So no more football on Sundays huh?  Somebody send me some new Sunday hobbies, pronto-like.  I’m thinking maybe something along the lines of laying on the couch watching synchronized swimming or rugby.  Cartoons?  Outdoor soccer?  Whatever it takes.

That weekend wasn’t all bad considering I was oncall.  We started off Friday stopping by the Brooksider to say hi.  That entertained us for an hour or so, then we walked down the street for dinner at Jalapeno’s.  I was moderately fired up for this excursion, as the last Friday of the month is “chicken verde burrito” day.  As I’ve probably mentioned before, I’m not a huge fan of the menu at Jalapeno’s, despite the fact that I eat there once or twice a week.  The chicken verde isn’t on the menu though, it’s a once-a-month special that I rather fancy.  Apparently I don’t fancy it enough to wait in line though, because when I saw the crowded dining room and the waiting list, I turned back around and left.  Mexican food still sounded good, so we headed to option B, which was Cantina Del Rey up the street from our house.  I like the food a lot better at that place than Jalapenos, yet I’ve only been there twice since it opened several months ago.  Go figure.  Apparently lots of people like it, because it was even more crowded, and the wait even longer.  We were getting hungry though, so we decided to hunker down for the 20-minute wait the girl quoted.  After 30-35 minutes we went and checked on our spot, and got the uncomfortable blank look that said we probably had gotten lost in the shuffle.  She guaranteed no more than 10 more minutes, but we’d kind of lost our appetites by that time so we called dinner a bust and went home to round out the evening with a few sets of Rock Band and a bag of chips.

Saturday we didn’t have a lot of qualifications around the day’s activities, just that they be outdoors.  So determined were we to take advantage of the forecasted 60-degree weather, we even conceeded to crossing the river to join the Northlanders for some entertainment.  Kevin was debuting his newly-completed smoker, so we threw a few slabs of ribs in the car and made the arduous trip up I-435.  We finally arrived at noon, and were pleased to find that the smokers were running, and Carol had a spread of snacks out that would have kept even Todd happy.  We threw the ribs on, made a plate of nachos, and spent the rest of the day sitting in the driveway watching the flesh cook.  Around six, we started pulling ribs and doing some taste-testing.  (Not of consequence, but definitely of note, our elected onsite judge ruled one of my slabs the #1 entry.  Just thought I’d throw that in there.)  As to the performance of the new smoker, well I must grudgingly admit it turned out some good product.  It is a super-duper bleeding edge pellet fired machine, as opposed to the traditional off-set wood burner we’ve used for the last several years.  We had both of them running, and I did one slab on each;  The slab off the pellet smoker was undoubtedly better.  But, that said, there is an underlying feeling of “cheating” when you flip a switch, go play cards for 5 hours, then come back to a finished product.  We’ll just have to see if my morals hold up when it’s 3 o’clock in the morning, freezing cold, and I’m faced with throwing a log on the fire every hour or flipping an “on” switch and going to bed.

Sunday afternoon we were still sort of hungry for some Mexican food, so we went back to Jalapeno’s again.  Alas, they were closed.  Geez, who closes for Super Bowl Sunday???  Not like it’s a freaking holiday or something.  We rather dejectedly walked up to the Brooksider and narrowed the arteries on their deep-fried offerings, then went home and waited for game-time.  For the big game, we headed South to our friends the Johnsons.  So far South is this trip (like 15 miles MINIMUM) that we only see them twice a year;  The Fantasy Football draft and Super Bowl Sunday.  I must admit the game didn’t hold a lot of interest for me, but the promise of more BBQ certainly did;  There was a fine spread of smoked ribs and sausage, as well as the various side dishes that everybody brought.  We tore up the buffet table, then settled in and watched the first half of the game with the crowd.  We left at half-time though;  For one thing it was time to get back into our well-defined one mile circle of safety, and for another thing the little people were making me nervous.  I’d say, conservatively, there were at least 10 party-goers under the age of 3 in attendance.  Might have been more, but it was hard to get a count because they wouldn’t quit moving.  Well enough behaved lil’ urchins, but I was sure I was going to turn around and accidentally punt one of the munchins sooner or later.  You just don’t want to be between me and the rib platter, especially when you’re only knee-high;  Dangerous situation.  So, for safety’s sake, we headed back home and watched the second half on the couch.

