Ahhhh, finally a relaxing weekend.  I needed that.  We kicked things off Friday with a fine dinner over at John & Susan’s house.  John flew in several dozen assorted kinds of oysters, which I haven’t had in a long time.  And, I’ve never actually shucked oysters, so that was an adventure in itself.  As if the oysters weren’t enough food, we had a big pot of shrimp, ‘taters & corn to go with it, and Donette made a bowl of shrimp ceviche.  The oysters were definitely the stars of the meal, although we had a little trouble finishing them off.  They all had to be eaten though, so we did;  Not much you can do with leftover oysters.

Saturday turned into a nice lil’ day.  Donette had taken off with a bunch of girls to celebrate our friend Anne’s 50th birthday.  The one chore she left me with was to go to the Starlight box office and get some tickets for a few of the summer shows.  So, I dutifully headed over there on my motorcycle around 11:00.  I got the tickets, and headed back home.  It was such a nice day out, I decided to turn left on Holmes and stop by my buddy Wally’s house to see what was going on.  Well, he wasn’t home, so I decided to ride on down to the Yamaha dealership and see what was going on there.  So I headed a little farther south to Martin City, and when I got near the dealership my fuel light came on.  At this point, or somewhere near this point, my trip took on sort of a Forrest Gump-like quality.  When I got to the dealership, I thought maybe I’d just ride on down to Snead’s and get a tank of gas.  And when I got my tank of gas, I thought maybe I’d just keep going a little further on Holmes.  And I figured, since I rode this far, maybe I’d just ride all the way to the end of the great street of Holmes.  And that’s what I did.  For no particular reason, I just kept on going.  OK enough Forrest Gump.  Anyway, it may be no surprise to anyone else who has lived in the area 40+ years, but Holmes turned into D highway, which ended all the way down at Drexel, Mo.  I was kind of wishing I had my Garmin with me, because I wasn’t exactly sure where I was at.  (Other than that 71 was somewhere east of me.)  I studied on it a while, and enventually decided that, since I wasn’t going anywhere particular, it really wasn’t too important how I got there.  Armed with this logic, I headed east, and indeed ended up at 71 highway in the fine town of Archie, population 890.  (Salllllllute!)  From there I worked my way north-east to Z highway.  About that point I noticed, even through my sunglasses, that my arms were getting pretty pinkish where my sleeves were blowing up, so I decided to start working my way back.  I headed north, and Z ended at 2 highway, which with my photographic memory I remembered I had passed riding down D.  Indeed, it took me right back to D, where I headed north right back home.  When I got home I was rather surprised to see my whole loop had been a little over 135 miles.  Holy smokes, I had no idea I had gone that far.  I gave an A+ to the ride, it was fun…  With the exception of the ridiculous farmers tan I ended up with.  It took up a good part of the afternoon too;  After that I grilled myself a hamburger and sat on the back porch with Gabe, listening to the Royals get thrashed again.

Sunday I picked up John, and we headed way up north to do some shootin’ at my friend Mark’s house.  It was quite a drive (Lathrop, MO) but there sure isn’t anywhere closer I know of that allows random gunfire, so it was worth it.  We stood out in his field and killed cans for a while, then it started getting hot so we headed back to the A/C at the Brooksider to watch the Royals get thrashed.  Again.  After that I headed home for dinner and grilled up some burgers again.  I liked the ones I made Saturday night so I wanted Donette to try them out.  A rather interesting mixture of burger, blue cheese, and chopped herbs.  (The Aerogarden is getting a little wild, everything is getting a good dose of chopped herbs.)  Luckily she liked them too;  They are pretty darn good.  So ended the weekend.  She was tired from her overnight party with the girls, and my sunburn was still a little uncomfortable, so we settled in at our respective TV’s for an evening of bad programming.

Ow.  I am in such physical pain today I almost stayed home from work.  I ain’t as young as I used to be I guess;  That four day weekend, while enjoyable, took quite a bit out of me.

