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Ahhh, a nice three day weekend.  This week is short too, which I’m looking forward to.  Last week I decided to take Friday off because we were going to a concert Thursday night, and I thought I might require additional recovery time.  We scored some tickets to the Crossroads to see Seven Mary Three (with Marcy Playground,) both of whom I rather enjoy.  And for free I downright like them, plus it was an absolutely perfect evening for an outdoor concert.  So, we headed down there with our friends Brooke, Fritz & Holly, and proceeded to generally enjoy the show.  Fritz had VIP passes for us all, which just meant we got to stand right down front.  I kid you not, if I had any hair, it would have been blowing in the breeze the speakers were generating.  It was LOUD.  There is a relatively good chance I sustained some level of hearing impairment.  Then again, I am about 1/2 deef anyway so no big loss.  We actually stayed until the very end of the show.  As if that wasn’t late enough for us, we rounded the evening out with a little Rock Band back at the house.  Hmmm, lay off the energy drinks Phil, no good can come of them.  ** Late addition:  I forgot to mention the delicious dinner we had.  The pizza from Grinders was very good, but Donette hit the home run with the “Frito Pie.”  They take a bag of Chili Cheese Fritos, and just open the bag and dump in beef, cheese, sour cream, etc.  In addition to being a nutritionally balanced snack, it got very high presentation marks.

Friday…  Well, we didn’t do too much.  One of our old neighbors, Molly, (Brooke’s roommate) came into town so we joined her down at Jalapenos for lunch.  After that we went to the pool with them for a bit, and then we went back home and hit the couch.  We were supposed to go to a party with them, but we had to own up that we just weren’t quite up to two nights out in a row.  Old age gets the better of us once again.

Saturday we got up rested and in much better shape than the day before.  After walking the dog, we headed down to the pool with Susan for some lounging.  We actually stayed there for several hours, much longer than I can usually tolerate it.  This came at the expense of a rather nasty sunburn though…  Drat.  After we had duly lounged, we headed to the Brooksider to enjoy the weather a bit more on the back deck.  Good times.  For evening entertainment, we went to my big twenty-fifth high school reunion.  Wow…  Twenty five years, I am indeed old.  It was down at the Cashew, well within our geographic comfort zone, so I figured what the heck.  Well…  As probably anybody but myself would have likely predicted, it may have been within my geographic comfort zone but perhaps not so much in my social comfort zone.  Maybe “excruciating” is an overstatement, but there are probably ways I would have rather spent the evening.  Usually I can count on Donette to bail me out in such dicey scenarios, but I think she took a “Hey, this was your bright idea” tact this time.  While I certainly did get to see some old friends, I think I spent the majority of the time sitting at a table trying to recall exactly what I was thinking when I RSVP’d.  Oh, and I came up with my first million-dollar idea:  The reunion tee-shirt.  Everybody gets a tee-shirt with their essentials listed on the front and back:  “Hi, my name is ___, I’m here with my ___ whose name is ___.  We have ___ children, live in ___ & work at ___.”  You get the idea.  Hand out a sharpie to fill in the blanks and boom, you’ve just shaved ten minutes off the front of every single conversation.  Let’s say you talk to ten people that night, you’ve just saved yourself over an hour and a half of excess chit-chat.

Sunday was a pretty low-key day too.  My sunburn had gotten progressively worse, to the point it was really rather uncomfortable.  I did manage to take Gabe on another long walk, which he sort of enjoys.  I say “sort of” because the boy has the lowest heat tolerance of any animal I’ve ever seen.  For being a generally athletic breed, he does not last long at all in any kind of heat.  Around the two-mile mark, he started dragging me over to every bit of shade in sight and would just plop down.  I thought I was going to have to call the sag wagon for a while, but he finally toughed it out.  For dinner, we had John & Susan over for some blue cheese burgers.  We’ve been making those quite a bit lately;  take a 1/2 lb. burger, mix it up with a bunch of fresh herbs and seasoning, stuff it with blue cheese, and grill it up.  Pretty solid.  We added bacon this time too, which topped it off quite nicely.  After dinner we played a round of Yahtzee, which I managed to win despite not having any idea what I was doing.

Funny comment Donette made in passing this morning while I was slathering on another gallon of aloe:  “Hey, didn’t that antibiotic you’re taking say something about avoiding direct sunlight because it makes you sensitive to sunburn?”  Ya’ know, now that you mention it… DOH!!!!

