Man I was stressed out yesterday.  Perhaps the most stressful part of my stress what that I could pinpoint exactly WHY I was stressed.  Best I could come up with was that I had my day very well planned out and it had dissolved into a frantic jumbled mess by 9:00.  That isn’t all too rare of an occurrence though, so I don’t know why it would throw me off yesterday.  At any rate, stressed I was.  As luck would have it, as soon as walked in the door after work Donette greeted me with an invitation to the Brooksider.  Ahhhh, that sounded just perfect, so we loaded up lil’ Teagan and headed down there.  They have an intermittently enforced “no dog” rule down there, so Donette and Teagan didn’t stay too long, but everybody got to meet the pup at least.  After they headed back home, I hung out and enjoyed the nice weather and a CAO Brazilia stogie.  This little respite seemed to calm my nerves a bit, whew.

Last night I met Munkirs for the Tuesday night bike ride out at Mission Farms shopping center.  That route is still growing on me, it’s just a pretty nice ride.  It started off as usual, a huge group of riders in a big bunch taking up a whole lane.  Then, also as usual, about the 5 mile mark the group started thinning out a bit and breaking up into smaller groups.  Few more miles, the group gets smaller, and by that time Munkirs and I have usually settled into our pace for the evening.  Towards the end of the route I was feeling pretty drained, and when we finished and checked our cheap, barely functional, non-Garmin computers we both showed just a bit over a 17 mph average.  That’s pretty zippy for old men like us, definitely the fastest we’ve ridden that route this year.  I have a feeling it’s also about the max speed for that group, I don’t think we’ll see much faster than that.  I threw in a little bonus for the evening too, and rode my bike from the house out to the ride.  A little pre-planning might have resulted in a slightly slower speed during the ride, so I’d be able to actually get back home under my own power.  I made it though, albeit at a much slower pace, for a total of 32 miles on the evening.

Had an interesting lunch yesterday.  Myself and a few co-workers went to Dixon’s Chili out in Independence.  I haven’t been to a Dixon’s since I was just a lil’ fella, back when they had a Grandview location.  (Long since closed down.)  The remaining location is billed as the “longest family owned restaurant in Kansas City,” so I suppose they must be doing something right.  I still find it a little suspect though.  Any time you have to place a large placard on the tables explaining why the bowl of meat in front of you can be legally referred to as “chili,” I think it’s a problem.  It wasn’t an issue for us though, we all had the all-you-can-eat tacos, which were certainly passable.    The only problem I had with them was my inability to distinguish between “all-you-CAN-eat” and “all-you-SHOULD-eat.”  My poor tummy wasn’t right the rest of the day, I’m not sure it is today either.

Wow, I’ve been slacking on the updates a bit.  Been a little disinterested to tell the truth.  But, for the sake of using my website, I’ll hammer out an entry.

I was working in St. Louis all last week, that was another excuse for the lack of updates.  It was a tolerable trip, all things considered.  Work was…  Well, it was work.  I squeezed in some fun too though.  Monday night I went out with Scotten and killed some time at a place called Trainwreck.  Rather fitting name for us two, I thought.  Wait a minute, doesn’t Scotten live in KC?  Well, yes he does.  As it happened though, he was down there working also, and staying not far from where I was at.  For whatever reason, it actually never occurred to me that I should get in touch with my St. Louis buddies until I found myself thinking how odd it was that I would drive 225 miles and hang out with somebody that lives in my home town.  By that time it was too late though, so I never did get ahold of anybody.  Yes, I’m a generally rude friend.  I accept that.  I did get to go out with Jeff and Victoria (Donette’s sister) while I was there also though.  We met up at Square One Brewery and had an excellent dinner.  Solid place, I’d like to get back there again.  That was my two night’s entertainment for the week, which is about my threshold for fun, and I just hung out at the hotel and watched TV the other nights.

