I have the day off;  Should you be likewise blessed you should contact me asap as I am in need of entertainment.  I’m pretty much up for anything, as long as it’s cheap, warm, and within a mile of my house.  Other than those small qualifiers I’m raring to go.  I have even briefly considered heading down to “suicide hill” for a little sledding.  I pass by there every night on my way home, and it sure does look fun.  It doesn’t fall very squarely in the “warm” category though, and besides that it’s too early in the year for a trip to the emergency room.

Last night was another in my current run of uneventful evenings.  I essentially sat in front of the computer and watched craigslist all night, waiting anxiously for that perfect set of bicycle wheels to pop up.  They never did.  Sigh.  Guess I’m doomed to ride on a bent wheel all season, should the “season” in fact ever arrive.  By the time all this crap melts off it will be too hot to ride.  (Or too windy, or too rainy, or too dark, or….)

Wow I about froze my patootie off this morning.  It’s a pretty long walk from the bus stop.  When I finally stumbled through all the snow, I looked at weather.com and it said minus nine.  Brrr.  Double-brrr even.  I was bundled up pretty well though.  Last time we were out in Colorado I picked up balaclava on clearance.  I figured for ten bucks, what the heck.  I have long since gotten my money’s worth out of that thing.  I wear it all the time on the scooter under my helmet, it’s nice and toasty.  My other key purchase was a set of YakTrax.  While an admittedly ridiculous sounding idea, they work very well.  If they don’t shovel the sidewalks downtown soon I might pick up some snowshoes next.

We stayed in and cooked dinner last night;  Not too much to write about there.  Well, other than Donette’s batch of coconut & macadamia snow ice cream she whipped up for dessert.  Fancy!  But, rather than detail that delicacy, I’ll put up a picture of Kane’s latest acquisition, a Kitty Water Fountain.  Yes, this is what we have sunk to.  Here he is enjoying a cool drink of water from his new luxury.  The hand towel to his left is so he can wipe his mouth when he’s finished drinking.  Why ever did we purchase such an oddity?  Well, the boy has some kind of problem with water.  If you leave a 1/2-full water glass out, there is a 100% chance he will knock it over.  He has a full bowl of water all the time, but he rarely drinks from it, just sticks his paw in it and swishes it around.  Not only weird, but annoying.  I suppose the simple solution would be, “Don’t leave 1/2-full water glasses sitting around.”  Well, I just can’t seem to adapt to that idea, and I’m tired of finding all my papers soaked in water that he’s knocked over.  As it turns out, his behavior isn’t all that weird.  A little google-age seems to show that’s just what cats do.  (Making all cats weird in my book.)  They like running water.  Who knew.  Sure enough, he drinks regularly from this contraption, he will even sit and just watch the water flowing now and then.  Money well spent I guess.  (I’ll just keep telling myself that.)

Is this to be my last post for a while?  Will my website go down for an extended period, buried under two feet of snow and ice?  Oh the drama.  Honestly I think now that they have officially predicted “the worst snow storm in 50 years,” it is going to miss us for the most part.  You heard it here first;  There will be no significant snowfall in KC.  Just visit www.pkenagy.com for all your weather needs in the future.  I am a remarkable 2 for 6,564,348 predicting rainfall, we’ll see if that accuracy rate holds for snow too.

We went out for dinner last night, mostly because the news is telling us we will be home-bound for the next few days.  We decided on 75th Street, since it’s close and familiar.  Not much detail to go into there…  Uhhhh, we shared a pizza.  A very delicious pizza, as a matter of fact.  I elected to pay the dinner tab with our “points” for once.  They have one of those reward card systems, like darn near everybody else in town, where you earn points for money you spend there.  We’ve had a card for several years and although we don’t go up there that much, we have still managed to amass quite a few dollars.  (For whatever reason we don’t ever cash them in, we just keep saving them for who-knows-what.)  Well, in another one of my bold predictions, I have the feeling the restaurant is struggling a bit.  Wouldn’t it stink to save all those points for years and then walk up one day and the doors are locked?  Add to that the fact that we seem to be perpetually broke lately and I think it’s time to go on a run of free 75th Street dinners.

Glad that’s over.  Now there’s a phrase you don’t hear every Monday morning;  Unless you were oncall over the weekend.  Ehhh, it wasn’t bad though, I squeezed in my share of entertainment.  I kicked things off Friday afternoon down at the Brooksider.  I had fully intended to just ride the bus straight home and settle in for some movies, but when I stepped out into the 50-degree weather I figured I had better take advantage of the situation.  I procured a nice cigar and proceeded to spend a few hours on the patio with the boys.  After that we decided to head out for a little dinner.  Our first choice was Chelly’s, which we don’t go to very often but always enjoy when we do.  When we stepped in the front door and found a wait for a table we bailed out though.  Second choice, on a snap decision, was the new Papa Rico’s restaurant across the street.  It’s been through several different restaurants over the last several years;  It seems to be one of those buildings that just don’t do well no matter what they put in it.  My dinner was pretty good, I think I liked mine better than Donette did hers.  I think the thing that threw us off most was their oddly liberal use of chili powder.  Everything was just doused in it.  You could smell it when the plates hit the table.  At any rate it was good food, we’ll give it another try.  We’ll most likely try their breakfast next time though;  I don’t think the dinner was good enough to unseat any of our “regular” spots.

Saturday we passed the afternoon without any notable excitement, then decided to go out on a “date night” for the evening.  We decided on the movies, which is certainly a rare occasion, as we can almost never find a movie that we agree on.  As it happened though, I wanted to see “True Grit,” and she is on a mission to see all the movies that are Oscar nominated, so we picked that one.  We found a 7:00 showing down at the Main Street AMC, and took a limo (a.k.a. city bus) down there around 6:00.  That gave us plenty of time to get settled in, grab a bite to eat, and get ready for the show.  Good movie, all in all.  I watched the original earlier in the day so I’d have a fresh comparison in my mind, and I can’t go so far as to agree with all the assessments that the new one is better.  It was entertaining though, and I always enjoy that theater if nothing else.

Sunday, well, let’s just pretend it never happened.  Which, in a sense, it never did.  I couldn’t quite get into first gear.  I suppose I never should have turned on the TV, that’s always a bad decision.  But I did, and ended up watching back-to-back-to-back terrible movies all day long, intermingled with news and uninteresting sporting events.  I was moderately looking forward to the Pro Bowl, as I wanted to see all the Chiefs players in it.  As it turned out, even the worst low-budget crappy movie available on Netflix provided more entertainment than that game.  I didn’t even make it through ten minutes, it was just too boring to watch.