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.

Wow I had to get up at 3:30 in the morning to get my best (only) suit on and get the tea brewed for the big wedding.  I thought it was a beautiful ceremony, and oh that DRESS!  Not really.  Actually they officially turned off our cable service yesterday so I couldn’t have watched it even if I had wanted to.  Which I didn’t.  Really.

Munkirs and I headed out on a rather ill-fated bike ride last night for entertainment.  We met up in Brookside at 6:30, where a big group of riders head out every Thursday night.  One snag was that crazy art fair that they have set up.  OK, it’s not really that big of a snag, I just don’t even like seeing it.  It’s very existence is annoying.  Then we headed out on the ride, and it was quickly apparent that for whatever reason the pace was going to be even slower than usual.  Brutally slow.  Usually it sort of auto-magically breaks up into a few different groups with different paces, but I guess last night was “one big happy family” night.  Anyway, we trudged on, and when we got to the first “re-group” spot I noticed Munkirs was nowhere to be seen.  Hmmm, I am quite sure at that turtle’s pace he didn’t get dropped, what the heck?  Then I overheard some riders asking about “the guy with the flat tire” back a few miles.  Ah ha.  I figured it was him, so I turned around and rode back the way I came.  By the time I finally found him, he was literally loading his bike in his truck in Brookside, he’d walked all the way from 59th and Ward Parkway.  An impressive little jaunt, especially wearing cycling shoes.

Meanwhile, Donette was out for the evening with Kelly at some hoo-haw redneck concert (Suzy Bogguss) down at Knuckleheads.  Sounded like a good show actually;  It’s really pretty hard to go wrong with any show at that place, it’s just cool.  And, turns out she plays more Folk than Country these days I guess, maybe I’d have even liked it.  I couldn’t have stayed out that late anyway though, I needed to get my sleep so I could wake up early for The Wedding.

NOT!!  Hey, you can’t have a barn-burner of an evening every day of the week.  Or, in my case, any day of the week.  We did leave the house for a little dinner though.  Much as I dislike double-kenneling the dog, (letting her out for a few hours and then shoving her right back in the kennel,) I was hungry enough that she lost out this time.  She really doesn’t seem to care anyway, because she gets a treat out of the deal.  So, we headed up to good ol’ 75th Street, which I hadn’t been to for several weeks.  It was solid as always.  We had the Greek pizza and an appetizer, and couldn’t even finish the pizza.  After that, it was back to the couch to watch the Royals game.  (Is it time to panic yet?)