That was a nice three-day weekend, although I will quite likely have some moderate to severe motivational issues around Wednesday this week as a result of the back-to-back long weekends.  I took off Friday for no particular reason;  Just seemed like the the thing to do.

Friday I went to the gym…  And that was about it as far as productivity for my day off.  I probably should have had a little better plan for burning a vacation day, but it didn’t work out that way.  So I spent a little time goofing off there, then took the dog for a walk, then went and met Martin & Brice up at the Waldo Bar.  We played several games of pool, of all things.  Haven’t done that in a while.  Donette & our neighbor Brooke joined us after a while, and we got down to some of the more competitive games;  The trusty Photo Match game.  After we’d fed enough quarters to that game, we headed down to Brookside and met David for some dinner at Carmens.  We adequately stuffed our bellies on pasta, then headed back home to play a little Rock Band.  I’m not sure what time we started, but I was rather shocked to look up and see it was 1:00 in the morning when we called it quits.  I don’t think I’ve seen midnight in the last six months, so that was something of a record rock-a-thon.

Unfortunately, the expense of staying up so late Friday night was the the total loss of my Saturday.  I got out of bed at a reasonable hour and Donette made us a solid breakfast of corned beef hash, eggs, and hash browns.  But, then I hit the couch in front of the TV and never moved again.  Well, I take that back;  We did make a rather “interesting” pot roast for dinner so that provided a short diversion.  We used an Alton Brown recipe, and it came out rather well.  (Minus the raisins…  That just don’t sound right.)  Other than dinner though, the day was a complete waste, consisting of basketball games, bad movies, and a few Wii games.

Sunday, after reading the thoroughly uninteresting newspaper, my day started shaping up much like Saturday.  I blame the cold;  I just don’t really feel like getting outside when it’s so miserable out.  Luckily though, Martins came down later in the day and saved me from another wasted day.  The girls went down to the Plaza for a short shopping trip, while Martin & I headed out in search of a pool table.  (I rather enjoyed playing Friday, so it sounded like a good thing to do.)  The place we went Friday was closed though, and so was every other usual haunt in the area.  We ended up sitting at 75th Street and watching something or another on TV.  After wasting a few hours in that fashion, we headed back home for dinner and then closed out the weekend with more Rock Band.

More days off, SWEET.  I have today off work, and then I took off Friday too in order to, you know, keep things balanced.  So, I’ve got a nice three day week staring me in the face.

Well, to be brief, we didn’t get out TOO much last weekend.  Or we did and I just don’t want to go over it because I’m in a big hurry to get out there and waste my day off.  Friday we went out with the Wilcox’s again, and again to Waldo.  We’ve been trying to like the Waldo Bar, so we went there again.  And, I kinda do like it, other than the fact that some knucklehead keeps playing country music the last few times we’ve been there.  That’s going to be a deal-breaker if  it keeps up.  It was tolerable though;  We played Buckhunter and Photo Hunt again and tried to ignore the twangy tunes.  After a while we wandered over to Tanner’s and had a little dinner.  Again with the mini-burritos. 

Saturday got off to a pretty slow start.  We went to lunch at Jalapenos, then I went to the gym for a rather half-hearted attempt at working out.  I figure a bad workout is better than no workout at all, although I’m not sure that is really the case.  I goofed off there for the better part of the afternoon, then went home to nice quiet house.  Donette went out with the girls for their big “Girls Night Out” so I had an evening on the couch watching TV with Gabe and Kane.  Remarkably similar to what the evening would have been like even if she had been home.

Sunday we started the day with a nice hot breakfast casserole, then off to the gym again.  This time I didn’t even pretend to work out though;  Straight to the hot tub.  We loitered there for quite a while, then back home for a late lunch.  After lunch, we went down to the Brooksider to watch the second playoff game.  Donette’s nephew Josh is a big Steeler’s fan, so her family all came down and joined us to watch it on the big TV’s.  It was a little more crowded than I would have liked, but we scored a good table so it wasn’t too bad.  Good game too. 

