There went a weekend that I will never get back.  A total waste of 2.5 days.  I have nothing to report.  If you want to know what I did, get a copy of the TV guide and read the lineup for the last few days, mostly TBS.  That pretty much covers it.

Actually we’ve been sick.  Whatever it is that’s going around, we’ve got it.  Some type of plague, I’m sure.  Most likely bubonic, but we haven’t been fully diagnosed.  The sort of odd part is that I have a different symptom every day.  Friday was fever, yesterday my nose was dripping like the leaky kitchen faucet, and Saturday… you do not want to hear about Saturday.  At least it didn’t all hit at once I guess.  So, at any rate… not much to tell.  Friday night we watched “The Recruit.”  A little too “busy” for my taste, but it was OK.  Saturday we did actually step out of the house for a few hours, but not for long.  We had a little soup at On The Border and then I shopped for a new Float Trip jacket.  (I didn’t find one.)  Then we went home and turned the tube back on.  Sunday was an all-time low.  I got up about 7:00, made some coffee, read the paper, and popped in an “Andy Griffith Show” DVD.  Watched a few episodes of Andy, then switched over to the TV.  The worst part is we don’t even have a decent cable package, so there’s not much to choose from.  We ended up watching a Julia Roberts movie and three Meg Ryan flicks, back to back.  Just kind of sat there next to the growing pile of kleenex and suffered.  Believe it or not, I found the stupid “TBS, Very Funny” commercials the most annoying part of the day.  The movies themselves were “tolerable.”  I should certainly be in touch with my feminine side for Valentines’ Day, after that run of chick-flicks.

Speaking of the pseudo-holiday, I expect we’ll have to take a pass on celebrating.  Doni is still a bit under the weather, and I’m not exactly 100% myself.  This is disappointing to be sure, because I had big plans for the evening, which I put considerable time and effort into.  I won’t bore you with details, but it was a very romantic, lovely evening in which I had devoted much effort.  Oh well, maybe next year.

Wow, that was a boring football game.  Painfully boring.  Went to a good party though so at least we had some measure of entertainment.  I think both teams were using the proven “bore them into submission” technique, perfected by one Mr. Frerking.  Oh well, I had a big bowl of funyuns and some spaghetti, what else could I ask for.  As for the rest of the weekend, it wasn’t too bad.  Friday night we watched “A Mighty Wind” and ate pizza.  Good wholesome entertainment there.  Saturday night we went to the big UMKC basketball game with a bunch of people, and managed to jinx them into breaking their big winning streak.  I will say it was a heck of a lot more exciting game than that lame Super Bowl though, complete with an exciting, if rather disappointing, finale.  If you missed the game, Chicago State hit two impossible, Hail Mary 3-pointers in the final 1.9 seconds of the game; the first one tied it and the second won it.  Jinx of the Kenagys, I tell you.

Well, I’ve finally come to terms with my sissy gym.  (Actually, not a “gym”, they prefer to call it a “club.”  Strike one right there.)  I’ve made it up there at least four times a week now for the last several weeks, so I think I’m officially back in the swing of exercising.  Unfortunately 10 pounds crept back on my gut during my little hiatus, but I’ll live.  That place is just not my style though, whatever my style might be.  Maybe I don’t have one and that’s the issue… Anyway, we’ll see how long this run lasts.  The list of things that annoy me about the place is quite long, but at the end of the day it wins out over my other options with location and price.  I’ll jot down a few of the things that I find bothersome about it, so that way in case you’re ever up there you’ll know how to act.  The first thing I would do is get rid of the telephone.  Why in the world do you need a telephone right there in the middle of all the equipment?  You don’t.  I have seen people walk in, use the phone for 20 minutes, and walk out, never touching a single piece of exercise equipment.  Why???  I don’t get it.  The second (and this was a very close race for first place) is to cut off access between the sauna room and the workout room.  I do not need to see a bunch of flabby old men parading around half-nekked.  (Usually standing there talking on the stupid phone.)  In the unforgettable words of my drill instructor, good ol’ Sergeant Whassisname:  “#*%&^, SON, YOU ARE NOT ON A #*$&%&^ BEACH, PUT YOUR #*%&@$ SHIRT ON!!!!”  (I was always fascinated how they could compose a sentence with more expletives than actual words.)  If all else fails, just refer to one of the many signs hanging everywhere politely reminding you to wear a shirt and shoes.  Good grief.  The third thing I’d do would be to throw away all the magazines.  People will sit on the benches and read those magazines more than they actually use the equipment.  There’s a library right up the street, folks.  And I swear, I was up there the other day, minding my own business on the elliptical machine, (actually if I could mind my own business none of these things would bother me) and this guy gets on the one next to me and starts reading some magazine that no self-respecting male should read.  I don’t remember the name of the publication, but it was embarrassing.  “Hollywood Insider” or something like that.  Dude.  There’s a copy of “V-Twin” right over there on the rack, shall I go get it for you?  Lastly, and some of you might find this one odd, they need to kick out the all the hot chicks that insist on working out in some kind of freakishly modified lingerie.  It’s distracting.  You’re supposed to be working out, not modeling for S.I. swimsuit edition.  Put your clothes on.  That one is pretty distant from the half-nekked old guys in terms of annoyance, but it’s on the list all the same.

