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.

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.