Believe it or not I don’t have any terribly exciting tales to relate from the last few evenings.  But, given that I have slacked a few days, an update seems to be in order.  Most of our recent activity has revolved around the turning off of the cable.  It’s not working out quite as expected, as is the case with nearly everything we do.  The grand scheme was to connect the big antenna in our attic to the televisions, and take advantage of all the free over-the-air channels that are available.  In retrospect, this plan maybe should have been executed before turning off the cable.  I knew how I wanted to do it though, just hadn’t quite gotten around to actually running the wires.  I’m more of an “on paper” guy, you know.  Donette finally got tired of watching the snow on the TV’s and ran the wires…  And no TV channels.  Turns out our TV’s are both old enough that they don’t have built-in tuners, oops.  So, back to the paper planning.  I think I have developed another scheme to get it working, which I’m sure will be a washout equivalent to the last one.  Meanwhile, as far as programming, my only real concern was the Royals games.  I thought I had this one resolved with the streaming torrents available for free on the Internet.  Well, a few weeks has shown that the Royals games are almost never available.  Just my luck.  I have seen several evenings where every single MLB game is available for viewing, except the Royals.  Go figure.

Last night we had the parents over for a belated Mother’s Day dinner.  Luckily Donette was able to rush home from work a little early and get things started.  We had brisket, beans, and salad for dinner, and she made a homemade bread pudding for dessert.  We never get dessert at our house, so this was a bonus for me too.  It made for a good get-together, or as good as 18th-place brisket can be I guess.

When the heat finally got here, it came with a vengeance.  We still haven’t flipped on the a/c though;  We’ll see how long that lasts.  Something tells me it will be running when I get home this evening, which from the look of the forecast will be just fine.

That was a long weekend, and I’m a bit worse for the wear because of it.  I had the day off Friday, so Martin and I headed up to St. Joe around noon to participate in the Apple Blossom BBQ contest.  That event just might be my favorite competition of the season, at least when the weather cooperates, which it did this year.  This year brought a slight twist for the Triple Fat Back team;  We had so many guys interested in cooking that we fielded two completely separate teams.  We figured since we can’t seem to do worth a darn in the actual contest, we might as well hold our own little mini-competition.  It worked out great, I enjoyed it thoroughly.  The fun began when the event organizer was checking us in, and our “second team” found out that Martin had registered them under, shall we say, a less-than-flattering team name.  (Even less flattering than “Triple Fat Back.”)  Team Number Two, as we shall refer to them here on the family oriented website, was less than amused with their given moniker, which of course delighted us to no end.  On the downside, it apparently enraged them so much that they got down to business and beat us in the competition.  Beat us rather handily actually;  With the exception of pork they bested us in every category, plus overall.  Martin and I did best for the Triple Fat Back team with an almost-respectable 18th out of 49, but Team Number Two came in eighth, for what would be the only ribbon of the weekend between the two teams.  It was a good time all the same, and we can just chalk up the results to beginners luck.

I got home from that debacle Saturday night to find an empty house, as Donette was out with a bunch of girls for the evening.  I was in an exhausted haze, but I did manage to scrape the two days worth of smoke, dirt, and grease off me before hitting the bed sometime around eight.  I guess I’m getting too old for the all-nighters, I was shot.  I would have gladly slept all day Sunday too, but unfortunately the chores were beckoning.  I got the way-too-tall grass mowed, which actually took a pretty significant amount of time, and hopefully finally fixed the gutters on the garage which have been sadly sagging for the better part of the last decade.  Meanwhile, I started up the smoker and threw on a 12 lb. turkey too.  Yeah, just can’t get enough BBQ.  After two days straight of it, the smell of the smoke almost made me convulse, but the turkey was thawed and needed cooked so it had to be done.  In the midst of all that, we took a little break and headed up to 75th Street for a small Mother’s Day lunch.  A quick check of my family tree shows Donette is actually not my Mother at all, but she had been none-too-subtly hinting all day that she expected some type of recognition so a tasty lunch served the purpose.

Yesterday was quite the exciting day at home I hear.  Events of the day were driven by the psychotic dog behind us.  We have long referred to this dog as “Stupid Mabel,” and she is well-known to us (and unfortunately probably everyone else within earshot) as Teagan’s arch-nemesis.  Probably twice an hour or so, these two will meet at the fence and engage in a barking match that does not end until both are forcibly dragged away.  They’ve never seen each other, being a wooden privacy fence, but from the sound of the barking they are quite sure they don’t like each other.  They carry on like that all day long, even as early as 5:30 in the morning sometimes.  (Oops, sorry everybody, yeah that’s my dog.)  You can almost see it on Teagan’s face in the morning as soon as she finishes eating:  “Well, that was a tasty breakfast.  Hmmm, guess I’ll go bark at Mabel now, get this day off and running.”  It’s even worse that she has, I have to admit, one of the most annoying barks I’ve ever heard.  Mabel has a regular old “dog bark,” Teagan sounds like a Pomeranian that’s been hit with a cattle prod.

