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.

Wow the big Valentine’s holiday has come and gone.  It’s not totally over yet though, I get today off to celebrate it.  At least I assume that’s why we got today off;  I’m not asking questions.  Don’t have much planned though.  Go to the gym and maybe cook some dinner.

Well that weekend didn’t come together quite as planned.  Friday we were supposed to go bowling with a bunch of friends, an annual event sponsored by the Belangers.  I was even planning to roll a few games this year.  As it turned out though, neither of us were feeling very well.  I don’t know if we just had the beat-downs from the week or what.  Plus, I was on call so that always cuts into my plans.  We ended up staying home and going to bed around 7:30.  Weak.

Saturday we were still kind of shaky.  We finally got up and around at ten o’clock or so, and headed down to Sharp’s for breakfast.  It was ridiculously crowded as always.  It reminds me of Jalapeno’s;  It’s good but not great, yet there is always a 20 minute wait for a table.  Odd.  We stood around and scored some chairs at the bar finally.  Breakfast revived us somewhat but we still took it easy the rest of the day just in case.  We didn’t do much for Valentine’s either.  I’d planned a big dinner of grilled tuna, but that menu got re-worked real quick when I saw the price of fresh ahi.  Instead we went with eggplant parmesan, which was still good and much more budget friendly.  We had some steamed mussels too, which came out quite nicely.  I’d been wanting to try cooking them since we had them at a bar in Dallas recently.  Kind of an odd pairing with eggplant, but oh well.

Sunday was similarly boring.  We slept in, and then Donette went out with Anne & Susan and I did a whole day’s worth of nothing.  Other than taking the dog for a walk I really didn’t accomplish anything.  We did go out to dinner at 75th Street, which was fun.  That place has been growing on us.  It ranks pretty high on the list of “new places” we’ve been trying in our semi-successful attempt to go someplace besides the Brooksider.  Not that there’s anything wrong with the ‘Sider, just need to branch out a bit.  After dinner we went home and fired up the Rock Band game.  The neighbor came over for a while to help play bass, and that pretty much wrapped up the weekend.

Note the weekly poll on the side of the page.  I need to learn to play some kind of instrument so I can try out for “the band.”  These are my top choices so far, but feel free to add suggestions.

I hope everybody enjoyed the brief respite from winter;  I don’t think it is going to last long.  I’ve lucked into a streak of 3-day weekends lately, and that was the case this past one too.  Friday was a premium day to have off too.  You don’t get too many 60+ degree days in February.  We went to the gym and kicked around a bit, then took Gabe on a nice long walk, then just sat outside and enjoyed the sun.  For dinner we met up with the Munkirs and Martins at a place in the southern-most tip of civilization.  It was cleverly named “The Wine Bar.”  Sounds like something I’d come up with.  We shared a nice bottle o’ red and a bunch of appetizers, which made for a solid enough dinner.  After dinner we went over to the Munkir’s pad and annoyed their dog for a few hours, then made the trek back to midtown.  Although I was stuffed when we left dinner, I must have digested somewhat because we had to make the dreaded run to Taco Bell on the way home.

Saturday, by the time I finally dragged myself away from the morning news and the computer, it was about seventy degrees out.  I took advantage of the rare weather by meeting up with “the team” over at Brice’s for a little BBQ practice.  In a recent effort to add a little interest to the coming season, we’ve switched up cooking responsibilities so we all have some experimenting to do.  Brice is stuck with chicken, so he was hard at work trying new recipes and techniques while the rest of us sat back and enjoyed the sun.  The bird came out good;  Not quite competition-ready perhaps, but it must have tasted OK because we devoured it all.  The sun was going down by that time, so we headed out to entertain ourselves at the nearest pool table.  After a rough start, Martin & I warmed up and thoroughly thrashed the Brice-Fahlstrom team.  I think the final score was around 13 to 3, although there was some dispute over the exact numbers.  As a side note, I forgot my cell phone at home that day, so if you were one of the bitter horde that tried contacting me I’M SORRY!!!  Good grief.  I don’t think that many people have called me in a week, much less all on the same day.

Sunday could be classified as a non-event.  The three-day weekends are a good thing, but they take a toll on an old man.  We went to lunch at Jalapeno’s, took Gabe for another long walk, and then I settled in for a few hundred rounds of Sudoku, interspersed with worthless television shows.  I feel rested though.