Not much to relate this week… I would have posted yesterday but the site experienced an unscheduled outage all day due to a failure at KCPL.  Apparently my UPS downstairs doesn’t have much run-time to it.

As far as weekend activities, I’d say Saturday was the “busiest” of days.  I started off the day with a nice 45 minute spinning session at the “racquet club” at 9:30.  Then we went to the ball game at noon with the Martins; the Royals lost as usual but it was still a great time.  Any time you get an afternoon game that’s in the low 80’s in the middle of July, you gotta love it.  Plus, it was free tee-shirt day, woo hoo!!!  After the game we hooked up with the Scottens, Browns, Munkirs, and of course Todd, and went to The Thai Place for dinner.  That’s a pretty big group for dinner, so we were plagued with the dreaded screwed-up-order and screwed-up-bill issues, but minorly so.  Sure couldn’t complain about the grub, that place is awesome.  After dinner we went to Harpo’s and hung out on the deck, where we actually lasted until past the midnight hour; quite remarkable considering we don’t exactly go out of our way to frequent Westport establishments.  I will grudgingly admit that their deck is considerably nicer than the Brooksider’s… But, the extra 4 miles makes it totally unacceptable for a regular hang-out.

Sunday we did “Kenagy Family Day” all afternoon.  After surviving the arduous trek to Peculiar, we were rewarded with a feast of ribs, dogs, and burgers, complimented by a bevy of sides.  We met the latest little ‘un in the bunch, young Faith Finley visiting from the wilds of northern Nebraska.  I took a grand total of 129 pictures, which are queued up to be posted after the other gazillion I’ve taken since my PC crashed.  (I am still in the process of loading software… Don’t have my “photo album” stuff loaded yet.)

Slackin’ on the updates again.  Actually I kind of took last week off.  Off from web site updates, off from the diet, off from the gym… just “off”.  I should have rounded things out by taking off from work, but I didn’t want to get too carried away.  Not that the site has been truly idle; I upgraded the webserver to 256 Meg of RAM, and have been giving a rather half-hearted effort at installing PHP.  The RAM works great… the PHP… not so great.  Not really sure what I’d do with it anyway.

Well, as briefly alluded to on the message board, about the most interesting thing we’ve done in the last few weeks was a camping trip to Smithville over the holiday weekend.  Not much of a “trip”, sure, but camping all the same.  We pulled into the campground on July 4th, got a good spot, and pitched the tent.  The tent, see, was kind of pivotal to the whole trip; Doni was getting a bit upset that we’ve had this super-duper tent for three years now and she’s never even seen it.  It’s primary function is Float Trip, it’s not meant for such banal trips as 45 minutes north of the house.  Given that, and the fact that it is the middle of summer, I wasn’t really too concerned when Doni INSISTED on not putting on the rainfly.  “It will make it cooler inside” she says.  Being something of a veteran outdoorsman, I gave her the “always be prepared” speech, and a short lecture on the unpredictability of nature.  But oh, no, she was adamant.  “At least let me put a few stakes in the ground,” I pleaded, but she would not be swayed.  So, with grave misgivings, I left it in it’s half-complete state and we headed out for a day of sun and fun on the S.S. Schmartin.  (The popular moniker for the fine vessel co-owned by Schmidt and Martin.)  It was a great day on the lake, and after watching a rather spectacular fireworks display over the dam, the Martins took us back and dropped us at the camp.  It was rather early morning hours at this point, but still I took a moment to plead with the Martins and Doni; “C’mon, help me put on this rain fly and put out some of the guy lines.  It’ll only take a second and I’d feel a lot safer.”  But ohhhhh no, nobody would listen to ol’ Phil.  At exactly 3:00 a.m. I was awakened by a few gentle sprays of very cold water on my face.  “Rats,” I thought, “Left the windows down.  Well, no problem, the Alaskan Guide can easily withstand this little sprinkle.”  By this time the water had awoken Doni too.  We were zipping up the windows, and I took a moment to point out “See, I told you we shoulda put on the…”  WHAM!!!!  We get hit from nowhere with a wall of water that looked like something out of a sci-fi movie.  Then the deafening thunder kicked in, and the wind kicked up like nothing I’d ever been in.  The tent instantly was completely flattened on the west side, and we were taking water like a swamped boat.  Doni toughed it out for about 8 seconds, then bailed for the Civic.  I could hear her screaming from the car, “C’MON, LET’S GET OUT OF HERE!!!”  Through the freezing cold rain, blinding lightning, gale-force winds and deafening thunder, (and quite possibly hail… it sure hurt but it might have just been big raindrops) I managed to gasp out “No… you go… I gotta… save… the tent.”  The last I saw her, she was driving off through the wreckage of flat tents and tumbling lawn chairs, heading off to bunk at the Martin’s house while I hunkered down in an ever-deepening pool of water.  Well, to sum it up, the tent didn’t fare too well.  While it survived better than any other tent in the immediate vicinity, it was in less-than-ideal condition to say the least.  Several of the poles came apart, and the shape of it was quite sad.  And the water… ohhhhhh, the water.  I don’t know how it all got in the tent, but it wasn’t coming back out so easily.  All-in-all though, there was no permanent damage.  Nothing a few hours in the sun couldn’t fix.  Doni came back to get my battered carcass in the morning, and the rest was history.  Moral of the story?  Always, always, always, put on the rain fly, and at least a few obligitory stakes and guy lines.

**DISCLAIMER:  The author of the above may have taken liberty with a few details of the story in order to 1) protect his or her already-shaky reputation as a camper and 2) make for more interesting literature.  It is up to the discretion of the reader to determine which parts may or may not have been contrived.

