You have to guess which one is true.

Man, the world was against me this weekend, I tell ‘ya.  I got nothing to report.  NOTHING!!  Donette was out of town, Todd was out of town, the Brooksider was closed, and the weather was crappy.  Where’s that leave me, I ask you?  What about ME??!!  I pretty much sat at home working and watching TV, in a bitter state of boredom and maudlin.  (“Maudlin” is my word of the week, brought to you by Junior Soprano, episode 59.)

Friday I got out for a few hours.  Donette was on a business trip to St. Louis, so Todd and I went to GAF’s up on Wornall, a.k.a. Romanelli’s.  It was OK, but a bit too laid back for crazy guys like us.  I had to go pick up Gabe at 6:30, and after that Todd came over to watch TV and eat cheese and crackers.  Seriously.

Saturday Gabe and I both were a testament to the phrase “Idle hands are the devil’s tools.”  That poor puppy was so bored he couldn’t help but get in trouble.  He’d be laying there watching TV with me, and you could just see that simple little brain churning away.  “Bored.  Bored.  Gotta do something.  Bored.”  Next thing you know he’d be chasing the cat, or walking around on the kitchen counters, or running around with Donette’s stuffed animals in his mouth, or assorted other mischievous activities.  And as for myself, I thought it’d be a good idea to catch up on a bunch of stuff at work since I didn’t have anything to do.  Turned out to be a bad idea;  Everything I touched went to crap.  Next thing I knew it was 2:00 in the morning and I had stuff broken all over the friggin’ country.  DOH!!  I got all my messes cleaned up, although it was well past my bedtime when the smoke finally cleared.

Sunday was a bit sunnier, if a bit chilly, so Gabe and I went and hung out at the park for a while.  He got some good running in, wore him out a bit.  He sacked out as soon as we got back home, so I went down and celebrated the re-opening of the Brooksider.  And, with that, my weekend was mercifully over.

I am lucky enough to have the day off, so let’s keep things brief here.  I don’t really have any useful purpose for the free day, but I guess a wasted holiday is better than no holiday at all.

We started off the weekend Friday at the Brooksider, believe it or not.  It was OK; there was a notable lack of sporting events on the TV, which meant everybody thought it necessary to crank the jukebox up.  So we had THAT annoyance going on, plus there appeared to be several after-work parties crowding up the place.  Bah.  If you want to hang out with your co-workers go do it somewhere else, or at least do it quietly.

Saturday we took a little road-trip to beautiful Omaha NE to watch our third U.N.O. hockey game.  While we don’t have any particular allegiance to this team, the games are always fun and we enjoy the city too.  Ed and Kim made the heinous drive with us also; we have to take Ed to narrate the action for us, not being hockey fans.  Upon our arrival, we hit a minor snag with our hotel room… For whatever reason they gave us a king size bed instead of the two doubles we’d reserved.  And they were totally full; no switching rooms.  My solution to this issue was that I should probably sleep between Donette and Kim, and Ed could have the chair.  This would not only serve to maximize the comfort of the majority of the group, but also provide me with a most excellent website update.  The kids elected instead to sleep on the floor.  Nobody ever listens to me.  Anyway, we got to watch an exciting game as always, but it ended in a tie, which I found a bit inconclusive.  A tie??!!  C’mon man.  Nobody does ties anymore, we need an ending!!  After the game we kicked around the downtown area a bit, but were rather hampered by the sub-zero weather.  Vicious cold.

Sunday we made the miserable drive home, which took up most of the afternoon.  Then we slugged around on the couch for a while and watched some of the race, which really didn’t hold any interest for us.  After wasting the majority of the day, we went over to Susan’s house for pizza and a few Sopranos episodes.  Todd joined us, and Gabe got to come too.  This was his first foray to Susan’s house when he actually got to come inside; he’s usually relegated to the back yard but it was a bit cold for that.  (Referring to Gabe, not Todd.)  Luckily he behaved admirably, maybe he’ll get to go back.

In other random notes of interest, our Team TFB website is now up, albeit in a somewhat abbreviated state.  Hey, it’s out there, that’s the first step.  Need to finish the roster page and hopefully get some “upcoming events” posted.  We have been contemplating a Spring contest but details are sketchy at this point.

Well that was a very Brooksider weekend.  I rolled down there Friday after work with a few co-workers for happy hour, to sort of get the weekend going.  Didn’t stay long though.

Saturday I was sitting around the house waiting for Donette to get home from her Texas trip when Ed called.  He was on some kind of charity pub crawl thing, where you go around playing putt-putt golf at a bunch of bars.  They were about to storm the Brooksider, so I went down there to eat a little lunch and laugh at them.  He and Kim paired up with Mike and Christy for the event.  I think they scored well in “style points” if nothing else; they had some kind of sombrero get-ups on.  After a while Donette stopped in to watch the fun too.  Like a real trooper, she came straight from the airport.  It pretty much wore her out though; She planned to hook up with them later at some of the other places, but took a nap instead.  Around 8:00 that night she was STILL napping, so she just called it a day and slept all the way through.