Well that effort at an update is about as lackadaisical as my last few trips to the gym.  That’s all I got though, I gotta use my holiday wisely.  (There is a very strong chance I will NOT use it wisely, but my intentions are good.)

Here it is mid-January and the sharp Christmas presents just keep filtering in.  In addition to the Wüsthof knife  Mom gave me, last week a shiny new Mandoline showed up in the mail from my Uncle Roy & Aunt Joyce.  Note the “e” on the end there;  No I did not take up playing a stringed instrument, it’s a kitchen utensil.  OK actually maybe it wasn’t an official Christmas present;  More likely they were just tired of listening to me repeat how much I’d always wanted one and when they saw a good sale they jumped at the chance to shut me up.  It’s happened before.  Anyway I was pretty excited to get to slicing, and finally decided on eggplants.  I can’t explain how I arrived at that decision;  I’ve probably only had eggplant once or twice in my life.  It made sense at the time though, so we had Eggplant Parmigiana for dinner on Thursday.  I have to imagine the recipe we used (out of our Betty Crocker cookbook) was some type of crime against true fans of the dish.  But, having no idea what good Eggplant Parmigiana is, it tasted pretty darn good to me.  Fried stuff with lots of cheese…  What’s not to like?  And, I’m sure it tasted considerably better with each piece of eggplant at an exact, uniform 3/8″ thickness.

Friday we again did happy hour with the Wilcox’s.  We have established something of a routine, revolving around John’s new PC.  Long story short, I “helped” John with his shiny new super-spec gaming computer, and after a few short weeks of “Call of Duty” nirvana it quit working.  Over the last several weeks I’ve been over there a few times trying different things to get the beast revived.  I’ve been slowly running out of ideas though, and by now my troubleshooting sessions have degraded to giving it a few sharp raps on the side, shaking my head, then going out to dinner.  Not very productive as far as the PC goes, but fun.  We went to Bobby Bakers for a while, then went over to Tanner’s and picked up some takeout.  In keeping with our New Year’s diet, we ordered all “small” foods to keep the calories down;  mini corndogs, mini burritos, and mini baked potatoes, a.k.a. cheese fries.  I figure anything with the word “mini” in it has got to be low-cal.  Armed with this delicious dinner, we headed over to their house and played cards for the rest of the evening.  We enjoyed the meal, and team Kenagy pulled out the victory in the Pitch game.  As a side note, if you ever go to their house for cards, here’s a little tip for you:  Throw the game.  Susan may  only come in at 4′ 8″, but she can get extremely aggressive when provoked and does not take losing well.  That reminds me, I need to call and check on John, she was still  pretty upset about that last bid when we left.  (We said we were going to refill the Cheezit bowl and crawled out the kitchen window;  It was very clear we were not allowed to leave until she won a game.)

Saturday rounded out pretty well.  We got around rather slowly in the morning, then headed out to Mom’s for lunch.  My intention was to do a little winter maintenance on my motorcycle (under the “better late than never” category) but after driving all the way out there discovered I had forgotten the key.  Whoops.  Oh well, no worries, I’d have probably electrocuted myself trying to take the battery out anyway.  So, we headed out and had a solid lunch at the Best Burrito.  After lunch Donette went home and I went over to my friend Ron’s house (a.k.a. “Flop” if you don’t recognize that name) to watch the MU game.  Ron lives in the quintessential bachelor pad down in Brookside;  A big 3,000 square foot house furnished with a leather recliner, big screen TV, refridgerator, and a microwave.  What else do you need?  You want to watch the game sitting down?  Bring a chair.  You want to be warm?  Wear long sleeves, ’cause the thermostat stays on fifty-eight. Want to cook something?  The grill’s out back, coals are on the porch. Cigar smoking isn’t just allowed, it’s encouraged.  I swear, the guy could charge a $5 cover and make a mint.  I spent most of the day over there, watching the unfortunate MU game and then the first NFL playoff game.  After that I went back home and watched the second game, then played Wii games the rest of the night.

Sunday we started the day off right with a trip to the gym.  We worked out for an hour or so, then replenished our systems with a 2500-calorie trip to their brunch buffet.  (I thought I heard the cook remark that he’d never had to replenish the sausage gravy so many times in one day.)  Thusly stuffed, we pretty much hunkered down at home for the rest of the day.  Football season is coming to a close rapidly and I intend to waste every possible remaining day watching the rest of the games.  That was really about the whole day, other than a good hour and a half of Rock Band later in the evening.