Now mind you, I am not putting total blame for everything on everybody else.  Oh, no, I’m making changes too.  Yesterday I reloaded my MP3 player with some “cheerier” tunes, and it did seem to help a bit.  I don’t know where I got that junk, but most of the songs I had on there really had little value outside of perhaps ritualistic animal slaying.  So I dumped all those in favor of more “traditional” tunes.  We’re not talking KUDL stuff, just a little “tamer” so to speak.  And, what do you know, not once during the whole time I was there did I have to fight the urge to throw a dumbbell at somebody.  Things are looking up.

Now that was a good weekend.  We did one super-size bunch of nothing at all.  Quite relaxing really.  Doesn’t provide much material for the Monday update, but I’ll take it.

For the most part, it was a weekend of cinematic appreciation.  We had a few movies backed up on us that we hadn’t gotten around to watching, so we hunkered down in front of the TV and switched into “turbo-slug” mode.  I didn’t take it to quite the extreme that Donette did; She put on her jammies when she got home from work Friday, and didn’t change until Sunday afternoon.  Now that’s a professional relaxer at work there.  I at least made it to the gym for a while on Saturday.  Of course she did get some stuff done around the house between movies… I didn’t do anything of actual use.

So, bottom line, we did nothing so I can report nothing.  Best I can do is list off the movies we saw.  We started Friday night with the classic action movie, Dodgeball.  Good show, highly recommended.  It had all the mind-numbing qualities in a movie that I like; action, tasteless jokes, cheesy subplots, and a wholly predictable ending.  Five stars.  Saturday morning we had a 9:00 a.m. showing of “Swordfish.”  That one was a little “busy” for me… Still not really sure what the heck happened.  But, you know, Halle Berry and all… four stars.  Saturday evening we watched “About Schmidt.”  I’m still thinking on that one… I kept seeing myself 30 years down the road, which was monumentally depressing.  Maybe if the protagonist would have gone on Float Trip it would have been better.  Sunday morning we switched back to the mindless genre, with “Uptown Girls.”  Hmmmm.  I suppose I’ll get heckled for even admitting I watched that one.  I don’t know where the heck the rest of Sunday went; Aside from Doni making some soup I really don’t know what we did.  Anyway, around 3:00 we met Susan and Todd down at the Brooksider and went to see “Million Dollar Baby” in a real live theatre.  We haven’t been inside a real movie theatre since we saw “Austin Powers III” several years ago.  This time Susan hooked us up with tickets to the V.I.P. room, which we’ve been saying we wanted to go to for a long time.  That’s the way to go there; big ol’ reclining chairs, and a wait staff to bring you drinks and food and stuff.  The movie itself was pretty good too.  Todd gave it a resounding two thumbs down, but I kinda liked it.  It was just too darn sad though… I guess I’m more of traditional happy-ending kind of guy.  Since I actually might have beat a few people to seeing this one, I won’t go into any details; Suffice to say I could script a few much more “interesting” endings though, most of them revolving around Hillary Swank and swimwear.  Personally I would rather see “Dodgeball” up for the Best Movie award than this one, but that’s just my opinion.

