Yesterday I had the bright idea to start riding my bicycle to work.  Seemed like a good idea, since it was the hottest day of the summer (so far) and all.  Eh, it’s only 7 miles though, not so bad.  I will admit the ride home was a bit…  Toasty, shall we say.  Having survived that, I had the even brighter idea to go on a group ride that left from Family Bicycles at 6:30.  It was still pretty warm at that time.  It wasn’t bad though, we took it easy.  Being a slow learner, I rode in again this morning, mostly just for the opportunity to say I rode my bicycle on the hottest day of the year.

Well, Johan flew back home Friday morning, and we dropped right back into our schedule.  Not that we shook things up too much while he was visiting, but we did get out a lot more, and definitely more outside our usual haunts.  After seeing him off at the airport, it was down to the good ol’ Brooksider, sitting around with the usual gang, watching the usual Royals game.  Wasn’t horrible outside either, for once.

Saturday was sort of a lost day.  Just never got out of the gate.  I took Teagan up to her class at 11:00, then headed back home and got sucked in by the dreaded couch monster.  I dorked around with my webserver for a bit, in another futile effort at upgrading to mysql-5, and by the time I got bored with that it was almost time for the Royals game, so I just called it a day.  Boring.  Oh well, it happens.  It happens quite often, as a matter of fact.

Sunday I at least made a moderate effort at entertaining myself.  I headed out on a bike ride about 10:00, and got in 17 miles at a decent pace.  Whew, it was hot.  After that I headed up to 75th Street and watched the afternoon Royals game on their (air-conditioned) patio.  Belanger joined me after a while, and we watched the rest of the game then headed over to Kennedy’s for a brief stop.  (Confirming once again that I don’t care for Kennedy’s too much.)  Solid way to spend the afternoon, and after that I declared it too hot for any more entertainment, so I spent the remainder of the weekend on the couch.  Donette, meanwhile, was on one of her movie marathons down at the Plaza with a buncha girls.  Not a bad way to spend a hot afternoon either, I don’t suppose.

Last night we headed down to the Crossroads district to see the O.A.R. show.  We started off the evening by meeting up with the Martins at Los Tules for a little dinner, and then headed off to Grinders.  When we got there the opening band, Soja, was about 1/2-way through their set.  I’m not all that fond of Reggae so I could have easily done without this part of the show, but everyone else seemed to like it and the people-watching was top shelf.  By the time O.A.R. came on at 9:30 it had cooled down to an almost tolerable temperature, and we got to enjoy a great show.  Donette had picked up some “V.I.P.” tickets for us, which effectively consisted of access to a large blocked-off area in front of the stage.  I was a bit skeptical of the extra cost during the opening act, as there was plenty of room out in the main section, but when O.A.R. started it was quickly apparent that it had been money well spent.  There was enough room to walk around without fighting a crowd, and you could easily walk right up to the stage for a little ear-splitting volume if you wanted.  Matter of fact, Donette and Kelly took in the whole show down on the front row;  Crazy kids.  The only bummer was they didn’t get any pics up there, the camera-police were being a bit over the top.  They were even getting on people for taking pics with their phones, come on.  Well, OK she did sneak in a few photos.

We had house-guests last night so we broke out the hide-a-bed.  When we got up our guests were gone and the bed had been taken over by marauding pets.  Might never get the couch folded back up.

Busy weekend in the Kenagy household.  Since Johan has been visiting us, it’s sort of like we are trying to keep a vacation pace, but while working at the same time.  Wears an old man out, but it’s a lot funner than my usual schedule.  Friday was an exception to this, for me anyway.  Donette and Johan went down to the Phoenix to watch Lonnie McFadden, but I got hung up at work and missed out.  Boo-hoo for me.

Saturday morning Donette and Johan got up quite early and headed out to the Jingle in July 5k run up at Worlds of Fun.  Very rare is the morning the wife beats me out of bed, but I didn’t even hear them leave.  Sounded like fun;  I’ll take their word for it.  Johan turned in a quite respectable time.  I think that was mostly out of self-preservation as he tried to distance himself from Susan & Donette, who were sporting Santa hats and sleigh bells.  Donette bested her 5k time for the year by like 10 minutes too.  It was either a “fast” course or she hasn’t been trying very hard the last few.  By the time they finished I’d drug myself out of bed, and I met up with them at Eggcetera for some solid biscuits and gravy.  For our evening entertainment, we headed down to the Power & Light district and had a monstrous burger at Gordon Biersch.  After filling our bellies, we hopped on the KC Strip Trolley and started a tour-de-KC back towards our house.  We’d never taken the trolley before, but we had a coupon so we figured what the heck.  It worked out nicely I’d say.  It gave us a chance to hit all the “entertainment districts” in one evening.  We started at the Power and Light, then hopped off and checked out Martini Corner, on to Westport, then the Plaza, and then finished out the evening in Waldo.  Whew.  Even better, we had the trolley all to ourselves the entire time, until the last leg from the Plaza to Waldo.  At that point it went from just us three to absolutely crammed.  Guess it’s more of a “late night” sort of thing maybe.

Sunday was a day of feeding.  Munkirs joined me in the morning for a quick bike ride (somehow missing all the rain,) and then we met up with Susan out at Amigo’s in the ‘Dotte for a massive breakfast.  That is to say, we ordered off the breakfast menu, it was after noon by the time we actually got out there.  That kind of knocked the wind of us, so we stayed on the couch the rest of the afternoon, then it was off to Smokehouse BBQ where we joined Donette’s parents for some dinner.  I always forget just how good that place is, it ranks very high as one of my favorites in the city’s BBQ stops.  Too bad it’s so incredibly far from our house.  I stuck with my standard order, the rib platter.  Not only is it good, it’s also one of the only places in town that I can afford the ribs, bonus.  That wiped us all out for the evening.  I wasn’t really hungry when we started, but it was so good I ate the entire platter, relegating me to the couch for the rest of the night.  I think I need to ramp up the bike riding and slow down on the restaurant visits.