Well here we go.  Back to work and hopefully some normalcy to my schedule in general.  After the last several weeks of holidays, 1/2-days, etc, I have a feeling this is going to be a long week.

It seems like a long time since last Monday…  We did a LOT last week.  Nothing anyone would be interested in though I imagine.  New Years Eve was something of a bust;  Nobody seemed very into it this year.  (Or maybe just not into celebrating it with us…)  For that matter, we weren’t either, so we went down and said “Happy New Year” to everybody at the Brooksider, then went across the street to Carmen’s and picked up some takeout.  Went home, ate our delicious dinner, then played Rock Band for a few hours.  That got us to about 10:30, and then we popped in a movie.  “Tropic Thunder” was the show for the evening.  As has been the case with any other movie I’ve tried to watch lately, I made it about five minutes into it and fell asleep.

Friday we were absolutely beat down.  I can’t recall exactly what the reason was for our extraordinary fatigue, but neither of had any interest what-so-ever in doing anything after work.  We had every intention of hunkering down, maybe playing a few games, and going to bed at 8:00.  That plan lasted until John & Susan called us and said they were up in Waldo for some happy houring.  We were so set on our original plan that they had to work on us for like 20 seconds, but eventually we relented and walked up the street to join them.  We hung out in that area for the rest of the evening.  We played a few bajillion rounds of  “photo match,” the rather kiddish game where you look for the differences between two pictures.  I’ve always found it oddly entertaining though;  It could well be the only arcade-type game I’ve ever fed a quarter into.  After a while though, John got us started on “Buck Hunter,” and I have to  admit it was a bit more entertaining than the picture game.

Saturday was pretty nice out, so we started on our obligatory New Years fitness program.  I fully expect it to last around 8 days if the last few decades are any indicator, but you never know.  Donette read somewhere or another that she is supposed to be walking 10,000 steps a day, so she picked up a pedometer, leashed up Gabe, and off we went.  We walked all the way down to the grocery store, did a little shopping, and all the way back home.  (Roughly 2.5 miles.)  Then we drove out to the ‘Dotte and hit Nebraska Furniture Mart, which is a fair amount of walking too.  We couldn’t find anything to waste our money on there, so we walked from there to Cabela’s, where remarkably we couldn’t find anything we “needed” either.  After that failed shopping expedition, she coicindentally got a hot tip that the ‘Dotte Walmart had Wii Fits in stock though, so our long drive wasn’t wasted.  We (or at least I) were a little disappointed to find that all that hiking around only added up to about 6,000 steps.  Good grief, exactly how far is 10,000 steps???  Farther than I care to walk in a day, that much I have determined.  For dinner, we tried out a new recipe I spied the other day, chorizo-stuffed poblanos.  It was a reasonably successful recipe;  I was a bit thrown off by the heat of the poblano peppers.  I don’t know if it was because they are “out of season” or what, but they were a lot hotter than I anticipated.  Matter of fact, they tasted like chorizo-flavored pain.  But, at the same time, oddly tasty pain, so I sat there in a puddle of sweat and mowed through them.  After dinner we watched “Hancock.”  It must be a pretty good movie;  I made it about 15 minutes before I fell asleep.

Sunday we once again walked Gabe down to Brookside and did a little grocery shopping.    I don’t know if all this walking will do us any good but Gabe is liking it.  We sat around the house for most of the afternoon, then the Martins came down and saved us from total boredom.  Chris and I went down to the Brooksider and watched some football, and the girls stayed home and did whatever they did.  Probably talked bad about us.  We headed back home for dinner, and made some kind of lemon-garlic-scallop linguine.  It came out pretty good;  Much less painful than the previous evening’s entree.  After dinner we made them join our band and play some Rock Band II.  That was the first time we’ve been able to play with all four people at once;  Martin on bass, Donette on guitar, Dakin on vocals and I tried to play drums.  I’m pretty sure Martin will be defecting from “Guitars For Christmas” to join the “Physco Tabby Pitbulls” in the near future;  He recognizes our vast potential.