After that, we went over to Susan’s and watched Sopranos, and called it a weekend.  Wow, what a huge waste of a perfectly good couple of days.  Quite relaxing.  I’m for it.  We don’t get to do that very often.  Oh yeah, Doni yelled at me last week for not mentioning that we are down to one pet again.  She gave Malachi (the obese black and white one) to one of her co-workers on a trial basis, and reportedly they are getting along just famously.  The other one, Kane, is more than pleased to be the lone cat again.  I still plan on getting a dog some time, but haven’t been able to pull the trigger.  Too much effort.  For the time being, dumping the litter box every several days and throwing a scoop of food in a bowl is about all I can handle.

** Sorry for the extra-late update.  I messed my site up and couldn’t get it to work.  Had my best technicians on it all day, connectivity was just restored.

Obviously I’ve fallen down once again on my plan to update this on Sunday.  Turns out I didn’t have time to actually work on the “regularly scheduled programming” because the friggin’ message board spammers finally caught up with me.  These scourges of the Web decided that myself and the 3 regular readers that come out here would appreciate some links to such useful content as “bdsm gay fetish male” and “bondage video male gay bondage gay.”  Nice.  Doni thinks they got my site address when I was out signing up at their site.  I assure you this was not the case.  The good part was that all the posts were coming from a single address; All I had to do was block it.  Well, nothing is ever that easy.  Turns out my existing firewalls aren’t flexible enough to block single hosts… Everybody comes in or everybody stays out.  So, I had to break down and read up on how to tighten down the site with the Apache access controls.  My first few attempts failed miserably, but I “think” I finally got it right.  In the process, I started reading my server logs and its actually pretty amazing how many people hit it just to “see what’s there.”  Then you have your “courteous spammers” that follow some kind of protocol, which my server wasn’t set up for, and your “non-courteous spammers” that just pound away on the site.  Geez.  So, when all was said and done, hopefully my site is a bit more secure.  The whole thing kind of twerked me off, because I’m really not interested in the configuration at that level, but I’m not interested in links to teenage boy’s feet either.  I guess you gotta choose your poison.

So… Friday night I went to yet another 40th birthday party.  Man, they’re dropping like flies.  Mark Francisco was the latest to take the plunge into the world of the elderly.  About 30 people showed up for dinner at Buca di Beppo.  They took good care of us for a table that size, and we had an all-around festive time.  After dinner most people went to Frankie’s to do whatever-the-heck you do at Frankie’s; I went home.  I could pretty much tell from the outside that it wasn’t “my kinda place.”  Plus, I didn’t even have enough cash on me to cover my dinner, much less partying afterwards.  Oops.

Saturday I went to the gym to further substantiate my disdain for it and everyone who goes to it.  This was a highly successful endeavor.  I am currently working on a five-step program to better tolerate my fellow gym attendees, since I will grudgingly admit that since they also pay dues I can’t really keep them away.  And, I suppose the gym needs all the dues they can get to buy all the fancy new equipment.  I haven’t fully developed this plan yet, however, so for now everybody just irritates me.  After that, I went out and met my Mom at her farm in Garden City, to show this old camper to some guys who wanted to buy it.  Man, you talk about miserably cold.  I don’t know why these guys couldn’t wait until Sunday or Monday when the weather was a bit more favorable.  Oh well, I wasn’t the one who had to put the wheels on it and get it outta there.  They seemed pretty set on having it that day, so more power to ’em.  In retrospect, I probably should have bought it myself; Kevin could have used the trailer for the smoker project.  But… I didn’t think of it until too late.  Saturday night we went over to Ed and Kim’s for awhile and helped them move a few things into their new apartment.  They’re moving across the hall into a bigger place, so it didn’t take much effort.  We were going to work on Ed’s web server, but after we moved it to the new place and booted it up everything was working fine, so he decided not to mess with it.  I’m more of a “Fix it even if it isn’t broke” kinda guy, but to each his own.

Sunday was typically unproductive, except for a few hours dialed into work and a few hours ciphering on the anti-spam strategy.  Hung out at the Brooksider a while and watched football with Munkirs, then went home and watched TV.  We tried to drag Todd back into the folds of society, but apparently he and Martin spent the weekend up in the Northlands “getting to know each other better.”  I’ll take that as a thinly veiled phrase for “spooning on the couch.”  Whew, there’s a mental image I could do without.  Nobody is really sure of the whole Todd “situation” yet.  The whole thing is very, very troubling.  If anybody gets any cold, hard facts on this, please do share.

Here are some more pictures of the “Great Smoker Project.”  It’s coming along just famously, keep up the good work Brown.