It appears that the past few weeks (months?) of eating out at the Brooksider more often than not has taken it’s toll.  I don’t know exactly where mini corndogs and waffle fries fall on the nutritional scale, but apparently not very favorably.  So, Monday morning I started… A new diet.  Not a very fancy diet, mind you.  It loosely consists of “eat less and don’t go out every night”.  Shouldn’t be THAT hard.  I also (gasp) took up jogging.  Maybe “took up jogging” is an exaggeration at this point… I’m “testing the waters” of jogging.  I’ve been hitting the treadmill at the gym for about a year, so I figured it’d be roughly the same thing.  Not really.  You’ve got wind, hills, (albeit very slight ones,) and nothing to tell you how fast to go.  The whole “pace” thing is definitely a new concept for me.  It’s kind of like driving; when you’re a few feet behind somebody, the natural tendency is to go ahead and pass them.  Well, that’s fine when you’re in a car that’s powering itself.  If you’re relying on lungs that haven’t seen fresh air in umpteen years… Not such a good idea.  So far it’s going pretty good though.  It’s exactly 2 miles down to the Brooksider and back, so that’s been the route every night.  And, I do manage to avoid the sirens call and turn around when I get there.  My favorite part is the wacky thoughts that start creeping into your mind at about the 1/2 mile point.  Bizarre, wacky thoughts, but with the lack of oxygen and extreme fatigue, they seem perfectly lucid at the time.  Provides a lot of entertainment to pass the time.  Some of my favorites are:

1. I wonder if that lady would notice if I sat in her stroller, and she could just push me back.


2. Hey, look at that, some kid left his bike unlocked…


3. I bet I could jump in the back of that pickup truck undetected.


4. Hey kid, I’ll give you $50 for your scooter.

Ever been to www.googlism.com?  Kind of an odd site.  You can put your name in and it will tell you all kinds of fascinating stuff.  I learned things about myself I wasn’t even aware of.  Some of my favorites:

• phil is a top bloke


• phil is basically the only one to blame if you don’t like the comments on these pages


• phil is as charismatic as can be but he cannot will a cure with one heartfelt admonition


• phil is “getting real” and helping you unlock your root core and create your life the way it was meant to be


• phil is not an acronym for some new dynamically streaming cross


• phil is a committed calvinist, with a decidedly baptistic bent


• phil is crowned king of the jungle by simon holden


• phil is reputed by townspeople to be more than 100 years old


• philip is quite a challenge at home and at childcare


• philip is more the victim than the villain


• philip is a name common to both bulgaria and america


• philip is said to have been martyred at hierapolis of phrygia


• philip is not fond of his english teacher miss narwin


• kenagy is manager of kenagy family farms in albany and is an innovative vegetable


• kenagy is free with museum admission


• kenagy is checking out

Unfortunately “Phil Kenagy” doesn’t return anything.  Try “Chris Martin” though; there’s some good ones in there.

Whew.  I’m glad that weekend is over.  That was one of those weekends that was fun, but there was junk going on all the time so it was kind of tiring.  I think we did go to the Brooksider Friday night for some relaxation… Other than that it was all running around.

Saturday was the big wedding reception for one James Munkirs.  He managed to barely sneak in under the wire on his vow to find true love before his 40th birthday.  It was a great event, albeit an indoor one, on the day of what I am labeling “The Single Nicest Weather This Year”.  I’m getting a lot of kick-back on that label, but I’m standing by it.  That could have very well been the only Spring-ish weather we will see all year.  Oh well, gotta make sacrifices.  Other than what shall hence-forth be referred to as “The Susan Incident”, the party was a rousing success.  (I shouldn’t say “other than” because it actually contributed to my enjoyment of the event immensely.)  Afterwards we went to a nice little Yuppie place around the corner, Nick & Jakes, and then we all hooked up over at our house to “make a plan”.  A good, if a bit overwhelming, crowd showed up; Martins, Belangers, Frerking, Browns, and Scottens.  Oh, and Todd and Susan were there too.  Wait a minute, weren’t they supposed to be… uhhh, never mind.  Anyway, after kicking back and relaxing in the beautiful weather for at least 90 seconds, it was decided that we should go to dinner at 75th Street Brewery.  I’m not a huge fan of that place, so Martin, Todd and I hung back while everybody else went.  After that they went to Bobby Bakers, and then back to our house.  Man, that’s a lot of people for our 500 square foot house.  It was a fun bonding experience though.  Sat around and talked about how fun James used to be.

Sunday we slept relatively late, then went to the Hereford House for lunch with Doni’s parents.  Man I had a killer KC Strip.  That’s not actually my favorite cut, I just went with it on a whim.  Getting a little wacky in my old age.  My cutting-edge gamble paid off; excellent steak.  After that, we did a little shopping on the Plaza (bleah) where Doni bought a new pair of shoes for her trip this week.  She’s in Cincinnati all week for work, so I’m bacheloring.  We closed out the weekend over at Susan’s with Episode 2 of the Sopranos and a great pot of spaghetti.  I tried to watch Six Feet Under again but couldn’t pull it off.  Man that show is horrible.

In between all that, I managed to make a successful conversion to my “new” server.  The site is now running on a 500 Mhz has-been PC, with 128 Meg of ram and a 40 gig hard drive.  And doing so quite well, I might add.  This frees up my other PC to… Do something else.  The Red Hat Linux debacle, part II, was another complete and utter failure.  Let’s see, I can struggle with this stupid thing for weeks on end trying to make it even remotely functional, or I can put Windows on it and have it fully online in an afternoon.  I chose the latter.