I shall do my best to struggle through some semblance of an update, given my rather lackadaisical effort last week.  That said, I am still rather disoriented from vacation.  I did however put pictures up already so hopefully that provides some kind of diversion.  Some of them are from Kelly’s camera, so that’s the reason for all the different resolutions.

We spent all last week in Arizona with the Martins.  Home base was Sedona, which proved to be just a fine little town.  The weather was nothing short of glorious all week, and according to the locals that was just for us.  Apparently it is generally on the chilly side in mid-March.  I vaguely recall our trip itinerary, which I shall attempt to run down.  We flew out Friday the 13th, not being particularly superstitious.  As a matter of fact, it turned out to be a rather lucky trip when we took a bump in Denver in return for some travel vouchers.  On the downside, we didn’t get to Sedona until 2:00 in the morning KC time.

Saturday we slept in, then went to the St. Patrick’s Day parade in big downtown Sedona.  It was quite possibly the lamest parade ever, but then we hold our parades to a rather high standard.  It passed the time at any rate, and given the weather made for a decent diversion.  (OK from here on out exact dates and times are kinda fuzzy so don’t hold me to this timeline.)  Sunday we started the day with an early morning jeep tour.  I don’t know who’s bright idea it was to paint the jeeps pink.  Call it an insecurity but I never was totally comfortable riding around in a bright pink vehicle.  I had to admit they were pretty bad machines though;  They ran them over some impressive terrain.  After that we drove to a nearby trailhead and went on a 5-mile hike.  It was rather moderate terrain, but I think everybody agreed 5 miles was a bit excessive.

Monday we enjoyed a lovely drive out to the Grand Canyon.  It took like 9 hours I think.  Or maybe 2…  All I remember was it was very, very long.  It was worth it though, the canyon was very scenic indeed.  I’d go so far as to say “grand” even.  We spent all day out there hiking around.  Tuesday is a lil’ fuzzy.  I think the Martins went hiking and we stayed back at the condo and sat by the pool reading.  We cooked up some corned beef & cabbage for dinner and…  Some other stuff.  Wednesday we made the arduous drive to Surprise AZ to catch a Royals game.  Our original plan was to roll a Cubbies game into the afternoon also, but they were all sold out.  The Royals provided us with a decent amount of entertainment though, although they lost.  Donette got Zach Greinke’s autograph, which she was excited about.  At least she claims it is his autograph;  It’s quite illegible and the photo Dakin took was not exactly proof either.  Thursday we took a nice little bike ride.  Maybe not an over-the-top crazy mountain bike adventure, but it was fun and once again the weather was perfect.  Friday we flew back to KC, picked up Gabe, and went home.

The weekend was mostly spent trying to get our clocks back on track.  Saturday we did get down to the Power & Light and sat around watching the basketball games on their big screen.  We intended to go back there Sunday but it didn’t happen.  Instead we went down to the Brooksider to try and watch the MU game, but all the Jayhawk fans were naturally taking up two or three parking places each so the lot was full.  Wouldn’t want a door ding, you know.  While we were circling the lot I took a quick census of the handicap spots too;  Sure enough they all had Jayhawk bumper stickers.   Just pointing it out.  I guess we could have walked down there, but they steal chairs also, so it just wasn’t a safe option.  We walked Gabe up to the library and back, and then sat around the house the rest of the day.

We are in Phoenix celebrating St. Patrick’s Day, and as such I am wholly unable to update this.  While the weather might be fantastic, the Internet connection isn’t.  As I write this, I am balancing on one leg while hanging over the deck in Martin’s room, stretching my laptop as far towards where I imagine the nearest access point to be as I dare without risking severe bodily injury.  I’ll write up our little vacation later.

My countdown to vacation has begun.  All I have to do is struggle until Thursday, then we are flying to Arizona on Friday for a week of whatever-you-do-in-Arizona.  While I am admittedly a bit less than enthusiastic about spending my hard earned money on a trip within the continental US, I am none-the-less looking forward to a little time off.  Maybe we’ll hit the lottery soon and I can get someplace a bit more tropical next time around.