I think I’ll go with the “brief weekend overview” method here, because I’ve got some unrelated ramblings to post and I wouldn’t want anyone to get bored and quit reading before all the REALLY exciting stuff kicks in.  So… Friday we went down to the Brooksider for a birthday party.  “Big Don” turned fifty.  We didn’t last too long because it was too crowded… Kept getting jostled.  I didn’t even get any cake.  Saturday I drove up to Kearney to check on the progress of the smoker that Kevin Brown is working on.  Yeah baby, we’re going big-time this year.  Hopefully it will be completed by this Spring, and ready for some demo’s.  Here’s a few pictures of it, kind of out of focus but you get the idea.  (What’s up with the fuzzy pics K.B., camera frozen or something?) 1, 2, 3, 4.  The box that looks like a wood burning stove is… a wood burning stove.  This will serve as the firebox.  The upside is that it should be very fuel-efficient and the heat should be quite adjustable, the only downside is that it weighs several hundred pounds.  There are two pictures of the cooking chamber with the doors cut out; you get the idea there.  The green box that looks like a filing cabinet goes on the opposite end from the firebox, to serve as a warming box.  There’s apparently still some discussions going on with the design team regarding this feature.  There are also some chrome Harley pipes I don’t have a picture of; these will serve as the smoke stacks.  I’ve got high hopes for this project, as I’ve always wanted to cook on one of those big fancy rigs like the cool kids at the BBQ.  Heck, or just use one for a party for that matter.  And on to Sunday… We met Munkirs down at the Brooksider for lunch, and watched the afternoon football game.  Doni’s cousin who goes to school in Omaha was in town and came down also.  Had a good lunch but the football game was rather boring.  The best part was that Munkirs paid for lunch with the Brooksider gift certificate I’d given him for Christmas.  THAT was a good plan on my part, if a bit transparent.  After that we went home and cleaned the house a bit, then Susan W. and the Kids came over and watched the Sopranos.  We’re up to the middle of Season 2 now.  For dinner, Susan declared it “Bring-Your-Favorite-Snack Night”; we had some 7-layer dip (Doni’s), cheese and crackers (mine), Skyline Chili dip (the Kid’s) and McDonald’s french fries (Susan????).

Well, as I mentioned, I was keeping the “Weekend Update” brief so that I could drone on with both some random geek projects and some general mal-content.  That wasn’t particularly brief however, so I think I’ll cut out the geek projects because I’m sure nobody really cares about them anyway.  You never know though, somebody might have some solutions/ideas for me.  Just to pique your curiosity however, I’ll mention that 1) I bought a new Linksys wireless router, and am currently working on juicing it up to serve a signal to the Brookside area at large.  Of course I’ll likely never let anybody actually attach to it, but I want to see how far I can pick up the signal myself.  2) I moved my webserver to a different PC, after finally conceding that I don’t need 3 PC’s running all the time.  The question still remains what to do with the “open” one though.  3) I continue to be perplexed by a viable backup solution for my computers.  I just can’t find anything easy and reliable.  (Oh, and did I mention preferably “free”.)  I put a portable drive on the computer downstairs and shared it out for this purpose, but after a reboot the share goes away.  Not to mention, I still can’t find a program I like for the backup either.  Geez.

OK I’m skipping the paragraph on “general mal-content” too.  Screw it, I’m spent.  My holiday is slipping away rapidly, I need to go do something.  Maybe I’ll just post that separate or something.  I could blab a whole novel on “Why I always end up at the Brooksider instead of the Gym, and the toll this is taking on my health.”  There are just myriad reasons explaining both why this is not my fault, and why it is everyone else’s fault.  Compelling, fascinating reasons.  Entirely too lengthy to go into on a Monday morning, that’s for sure.

Oh, and a little side-note: We seem to have lost Todd.  He was at the Brooksider Friday evening, and hasn’t been heard from since.  Hasn’t been on Instant Messenger all weekend, and doesn’t respond to emails.  Heck, I even took the extraordinary step of CALLING him; Goes straight to voicemail and the messages haven’t been returned.  If anybody talks to Francisco this week you might have him run through the weekend “calls” and see if anything turns up.  If anybody does happen to see Todd, do not attempt to approach him yourself.  He’s no doubt cold, confused, and hungry, and could be dangerous.  Just make a note of the time and place, and I’ll notify the proper authorities so that the matter can be addressed safely.