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.

After a late night out at the Royals game with Martin Tuesday night, I ended up taking the day off yesterday for some local sight-seeing.  While I was not aware of it, there are actually a precious few tourist attractions right here in our own little city.  Johan and I started the day off with a long trip southwest to the beautiful city of Olathe.    We wanted to see the famed Garmin facility.  Actually Johan was looking for a specific device, and we figured if anybody had it available it would be the place where they were made.  Turned out to be not so clever an idea, they didn’t have much of anything.  But, now I’ve seen the Garmin facility.  Continuing our Tour de Electronics, we headed back east to the mecca known as Microcenter.  We spent a little more time here than at Garmin, and made a few select purchases.  Concluding our morning shopping trip, we headed to the Old  Overland Park area and strolled the Farmers Market for a bit.  I never even knew they had one on Wednesdays, we just kind of happened across it.  Donette met us out there, and we picked up some nice looking produce for dinner.  By this time we were getting hungry, so we headed downtown and hit Arthur Bryant’s for lunch.  I like that place better every time I go, it’s always a safe bet.  It was worth noting that Johan did declare the TFB BBQ from last Saturday to be considerably better though.  Actually he had a mouthful of brisket and I couldn’t understand him;  He might have said “It’s hot out” or something, but that’s what I heard.  After lunch we made the quick drive over to the Liberty Memorial.  Despite having lived in this city for a couple of years, I have never made it to this spot, so we all got to see something new.  As everyone who has been has told me, it was very interesting, well worth the admission.  We got to go up the tower too, and enjoy the great view.  We spent several hours there, and then headed down the Boulevard Brewery.  We had tried to get in on a tour, but their website showed them all booked through August.  Still worth a stop though, we figured.  As it turned out they let us in on the tour that had just started when we arrived, score!  The tour was entertaining as always, I think I pick up new fact or two every time I go there.  After that we started making our way back towards the house, by way of Costco of course.  We bought some nice fat ribeyes for dinner, as we were starting to get a bit hungry again by that time.  Luckily the package had four steaks in it, as I torched the first two beyond any recognition.  I hate that grill, and I am convinced it hates me too.

Finally got some new tires on the trusty bicycle.  They were waiting on the front step when I got home from Martin’s house last weekend.  I put them on yesterday after work and headed out on a 25 mile test ride.  Honestly, I have to say I was not impressed with the new rubber.  I was out of breath the whole ride, sweating so much I could hardly see, and my average speed was, well…  Average.  This leads me to the inescapable conclusion that the new tires are most likely faulty.  I probably need some more expensive, faster ones.  Possibly a whole new bike.

If anybody hasn’t stepped outside for a few days, I’ll save you the trouble;  It’s still hot.  Despite the lingering heat wave, we enjoyed a bit of semi-outdoor entertainment this weekend though.  We kicked off Friday at the ol’ Brooksider.  I headed down there directly after work (by way of the house to put some shorts on,) and took up my spot on the patio.  It was so hot there wasn’t even a waitress out there for a while, but they opened for business at five.  It actually wasn’t that horrible;  It’s shaded if you get the right spot, and the fans were moving the air around a bit.  After a while Donette and Johan joined me;  They’d spent the afternoon at the pool.  We hung out down there for a few hours, then headed off to dinner at Cantina del Ray, which was typically tasty.

Saturday kicked off with doggie class up at Petsmart.  After I finally found a parking place, (it’s right next to the new Trader Joe’s, which is still absolutely crazy,) we put in our hour of learnin’.  She did a little better than last week, although “lay down” is proving to be a bit of a stumbling block.  Who wants to lay down when there are treats flying all over, people walking by, kids wanting to pet you, etc?  Sheesh.  Matter of fact she never did lay down, not once.  Better do our homework this week.  After that we loaded up the car and headed <gasp> across the river to hang out at the Martin ranch.  I wanted to take Johan to one of our competitions, but that didn’t work out so the next best thing was toss some meat on the smoker and have a little party.  Actually, given the weather, I’d say it was a better option;  The idea of sitting outside all day was not very appealing.  Saved a lot of fuel too;  We didn’t have to actually light the smoker, we just set it in the sun and it ran about 250 all day.  We threw on two briskets, four slabs of ribs, a handful of chicken wings, and some jalapeno poppers for good measure.  It turned into quite the party, good times.  As an added bonus, Team Brisket might have actually stumbled across our next “tweak” too;  Look for a double-digit finish at the next contest!  (As long as there are fewer than 100 teams anyway.)

Sunday was a bit of a down day.  That BBQ took it out of me.  Poor little Teagan was shot too, so we didn’t have to worry about entertaining her.  I honestly am not sure I’ve ever seen her that tired, she slept all day.  Between kids throwing her ball and playing with the Martin’s temp-pup, she was flat worn out.  I did drag Johan down to the Brooksider in the afternoon so we both could feign interest in the sporting events of the day.  I have to admit I was a little surprised/dismayed to find the place was absolutely packed with people watching the soccer game.  Hey, I appreciate the enthusiasm, but could you do it somewhere else?  Luckily the regular crowd was there, (not that “lucky” actually…  wasn’t really very surprising at all,) so we had someplace to sit.  They had nearly every TV tuned to the soccer game, but they did throw the Royals game on one for us.  I will admit, the soccer game was exciting, especially at the end.  Passed the day at any rate.  For evening entertainment I watched Secretariat.  While well outside my usual genre, it was a very good flick.  I would recommend it to everybody, but then I imagine most have already seen it.