As anticipated, I wasted my day off yesterday.  Outside of a remarkably exciting trip to Target I sat in front of the computer and watched my day go by.  Rounded out the boredom with Monday Night Football, which culminated in the defeat of my fantasy team.  All-in-all, a rather uneventful, if relaxing day.  I cooked Doni a birthday dinner, such as it was;  Mahi-Mahi and salad.  Today, though…  TODAY I shall do a little something with my time off.  I am relaxed and ready.  I dropped Doni off at work this morning, so I have the car, giving me the rare luxury of mobility.  To get things started, I drove up to the grocery store and bought some short ribs.  I’ve never had short ribs before, at least in my shaky memory.  I’ve been seeing them on TV a lot though, and they sure look good.  So, I brought them home and gave them a good browning in the cast iron skillet.  Then I sliced up a sweet onion and threw it in, deglazed all the goodness with a Schlafly Oatmeal Stout, then tossed it all in the slow cooker with some ‘taters and mushrooms.  Now my plan is to go loiter at the gym for a few hours, and possibly even go meet the boys at the Brooksider after that.  Then, all things going well, I will come home to a nice dinner waiting in the crockpot.  It’s a good plan anyway…  My plans rarely pan out but we’ll see how it goes.

I’m in the middle of an extended weekend, so pardon my brevity.  I’ve got all kinds of really important, fun stuff to do on my day off and I don’t want to waste too much time typing this.  Going back to bed is pretty high on the list, and after that I’m not really sure what to do with the rest of the day.  Anyway, as to my weekend…  Friday I stopped by Diebel’s and took advantage of their two-fer-one cigar deal.  I picked out a nice little number from Partagas, then continued on my way to the Brooksider and fired it up.  By the time I was done with that, it was getting uncomfortably chilly on the patio and it was dinner time, so I headed on home.

Saturday we got up early-ish and headed up to the gym.  Got that knocked out, then headed out on a shopping extravaganza.  Neither one of us are very big shoppers, but you wouldn’t know it from that afternoon.  We wandered Cabela’s for quite a while, and I picked up a cheap-o red dot sight for one of my pistols.  It was a good deal, but not much to show for an hour and a half of wandering around.  After that we went next door to Nebraska Furniture Mart, where we spent a longgggg time.  Donette picked out a remote start for her car, which she has been wanting since the day we got the car.  They made her a good deal on it too;  An offer she just couldn’t refuse apparently.  After she picked that out, we spent about two hours looking at surround sound systems and loveseats.  Never found just the right deal on either of those though, so that was just time wasted I guess.  For evening entertainment, we headed up north to the Martin’s house once again.  I swear, I’ve crossed the river more in the last two months than I have in the last two years.  They threw a party for the Schmidt’s, who are getting ready to leave to country for an extended time.  And a fine fiesta it was;  Got to see all kinds of people.

Sunday was another fine day.  In a bit of a departure from our usual routine, we headed down to the Flying Saucer to watch the Chiefs game.  They were having their annual Christmas Party at the same time, which we decided to go to this year.  It was a good time, if a bit packed.  We had to stand up the whole time, but that was OK.  We ended up watching the entire game there.  They are a bit more limited on the TV’s than the Brooksider, but we could see fine.  Good Christmas party too;  Now we can say we did something Christmas-y, so check that off the list.  After that we headed back to our usual entertainment locale.  Donette met up with “the girls” at Jalapenos, and I popped in the Brooksider to watch the late games with “the boys.”  All that revelry wore us out apparently, the evening ended on the couch watching TV.

I guess the holidays are 1/2 over now?  Maybe only 1/3 if you count New Years.  The season has officially begun, at any rate.  I’m awfully limited on material this particular Monday, so I think I’ll just go with a mish-mash of mini-info from the last week.  I was oncall over the weekend, and as such spent the vast majority of it sitting on the couch staring at my phone, waiting for it to ring.  Can’t do much with that.

So, backing all the way up to last Wednesday…  Things started off rather rough, as alluded to in the post below.  The day rebounded though.  After rescuing my motorcycle from sitting in the rain on the UMKC campus, I joined a large group of old men down at the Brooksider for the annual pre-Thanksgiving AKL luncheon.  I missed the actual lunch, but I met up with the late crowd, which was still pretty sizable.  After that I went home to find my first Christmas present of the year laying on the front porch;  A shiny new Synology DS-111 from Santa Claus.  After spending way-too-much time trying to make my website run on my woefully underpowered NSLU2, I finally gave up and just bought a new toy.  So far it’s working out well;  This is my first official post on it as a matter of fact.

