Whoa it’s toasty out there.  Downright nasty.  Oh well, I guess in all fairness it is summer in KC. We had a good weekend despite the weather though, and despite not sticking to our “weekend plan” at all.   Maybe we shouldn’t even try planning, because whatever we put on a list just never works out.  Friday I don’t recall that we did much of anything;  We hit social hour  at the Brooksider, then went home and played Wii games for quite a while.  Boring entertainment, but cheap and wholesome.  (My new motto.)  After that we popped in “The Dark Knight” and I promptly fell asleep as usual.

Saturday Donette went out with “the girls” and I had a big motorcycle ride planned.  I got my ride all washed up, fueled up, and ready to go.  My buddy Troy showed up on his bike just about the time the rain started.  We stood around and ciphered on this unfortunate situation for a while, trying to guess what it was going to do.  After a while it was clear the rain wasn’t going anywhere so we called no joy on the ride.  Bummer;  We’d been trying to get something coordinated for over a year and that was the first Saturday we finally got sync’d up.  But, riding in the rain ain’t a whole lot of fun, so I guess we’ll just have to try again another day.  So, given the rainout, I slogged down to the Brooksider and spent the rest of my afternoon there, mostly out of sheer boredom.

Sunday, according to our weekend itinerary, I was to spend the afternoon smoking a brisket.  Well, as it happened, I just didn’t really feel like it.  I had finally gotten around to picking up a new handgun last week, (a Ruger SR9 for the very few readers who might actually care,) and I was anxious to try it out.  So, I called up my friend Mark and we headed out to Parma Woods for some shootin’.  Yeah, it was a little warm out, but it was a lot of fun.  It must have been fun, because we were there over three hours.  After that entertainment, we once again headed to the Brooksider for a little a/c.  (Apparently my unofficial hiatus on the Brooksider is over;  Geez I went there more last weekend than the last two months total.)  We hung out there for a while, then our neighbor Brooke showed up feeling hungry so we walked down to Jalapenos for dinner.  After stuffing myself on some enchiladas I went home and curled up on the couch for a movie.  Donette recommended “Iron Man,” which her and Susan had watched the night before.  Indeed, it was a good flick;  I even stayed awake all the way through it.

Not a bad weekend, all things being relative.  Actually my entire week was shot down Tuesday when I went to the orthodontist, presumably to get my braces removed.  They hadn’t really said as much, I just had it in my head based on a few clues.  For one thing, it was my last payment.  It stands to reason that if I am no longer giving them money, they never want to see me again;  That’s the way it usually works.  Secondly, I’m really quite tired of them.  Done.  So, based on these reasonable assumptions, I packed my celebratory beef jerky and headed off.  Well, it didn’t work out;  Guess the jerky will have to save for a while.  Dang.

Friday after work Donette picked me up and we headed over to Raytown to check out the BBQ contest.  Our friends Red Buffalo BBQ were competing, so we hung out with them and walked around a bit.  Rick threw a few slabs of ribs on for munching, and they were pretty awesome.  He inspired me to give my own horrible ribs another go, so when we got home I took a few slabs out of the freezer.  We pretty much called it a night when we got home.  We picked up a copy of Gran Torino from the Red Box, popped it in, and that was it.

Saturday I got up and set about dealing on the ribs.  Since my last attempt was such an unmitigated disaster, I effectively started over.  Babybacks instead of spares, different rub, and less heat & less smoke, on the advice of my good friend Alton.  Meanwhile, Donette was continuing her monumental undertaking of trying to stop our 75-year-old crappy stone basement from leaking.  Unfortunately, my constant attention to the firebox kept me from assisting with this project.  While we were both engaged in our respective tasks, our old neighbor Rick came by to visit.  He actually still owns the house next door, and has been renting if out for a few years.  The current tenants are moving out though, so he drove up from Chicago to do a little “between renter” maintenance.  His partner Lucci was with him, and their dog Bondai.  Bondai & Gabe are buddies from way back, and they acted it;  They pretty  much ran each other ragged, which doesn’t really take much for Gabe.  While we were chatting with them they foolishly let it slip that they were going to a BBQ at their friends Ann & Jen’s house, so we invited ourselves over to that event.  Hey, they live close by, they were que’ing, and we didn’t have anything else to do;  Worked out perfect.  (For us anyway.)  So we packed up our ribs and headed over there, and actually stayed rather late.  The ribs?  Eh, better than last time.  I think I’ll save the hickory for the brisket and switch to apple or something next time.