Saturday was a fine day, as my days go.  Brice had taken advantage of the excellent weather and thrown a brisket and a slab of ribs on his smoker, so Martin and I went over there and hung out all afternoon.  My guess is that is going to be one of the nicest days we see this year, so I’m glad I got to take advantage of it.  We spent the better part of the afternoon sitting on his patio enjoying the weather, (and the ribs,) and then later in the day we migrated to The Well to watch the Belmont Stakes horse race.  At least I think that is what it was called;  I will admit to not really knowing (or caring) what race it was, I was just there for the “event.”  After the little ponies had run their circle, Martin and I joined the girls for dinner at Cantina del Ray, which we hadn’t been to in a while.  We enjoyed a delicious meal, and then headed back to our house and listened to the Royals game on the patio.  Whew, the weather was just too nice to be inside.  They brought over a little friend for Teagan to play with too, which worked out well.  They effectively wore each other out.  (Don’t worry Schmidt, little Fifi took care of herself just fine.)

Sunday morning, at the unholy hour of 9:00, Munkirs came over and joined Martin and I for a brisk 30-mile bike ride.  Whew.  This was a planned event that I had known about all week, and one would think that I would have tempered my activities on  Saturday accordingly.  Guess I am just a slow learner though.  I’d pinned a lot of hope on a rain-out, which didn’t work out;  Not a cloud in the sky.  Luckily between the nice weather and the moderate pace I was able to survive though.  Nice ride actually, Munkirs has a pretty nice route plotted out.  (If only I had one of those fancy Garmin’s I could share it with everybody.)  After our ride we all headed up 75th Street for a little lunch on their patio, and then Donette and I headed back home and promptly fell asleep for the rest of the afternoon.  After eventually waking from  our naps, we put a lot of thought into dinner and decided on, of all things, 75th Street.  What the heck, hadn’t been there in nearly six hours, maybe they had a new menu item or something exciting.  That didn’t turn out to be the case, but it was still good.

Straight from cold and rainy to hot and humid, as anticipated.  Nice.  Cheated out of Spring once again.  We enjoyed the weekend such as it was though.  Friday I had fully intended to just head home and watch movies.  As it happened though, the gang was celebrating our friend Anne’s birthday down at the ‘Sider so we headed on down there for a short while.  We handed out our obligatory birthday well-wishes and THEN went home and watched movies.

Saturday I got up bright and early and met Munkirs out at Mission Farms for a spin on the bicycles.  He’d mapped out a nice little 32 mile route for us, which proved to be quite workable, if a bit on the hilly side at times.  Luckily we got started before it got too horribly hot, but it was still plenty toasty.    After that bout of exercise, I hauled Teagan out to the doggie park so she could get some exercise too.  I was a little surprised to find a decent-sized crowd out there, given the heat.  Worked out well though, Teagan ran herself ragged.  She was more than ready for a nap when we got back home, which allowed Doni & I to get dressed and sneak off to my cousin Elizabeth’s wedding.  I have to admit, I have actually been looking forward to this wedding for quite some time.  Elizabeth was the flower girl in our wedding, so that was sort of special for us, even if she didn’t return the favor and have me be her flower girl.  (As she pointed out, she didn’t have a flower girl in her ceremony, or it most certainly would have been me.)  I have to say I was excited for the reception too.  It was held at her parents house in their huge back yard, and they had Lonnie McFadden for entertainment.  If you have never seen one of his shows, you should definitely go catch one.  The guy is just a Kansas City standard.  I haven’t seen him in quite a while, but he was just as good as I remembered.  I don’t see a lot of private shows on his calendar, so I don’t know how they got that worked out, but I sure enjoyed it.  Having Lonnie McFadden sing “It Had To Be You” for your first dance, are you kidding me?  How cool is that?!!?

Sunday didn’t bring a whole lot of entertainment our way.  Too hot.  We did go check out the Taco Factory up in Waldo for lunch.  Not too bad, not too bad at all.  I had one chicken and one pork taco with rice & beans on the side.  It was definitely a solid lunch, although I’m not sure it really offered anything to make us hurry back.  The selection of places in that $7 – $9 price range is just nearly overwhelming these days, it’s hard to find a favorite.  They did have some tempting week-day specials posted up on the wall, we might go back and check those out.  After that, well not much occurred.  Heck I was so bored last night I actually watched the entire NBA playoff game.  Now that’s bored.