Sort of a moderately lame weekend.  Friday we made a somewhat unplanned appearance at Happy Hour down at the Brooksider.  Cheap entertainment I suppose.  We hung out on the back deck for quite a while, enjoying the somewhat temperate weather and the beginning of the weekend in general.  When we tired of our loitering, we moved up the street for a little dinner at Cantina del Rey.  Man, I like that place.  It’s been a little over-crowded as of late, but Friday night we walked right in and got a table.  I went with my favorite, the carne asada.  Probably about time to branch out a bit before I get tired of it, but don’t want to get too risky.

Saturday we spent the afternoon doing a whole lot of nothing.  I got wrapped up in a stupid time-killer computer game, and Donette stared at the TV in a similarly time-wasting fashion.  I guess we were saving our strength;  We had signed up to work at the second annual Wine & Beer Brew Ha Ha down at the American Royal building.  We worked at it last year and had fun, so we figured what the heck, try it again.  We headed down there around 3:00, and indeed it turned out to be a great time again.  We actually did work pretty hard though;  I think harder than last year.  We sorta hung out behind the scenes and kept all the vendors fixed up with ice and fresh water, cleaned up messes, and that sorta stuff.  Most people like to stand out front and pour, but that’s wayyyy too much interaction.  The event ended at 9:00, and after that we hung out with the other hard-working volunteers for a while…  Kinda a “post-party.”  I got the feeling the event overall was a big success for the Royal;  Maybe they’ll lower our freaking booth price for the BBQ.  (Yeah right.)

Sunday we were a bit slow getting around.  I had planned to go out to the shooting range, but since it was storming pretty bad I figured that was off.  I checked in with my partner in crime for the “alternate entertainment options” around noon though, and he said all was dry out that way, so we were a go for shootin’.  That killed three hours or so.  I ran through a bunch of ammo;  Guess it’s time to start loitering at the Walmarts again.  After fine-tuning our quick-draw technique for a bit, we ended up back at the Brooksider to meet up with the girls.  Didn’t stay long though, ’cause I was hungry.  Luckily I scored my first homegrown tomatoes of the season while I was at the ‘Sider, so I sliced those up for a fancy tomato-cheese-herb-oil salad.  Yum.

Hopefully everyone still has all their fingers intact after the Fourth.  I can’t decide if the weather was a boon or bust at this point.  I could have done without all the rain, but at least it was reasonably cool.  I had Friday off work, and, ahem, Donette did too, so we started our weekend Thursday evening.  I started things off by “fixing” my webserver for a few hours.  There wasn’t anything wrong with it in the first place, but by the time I finished there certainly was.  I gave up after a while;  I’ll figure it out later, or start over, or something.  Luckily, I keep a spare for just such an emergency, so I moved everything over to the super-duper backup and went about more entertaining ways to kill time.  For the first evening of the long weekend, we picked up Brooke and went down to the newly opened Vox Theatre, where they were having an open house of sorts.  It was definitely worth the time;  They had a nice table of feed out with some good pulled pork and trimmings.  There was also Shatto ice cream, which I’ve always wanted to try but am too cheap to buy.  (It’s probably worth the extra coin after trying it.)  We also got to test out the new Tank 7 from Boulevard, which I think will be a hit.  We hung out there for a few hours and then it started getting a little crowded so I freaked out and left.  Fun gathering though.

Friday we got up and headed to Smithville Lake for some psuedo-camping, which would take up the rest of our weekend.  Donette’s folks have a big motorhome, which they let us borrow, so we pretty much just threw a few changes of clothes in a sack and headed up there.  Since all our northland friends were so rude as to sell their boats we really didn’t have any water-related entertainment, so we just kinda hung out.  And hung out, and hung out, and…  Hey it was “relaxing.”  We met our camping neighbors and spent a considerable amount of time talking with them.  Yep that’s us, making new friends, building bridges.  They were nice people though, and it passed the time.  The guy was pretty funny too;  By the end of the weekend I noticed that every time the dozen or so kids in their camp started getting extra wound up, he would wander over to our camp.  Hmmm, coincidence?  That was about the whole of the weekend.  We enjoyed the fireworks, at least the ones that didn’t get lost in the clouds.  There were several rainstorms, but that is relatively insignificant when you’re in a motorhome.  During those wet interludes and the 14 hours a day Donette was sleeping, Gabe & I watched movies.  Our cinematic entertainment included:  The Happening, The Strangers, & Max Payne.  The Happening was one of the worst flicks I’ve ever endured, but I didn’t have anything else to do so I sat through it anyway.  The Strangers was…  OK.  It might have been better if I didn’t watch the first 20 minutes without hearing any of the dialogue.  I could hear the music fine, but no voices, which I figured was supposed to be some sort of artsy-fartsy suspense builder.  It started getting ridiculous after a while though, and then I figured out I didn’t have my headphones pushed in all the way.  It wasn’t worth starting over though, so I just let it run from there.  I liked Max Payne better than the other two;  It was good enough to restore my faith in Marky Mark as the top-notch actor that he is, after watching “The Happening” disaster.