Sunday was similarly low-key.  We went to Jalapenos for lunch, then I popped over to the Brooksider to watch the Brigade game.  Unfortunately (in my book anyway) most of the tv’s were tuned to the MU game, but I guess it was still something to pass the time.  I hung out there for a while, then went home to make some dinner.  With the upcoming season #6 of Sopranos right around the corner, we decided to get back into the swing of things by replaying season #5.  So, we whipped up a pot of spaghetti, and had Todd and Susan over for some re-runs.  After watching episode one, however, the girls decided they needed to watch “Desperate Housewives” so Todd and I bailed.

Well, that was a half-hearted update to say the least.  I am distracted by my latest “project” and can’t concentrate.  I started shopping around this weekend for an external hard drive, so I could back up my PC’s at home.  (SINCE DONETTE LOST MINE!!!)  My attention was quickly drawn to the “NAS” option; Network Attached Storage.  Instead of just plugging in an external USB drive to each of your PC’s and backing it up, you put an IP address on these and they act like another device on your home network.  Nice… But then the Linksys NSLU2 caught my eye.  This setup is a bit different than most; instead of an “all-in-one” unit, this just gives you a network interface and two USB ports, and you plug your own drives into the USB’s.  This actually makes it a bit more cost-effective, as I can build my own external drive relatively cheaply, and if I should ever find the one Donette lost I’ll have TWO!  And as if this doesn’t fascinate you enough, there’s MORE!!  As with most other Linksys devices, it runs on a version of Linux.  And, as with ANY other device, if you put Linux on it, somebody will hack it.  Sure enough, a search quickly turned up the NSLU2-Linux page.  An entire site dedicated to the Linksys NSLU2 (aka “SLUG”) and those who love them.  SWEET!!  So… My big scheme is, I want to put one of these things together, load Apache on it, and turn it into my webserver.  “What is the advantage,” you ask?  ABSOLUTELY NONE!!  But I would probably be the coolest kid in Brookside if I got it working, I’ll tell you that much.  You can also run a fileserver, mailserver, and all kinds of other neat-o stuff on it.  And, actually there IS an advantage; Instead of the 400 watt PC with the 19″ CRT monitor that sits in the basement spinning my light meter all day long, so Munkirs can post his one derogatory comment per week, this little guy would pull less than 15 watts and do the same thing.  Oh yeah, I’m pumped.  This project will be a bit hampered by my marginal Linux skills, but I’ll call it a “learning experience.”

Wow that was a boring football game.  Thumbs down.

We actually went out Friday night for a change.  Gabe was sacked out from being at daycare all day, so we figured what the heck.  We hung out at the Brooksider for a while, then the Martins joined us for dinner at Jalapenos.  (Like we haven’t seen enough of THEM in the last few weeks…)  After a good over-feeding, we went back to the house and threw a few hands of 10 point pitch.  Haven’t played that in a while; Good game.

Saturday Donette woke up rather early and flew out to Texas for some kind of insurance convention.  Sounds like a hoot.  That left Gabe and I on our own… We were so perplexed by the situation we just kinda sat around all day.  We did go out to the park for a little exercise.  Played a little catch, did a little “practice” on his commands, that kinda stuff.  Around 6 or so, I figured I’d better get started prepping food for Todd’s Superbowl Fiesta.  He signed me up for cooking some ribs, so I picked up a few slabs of spares at Pricechopper.  I got them all peeled and stuff so I wouldn’t have to mess with that Saturday morning.  And, I figured we might need some soup too, so I made a huge pot of turkey broth.  By then I was sort of in the prep-cooking mode, so I went ahead and chopped up a big ol’ bucket of mirepoix for the soup.  (How ’bout THAT word…)

Sunday I got up early and fired up the smoker, and had the ribs on by 8:00.  I used the apple wood from a tree I helped cut down a few months ago;  It burned just famously.  While the ribs were cooking I decided to make a huge pot of “Clean-Out-the-Freezer Gumbo.”  I used up a bunch of leftover brisket and turkey, and some smoked sausage.  It came out pretty well, but I didn’t get the roux quite as dark as I usually like.  Got a bit impatient, what can I say.  Next time I think I am going to try using my immersion blender, maybe that will be easier.  I whisked that pot for a solid 40 minutes and it STILL wasn’t dark enough.  Anyway, I hauled everything over to Todd’s around 3:00 for his little fiesta.  He drew a remarkably good crowd considering the venue… I can’t believe how many people (myself included) left their 50″ TV’s so they could huddle up in Todd’s kitchen around his 19″ TV with rabbit ears.  Old school, man.  Belanger and the Munkirs came up, the young ‘uns (Mike and Ed) came over, Ivicak, Susan… An honest-to-goodness mob.  We sat around and watched the game in it’s boring entirety, and that wrapped up the weekend.  Gabe and I are bacheloring until Wednesday, so if you got any action for me let me know.  (Assuming it doesn’t require traveling over a mile or so.)