I don’t know what that title means.  I am aware the Oscars were last night, because Donette watched them over at a friends house, but I wasn’t able to fit it into my busy schedule.  Compounding the issue, my online paper isn’t working this morning (again) so I don’t know who won.  Gosh, hope I can make it through the morning.

All things considered, that was a rather entertaining weekend.  I was oncall so that kept me tethered to the PC a bit more than I’d have liked, but I think I made the most of it.  Friday we stayed in;  Kind of get into the swing of oncall, so to speak.  I can’t remember what we did for dinner but I’m sure it was absolutely wonderful.  Enchiladas perhaps?  After that we drifted off to our respective TV’s and watched movies.  For my part, I saw “Blood Snow” & some other movie which was so awful I have purged it’s name from my memory.  “Blood Snow” wasn’t exactly riveting (it was in German and didn’t really make sense even if I could have understood what they were saying) but compared to the second one it shoulda been on the awards show last night.  I would’ve just turned it off in disgust, but being Friday night I felt I should stay up until at least 10:00, so I stared at it until the bitter end.

Saturday worked out to be a decent day, all things considered.  I worked through the afternoon, with half an eye on the disappointing basketball game, and then about 3:00 I walked Gabe down to Brookside.  Our friends Troy & Laura were down there for an “event” that’s been on the calendar for a long time.  Laura has been writing a childrens book called Escaping the Tiger for the better part of the last decade, and it finally got published, shipped and released.  They had a big “book signing party” down at a store in Brookside, and Troy was grilling out back, so I went down to hang out and enjoy the day.  It turned into a rather huge event.  There were conservatively 250 people packed into the little shop, and unfortunately they sold out of books a bit early, but there was plenty of food and everybody had a good time.  And, once again, I got to see still more high school friends I hadn’t seen forever.  (Laura is a proud Grandview alum.)  The crowd was a bit much so I stayed outside with the grill, helping Troy shovel chicken.  He ended up churning out 60 lbs. of drumsticks and several slabs of ribs.  I stayed until they finished up around 9:00, then went home and watched “Duplicity” with Donette.  Weird movie.  Not quite sure I ever figured out what was going on.

Sunday we slummed around the house all morning, then headed out for an exciting walk through the aisles of Costco around noon.  We loitered there for an hour or so, and then decided to catch some lunch somewhere.  We decided on the new Blanc Burgers down on the Plaza;  Well, new location anyway, it recently re-located from Westport.  I can’t decide if I liked it or not.  It was most definitely good, but a bit on the pricey side for a hamburger.  But, it was one good hamburger.  (As well it should have been.)  After lunch I took Gabe for a nice long walk, to reward him for destroying our living room while were gone.  Then, for evening entertainment, Donette & Kelly went over to Susan’s house for a big Oscars party.  Boys weren’t invited this year, drat, so I stayed home for a little cinematic entertainment myself.  My showings included the soon-to-be-famous titles “Severance” and “Killer Klowns from Outer Space.”  Definitely Oscar-worthy.  Oh and I played some solo Rock Band and Big Game Hunter too, that entertained me for a few hours.  I found the “shooting arcade” portion of the latter, where you just blast stuff and don’t have to do any thinking.  Perfect.

I am quite excited, it looks as if I just may be able to dig the scooter out of storage this week.  Might be pushing it a little bit, but I am so sick of riding that bus I’m willing to knock a few degrees off my “low temp” rule for riding.  We shall see what the week brings.

Not a bad weekend, all in all.  We kicked off Friday with a bit of Happy Hour celebrating down at the Flying Saucer.  Just the two of us, for a romantic game of darts.  We hung out there for a  short bit, and then went to yet another “Grandview High School Get-Together” thingie.  Geez I’ve seen those people more in the last few months than I did in High School.  This time the location was “Howl at the Moon,” which is a piano bar down in the Power & Light district.  It was OK until the piano players started;  That’s just not really my kind of entertainment.  Must suit a lot of other people though, because it was packed.  We didn’t stay very long after the music started though.

