OK enough with the rain already.  Luckily we did manage to get the lawn mowed Sunday, which was good.  The bad news is we just mowed it Friday.  Yes, it needs mowed every other day or you’re in for a big clumpy mess.  Thanks for that Ryan’s;  What did you put down anyway, 50 lbs. of straight nitrogen?  I guess we’re supposed to feel like we’re getting our moneys worth this way.  Oh well, at least it’s green and growing I guess.

I kicked the weekend off on Friday at, believe it or not, the Brooksider.  I met up with one of my old high school buddies, Mike, who I hadn’t seen in…  Oh, let’s just say a long time.  We got at least partially caught up with each other.  Hard to cover two decades in an hour and a half, but we hit the highlights.  (I only have like three, so mine don’t take long.)  After that I headed over to John & Susan’s house, where I found Donette hanging out in the back yard with Susan enjoying the warm weather.  I joined them for a bit, then headed home and watched the Royals.

Saturday was a longggg day for old man Phil.  Donette abandoned me around noon to go to a “Mother-Daughter Tea” out in Grandview with my Mom, sisters, nieces and her Mom.  While they were out sipping their Earl Grey, that left me at home with my two nephews.  All alone, with Gabe as my only means of backup.  (I tried to convince them that he would eat them if they misbehaved, but he didn’t look very menacing asleep on the couch.  They never bought that threat.)  Ahhhh, it wasn’t too bad.  We played Rock Band the entire afternoon.  On the downside, the only song they seemed to enjoy was “Eye of the Tiger.”  I don’t think it would be a stretch to guess we played that horrible song fifteen times.  And it was probably my least favorite song on the entire game before that.  Around 2:30 we went and picked up Donette and headed to the Royal’s game.  We wanted to get there nice and early to get our super-duper jerseys.  We stood in line a bit, but it wasn’t bad, and we all got our jerseys.  On the downside, we had three hours to kill before the game.  I can now say I have thoroughly toured the inside of the new stadium.  The boys did score Coco Crisp’s autograph though, so that was cool.  And, the Royals lost the game in a convincing fashion, bringing my record of games attended to a perfect 0-4!!  We gave up on them after the 7th inning.  The boys wanted to stick around and hunt more autographs but ol’ Uncle Phil was done for the day.  We topped off their day of excitement with a cool encounter with the Peculiar police department on the way home.  Lights, sirens, and everything!!!  They seemed to enjoy that almost as much as the game.  I’m here for your entertainment boys.  Gimme eighty bucks.

Sunday we kind of sat around and waited for the devastating storms all day.  What happened with that?  Oh well, I’m glad they didn’t materialize.  As mentioned, we did get the lawn mowed, and we also took Gabe for a short bike ride.  He does very well, managing a solid 5 mile per hour trot beside Donette.  Might have to make a habit of that.  We watched the Royals lose again, then settled in for a night of old movies.  Can’t think that we’ve ever done that, and I’m not sure what prompted it that night either.  Boredom I suppose.  We watched Big Jake, and then Vera Cruz, neither of which I’d ever sat through end-to-end.  Pretty solid offerings I guess;  I stayed awake through both of them anyway.

Not much to go with this week;  Donette spent the weekend in Vegas with her little friends, so I just hunkered down and watched it rain.  Unfortunately she did not strike it rich, or at least she didn’t tell me about it if she did.  Guess I gotta keep going to work, dang it.

Although I didn’t do much over the weekend, I did partake in a few “events” over the week.  Wednesday I lucked into some sweet Royals tickets.  Our neighbor Brooke scored four seats on the very front row, lower level right behind the Royals dugout.  We were so close I coulda reached out and smacked Rusty Kuntz on the back of the head.  It actually made me a little nervous, I was pretty sure I was going to get a bat or ball upside the head at any moment.  The weather was great too, although I underestimated the UV rays and put a good toasting on my head.  Ouch.  Of course they lost the game, as they always do when I go.

Thursday night I went with Brooke and her friend Nick to see Beer Wars.  It was pretty interesting, if a bit slow and about 20 minutes longer than my attention span.  I was surprised at the attendance, or rather the lack thereof.  I’d say there were probably about 50 people there.  Fine by me though, plenty of room that way.  After the movie we went to Westport (??!!) for a very short while, then headed home, as it was well past my bedtime at that point.  (Like 9:30 or something ridiculous.)

