Heavy sigh.  I am less than enthused.  But I shall honor my “obligation” of updating this I suppose.  Let’s see…  Friday I went down to the Brooksider to see “the boys.”  I hadn’t been there all week, and I was honestly pretty excited to hang out.  Nice night too, sounded like the perfect crime.  I scootered by Diebel’s and picked up a nice 1/2-price stogie and was on the patio by 4:15.  The evening was something of a let-down as it turned out.  I guess that’s what happens when you get excited about something.  Solid crowd though;  Martin, Brice, and Fahlstrom showed up so we had a good round of BBQ planning.  It was crowded and loud though, and my Macanudo Cru Royale cigar was a disaster.  Meanwhile, Donette was out with “the girls” doing whatever girls do when they go out.

Saturday I started off the day by taking a nice walk with the pup.  We headed north up the Trolley Trail, and had a fine social stroll.  We ran into a charity dog wash down near 63rd.  She didn’t care for that much, but grudgingly put up with it.  The rest of the walk was moderately uncomfortable, as my shoes and socks got soaked in the bath process, but we made it down to the pet store where she picked out a tasty bone and a new chew toy.  After that, we walked back home, took a quick rest, then loaded up and drove to the Penn Valley dog park for some play time.  She did quite famously there.  There were only a few other dogs there, so it was fun without being too overwhelming.  Having sufficiently tired out the dog, I headed down to the Brooksider again to watch the Royals game.  I didn’t really want to, mind you, I just felt like I sort of got cheated on Friday night.  I busted out a La Flor Dominicana stogie that I’d been saving since last September, and it proved infinitely better than the Macanudo.  The weather was ideal too, I’d say it made up for Friday.  The only downside was that everybody was watching the stupid golf game.  Errrr, BORING!!  I had to practically beg to get one TV turned to the Royals, but at least they humored me so I could watch the game.

Sunday morning Munkirs came over for a quick bike ride.  Turned out to be a really quick ride;  Neither of us were feeling particularly energetic apparently.  Man, that wind was something, it seemed to be right in our faces no matter which way we turned.  We ground out 12 miles and called it a day.  Most of the remaining Sunday passed without incident.  We did head out to Los Cabos for dinner, which was actually quite good.  (If I sound surprised, it’s because I refuse to believe that a world exists south of 83rd Street.)  Sort of over-ate though, we were both so stuffed it kind of ended the day.  I spent the rest of the evening on the couch watching another Resident Evil installment.

Ahhh, 3-day weekend.  I’m all about that.  So far my morning has consisted of coffee, a bagel, and about 30 games of Word Twist on Facebook.  It’s gonna be a humdinger of a day, I can tell already.

Donette got home from her latest adventure last night.  On the way to pick her up, Teagan and I stopped by her parents house for a visit.  She got along just famously with their dog Charlie, although she seemed genuinely concerned that he wouldn’t play tug with her.  On the other end of the spectrum, she was not a big hit with their three cats.  Ohhhh, for a video camera.  I’m not really sure what triggered them, but one of them attacked and the other two instantly joined in.  They were (literally) flying at her from three different directions with a tactically coordinated “strike and retreat” method.  Poor little Teagan was so baffled she ended up on the floor covering her head with her paws.  Geez, between getting beat up by Bob’s dog last weekend and now a pack of cats, her confidence has to be taking a hit.  She seemed to shake it off pretty quickly though, she was back to jacking with them in no time, from behind the relative safety of a baby gate.  Which, incidentally, didn’t speak too well to her intelligence…  She didn’t appear to have any recognition that the sounds they were making were most definitely not of a friendly nature.  Oh well, she’ll learn.  (Or not.)

What would Cesar do?  I’ve put an inordinate amount of time into researching the “tug of war” game with dogs.  All to no avail, I can’t find a solid answer.  For every supposed “expert” that says to never let the dog win, there’s another who says it’s fine and builds their confidence.  Then you even have several in between who swear by a certain percentage:  “Only let the dog win 15% of the time.”  So I’m supposed to count each time, yeah I see that happening.  Far as I can tell it doesn’t seem to matter one way or the other with young Teagan, I guess I ought to just play with the dog and quit cipherin’ so much on it.  The pup can play some tug, I know that.  Took me by surprise the first few times;  She pulls like a freakin’ four wheel drive truck, and she can hang on like…  Well, like a pitbull.  She plays nice though, although we are still working on the “release” part.  Other than an extended round of tug-of-war and nice long walk, I didn’t do much last night.  Would have been an awesome nite to go watch the Royals down at the Brooksider, but I guess I effectively scratched that option with the new dog.  (They banned doggies on the patio quite some time ago.)  Tonight promises similar boredom…  Not even a baseball game on tonight.

I sat home on the couch with the dog last night and watched the big basketball game.  Wow, that was boring.  But, since I was going to be bored anyway, I sat there and watched the entire thing.  I’ll always readily admit I ain’t the biggest sports fan out there, so I followed the game on the Internet too, watching for other opinions.  A common theme seemed to be that excellent defense was the cause of the abysmal score.  I dunno, I just couldn’t see it.  All I saw was loose balls bouncing all over with nobody bothering to pick them up, open shots clanging off the rim, (or the backboard or the third row of seats,) and guys dribbling off their foot.  It honestly looked like both teams were trying to throw the game and they couldn’t decide who wanted it less.  Made for a heck of a boring game, at least for me;  Far as I can tell the only people who actually enjoyed watching it were the ones that had Connecticut in their bracket.

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.