It IS Friday right?  Please?  Well I guess if it’s not, it will be some time.  That weekend went by entire too fast, it could still be last Friday for all I know.  Things started out rather unremarkably;  Spent Friday evening down at the Brooksider of all places.  Hey, this weather ain’t gonna be around for ever, I feel I need to take advantage of it while it’s here.  Nothing of note from down there;  The same guys, sitting at the same table, talking about the same things.  A routine I am quite comfortable with, I might add.

Saturday brought another fine day outside.  We spent our morning running errands, which took a lot longer than normal with the big marathon going on.  I think we drove about 15 miles on the 5 mile trip to Costco.  We got everything done though, just took a bit longer.  Later in the afternoon we headed over to our friend Ron’s house, AKA “Brooksider North,” for a gathering.  (He insists on referring to these events as “gatherings,” as the term “party” would somehow require too much responsibility.)  Officially dubbed the Annual Fish Fry, it’s morphed into a more diverse buffet over the last few years, presumably because nobody wants to go catch and clean a bunch of fish.  (I know I don’t.)  We did fry up some obligatory fillets, but there was also fried chicken, ribs, and two kinds of smoked pork.  For our part, we brought the fryer for the fish and threw some hush puppies in the grease too.  The pups came out well this year;  I just bought a few boxes of mix and then stirred in a few “extras.”  Much better than the home-made route, and easier to boot.

Sunday we got out of our routine a bit.  Niece Dee was having some kind of BBQ at her dormitory in Columbia and needed a cooker, so she’d called a few weeks back to see what we could come up with.  Details were a bit…  “sketchy” around the event, but we borrowed our friend Troy’s cooker and headed up there early Sunday morning.  It was a good time;  Our responsibility pretty much consisted of starting the fire and then sitting in lawn chairs enjoying the weather.  Never did really figure out what the party was for but that’s OK;  Something to do with Homecoming I think.  They set up a bunch of games and decorations and food, all of which was judged around 4:00.  (I’m not even sure what the judging criteria was, but they seemed pleased with the event so that’s good…)  The grill served admirably;  Dee and a few friends churned out some serious burgers and dogs on it.  I was rather surprised (shocked?  scared?  disturbed?) at the amount of food they went through.  Final damage was 160 hamburgers, and at least that many hot dogs.  And there were only like 35 people there.  (OK maybe a few more than that.)  You definitely wanted to pull your fingers back quickly when setting down a pan of food, or they would end up on a bun with relish and mustard.  We spent the whole afternoon down there;  By the time we got the cooker cooled down enough to pull it was around 6:00.  A few hours driving back to KC, then add another hour for me to finally get it backed in the driveway when we got home, (180th time is a charm) and it was bedtime.

Munkirs came over last night and we headed out on a short bike ride.  The last one of the season maybe?  We’ll see.  We left my house about 6:00 and put in a quick 18 miles.  By the time we got back it was (very) dark and rather chilly too.  The good news was I got a little use out of my super-duper new headlight, which worked just dandy.  Good thing, I waited about a month and a half for the stupid thing to get shipped.  The cold is another story though;  Don’t have any new toys to fix that issue.  I was just….  Cold.  Yeah, I suppose I do have a closet full of those fancy things called “jackets,” but they aren’t specifically CYCLING jackets, so I’m sure they wouldn’t really work for that application.  Sigh, get the checkbook out.

Every time I get rid of something because I haven’t used it in several years, I will find a need for it shortly thereafter.

Does anyone know how to train a cat to puke on the OTHER side of the bed?

Ahhh, another Monday.  The thrill of another exciting week staring me in the face.  Mmmm-hmmmm.  And it’s raining to boot.  Nothing better to start a week off right than a morning with the bus-crazies.  Guess it was about time for a little precipitation;  At least I got my grass seed down yesterday.  As for the weekend?  Ehhh.  Friday passed without incident.  I did have a pretty good lunch that day I guess.  Mostly out of boredom, I wandered down to Winslows in the City Market.  I hadn’t been there for a long time, if ever.  Seems like I was there once many moon ago.  At any rate, I was out enjoying the weather and decided to stop in for lunch on their patio.  Granted, I was starving, but I thought it was pretty good.  I had the rib plate with fries and slaw.  Way too much food, but I guess that’s BBQ in KC.  The ribs were good;  Very smoky (which I like) and I liked the rub on them.  The downside was they were off the long end (to be expected for the lunch special I suppose) and they weren’t trimmed.  Pet peeve I think;  It’s not like anybody is going to eat all that nasty gristly stuff, cut it off for pete’s sake.  I’ll probably go back in a few weeks and try a sandwich and see how that goes.  When I got home Donette was up the street at Cantina del Ray with Susan, doing a little light happy-hour-slash-dinner.  When she got home she dug some homemade tamales out of the freezer and heated them up, and then made a good green chile sauce to go with them.  We’ll have to save the green chile recipe, it was a keeper.  After that we split up to our respective TV’s.  Not sure what she watched but I fired up some good horror movies.  Halloween is just around the corner you know.

Saturday we did a little light work outside.  The front yard went south on us towards the end of the summer…  I think it burned up while we were out of town.  Forgot to leave the sprinklers on, whoops.  I raked a few tons of thatch out of it and then threw some seed on it.  Not that it will grow this late in the year, but I can say I tried.  After that we headed over to our friends Troy & Laura’s house for a cookout.  Eight-seven stoplights and an hour later we were in Lenexa, right on time to catch the burgers coming off the grill.  We hung out there for the rest of the night, with half an eye on the MU game and the other half on some s’mores.

Sunday morning I got up relatively early and headed down to Brookside for a group bicycle ride.  First time I’d gotten back on the bike since the MS-150 a few weeks ago.  I’d never been on the Sunday morning ride and given the perfect weather it seemed as good a plan as any.  Munkirs met me down there and we headed out on a very… err…  “leisurely” 16 mile ride.  Geez they took the “no rider left behind” philosophy to a whole new level.  I guess it’s just supposed to be a Sunday morning stroll and it definitely fit that category.  When we (finally) arrived down at the City Market everybody headed to Happy Gillis for breakfast.  Munkirs & I decided it was time to get the day started so we skipped breakfast and headed back towards Brookside.  Suffice to say we made better time on the return trip.  Hey, it was a great morning outside though, overall it was an enjoyable ride and I wasn’t looking to break any land-speed records anyway.  I was mostly just interested in the route they took to get downtown, and it turned out to be a rather serviceable route indeed.  After the ride I headed down to the Brooksider to sit outside on the patio and watch the Chiefs game.  It was predictably packed, and rather festive, even after the disappointing outcome.  I stayed through that game, and part of the late afternoon game, then headed back home.  Donette fixed some great stuffed pork chops for dinner, then I finished out the weekend with a good round of Wii games.