The scourge of blog pages these days seems to be comment spam.  Well, besides the actual content of said blogs, but that’s another topic.  I can count on two or three junk comments coming in every day, and sometimes bursts of like fifty or so.  Anyway, WordPress has a nice add-in to catch all this crap.  Akismet checks the comments that are posted, and if it determines it’s a spam moves it to a folder instead of posting it.  It’s good at it too, I think I’ve only had it miss one or two since installing it a long time ago.  I don’t even check the contents of the folder any more generally, I just empty it out and move on.  The other day though, out of sheer boredom, I found myself scanning through the contents to see what was there.  A few of them caught my eye.  Several of them were in Russian, and my browser (Chrome, as it happens,) automagically detected this and offered to translate them for me.  How cool is that?  Pretty sweet technology there, at least I thought so.  Another handful of them were offering to sell “bulk Facebook fans, likes, and friends.”  Now that’s just sad.  What is the world coming to?  I went ahead and picked up a few hundred new friends though.

Hopefully we are in something of a respite from the heat wave.  I got in a short, easy bike ride last night and it was quite pleasant.  As an added bonus, when I got back home, I found Farmer Brice had left a nice basket of fresh tomatoes on my front porch, my first of the year.  (Not counting the ones I bought at the O.P. Farmers Market, which I’m not convinced were from a garden.  These were infinitely better at any rate.)  I sliced them up with some mozzarella I had in the ‘fridge, added some fresh basil and balsamic, and they made for a delicious dinner.

Another weekend down.  We kicked off Friday in the usual fashion, down at the Brooksider.  I really didn’t want to go down there as I was feeling a bit tired, but with the (very slight) break in the weather I thought I better take advantage of the patio.  After visiting with everyone for a while, we headed off to dinner at Piropo’s Grille in Parkville.  (Why yes, of course we had a coupon.)  Donette has been there several times, but it was only my second time there.  I had a ribeye, which was awesome.  The sides were a bit under-whelming, but who cares about them anyway.  Donette had a KC strip steak, which was very good too, especially with blue cheese crumbles on top.  That did us in, night-ender.

Saturday I took Teagan up to school, which was the last class of the session.  Oddly (at least I thought it odd) everybody else in the class had slowly dropped out, and for the last two weeks it’s just been us.  Hey, personalized training, can’t beat that.  I’m not sure why everybody else quit.  Didn’t like the class?  Scared of the killer pitbull?  Who knows.  I didn’t find the class “fantastic” but I thought it helped, so who knows.  Maybe everybody just got tired of cutting into their Saturday.  At any rate, we ended up signing up for the next session too;  Onward and upward.  After that, I took a short bicycle ride, then joined Martin, Brice and Falstrom at a few nearby haunts.  We killed the afternoon playing pool and shuffleboard (which I lost every single game of) and then it was back to the couch to watch the Royals game.

Sunday I woke up (very very very) early and picked up Munkirs for a bike ride.  We headed off to Louisburg, KS and rode in the Cider Mill Century.  We weren’t on the century (100 mile) route though, we took the 50 mile option as part of our grand training plan towards our planned century ride later this year.  We rode this one last year also, and I distinctly remember despising it, particularly the big hills.  This year was a pleasantly different experience;  It was actually a rather easy little outing.  Could have been the nicer weather this year, our increased mileage thus far, or maybe it was just a lucky day.  That said, I did get the dreaded leg cramps with about six miles left.  Eeesh, I hate that.  Luckily I was able to shake them out pretty quickly and finish up though.  Later that night, Donette headed off to Starlight to catch the Mama Mia show with a few friends.  I opted for the Brooksider myself, as  I was absolutely craving a cheeseburger.  Odd, because I rarely crave food at all these days, but I couldn’t shake this one.  Musta been the bike ride.  It hit the spot too, yum.

Last night, after cycling home from work, I was looking for a few more miles.  I had a few options available within a short distance of the house, and decided on the one that was leaving from Spin Pizza.  There were two route options, so I showed early to weigh my choices.  About 6:15 the first group took off, and they described that ride as “27 – 30 miles at an 18 mph average.”  Ummm, no thank you.  That was a pretty serious-looking group of  cyclists.  A few things they all had in common;  All the bikes cost slightly more than my motorcycle, and the people riding them weighed about as much as my right leg.  Y’all have fun.  That left me with the 6:30 group, who were at the other extreme end of the spectrum.    With the exception of a few people, (including one Munkirs will readily recognize as “Pinarello-guy,”) it was definitely a bunch of hacks.  Which is to say, I fit right in with this bunch.  So, we took off on our pleasant 12 mile journey, holding a blistering pace of about 4 mph.  Huge group too;  I did a rapid head-count and hit 38 people.  It wasn’t a bad route actually;  We wound through Mission Hills for most of it, which made for a sort of cool “Tour de’ Homes.”  After a while we re-grouped in a parking lot, where the ride leader had parked his truck and had ice water and energy bars for everybody.  Now there’s a new twist on the group rides, I thought that was awfully nice of him.  Shortly after that break, I started to get a little bored though, and took off after two guys riding like they were trying to qualify for Team Garmin.  Bad idea, shame on me.  We quickly pulled far away from the group, and when we got to Ward Parkway they turn around, look at me, and say “Which way now?”  Really??!!!  You were riding that fast and don’t know where you’re going?  Good grief.  Again, shame on me;  If you don’t know the route, stay behind the ride leader.  Anyway, we turned north and started back, eventually winding our way back to Gregory and Wornall.  Here my new friends again got puzzled and couldn’t figure out where to go.  I offered up some rare input;  “Why don’t we just get on Brookside and roll down the hill to the start.”  One guy actually waves his hand at me dismissively and says, “No, Brookside doesn’t go through, that won’t work.”  Well well, end of my input.  I shoulda just rode on by myself, but I’m a team player so I stuck with them and their foolish choice of Pennsylvania.  Yeah, I could have told them that meant stop signs every two blocks for the rest of the way, but I was done.  North is north anyways, I figure.  So, we haltingly rode back, and indeed did end up at the pizza shop.  I did jab my one small measure of revenge in though.  Upon our arrival, Navigator asks, “You coming in for pizza?”  I replied, “No, I need to ride back home.”  Navigator: “Oh yeah, how far you still have to go?”   Phil: “Not far, I live right off Gregory.  I just take Brookside the whole way.”  Fat Boy OUT!

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.