I had Friday off but didn’t really take advantage of it.  I hit Costco and picked up a couple of briskets and took a bunch of crap up to Martin’s house in preparation for the Great American BBQ, which we were heading out to on Saturday.  Probably the highlight of my day was getting pulled over by the po-po on my scooter.  Seriously, why would the man want to hassle somebody on a scooter?  It’s not bad enough that a guy is stuck riding a scooter for transportation, you have to shake him down too?  Well it turned out it was my buddy Mike from college, having some fun at my expense.  Yeah, thanks for that.  Apparently he was in such a state of euphoria at seeing me on a scooter he didn’t notice that my tags expired two months ago, so HA.

Saturday and Sunday ran together into one big blur at the BBQ competition.  I think I might just be getting too old for those things.  I rode out to the site with Bob around 2:00 Saturday afternoon and helped out just a bit with the booth setup.  We had a nice big spot so we got everything arranged and then generally sat around and baked in the heat.  Munkirs, Belanger and Scotten came out and visited us for a while, but for the most part it was a low-key event.  We mostly sat around and lounged.  Later in the evening we went and saw a decent blues band, Martin & Scotten rode some carnie rides, and then before we knew it midnight was upon us and it was time to start cooking.  So, the next 15 hours or so were spent feeding the fire, basting, wrapping, spraying, cutting, and all the other fun stuff that makes me continually wonder why we do these competitions at all.  It was oddly fun this time though.  Our results?  Well, probably the worst showing we have ever made.  Only Martin (ribs) did anywhere near acceptable.  I don’t really know what happened;  We may not have been expecting ribbons, but c’mon, it wasn’t THAT bad.  Or maybe it was and my judgement was skewed by extreme fatigue, I’m just not sure.

After dragging my semi-concious carcass back home and sleeping for 12 hours, I woke up Monday really wanting some barbecue.  Actually, just the thought of it made me want to puke, but we’d invited John & Susan over for ribs, so I fired up the smoker and got to work again.  They came out OK I guess;  I gave myself a break on them because I rarely cook ribs so I was happy with anything considered “edible.”  We had a nice little dinner, took a beating in a game of pitch, and called it a weekend.

OK give me one more week of the old “I really didn’t do anything over the weekend” song and dance.  Surely next weekend (our first BBQ competition of the year) will bring some excitement.  This past weekend was probably (hopefully) the absolute low point of my biorhythm curve.  Unless it has just flat-lined at the bottom, which is entirely possible with my luck.

I seriously considered just skipping the update this week, as it’s actually somewhat traumatizing just thinking about it.  But, I’ll skim over the low-lights.  Friday I went oncall, and as such just sat home and watched bad movies on the couch.  I don’t even remember what I watched, other than I did see “Missing In Action” for the first time.  The first time this month anyway;  I’ve lost count of how many times I’ve really seen it.

Saturday I awoke in something of a foul temperament.  Donette homed in on my weakness and chose to just antagonize me all day.  Typical.  To my credit, I did try and turn things around by going out to Mom’s and trying to start my motorcycle.  If I could just get my new battery in and go for a ride, all would be right with the world.  Well, I did get the battery in, but it still wouldn’t start.  I jumped it off the car, and it fired up immediately.  I was pleased as punch until I started home and noticed my gauges were going off and on constantly.  So, I limped in to the shop and left it for them to take care of.  In retrospect, I probably should have filled out some paperwork or something, or maybe let them know who I was and why I was leaving my bike there.  I really wasn’t in the mood for interaction though, so I just left it outside the door with the key in it and stomped off.  (Note to self;  Call motorcycle shop today…)  With my spirits considerably buoyed by this event, I then headed up north to set up some graduation thing with Martin.  (All the food we bbq’d last weekend.)  That was a hoot.

Saturday night, well, my oncall duties took a turn for the worse.  Details would only bore you more than you already are.  I was, however, looking forward to a nice day on Sunday.  My original plan was to smoke some ribs, but my friend John had tickets to the Royals game, and the weather looked perfect for a day at the “K”, so I threw the ribs in the freezer and put on some sunscreen and a Royals shirt.  John showed up at noon to find me hopelessly mired in a conference call at work.  I tried every trick in the book to shirk my responsibility, and believe me I have a lot of them.  Nothing worked though, and John ended up leaving my ticket so I could just head up to the game later.  Well, the call finally wrapped up around 9:00 that night, so I missed the game, the weather, the ribs, the day.  Oh well, better luck next weekend I guess.