Sunday we broke camp and headed back  home around noon.  I was feeling mysteriously beat up for no more than I actually did all weekend.  I watched the Royals game, took a short bike ride down to the Plaza and back, and well, that was about it.  Our old neighbor Rick was in town again, so we went to dinner at Waldo Pizza with him and called it a night.  If I would have taken any pictures at the lake I would post them…  But I didn’t.  Sort of forgot I had the camera I guess.  There wasn’t much to photograph anyway though;  I guess I could have done a 48 hour time-lapse of Gabe sleeping on the picnic table.

I shall put my best effort into this, as always, but am feeling rather lackadaisical.  I should move this to Tuesday or some later day, when the grim reality of another week has set in and I’ve achieved a better level of acceptance.  Right now I just feel like going back to bed.

There is also the fact that I didn’t do a whole lot last weekend.  Donette was out of town with her little friends, so Gabe and I settled in for a few days of yardwork and relaxation.  Or at least relaxation.  She left early Friday, so I had to get home right after work before Gabe ate the house.  We fixed ourselves a nice little bachelor dinner (chips and dip) and hit the TV room for an evening of Rock Band and reruns.  Good stuff.

Saturday…  Well it was really too stifling hot to do much of anything.  I threw a brisket on around 7:30 in the morning, and that project ate up most of the afternoon.  Believe it or not I had some issues keeping the heat down.  It got finished way earlier than it should have, but didn’t turn out too bad.  I had planned on spending the entire day cooking it though, so it’s early completion left me a bit short on entertainment for the rest of the day.  So, given that it was kind of hot in the house and I was too lazy to turn down the thermostat, I ended up walking down to the Brooksider to sit in their A/C.  This ended up being a fine decision, they had it set on turbo-cold.  I hung out down there for the rest of the evening, then back home for more Wii.  I tried to teach Gabe how to play tennis so I’d have some competition, but his lack of opposable thumbs proved an insurmountable obstacle.

Sunday, I wish I never would have gotten out of bed.  I did though, and it proved an unfortunate decision.  It started off well enough;  Gabe and I took a nice long walk to enjoy the cooler weather.  We got back home around 10:00, and after 30 minutes or so on the computer I was getting bored.  I checked into the MS-150 website to see if they had any rides going on, and sure enough there was one starting at Loose Park at 2:00.  That sounded like a reasonable diversion, so I ventured into the basement and dug out my long-retired road bike.  A quick check showed the tires were rotten beyond all hope;  I was clearly not going to be riding that bike.  So, in what would prove to be the first in a long line of poor decisions, I decided to just take my mountain bike.  I hadn’t ridden it either this year, but it looked road-worthy at least.  I rode down to Loose Park to find a gathering of around a dozen people, all on road bikes.  Yeah, no big surprise there.  However, a quick assessment of the group made it clear that a few of them quite frankly were not going to be setting any land speed records.  So, I checked in for the 15 mile option.  Hey, I hadn’t ridden in a while, I was on a mountain bike, and I’m in horrific shape, but figured anybody who can walk under their own power can struggle through 15 miles.  Well, my intended riding partner fell out pretty quick.  In retrospect, I should have called it a day right then and turned around.  I was feeling pretty good though so I kept plugging on.  At around ten miles I asked “So, uh, where’s the turn-around for the 15 mile ride?”  Well, they sort of forgot to mention it, so I was now on the 20 mile ride.  Bummer.  Well, whatever, I was halfway done and feeling OK.  There were four of us on the 20 mile option, so we’re cruising along enjoying the weather and one them drifts off the road and wipes out.  Boom, done.  No broken bones luckily but she’s done for the day.  The other two stayed with her to wait for a car, leaving me with, yep, the 40 mile group.  Shoulda stayed in bed.  Next thing I know, my legs hurt, my butt hurts, I’m getting a sunburn (no sunscreen, I was only going 15 miles) and I’m in friggin’ Martin City.  So, I hung back a bit, pretending I was messing with my shoes, and when everybody was about a block ahead of me I hooked a right on Holmes and never looked back.  I managed to drag my carcass to 95th, and decided I would either have to find a ride or just die there, because I was definitely not going to survive the hill in front of me.  In what would prove to be my only good fortune of the day, I caught Donette just pulling back into town, so she came and got me.  She drove me to the Brooksider, where I ate dinner and retold my tale of woe, standing the whole time.  Not a good start to my supposed bike riding season.