Saturday we got up and headed out to Cabela’s for a little light shopping.  Picked up a copy of “Big Game Hunter” for our Wii, a few new chairs and some disposable propane bottles.  Good sales!!  After that we stopped by Amigos in the ‘Dotte for a little lunch, then went home and played the new game for a while.  (It’s fun by the way, if you’re thinking of getting it.)  For evening entertainment, Donette headed down to the Sprint Center for the Billy Joel & Elton John show, with her friend Katie.  Meanwhile, I headed out to (gasp) Overland Park and met up with some out-of-town friends.  My ol’ Army buddy Scott & his wife were in town for a meeting out off College Blvd, so instead of trying to describe how to get to our area of town I just drove that way.  I stayed quite a bit later than I intended, but what can ‘ya do, we were having fun.  After that I headed back home and closed out the evening with some solo Rock Band.

Sunday I slept in a bit, relatively speaking, then headed out to the big gun show with my buddy Mark.  YEEEE HAW!!  Good grief.  I think I’d take the “bus crowd” over the “gun show crowd” any day.  I thought the admission price was a little steep but after checking out the quality of the people-watching, I felt it was well worth it.  Just remember to strictly heed the “no touch, no talk, no eye-contact” rule.  We must have found the show (or the people-watching) pretty engaging, because we wandered around looking at stuff for 3 hours.  Bought a grand total of nothing too.  I had myself talked into a fancy new flashlight, but just couldn’t part with the cash.  Mark dropped me off at the Brooksider after the gun show, and I walked in to find the place was absolutely packed.  I wouldn’t have guessed it, but everybody was there to watch the big hockey game.  They were fired up too;  I can honestly say I have never seen a reaction down there anything like when the USA team scored that goal at the end of regulation.  Unfortunately it didn’t work out in the end, but it was still pretty exciting to watch and I was glad I lucked into seeing it.

That weekend was definitely a bit… “subdued” after last weekend’s escapades. Don’t guess we can count on friends flying in last-minute to entertain us every weekend.   Rats.  It was fun enough though, I’m generally more easily entertained than I used to be.  Friday we went to an auction at Donette’s school.  We went last year and had a great time, so we figured what the heck, try it again.   We got there around 5:00, so I could help out in the kitchen.  (Now aren’t I just the good hubby?)   They were having a shrimp boil, so I offered to lend a hand if they needed it.   They really didn’t need any help, but it was fun at any rate.  As a bonus, I ate my weight in boiled shrimp.  After dinner several of our friends from the Brooksider joined us upstairs at the auction, which was a blast.  We actually stayed all the way to the end, whatever time that was.   For whatever reason, I like watching the auctioneers do their thing.  They have Nigro Brothers do the auction, and those guys really know how to wring coin out of people.  Pretty amusing.  We had pretty good luck in the raffles too;  One of our friends won an Ipod off his $2 ticket, and our friend Katie hit the final four on a cruise but then lost out on the final drawing.

Saturday & Sunday I can quite easily lump together into one paragraph.  Matter of fact it might be difficult getting more than two sentences out of them.  I watched quite a bit of the Olympics on Saturday afternoon, then in the evening I headed down to the Brooksider to watch the Missouri game.  Alas, it was all full of (loud) riff-raff from the earlier game.  “Those people” were all over the place, taking up valuable Missouri chairs and being generally obnoxious.   I made it about fifteen minutes and then bailed.  Opted instead for a nice steak dinner at home.  Sunday we considered ourselves “snowed in” and didn’t really do anything.  More Olympics, and then Donette made an almond-crusted pork tenderloin, with pear stuffing on the side, for dinner.   Deeee-licious.  After that we watched “The Taking of Pelham 1 2 3.”   It was OK;   Mostly I just wanted to watch it because it was on Blu-Ray so I could use my nifty player.  Pretty cool picture, I must admit.   I rounded out the weekend with a showing of  “The Death Factory; Bloodletting,” which was appropriately horrible.

Score, I have the day off!  Donette had to work though, so it’s up to Gabe and I to entertain ourselves all day.  I predict an afternoon of the Winter Olympics.

So that was an unexpectedly entertaining weekend.  I was chatting online with our friend Kim last Thursday, and we were tossing around possible times for a visit, since we hadn’t seen her & Ed for a while.  I said, “Hey I got a four-day weekend, why don’t you just come to KC?”  So she checked with Ed, and they booked a flight and came in Friday night.  Ahhh, to be young and carefree again.  (As opposed to old, broken-down and carefree.)  We picked them up at the airport about 9:30 or so, which was wayyyyyy too late to actually go out that night, so we just sat around the house catching up.