I traveled again this past weekend, throwing me all out of sorts for the upcoming week.  Had to be done though.  This time my wandering ways took me to the vast unexplored wilderness known as the “Northlands,” to visit the Martin family.  I took Friday off work in preparation for the drive.  After lunch with the wife in the River Market area, I took a quick nap, packed my bags and then headed the Honda up the highway.  The Interstate was pretty clear, and I was able to complete the arduous journey in just under 30 minutes.  Exhausted from the drive, I spent the rest of the evening on Martin’s back deck, watching the late Royal’s game and winding down.

Martin & I got up at the unholy hour of 4:00 on Saturday to start a large BBQ undertaking.  One of us had the brilliant idea to cook the meat for a party of 300 people next weekend, so we figured we’d pre-cook it all to (hopefully) make things a little easier.  We got off to a rather rough start, despite doing quite a bit of prep-work the night before.  It was cold & windy so the smoker gave us a little grief, and perhaps we just weren’t quite on top of our game in the pre-dawn hours.  We were up and running by 6:00 though, and after that things smoothed out a little.  When the sun came up and things warmed up a bit, it actually turned out to be a nice day.  We spent the entire day feeding the fire, tending the meat, all the things that make ‘queing somewhat relaxing and almost enjoyable.  Several people stopped by to check the progress;  At one point it was darn near a party.  Luckily Brice showed up to help with the actual psuedo-work portion of the day, so by sometime in the early evening we were able to get everything done and sit back for another Royal’s game on the deck.

I stayed Saturday night at the Chateau de Martin again, then got up early Sunday for the drive back home.  Once again the traffic was relatively light (as it usually is at 5:00 in the morning) and I managed the journey without incident.  I was able to complete the trip with barely enough time to spare for our 10:15 reservations at Grand Street Cafe.  We went there with John & Susan for a little Mother’s Day celebration.  No, Donette is not my mother to be technical about it, but the buffet was good at any rate.  I think I may have eaten my weight in smoked salmon.  The downside was that much food at that time of morning kind of ended my whole day.  I went back home, hit the couch, and never moved again.  At one point I tried to get motivated to mow the yard, but when I glanced outside it looked like it was either raining or getting ready to rain, so I stayed where I was.

Pardon my tardiness, I’ve spent my morning driving back from a weekend stay at the resort in scenic Earth City, MO.  Just a tinge of sarcasm there;  Actually that place needs to be erased.  Ahhh, I guess it isn’t that bad.  OK it is, I just like to maintain a positive outlook.  The extra-bad news is that I was there for work, so I really don’t have any fascinating tales of the weekend to relate.  Aside from one kind of edgy trip to Costco, I just shuttled back and forth between work and the hotel.  Whippee.

I guess I did go out Friday night, which was quite fun.  Through the magic of the evil Facebook, I hooked up with Kupcho, Eisenbarger, Lil’ Boy, Slim, and Lost Brother Marcks at the Village Bar for a few hours of socializing.  Actually several hours of socializing;  I stayed out well past my bedtime.  Sort of like going out with my buddy Mike last weekend I guess;  Not too hard to find conversation material if you haven’t seen somebody in 15 years.  (If you don’t recognize those names, incidentally, they are all fraternity brothers from my rather wide span of college years.)  Rick Hayes stopped by and said hi too, but he was working so he chatted for a bit and moved on.

Well, honestly that’s about it.  I could go into a lengthy diatribe about the excitement of working into the wee hours of the morning, and all the fascinating testing we did, but I don’t want to risk losing any of my precious few readers to self-mutilation.  I did, for nostalgia’s sake, stop by Biffle’s BBQ in Concordia on the way home today for lunch.  Hmmmm, not quite as good as I remembered from the college days.  I had a brisket sandwich and it was…  OK.  Perhaps a few years of TFB-BBQ has set my expectations too high.  It was a bit dry and shaved too thin.  Perhaps next time I’ll jog south a few miles and stop by Perry Fosters instead.  If that turned into a disappointment it would be truly heartbreaking though, so I might just not risk that one.