Another year, another birthday gone by.  I considered this a “milestone” birthday at forty-five, as it puts me on the downhill slide to fifty.  Most people guess me at around 58 anyway so it doesn’t really matter.  For the big event, I was secretly hoping to spend my day sitting in a small cubicle staring at a monitor.  What do you know, I got my birthday wish, just going to show that dreams do come true.  In addition to this exciting afternoon, I got some nice gifts too.  Besides lots of nice well-wishes on good ol’ Facebook, my Mom and Donette’s parents went together and got me a new fork for my bicycle.  (They do not know this, but they did;  Thank you!)  It has been brought to my attention by a few different people that my current fork (the part that holds the front wheel on) is not exactly, well, “safe.”  I’ve been intending to replace it all year, but a new one is just a bit pricey.  I guess I should specify, the new carbon-fiber one that I want is just a bit pricey.  I could get a considerably cheaper one, but I think everyone would agree that it’s better to wipe out in a spectacular fiery crash than to be seen riding around town on an alloy fork.  Makes sense to me.  From myself, I got a  USB TV tuner for my home theater PC.  This little toy goes back to our recent unplugging of the cable TV.  I don’t remember if I’ve rambled about this before, but our plan was to hook up an antenna and just watch local TV stations.  Well, as it turned out neither of our TV’s have built-in tuners, effectively wiping out this idea.  So this little gadget fixes that problem, as well as giving me a DVR and some other cool little features.

For my birthday dinner, Donette took me out to Plaza III.  I haven’t been to this fancy-schmancy place in quite a while;  High School prom I believe was the last occasion.  Took me that long to save up enough money to eat there again.  Heck I probably spent more at prom, because this time we had a coupon.  Seriously.  I used to feel a bit funny using a coupon at places like that, but I think I’m getting over it.  Donette had the prime rib and I had a strip steak, both of which were awesome, then we finished things off with a slab of strawberry cheesecake.  While I will continue to maintain that no dinner on earth is worth those prices, it sure was delicious.  After dinner we walked over to Brio and had a cup of coffee, then headed back home, as it was well after 9:00 and the old man had to get to bed.

Last night I got out for a bike ride with Munkirs.  Generally we leave from Mission Farms shopping center on Tuesdays, but I was car-less last night so instead we left from my house for a 17-mile loop.  On an unrelated note, we haven’t had two cars for long time, why have we run into so many issues with transportation lately?  Who knows.  Anyway, it was a fine night for a ride, a nice change from the recent low temps.  Little on the breezy side, but that would be nit-picking.  After our short bout of exercise, we headed down to the Brooksider to watch some baseball and eat a little dinner.  (Munkirs had been exiled from his own house by a group of bunko players.)  Might have stayed just a little too late, it was a chilly ride back to the house, but oh well.

A good write-up on the concert from last weekend.

The Google is coming to Kansas City!

This weather is affecting my quality of life.  What the heck.  It was 60 degrees in our house this morning, we may well have to turn the heat back on.  At least that’s what the thermostat reported;  I think the wood floors were somewhere around 25 degrees.  I went ahead and hit the Brooksider as planned on Friday afternoon though.  I’d invested too much planning into my evening to just go home and watch movies.  So, I stood out on the patio and shivered for an hour or two before conceding it was just too cold.

Saturday brought some moderate entertainment.  I waited until two o’clock or so and headed out on a solo bike ride.  Brrr, it was cold.  I had on some relatively warm clothes though, and headphones stuck in my ears for entertainment, so overall it was a tolerable ride.  That night we headed down to Knuckleheads with Scotten, the Luecks, the Browns and the Martins for the big Rainmakers concert.  This was yet another “reunion” show for them, and made for a nice little flashback for all of us.  They were a big favorite of ours back in the college days, and used to play down at Warrensburg a lot.  I must say, they have… errr…. aged a bit.  But then, so have we.  They still sound solid though, I really can’t believe Bob hasn’t screamed himself out of a voice by now.  If I had to complain at all, and of course I have to, it would be that 1) I didn’t care for the setlist that much.  They started the show by playing their entire first album, in order.  Great way to start, and it was a lot of fun.  And then after that, well…  They moved into their “newer” stuff, which of course the 750+ 40-something fans in attendance didn’t have quite as much use for.  Also, 2) they could have ordered up a little nicer evening.  Knuckleheads is an outdoor venue, and it was freaking cold by the time they got done playing.  (Tack that on as number 3:  The show didn’t start until 10:00 at night.  I would say full 85% of the crowd, myself included, would just as soon have been in bed by that time.)  Overall?  It was a blast.  If not for the weather I probably would have gone back for the second show Sunday night.

Sunday didn’t bring much.  We didn’t get home until some unholy hour that morning, but of course I couldn’t sleep a minute past 6:00, so I was pretty tired.  I got the lawn knocked out before the Royals game, which was then rained out, leaving me with nothing to do for the rest of the afternoon.  So, I walked Teagan down to Brookside, where I saw several of the boys sitting on the patio at the Brooksider.  Works for me;  I walked the pup back home and then went back down and joined them.  We watched golf all afternoon, sort of fitting entertainment for an entirely boring day.  Moments before I would actually stick my thumbs in my eyes so I wouldn’t have to watch golf anymore, Donette called and said she wanted some dinner.  Whew, just in the nick of time.  So, we headed down to Jalapenos for a little grub, then called it a night.

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.