So the actual reason I wanted them to come up was to take a first run on my “Taste Of KC” pub crawl that I’ve been developing.  We’ve got visitors coming into town this summer and I am working on fine-tuning my list of places to visit.  So, Saturday afternoon, we hopped on the bus and traveled down to the City Market for the first place on the list, Harry’s Country Club.  This was sort of a last-minute addition to the itinerary;  I’d never actually been there but wanted to hit someplace in that area and I’d heard good reviews on it.  It turned out to be a good pick, I wouldn’t be surprised if we went there again soon.  We had a great lunch there, although it was remarkably busy for a Saturday afternoon downtown.  From there we walked to the Phoenix, then to the Flying Saucer.  I picked the Phoenix because it’s right next to my office, so I could show the possibly interested parties where I work.  The Flying Saucer is just a fun place, even if it’s a chain, and the P&L district is worth a visit I think.  From there we hopped back on the bus and went to Kelly’s and McCoy’s;  I figure you pretty much have to see Westport while in KC.  As a side note, for anyone who might actually go to Westport, Kelly’s appears to be constructing a huge upstairs patio, which I’m sure will be a big draw should Spring ever actually arrive.  After Westport, we deviated slightly from my schedule.  I had the Peanut on Main down as my next stop, but we switched that to Tomfooleries & Fred P Otts so Ed & Kim could see some of their old haunts.  Our last stop was The Well in the Waldo area.  I wanted to hit a few more places in Waldo, but it was getting pretty late by that time and the old man was out of gas, plus poor Gabey had been locked in the house all day.  So, we cut the tour short and headed home, and spent the rest of the night playing Wii.

Sunday, well…  It was much like most of our Sundays.  We did briefly leave the house and hit the brunch up at 75th Street.  It got trimmed of the tour the night before, so I guess better late than never.  It’s a pretty good brunch by the way;  If you’re looking for a Sunday afternoon meal you could definitely do worse.  After that, we went back to the house, and the girls promptly fell asleep.  Ed & I spent the afternoon watching the Olympics, and then we drove them back to the airport later in the evening.  For the holiday today, I shall spend my time recuperating, and maybe restructuring my tour list.  It’s a good start, but needs a little fine-tuning.  Gotta pick up the pace for one thing;  I don’t want to be rushed, but I didn’t want to have to cut off any can’t-miss locations either, like Bobby Baker’s and maybe the Brooksider.  Work in progress.

I think I pretty much maximized that weekend, given that I was oncall.  That’s a pretty entertainment-limiting event, but I did what I could with it.  Kicked things off Friday with a little Happy Hour down at the Flying Saucer with the Martins.  Kept things low-key but it was fun enough.  After that we all headed back to mid-town, and had dinner at Cantina Del Ray.  I wanted to branch out from my usual asada enchiladas, but then decided not to mess with a good thing and ordered them as usual.  Can’t go wrong, plus I just like saying “asada enchilada.”  Yes, I am easily amused.  After dinner we headed back to the house and played Rock Band for a few hours.  We actually even found a few songs that we’d never played before…  I thought we’d been through the whole game.

Saturday was entertaining for Donette, but not so much for me.  She went out with the Brooksider crowd for a full day of carousing around the Waldo area.  And I mean “full day”;  They were out from like 10:00 in the morning until 7:00 at night or so.  Can’t really fill in the details on it, because I wasn’t there.  I spent the day on the couch working and watching B Movies.  (Isn’t “B Movies” an actual term for cheesy films?  These were probably more like “D” or “F” movies if so…  Just how I like ’em.)  I worked all night too.  Lame.  What can ya’ do.

Sunday I was going a bit stir-crazy, so I headed up to the shootin’ range with Mark and burned up a few hundred .22 rounds.  I haven’t shot the .22 in a while, and I always forget how fun it is.  It makes target practice a lot more enjoyable when you don’t even have to think about the cost.  I usually just see a quarter flying downrange every time I pull the trigger, but with the lil’ .22 it’s not an issue.  Fun stuff.  After that, we headed down to the Brooksider and watched an hour or so of the pre-game coverage.  They were having a wing-eating contest at half-time that I sort of wanted to stick around for, but decided against it.  I tried a little taste of the sauce they were using, and it was so ridiculously hot I really wanted wanted to watch somebody try and eat it.  Wow, it was crazy hot.  (I’m breaking out in a sweat just thinking about it.)  But, our friends Tom & Nancy were having a party a block from the house, so I decided on that instead.  It was a good time;  I even actually stayed for the entire game.  I am quite sure I have never stayed for an entire Super Bowl party, so it was either a really good party or a really good game.  Or maybe some of both.