The weekend started off nicely with a tasty lunch at Fiorella’s BBQ.  If there’s anything better than a BBQ lunch, it’s weaseling it out of Kevin Brown.  Yes, he actually picked up the tab, in a manner of speaking.  I had the lamb ribs, which I’d never tried before.  I’m now on a city-wide hunt to find some I can make at home though, because they were awesome.  If I could make so bold a statement, I think I’ll even say they were the best thing I’ve ever had there.  I probably need to go back and make sure it wasn’t just a fluke.  After lunch I went back and served the rest of my hard time at work, then went and met my friend John up at Bobby Bakers for an end-of-week celebration.  We hung out there for a while, then I went home to find Donette hard at work in the kitchen as usual.  She went on some kind of crazy binge with the KitchenAid, determined to grind up everything in the house.  She’d fed two whole pork butts and a beef roast through it by the time I got home, resulting in rather massive batches of italian sausage, breakfast sausage, and chorizo.  (All this wonderful product she spent all day on, and I got frozen pizza for dinner;  Not sure what happened there.)  After dinner we decided to watch a movie to kill some time before a little Rock Band session.  We decided on The Changeling, which sounded engaging enough.  As usual, I was fast asleep five minutes into it, and my day was over.

Saturday morning, after a tasty biscuit & gravy breakfast,  Gabe & I took a rather overdue trip out to Mom’s to see what was happening in the southlands.  I finally got her doorknob fixed on the front door, although I managed to turn the 20 minute install into a two hour project as usual.  I also hooked up a battery charger to my motorcycle, which is sitting in her garage, so hopefully the weather will cooperate this week and I’ll be riding again soon.  After that visit, I went back home and found Donette STILL working in the kitchen.  She’d whipped up two enormous batches of red sauce, one with meat and one without.  Out of control.  And, as on Friday night, I went without dinner.  I guess all this food is just fer lookin’ at, not eating.  I slugged around on the couch all evening not doing too much, because I had to work later in the night and needed to rest up.  I did get in a solid two-hour Rock Band session with Ed, which was fun.  I didn’t lose my connection once either, so all my work last weekend musta paid off.

Ed & I wrapped up our jam-a-thon around 11:00 Saturday night, then I headed upstairs to work for the rest of the night.  Between staying up all night and the Daylight Savings crap, I was all out of sorts on Sunday.  I’m still a bit disoriented as a matter of fact.  I’m not sure what exactly transpired during the day, but I do somewhat recall the Martins coming over for dinner.  Donette actually served some of the food she’d been making all weekend;  I guess because we had company.  We had a tasty spaghetti dinner.  She even made the pasta from scratch, although it kind of tended to stick together.  (She insists she is going to try that experiment again tonight, we’ll see if she comes through.)

Wow I did not expect that snow.  Perhaps I should have, given how much time I spend watching the news and reading the newspaper.  I think I was in denial or something.  It effectively ruined my weekend though;  I ain’t going out in that crap.

Friday the Martins came over and entertained us for the evening.  We picked up a Waldo pizza and tore that up, then played a few good rounds of Rock Band.  I must say the new disco light adds mightily to the ambiance of the “stage.”  After that we played random other games for a bit, then sat at the table for some 10 point pitch.  After the Martin’s left I returned to the Rock Band room and played online with Ed for a short bit.  I mostly just wanted to try out the online play.  It didn’t go too well, we only got through a few songs.  I kept getting disconnected from my wireless network, which just jacked everything up.

Saturday I woke up with no goal in mind other than fixing my sub-par wireless connection.  Like most people, I had a spare wireless router in the closet in case my production one ever failed unexpectly, so I broke it out to see what my options were.  I’d messed with WDS in the past, but found it flaky at best and never got it working just right.  After some quick research, I decided to try a Repeater Bridge setup this time.  This is a new feature in the router firmware I use and overcomes a few limitations of WDS mode, namely bandwidth and security.  Unfortunately I didn’t do quite enough research, and ended up wasting my entire day trying to get everything up and running.  I blame their documentation myself;  It’s kind of sketchy and from doing some Google searches I think lots of people run into the same exact problems I was having.  Just as I was about to call it a day, I finally decided to quit reading and just look at the pictures.  Hey, it worked in school, why not at home.  Sure enough, I was up and running about 20 minutes later.  All’s well that ends well I suppose.  To test out the new setup I played a few rounds of Guitar Hero with my co-worker Mike, and sure enough everything stayed connected flawlessly.  Unfortunately I suffered a pretty good drubbing in the game itself, but my excuse is I don’t play GH that much.

