If it can be helped,  please don’t ever use the phrase “Just sayin” in any form of communication with me.  Your cooperation is appreciated.

I think I woke up on the proverbial wrong side of the bed.  There is no good reason for this, it just happens sometimes I suppose, and most commonly on Mondays.  What can ya’ do.  I shall type up an obligatory update anyway.

So, beginning with Friday:  You guessed it, an afternoon at my favorite local haunt.  By all rights I should have just gone home, given the weather.  I sort of look forward to it through the week though, and I didn’t want to start my weekend off on the wrong foot.  So, I headed down and took up a perch in the “duck blind” with several other guys.  That’s the small, covered part of the patio attached to the back of the building, which gave us a bit of respite from the drenching rain.  Our excitement for the evening?  Well, we were sitting there rehashing the weeks woes when we saw a big freaking rat about the size of Kane go slogging through the water.  Eww.  We promptly procured some chips and went about chumming for him, and then trying to crack him with a piece of firewood when he’d come out.  Ahhhh, good clean fun.  (Nobody had good enough aim to bag him though, rats.  HA HA HA, get it, “rats.”  Oh boy.)

Saturday I don’t much recall what I did.  I hit the gym around noon and spent a good amount of time there.  Given the wonderful weather, I’m sure I did something incredibly fun and exciting after that, but the details escape me.  After I got done doing whatever it was, I went and watched basketball games and bad horror movies on the couch.  Donette, meanwhile, was up north at a slumber party with a bunch of hens.  Not exactly as fun as chucking firewood at a rat, but every day can’t be that exciting I guess.

Sunday I mowed the yard.  Woo hoo.  The second mowing of the season, and it was way too tall.  I expect I’ll be cutting it again Wednesday if I am to keep up with it.  Sigh.  After that I headed out for a little spin on the bicycle.  To mix things up a bit, I headed straight north up Main and kept going until I hit the river.  Nice ride I think;  Got a few good hills mixed in and as long as you watch out for potholes the pavement is pretty good.  After that I decided to head down and watch the late basketball game at the Brooksider.  Wow, nice day.  I elected to sit at a table in the sun, which was too bright to really see the TV’s, but I was pretty neutral as far as the game went anyway.  After a liberal dose of rays, we headed home for some dinner.  Fired up the grill for the first time this year and had some good burgers.

Well that was an odd vacation.  As previously referred to, our cruise fell through, so that left us to our own devices for entertainment.  Having no devices, that translates to precious few options.  Let’s see…  I spent a prodigious amount of time at various dog entertainment venues around town.  Fun for Teagan I suppose, and to some extent I enjoy them also.  She had her first real attempt at swimming;  I see a doggie-life-vest in her future.  We rode the motorcycle up to Lexington, MO for a day, mostly just to enjoy the awesome weather.  We spent more than one afternoon basking in the sun on the patio at the Brooksider.  I got caught up in the whole March Madness event for once, but effectively lost all interest after Missouri crashed and burned.  And I think that about covers vacation.  Gas hit crazy prices right on queue for us, so we really didn’t want to go over a few miles away for anything, limiting our options even further.  What can ya’ do.  Our cruise has been rescheduled for late May, we’ll try it again.

The weekend itself was just sort of tacked on the end of the vacation I guess.  We got with the Martins to celebrate St. Paddies day and that about covers it.  Actually the girls did go out and celebrate;  Chris and I stayed home and slaved over a hot smoker all day so they would have a traditional holiday feast waiting when they got done carousing.  Ain’t that the way.  Maybe it wasn’t so traditional of a preparation though.  Convinced that anything worth eating is better on a smoker, we lit up some coals and prepared the entire meal over some nice hickory smoke.  I’ve done the corned beef on the smoker before, so I knew that was going to work out.  The cabbage and potatoes were something of an experiment, with mixed results.  I was a big fan of the cabbage, it was great.  We cored it, then stuffed it with butter, italian sausage, and some fresh thyme, then loosely wrapped it in foil and let it go about 4 hours.  Solid.  The potatoes we just tossed with oil and salt and put them right on the grate.  Eh, they were OK.  Probably should have foiled them also, at least for part of the time.