Friday I ended up at the newly remodeled Kennedy’s with Martin, Brice & Fahlstrom.  Whew, rough crowd.  The place was nice though, they did a good job on it.  If you don’t remember, the original Kennedy’s burned down in the big Waldo fire a few years ago.  I never was a very big fan of the original location, although it certainly had a following.  The new building, while it doesn’t really fit into the “scheme” of the rest of the block, is very nice though.  I think the new place will do a lot better, but who knows.  Probably won’t make my regular “rotation”…  That’s pretty much already set.

Saturday I went out to Munkir’s house and hung out all day.  We cleaned all the camping gear from last weekend and got it all re-packed for next years trip, and put together of post-mortem of the event so we’ll know what areas to improve on.  Actually I didn’t do any of that, I just wanted to throw Munkir’s name in since it was so grievously omitted last week.  In reality, I didn’t do much of anything.  Gabe and I ran a few errands;  Picked up a new battery for the motorcycle and bought a few hop rhizomes for a gardening experiment.  I fully expect I will fail miserably growing the hops;  We don’t exactly have much luck with plants.  What the heck though, sounded interesting.

Sunday was similarly uninteresting.  Donette got home around noon, and promptly went to bed for the rest of the day.  I headed down to the Brooksider and watched the Royals game with the boys, and that was about the extent of the day.  Stupid rain, what can ya’ do.  Oh and I suppose I can relate the latest Gabe escapade;  While I was out watching the game he decided to do a little counter-surfing in the kitchen, and ate two whole sticks of butter and a container of Crisco.  It was a longggg night at the Kenagy house.  And, despite being the smartest puppy alive, I don’t think he was able to correlate his early misdeed with the resulting misery.  Which means that, given the opportunity, he will probably just do it again.

Good grief, I must be old.  I feel like I got hit by a small car.  Float Trip was good.  Yes, it did rain quite a bit.  But hey, we were in canoes, we were gonna get wet anyway.  Yes, a tornado came a little too close for comfort, but it just added to the excitement.  Highlights that can actually be documented in a relatively clean blog?  Well, those are few.  I saw my first (non-captive) bald eagle, which was rather exciting.  It was an even more patriotic event when it took an enormous crap right in front of our canoe.  Ever seen a bald eagle crap?  Impressive.  There was a rather humorous exchange with the campground owner when he came flying down the hill to warn us of the impending tornado, but that one loses something without the Ozark accent so I’ll skip it.  Oh, special thanks out to Zim for letting me beg a bed in his nice warm DRY camper for the weekend.  It was definitely NOT tent weather.  I expect that’s about all the detail I need to relate.  I am trying to flush the memory of some things I saw and heard from my mind, and re-hashing them would only lengthen the cleansing period.

We got back Saturday, and after cleaning up I summoned every last bit of strength I had to go to the Royals game.  Some friends of ours from Nebraska were in town to see the game, so when Martins offered us some tickets it provided a quite convenient means to hook up with them.  I made it to the sixth inning, but then ran out of gas.  After the game we scampered back to midtown and had a late dinner at Cantina Del Rey up the street from our house.  With a full belly and battered body, I rolled myself down the street to our house and slept for about twelve hours.

Sunday I tried to rally a bit, with extremely limited success.  Our friends John & Susan called and wanted to go to Grand Street Cafe for their Easter brunch.  Sounded like a tasty menu, so we headed that way.  Luckily Susan called before we got there, and when we found out it would be a three hour wait we changed dining plans.  We opted for some BBQ down at Fiorella’s, always a solid bet.  After that, well, I watched the Royals game and Masters.  That’s some boredom for you right there.  That’s actually the first golf I’ve ever watched at home, and almost surely the last.  It got me through the afternoon though, so it served a purpose.  With nothing else on the tube that I could find, we started on a puzzle.  Yes, a good ol’ jigsaw puzzle.  I am that old.

