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.

I have (almost) successfully killed another week.  Last night I dropped by the Brooksider and found a big bunch of old men hanging out.  Carl, Zim, Chad, Martin, Belanger, Brice, Falstrom, et al;  I think we pretty much had representation from all four corners of the city.  I guess the occasion revolved around the basketball games, but it was so stinking loud in there you couldn’t hear anything.  Eventually this crowd filtered out, and I stuck around a while longer to hang out with a table of 20-somethings.  This was every bit as bad an idea as it sounds.  I am way too old.  Do not look for me down there tonight.

It’s Wednesday.  Four days since I was abandoned to fend for myself, left alone with no food, no entertainment, and no companionship save a half-crazy cat.  Yet I am somehow managing to get by, a testament to my strong will to survive.  Last night, weak from hunger, I barely managed to drag myself down to the Brooksider, where a kind young lady quickly recognized my desperate plight and rushed me a plate of chicken soft tacos.  Rejuvenated by this small amount of nourishment, I made it back home for another lonely night on the couch watching TV with the cat.  We watched The Thaw, which was a thoroughly engaging documentary on global warming.  Or, it may have been a mindless horror film.  It passed the evening, whatever the case.