So, the good news is I am on vacation!  Yay for me!  The bad news is I am sitting on my couch at home typing this.  We are supposed to be on our way to a beautiful beach in the Bahamas, which I must say we’ve been looking forward to quite a bit.  Alas, it was not to be.  We had all the details squared away.  Bags packed, check.  Dog-sitter lined up, check.  Time off work, check.  Passports, uhhhhh…  Whoops.  We had the rather stomach-lurching realization on Saturday afternoon that they were locked away in our safe-deposit box at the bank.  The bank that had closed an hour earlier.  This rather deflating news effectively wiped out our week-long vacation.  So, if anybody is looking for a great deal on a cruise package to the Bahamas, we are willing to let our tickets go for a great price.  The only catch is  you have to have access to a time machine also.  Any takers??

In spite of our vacation crash-and-burn, we tried to make the best of the weekend, with some limited success.  We went down to the Brookside parade on Saturday, which is always a festive event.  I swear it gets bigger every year too, the streets were packed.  From there we caught the bus down to the Power and Light and went to the Missouri game.  THAT was a blast.  Even having less-than-optimal seats, it was an exciting game.  Afterwards we hung out in the KC Live area for a while, just sort of people-watching, which there was plenty of opportunity for.

We spent most of Sunday furiously making phone calls, in a last-ditch effort to change the national immigration laws before our flight Monday morning.  Alas, our efforts would ultimately prove futile.  Even my best arguments fell on deaf ears.  (1.  “Are you SURE the Bahamas aren’t in the US?”  2.  “This is my vacation we’re talking about here.”  3.  “Pretty please??”)  We did actually get in touch with the bank, which I thought was our best bet.  Unfortunately the news was that the vault was on a time lock, and simply couldn’t be opened until Monday.  RATS.

Now isn’t that a novel title for a weekly entry.  Thought that up all by myself.  I’d fully intended to post some actual content last week, but never got around to it.  My new router, which I was obviously so proud of, went south on me and I spent the better part of my week obsessing over possible solutions.  Sigh.  But, I won’t bore anybody with the fascinating details again, much as I want to.  Instead, I shall bore everybody with the not-so-fascinating details of my weekend, which began Friday down at the Brooksider.  Not a bad evening on the ol’ patio either.  Sat out back with the boys, while Donette made a rare appearance catching up with “inside” crowd.  When the sun started going down it got chilly pretty quickly, so we grabbed some takeout from Jalapenos and headed home to enjoy some dinner.  After that I’m relatively sure I played Angry Birds for some extended period of time, although I can’t really recall.

Saturday morning Donette got up and headed downtown for the Oscar Movie Marathon at the Main Street AMC.  She went last year too and I guess it must have been fun because all the same girls went again this year.  You buy one ticket, and they run all the films nominated  for “best picture” back to back over a 24 hour period.  I can imagine no worse fate, but they apparently enjoy it.  Meanwhile, I was home dog-sitting with Teagan and our friend Susan’s new pup Walter.  They get along quite famously, so it’s a pretty easy job.  Around 2:00 I headed down to the 810 Zone to watch the big basketball game.  Normally this would be one of the last places I would head to watch a basketball game, but Brice had hooked us up with the Skybox so we had our own private viewing area away from all the riff-raff.  About a dozen guys showed up and we had quite a time;  Right up until the end of the game anyway.

Sunday we took things pretty easy.  Donette came dragging in around 10:00 and promptly went to bed, while I took Teagan out to play some ball.  She ran out of gas quickly for once, so I returned to my spot on the couch for a few hours.  Around 2:00 I noticed the temp had passed 60 degrees outside, which I decided was just too nice to waste.  I headed out on a rather leisurely bike ride, indeed a wise choice.  I didn’t ride particularly hard, just sort of enjoyed the day.  For our Sunday evening entertainment, Donette went over to Susan’s for the big annual Oscars party.  She won the pot for the most correct picks for the third year in a row!  (Good thing, maybe she can pay for all the new hardware I need to fix the home network problems.)  Meanwhile, I took myself out for dinner at 75th Street.  Enjoyed a delicious pizza on the patio while watching the World Series of Poker, can’t go wrong.