Sunday for some reason, Donette uncharacteristically got up at the crack of 10:00.  Since she was up pre-noon, we decided to celebrate with breakfast down at Sharp’s.  That’s a pretty good start to a day right there.  I’m pretty sure we could do better at home, but all things considered I’d just as soon have my breakfast brought out to the table all cooked and ready, with no effort on my part.  And so, stuffed with johnny cakes and biscuits & gravy, we headed back home and hit the couch to await the predicted storms.  Well the storms never came;  It actually looked pretty nice out.  We didn’t want to risk it by stepping outside though, so for the most part we just watched TV and played on the computer.  We watched “Fletch” for the bajillioneth time, caught the Royals game, and a few other entirely forgettable movies.  Donette did make a quick run to Costco and picked up a few more slabs of ribs;  Since this last round at least gave me a base to work off, I’ll call them version 2.5 I think.

I must have hit some kind of hole in the space-time continuum or something;  It could not possibly be Monday already.  I’ve been cheated.  Somebody owes me a day, maybe two.  It was even supposed to be a long weekend.  I had Friday off if I remember right.  Must not have spent it very wisely though.  I remember going to the pool with the wife, maybe grilling some hamburgers…  It’s all a big blur.

Since Friday apparently fell into a black hole, I guess I’ll just to move on to Saturday.  It started off with a rash of “chores;”  Had to get the lawn mowed, zipped out to Mom’s and worked on her PC, and a few other assorted household items.  For evening entertainment we were going to a concert with Ed & Kim, so we had some level of preparation to do for that.  We took Gabe up to Ronda’s house and dropped him off, then went and met Ed & Kim at the airport.  (I’m not entirely clear why, as they rented their own car, but I don’t ask questions.)  Since it was getting into the afternoon hours, we went ahead and drove out to the general vicinity of the show, which was at Sandstone.  (Or whatever they call it these days.)  We had a tasty dinner at The Yard House, then headed out to the show.  Incidentally, I don’t guess I even mentioned who we were seeing;  It was an O.A.R. concert.  Ed & Kim had actually gone to the show the night before in Denver too, so they had some kind of groupie thing going on.  Which, speaking of groupies, Ed mentioned that the Sandstone show marked the 90th time he had seen them.  Ninetieth.  As in ten less than triple digits.  Whoa.  After a good show (probably my 4th or 5th, I’ve got some catching up to do) we ended up back at the Yard House again.  We stayed there until they booted us out at closing.  (They close early.)

We stayed at a hotel Saturday night, so we caught a little sleep and then pretty much just killed time Sunday morning until Ed’s flight home.  Most of the morning was spent at Cabela’s;  That’s always good for a couple of hours of wandering.  They had a big sidewalk sale going on too, so we scored some deals.  Unfortunately, I missed out on a stellar deal on a new tent.  I was waffling on making an un-researched purchase on the spur of the moment, and it sold while I was ciphering.  Just to add insult to injury I did a little online research when I got home;  Yep it was a heck of a deal.  Sorry Munkirs.  After shopping we had a little lunch at Arthur Bryant’s (yum,) picked up Gabey, and called it a weekend.  Hanging out with the sub-30 year old crowd apparently took it out of us;  We spent the rest of the day on the couch watching bad movies and playing Sudoku.

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.