I have again been left to fend for myself, as the wife took off for Denver last night.  Yes, I am already hungry, thanks for caring.  I will persevere though.  Not like we saw each other much this weekend anyway, we were sorta busy.  Friday we kind of laid low, I had to get into the swing of the oncall routine.  Uncovered the grill for the first time and made some chicken, and that was about it.

Saturday morning we got up and headed to our second session of the boot camp.  It went better than the first round, I think.  I felt I did a little better keeping up, but maybe I’m just trying to make myself feel better.  I’m not as sore, that’s for sure.  After that solid start to the day, I headed over to Brice’s house to listen to the Royal’s game and watch some ribs smoke.  He got a new smoker a few weeks ago, and this marked the maiden voyage.  I took Teagan with me too, with good intentions of introducing her to Bob’s pups and getting in some play time.  Unfortunately this turned out to be a quite poor idea.  They got off to a bad start and it went downhill from there.  The meet and greet lasted about 4 seconds and then Smokey latched onto Teagan’s ear with a bite that would have done Mike Tyson proud.  He wasn’t letting go either, it took quite an effort to get them apart.  No harm done though, remarkably, but play-time was over.  We did let his younger dog Bailey out a few hours later and this went much better, so at least they got a little rough-housing in.  Later that night Donette and I met the Martin’s down at Knuckleheads for some music.  I’d never been there before, although it’s been on my list for many years.  Pretty awesome place, it definitely has “character.”  Planning a return visit soon, as a matter of fact.

Sunday was a rather low-key event.  I had to work all morning in the wee hours, and that always wears me out.  I got the lawn mowed, and Donette continued her bathroom remodel project for the better part of the day.  Watched the unnecessarily drawn-out Royals game, did some more work, then it was up to the Northlands to drop Donette at her parents.  All-in-all not the worst weekend ever, especially with the oncall qualifier.

Ahhh, the start of baseball season.  Always a big day in KC.  I started the celebration by emptying my wallet for a newspaper on the way to work.  For the children, you know, that’s always my philosophy.  Then I got to work and realized I didn’t have any money left for my morning Cheez-its;  So much for good karma.  As for the big game, we skipped out on actually heading to the stadium.  There were several opportunities for tickets, even some really good tickets, but between the weather and the associated cash outlay we took a pass.  I went over to my buddy Ronnie’s house and watched it, along with several other guys and a few slabs of ribs;  Can’t go wrong there.  Donette stayed home and listened to it while slaving away on one of her big home-improvement projects.  Pretty exciting game as it turned out.  That ball Gordon smacked in the bottom of the ninth was one of the more thrilling foul balls I can remember.  Hey, you gotta take what thrills you can get when you’re a Royals fan.

Last weekend we went ahead and pulled one of our cable boxes out;  Sort of a dry run to see if our cable-free lives are going to be feasible.  We haven’t actually turned it back in to the cable company though…  It’s still safely stowed in one of the closets in case I go into some kind of shock or something.  So far so good though.  As soon as I think it’s safe to unplug the other one I guess we’ll probably take them both back.  (I.E. after the basketball tournament is over…  I tried watching the games on the Internet but the feeds were pretty crappy.)  It’s only been a few days, but Hulu seems to serve my needs just fine.  All the “My Name is Earl” seasons available commercial free at the click of a button;  What else could I ask for?

Man these gas prices are killing me.  As I scootered by QT this morning I glanced over and saw $3.42!!  Come on!!  And that’s for regular, my high-performance machine demands premium at well over $3.60 per gallon.  Last time I filled up it cost me over seven bucks, for pete’s sake.  Ridiculous, and that will only last me around two weeks.  I really don’t see how people are supposed to afford to travel back and forth with those prices.  I may be spending more time on the trusty city bus, regardless of the weather factor.  I’ve already switched the new pup to Ol’ Roy dog food and pulled one of our cable boxes out, what more can a guy do??!!

Happy snow-day.  What a hoot.  Yee-haw.  Think I’ll go sledding after work.  Bah, it’ll melt off soon enough.  We enjoyed our weekend despite the horrible, miserable, heart-breaking, dismal weather.  I went to the Brooksider for a brief visit Friday night, just because I hadn’t been there all week and I needed to catch up on the latest exciting events.  Turned out there weren’t any, but it was good to see everyone all the same.  After a little dinner at home, we popped in Due Date for evening entertainment.  Donette said it was pretty funny;  I’ll have to take her word for it as I fell asleep almost immediately.

Saturday morning we got up and headed down to Crossroads Gym for our first “Boot Camp” session.  (Looks like their site is down, maybe they’ll trade me some sessions for a more reliable server.)  We bought a Groupon for this some time ago, and finally got around to scheduling our classes.  I figured what the heck, I went through actual boot camp not too long ago, and then there was that one morning we exercised during Desert Storm, so this wouldn’t be any big deal.  Wow, turns out maybe that eight weeks of conditioning wore off a bit over the last 25 years.  It was pretty freaking hard, I was dogging the whole time to be sure.  We both survived though, and I thought it was pretty fun.  (I keep repeating the “pretty fun” part several times a day so I will go back.)  After that solid start to the day we headed home, where Ronda was waiting to help Donette with some remodeling projects.  She brought her pups Cooper and Millie with her too, so Teagan got some good play time in.  Cooper and Teagan went at it pretty hard;  They had to be throttled back a few times but overall it went quite well.  While I did the hard work of sheriffing the dogs in the back yard, the girls were upstairs working in the bathroom.  By the time they were done we had no toilet or sink in our bathroom.  As of this writing we still have no toilet or sink in our bathroom.  It will all be good soon though.  Hit a few snags, like every other single project that has ever been attempted in our 75-year-old house, but it’ll work out.  We wrapped up the day with a nice dinner up at 75th Street (yet another Groupon deal) then headed home for a quiet evening.

Sunday we both were greeted with extreme pain upon our attempts at getting out of bed.  Wow, I guess we got our moneys worth out of the ol’ boot camp.  Not like “a little tight” sore either;  More like “can’t walk down the stairs” sore.  Donette bravely headed off to the gym with Susan to try and stretch out a bit.  I was having none of that, but I did hobble a few miles down the trail with Teagan to try and loosen up.  I don’t think it  helped either of us though.  It really kind of makes me wonder about my cycling.  I’ve gone on a handful of 17 – 20 mile rides this year so far with no discomfort at all, and then one hour of this “boot camp” stuff and I can hardly walk?  Hmmmm.  Might need to ramp up the effort on the bike.  I joined the girls down at Jalapenos for a tasty lunch, then went home and started raking leaves, a project which was mercifully cut short by the bizarre snow storm.  Forced back inside by this untimely weather, I spent the rest of the day on the couch watching basketball.