Anyway, yesterday Donette stayed at home all day, because she had a lot of work to do.  Apparently it was hindering her focus on said work having to go drag the dog away from the fence constantly.  So, she walked around the block, knocked on the door, and asked if Stupid Mabel could come over and visit for the day.  (Possibly without the “Stupid” part…  I don’t know, I wasn’t there.)  They agreed that sounded like a good idea, and she brought the mortal enemy home.  What do you know, they hit it off instantly, and played together all day.  They were actually both still together when I got home, although they were both so worn out I didn’t see them in action.  Problem solved?  We shall see.  There were actually no incidents at the fence all evening, a first to be sure.  We’ll see how long this truce lasts.

I’ve survived half my oncall, no small feat.  I would mention that it’s gone rather smoothly but that’s a sure jinx.  So I won’t.  In other news, I bought my first ever $4.00 gasoline this morning.  Actually, $4.04 to be exact.  Eeesh.

The last few nights have been rather… Anticlimactic.  Watched some TV.  Played some fetch with the dog.  Replanted the flowers that the dog dug up.  Watched the dog dig up the flowers again.  Re-replanted the flowers that the dog dug up.  Fun, useful stuff like that.  Nothing of any note that I can really recall.  Check back tomorrow though, you never know what may happen between now and then.  (If I was a betting man I’d go with “absolutely nothing.” )

Wow, May already.  And still frost in the mornings, nice.  Darn near froze on the scooter this morning.  The weather channel said it was 37 degrees out.  But, since it’s May, of course you don’t have to wear gloves or a heavy jacket or such.  Flawed theory apparently.  It seems cold is just cold, no matter what the month.

I was oncall all weekend, so we kept things tame.  (Tamer.)  Friday night Donette’s school had a fundraiser out in Grandview that we went to.  It was a Texas Hold ‘Em tourney, the “second annual.”  We attended last year and had a great time, so figured we might as well go again.  The event was probably twice as big this year, helped in no small part by the much smaller buy-in price I imagine.  Donette and I were both dealers.  Having never actually played poker, this was rather adventurous.  Not really that hard though I guess.  Meanwhile, speaking of adventurous, our friends Roger and Phyllis from down at the Brooksider were keeping an eye on the pup for us.  They (well, OK, just Phyllis) had offered several times but the whole idea made me a bit nervous.  They have a younger dog also though, so we hoped they would amuse each other.  It sounded like it went OK…  We’ll see if the offer still stands next time.  I guess “next time” would be our turn though.

Saturday I got the yard knocked out early.  I just cut it Wednesday, and it was definitely ready again.  Stupid fertilizer.  After that I rewarded myself with a trip down to the Brooksider.  I hadn’t been there in probably three weeks…  Some time before Float Trip.  Despite the art fair traffic, it was a good afternoon to hang out on the patio.  Matter of fact I stayed considerably longer than I expected.  Had a lot of catching up to do I guess.  After that I headed back home and fixed a little dinner, the settled in for some movies.  I tried watching “The Other Guys” but it was so horrible I ended up switching to some “My Name is Earl” reruns.

Sunday Munkirs and I headed out on a rather chilly bike ride.  Since we sort of got cheated out of the Thursday night ride, we took that route again.  The air was definitely a little brisk, but tolerable.  For post-ride entertainment I spent the afternoon trying to figure out how to watch the Royal’s game., since our cable got turned off last week.  After a few googles, I ended up getting it to work.  Free baseball games, sweet!  The video quality if definitely grainy, but for free I’m not going to complain.  After that I messed around with a pork loin recipe, in preparation for an upcoming BBQ competition.  I went with a Dr. Pepper brine, and then put it in a roasting pan with a cherry/chipotle glaze.  It came out… OK.  My gas grill is on it’s last legs I think.  It wouldn’t really get hot enough so the glaze didn’t thicken up like it should have.  Tasted pretty darn good though, and the brine did it’s job well.  After that I suffered through the second half of the movie I started Saturday evening.  Eeesh, that is a bad movie.