Thursday, if you didn’t know, was Thanksgiving Day.  We headed out to Mom’s house for a good ol’ traditional Turkey Day meal.  (”Traditional” sans sweet potatoes…  Not sure what happened there…)  We overate in the traditional fashion, that’s for sure.  After that delicious meal we headed back home and watched some football.  I usually head down to the ‘Sider to compare gluttony stories that evening, but I didn’t make it off the couch this year.  Donette went down and checked out the Plaza lights with her sister and niece, but I was too warm and comfortable to go out.

Friday started my oncall stretch;  Booooo.  We went down to the Brooksider briefly, then went home and Donette made a steak dinner.  Not sure what the occasion was there, and I didn’t see any reason to ask.  Just enjoy the steak.  That pretty much covers Friday, and as this paragraph is a little short I’ll just roll Saturday into it too.  Saturday we didn’t do anything.  Literally.  As a matter of fact, I never even got dressed.  We had no intentions of leaving the house so I didn’t really see the point.  We watched the glorious MU-KU game on TV, and assorted other less interesting games, and that comprised our entire day.  Sorta sad really, but rather relaxing at the same time.

Honestly Sunday wasn’t exactly a big upgrade from Saturday as far as accomplishments.  I did at least get dressed though.  We left the house a few times too.  Made a run to Costco, which is always exciting.  After that we headed over to our friend Ronnie’s house to watch the Chief’s game.  That is getting to be the ”Place To Be” on game day.  At one point I counted 25 people there.  Good win too;  That always makes for a better party.

The good news is I finally managed to run my motorcycle out of gas, so it’s ready for winter storage.  The bad news is I was north-bound on Main street at the time,  in a thunderstorm.  The good news is Donette has today off so she could run me a can of gas.  The bad news is my cell phone is dead.  The good news is I was near a bus stop, and had my bus pass with me.  That’s three “goods” and only two “bads,” so I guess that means it’s going to be a great day.

Happy pending Thanksgiving.  Hopefully everybody loaded their freezers with $0.69 turkeys that will invariably stay there until next year.  (Or the year after, or the year after…)

We got a bit of an early start on that weekend.  We actually went out Thursday night for a great dinner at Marina Grog & Galley.  We met Donette’s parents out there to celebrate their 52nd anniversary.  (Congrats!)  Aside from a long drive there and back it was a fantastic meal.  I had a ribeye myself, which was perfectly cooked;  No doubt the best steak I’ve had in a long time.  If I was ordering again I would have chosen a baked potato over the rice, but I was trying to be healthy.  (Which NEVER pays off, especially when you consider I was already tackling a 14 oz. ribeye.  Would a big buttery potato really have made that much difference at that point?)  Anyway, we’ll be going back sometime in the future.  It’s definitely in the “special occasion only” range for us price-wise, but another one will come up sooner or later I’m sure.

Friday we got back into our rut down at the good ol’ Brooksider.  The Group sorta threw me off by sitting outside though;  They are generally a fair-weather group.  I wasn’t really dressed warm enough for patio-sitting, but they cranked up the heaters and it was tolerable.  We stayed a bit longer than usual too.  There was some sort of MMA-related event going on inside so we stuck around and watched it.  I don’t really know what it was, or how to describe it.  They called it a “weigh-in” but there was no scale involved.  Who knows.  It was a spectacle to be sure, and we love a good spectacle as much as the next person.

Saturday I crossed The River for the second time in as many weeks.  Getting a little wacky to be sure.  Martin had generously offered to fire up the smoker(s) again and sent out an email to the world in case anybody wanted to smoke up some holiday fare.  It turned out to be quite a popular offering too.  For my part, I had a nice brisket to do which will be going out to Mom’s this Thursday.  There were also 6 turkeys, 8 slabs of ribs, 4 other briskets, and two pork butts.  Wow.  Yeah the smokers were full.  They are big though, so there was plenty of room.

We stayed the night up at Martin’s, sort of like a little mini-vacation.  If you’re going to drive that far, might as well make it worth the while.  We had a lot to do Sunday though so we got up and scampered back across the river bright and early.  As it turned out, “a lot to do” turned into reading the paper, watching football, and surfing the Web all day.  We did take a brief foray up to the gym but it was a rather lackadaisical effort.  We made a weak attempt at working out, then sat in the hot tub for the better part of an hour.  Hey, we can still say “We went to the gym this weekend.”