Wow that weekend went by entirely too fast again.  Bad stuff man.  Oh well, a few days of vacation are on the way.  We kicked off our weekend Friday with a short happy hour down at the Brooksider.  The only reason we went there was to hang out on the deck for a bit and enjoy the weather.  As it turned out, it wasn’t really that nice out, so we didn’t stay very long.  After that we went to Donette’s school for a big shrimp boil.  Can’t go wrong there for dinner;  They even threw in some crawfish for variety, which I pretty much had my fill of because everyone else in attendance seemed a bit skeptical of them.

Saturday I once again headed out to Mom’s to give the ol’ motorcycle a try.  After a delicious lunch at The Best Burrito, (chile relleno, yum) I went over to her house and fired it up.  Unsuccessful once again.  My battery charger said it was ready to go, but it turned  over once and gave it up.  I guess I will have to break down and buy a new battery.  In all fairness, it is a five year old battery, I’m sure it’s due.  But for what they charge for those little suckers it should last the lifetime of the bike.  Oh well, given the weather changes I probably shouldn’t be in such a hurry to get it home anyway.  Saturday night entertainment consisted of going in to work and playing with all kinds of neato stuff.  Wanna hear about it?  I didn’t think so.

Sunday I went out get the paper, and was fully prepared to stay inside for the rest of the day.  Snow??!!!  You gotta be kidding me.  Luckily our friend Susan called and shamed us into going to the gym for a while, so we actually left the house.  After that, since I was out anyway, I headed over our friends Mark & Anne’s house for a little PC tuneup job, then went back home and helped Donette make a few tons of sausage.  The flavors of the day were kielbasa and a summer sausage.  Unfortunately we ran out of casing rather early in the project, so we now have some enormous “loafs” of sausage sitting in the freezer.  Oh well, it all tastes the same.  For dinner I met Munkirs down at the Brooksider, so we could have one last planning session before Float Trip this coming weekend.  After an hour and a half of planning, our itinerary consists of:  Drive very far to the river, try to stay warm for two or three days (depending on our threshold of pain), drive very far home.  That’s been the Easter schedule for the last few decades, why shake things up now.

Wow that weekend went by fast.  I seem to still be on vacation time or something.  It seems like I just left work on Friday and now it’s starting over again.  I think I’ve been cheated.

We spent most of the weekend with the Wilcox clan.  I went over there Friday after work to deliver John’s PC, which I’d been working on for a while.  After several hours of staring at it in bewilderment, I finally resorted to randomly removing and replacing things.  Eventually I decided it has some bad memory slots…  At any rate it is once again running.  Hopefully it stays that way this time around.  After that we headed over to our house and watched TV for a bit, and that was pretty much it for Friday.

Saturday I dove into all my new gifts that had arrived during the week.  I got a brand spanking new Camelbak, so I got it all adjusted and ready for the season.  It’s finally time to retire my old one I guess.  It was actually the same model, but it’s probably 10 years old so I think I got my moneys worth out of it.  I also got some new river-shoes in preparation for the upcoming Float Trip, which is right around the corner.  (Never mind that six inches of snow on the ground, it’ll melt off.)  Last but not least, I scored a three-pak of four-gig flash drives, which kicked off an afternoon of messing around with my web server.  In addition to upgrading to the latest greatest firmware, I now have double the space and a fancy raid array.  I decided to go the raid route after Munkirs demanded 5 nines uptime;  We’ll see how it works out.  After that we headed back over to the Wilcox’s house for dinner and basketball.  The basketball games didn’t work out so well, but the tacos were delicious.

Sunday we almost hunkered down on account of the snow.  Around noon we started getting a little stir-crazy though, so we headed off to the gym.  We made a short effort at working out, but the better part of our time was spent sitting in the hot tub and steam room.  We hung out there for a few hours, then once again hooked up with Wilcox’s and headed to the Brooksider.  We hadn’t been there in like three weeks;  Something of a record I think.  Pretty much nothing had changed though, so it was all good.  We caught up on all the latest gossip, and all was well until the girls had to stir up some freaking McCain/Obama debate.  Good grief.  Faced with listening to that, throwing myself through the plate glass window, or leaving, I took the easy route and left.  More TV for the rest of the night, and so ended the weekend.