I got to hang out at the Phoenix last night for a while.  I do like that place quite a bit, but I’m usually in such a hurry to catch the bus and get back to midtown that I walk right by it.  Last night I was feeling rather what-the-heckish though so I dropped in to listen to the piano player for a while.  It was more crowded than usual but not too bad.  I stayed for about 3 hours, for his entire set actually.  He’s a good pianist, at least as far as I know, not being the biggest piano fan in the world.  I like listening to him at any rate.  If I had my choice he would skip the singing, but it ain’t that bad and he seems to enjoy it.  Might just go back next Thursday…

Nothing to report from last night.  Donette went out with some friends, I stayed home and played Wii games.  My amusement of choice was Cabela’s “Big Game Hunter.”  I don’t play the part where you stalk and shoot the animals though.  That part requires too much thinking, coordination, and all that stuff I have no need for.  I just play the “Shooting Gallery” part, which is a lot like the old Nintendo “Duck Hunter” game, with better graphics.  Man if they’d just put the dog in there, they’d really have something.  It passed the evening remarkably quickly;  Might just do that again tonight.

The first thing I usually do when I get up in the morning is check Weather Underground and see how much misery I’m in for.  Helps me know how many dozens of layers to put on for the march to the bus stop.  This morning, the first thing that caught my eye was the phrase “Today is forecast to be much warmer than yesterday.”  Well that’s just great.  The predicted high is sixteen freaking degrees.  I suppose when you really get down to it though, that is “much warmer” than yesterday.  Dang near twice as warm as a matter of fact.  I’m no meteorologist but I think “Not quite as brutally cold as yesterday” would have been a more accurate summary though.  Maybe I’ll email them my input, I expect they would be about as receptive to my wonderful ideas as the KC Transit people were.

Last night Donette called me on my long, slow, boring, noisy ride home and suggested meeting at 75th Street for dinner.  Sounded good to me, so I stayed on the bus all the way into Waldo and walked down there.  (“All the way” being a grand total of four more blocks.)  As I think I mentioned, we decided to start using up our “points” we’ve saved up there.  I seriously think we have enough to eat there once a week for the rest of the year, so we might as well get started on it.  While we were waiting for our dinner to come out, we played several rounds of our favorite video game, photo hunt.  You know, where they put up two pictures and you try and find the differences between them?  I think it’s more geared towards 6 year old kids, but for whatever reason we enjoy it.  I have to say, last night we totally killed that thing too.  We were ON.  My idea of a “good round” is getting into the six-figure score range, usually topping out around 103,000 or so;  Last night we were consistently over 600,000.  We even hit high score on the machine, not once but twice.  Oh yeah.  I am considering flying out to Vegas and seeing if there is any money to be made as a photo hunt pro.  Yes, I think the winter boredom is kicking in pretty hard.  For dinner we had a tasty mushroom and cheese pizza.  I was enjoying it thoroughly, then the manager came out and apologized for it being “over done” and took it off our bill.  Tasted fine to me, I don’t think I even would have noticed.  But hey, I’m not going to complain about a free meal, although it didn’t help much in our quest to use up our points…

Spring is upon us.  You heard it here first.  Well probably not, but I am supporting the forecast at any rate.

I must say, yesterday shaped up rather nicely after a somewhat sketchy start.  Things started looking up when KB called me up and we went out to a high-power business lunch together.  We talked about all kinds of businessy things over some delicious food at Gordon Biersch.  For some reason I seemed to remember being down on that place, but it’s back on my list now.  I had an awesome grilled mahi-mahi sandwich with garlic fries;  It single handedly turned my entire day around.  With a full and happy belly, I toiled through the remainder of the afternoon, and then Donette called and said she needed to run to the movie theater so she could give me a ride home if I so wished.  No bus ride home, heck yeah!  Actually I was more concerned with the walk to the bus stop than the ride itself.  I wasn’t exactly dressed for the weird cold snap yesterday afternoon and there was a reasonable chance of frostbite involved.  So, she went and picked up a few movie tickets, then we hung out at the Flying Saucer for an hour or so.  After that it was home to watch the Missouri game.  Well, the day didn’t wind up so hot on that note, but I’ve accepted that there will be at least a few letdowns every day.

I seem to have woken up on the figurative “wrong side of the bed” this morning.  Despite this hindrance, I will do my best at summarizing my 3-day weekend, which actually was rather entertaining.  Maybe the fact that it is over has thrown me into this foul temperament.  Who knows.

So anyway, Friday I had the day off, as previously mentioned.  I spent the greater part of the day on the PC in my endless quest for bicycle wheels.  A fruitless search, as always.  I did take advantage of my free day to join “the boys” down at the Brooksider for an early happy hour around 3:00.  That’s when they show up every day, one of the many benefits of retirement I suppose.  I hung out there for a while, even tried to have a cigar on the deck.  Too cold though, that didn’t last long.  We headed back home for dinner, then I tried to watch “Toy Story 3.”  As usual, I promptly fell asleep as soon as it started.

Saturday we joined our friend Ann for her annual “Snowball Softball” game.  Legend has it that softball was actually a part of this event many years ago.  That must have been a good many years ago because we’ve known her for a considerable time and I can’t remember that part of it.  Then again, I’ve never actually attended the event either, giving me a rookie status this year.  Basically the “game” consists of a pub crawl around several local dives, each location making up an inning.  It was a fun day, and I actually went to a few places I’d never been to before.  (This doesn’t mean I will necessarily go back to them though…)  Two such places were Flo’s Polka Dot Lounge and Tommy Farhas Cafe.  Not only had I never been to these places, I’d never even noticed they were there, despite driving by both countless times.  They were…  “Interesting.”  If nothing else they had good diversions;  I played several games of pool at Flo’s and they had a dart board at Farhas.

Sunday there was some football game on.  I don’t think anybody I knew was very interested in the game, but it did provide a good reason for a party.  We went to our friend Steve’s house way out in the southlands.  We don’t get to see them very often so we spent most of the time catching up with everybody, not to mention enjoying ribs, brisket, pork & chicken.  There was a big crowd there, and I really don’t think anybody watched much of the game.  We left at halftime, and I watched the rest of it at home.  Yawn.