Sunday we didn’t do a whole lot.  Let’s see…  A trip to Costco took up the better part of the afternoon.  We needed to do a little shopping there, but unfortunately we forgot it was both coupon expiration day AND free sample day.  That place was an absolute zoo.  Since the checkout was so long, we spent a few hours strolling around picking up unneeded (but really cool) items.  Oh well, what’s a trip to Costco without a few impulse buys.  After that, we sat around the house reading books for a few hours, made some chili for dinner, watched Balls of Fury for the tenth time…  And that was about the whole of Sunday.  Guess I should be rested up for the week now.

Wow, I had quite a streak of 3-day weekends lately.  Now they are over though…  Back to the real schedule for a while.  In retrospect I should have moved my day off from last Friday to today so at least I’d have a short week to buffer things.  Oh well, hind sight.

We actually didn’t do much over the weekend so the best I can come up with is an exhaustive list of what I had for dinner last week.  Exhaustive and boring, all right here in one posting.  We went out every single night though;  Maybe that’s why I sort of shut down Saturday & Sunday.  Monday night we went over to our neighbor Brooke’s house.  She cooked up some homemade chorizo sausage for tacos.  We were quite excited about this.  Not only did I not know you could make your own chorizo, it’s not even that hard.  We buy it quite a bit at the store, but have always found the ingredient list a bit “unsettling,” shall we say.  So, just mix it up yourself at home and you’re a little clearer about what’s going in your gullet.  So tasty was it, as a matter of fact, we had her over for dinner the next night.  We made some stuffed peppers with the left-over chorizo, which came out well.

Wednesday we went across the street to Bill & Trish’s house for corned beef & cabbage.  Little early in the season perhaps, but I like that meal a lot so the “standard date” isn’t too important.  Thursday we actually took things out of the neighborhood, and met some friends down at the Flying Saucer for happy hour.  We hung out there for a few hours, but when they went to the UMKC game we scurried back to our circle of safety.  Our plan was to have dinner at 75th Street, but that got derailed when we showed up and they had no water.  They were unphased by my perfectly logical train of thought that I didn’t want water, I wanted dinner.  We ended up just crossing the street to Chipotle and going home.

Friday night we went to an auction event at Donette’s school.  It was catered by B.B.’s Lawnside, so we totally gorged ourselves on ‘que.  I really just went for dinner, but we were having a good time so we ended up staying until the very end, which was sometime around way-too-late.  What can I say, I sort of like auctions.  What I found interesting is that every now and then they would break into rounds of auctioning off just donations.  Nothing in your hand, just a “donation.”  I saw several people put out rather large sums of money on the donations parts and never bid on a single item.  What’s the fun in that??!!  To each their own I suppose.  Crazy do-gooders, I say.  We didn’t go in for the live auction, but did score a backpack and a SWEET disco light out of the silent auction.  We absolutely stole the light for a mere $7.50;  A bargain at three times the price.  While her co-workers may have questioned her judgement, they obviously know nothing of interior decorating.  The Rock Band game room has just received a key upgrade.  For our part, we donated a BBQ brisket dinner, and I was pleased when it brought in $250.  Didn’t hold a candle to the $400 fried chicken dinner though;  Dang, that must be some good fried chicken.

Saturday and Sunday, well, not much to tell.  We had a nice little Rock Band session Saturday night, and Donette made some awesome mac ‘n cheese for lunch…  That about covers Saturday.  We did go on a city-wide search for a cast iron griddle, but couldn’t find exactly what I was looking for.  Sunday brought even less activity.  Poor Gabe was so bored he was about 1/2 crazy all day, but aside from a few games of “tug of war” he didn’t get much entertainment.  Donette went to an Oscars party last night over at her friend Susan’s, but (thankfully) guys weren’t invited.  So, for my part I stayed home and worked on my solo career in Rock Band.  I feel the new disco light adds mightily to my already prodigious skills.