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.

Finally Friday, albeit early Friday.  Not that the weekend looks like it going to be worth the wait, at least weather-wise.  We’ll see though. I waited all week for it, might as well try and get my money’s worth out of it.

Last night we went up to Lew’s for some dinner.  We don’t go there much, but last night they were donating a certain percentage of proceeds from sales to Donette’s school.  Anything for the children, that’s what I always say.  They do this promotion every now and then, which I think very neighborly of them so we try and get up there and spend a (very) little.  It’s always packed too, seems like every family in the whole school is up there.  Strikes me as a little odd, having attended public schools growing up, but maybe that’s just me.  Do you know how much money was donated to Grandview High School when my family went up to the local bar & grill to eat dinner on a Thursday night?  (That comparison is ridiculous from so many different angles I just had to throw it out there.)  Well anyway, I got a tasty blue cheese burger out of the deal, so no complaints from me.

Whew, I got nuthin’.  No good jokes, no recaps of a new place we went to dinner, no harrowing tales of the dog chasing the cat.  (OK I have lots of those, but how much can you get out of “The dog chased the cat.”)  Nope, it was an entirely uneventful evening.  Oh, I just remembered:  Last night was the ceremonious First Mowing of the Lawn!!!  How about THAT for excitement!!!  Yeah, boy.  I don’t think “ceremonious” would be my first choice of adjectives, but I’ll keep things clean.  I was about half-hoping the mower wouldn’t start and provide me a convenient excuse, but it fired up.  Sigh.  I would have to imagine things will go from here directly into the “twice-a-week” mode for the foreseeable future.  This might be the year I invest in a new mower for the cause, we’ll see.  I have considered just hiring the job out, but a little quick math seems to indicate I can get a pretty doggone nice mower for about the cost of 3 months with a lawn service.  After that chore, I took the dog for a walk and then Donette brought home some Kin Lin takeout for dinner.  Then I hauled my full bellies upstairs and watched Resident Evil: Afterlife, a remarkably engaging action flick.  Sorta made me want to rent the rest in the series.

So, back to the “dog life”  I guess.  Taking walks, playing ball…  Fun stuff but doesn’t make for very good blogging material.  Whew, that little girl can play some fetch.  Brings it back every time without fail.  Now actually getting the ball/rope/stick back for another toss is a different story.  Have to work on that part.

Monday night we did make it out briefly for dinner.  Donette is home all day on Mondays to entertain the pup, so it’s a good night to go out.  We went up to 75th Street for some dinner, and to enjoy the Spring re-opening of the deck.  One thing I forgot to factor in was that with the re-opening of the deck came the re-lighting of the cigarettes.  Ugh.  Want some ashes in that quesadilla?  Yummy.  Oh well, it wasn’t too bad, and it WAS a very nice evening out.

The biggest excitement of that weekend was the addition of a new dog to the house.  You might be saying to yourself,  “New dog??!!  I thought you were done with dogs?  I thought Donette was out of town?  I thought you had two ounces of common sense?”  Well, true, all true.  (With the possible exception of the last one.)  Things just sort of fell into place though.  “Went with the moment,” so to speak.  This little ‘un is a refugee from St. Louis.  A friend of Donette’s sister had taken her in as a stray a few weeks ago, but couldn’t keep her.  I just so happened to have a friend driving back from there on Friday, so I figured what the heck.  (Well, at least he was my friend before driving 4 hours with “my” puppy on his leather seats.)  So anyway, the dog journeyed to KC on Friday, and I went and picked her up that afternoon.  So far, so good.  She has been remarkably well behaved;  Almost to the point of arousing suspicion.  We are struggling to come up with a name though.  They called her “Athena” and she does respond well to that.  But, I think it’s good ju-ju to name your own dog so we’re trying to come up with something else.  On the short list so far are Reegan, Teagan, Reeces, Peanut, Theena, and approximately 20 others.  Quite the variation there, huh.  Actually I sort of like “Peanut” if it wasn’t such a goofy name.  That one might make the nickname list.  So here is a picture of her that her rescuers in St. Louis sent me.  She looks quite a bit darker in person than she looks here, but I’ve been too lazy to drag out my own camera so this will do.

** Edit:  We’ve agreed on “Teagan.”  She has been dubbed.

So what else went on this weekend?  Well, for the most part I tried to hang out at the house and get the pup settled in.  Lots of walks, lots of fetch, and lots of watching basketball.  I did make it out to Mom’s Saturday afternoon and got her new computer set up.  MAN that thing is fast, makes me want a new one too.  (This and every other want for the foreseeable future will be responded to with “We don’t have money for that, you wanted a dog instead.”)  This also gave me an opportunity to try kenneling the pup, which went just fabulously.  The only other time I got out of the house was for a nice bike ride Sunday afternoon with Munkirs & Martin.  Well, at least it was a nice ride for Munkirs and I;  Chris suffered a catastrophic failure of his Internet-Bike early in the ride and had to call in support.