Wow, welcome to winter.  That was a quick and harsh change in the weather there.  Hopefully it will be short-lived too.

We kicked off our weekend with a few dinner dates.  Thursday we met the Munkirs at the Blue Moose in lovely Prairie Village.  In truth, that really doesn’t qualify as a “weekend” event, as I had to work Friday, but since they are one of six people who actually read this I have to be sure and give it mention.  We had a fine meal and fine conversation, at least when we could get in a few words between James’ nonstop blathering.  (He DID actually speak though;  To the waitress when he ordered his meal.)  Friday we went out with the Martin and Wilcox gangs.  We met up at the Brooksider to say hi to that group, mostly because we haven’t been there in a few weeks and needed some face-time.  Satisfied that nothing had changed there while we were away, we walked down the street to Carmens for some dinner.  It was awesome as always.  I even branched out and ordered eggplant parmesan, which I don’t believe I’ve ever had.  After dinner everybody came over for a Rock Band party.  Yeah, that’s pretty much what we do anymore.  Keeps us out of trouble and so far hasn’t gotten the least bit old.

Saturday was pretty low-key.  We did a little shopping in the afternoon.  Big sale at Microcenter!!!  I picked up a copy of Guitar Hero, because you just can’t get enough rockin’ at our house.  I thought the guitar that came with it was compatible with our Rock Band game, so that was my main reason for getting it.  Turns out it’s not, but I kept it anyway…  Because it’s fun.  After that we went across the street for a big 1-year-old birthday party.  Now there’s something I don’t find myself invited to very often.  This was the little boy that Donette babysits for though, so I guess we were obligated.  It was fun I must admit, and there was plenty of delicious food to occupy me.  For evening entertainment, we stayed in and played Wii games all night.  We played Rock Band for quite a while, then we ended up playing Mario Brothers well into the night.  I really think that game is gonna pay for itself sooner or later;  We tend to just stay home and entertain ourselves with it rather than go out.

Sunday got off to something of a rough start.  I put on my shoes to go out and get the paper, and quickly made the disappointing discovery that somebody had peed in my right shoe.  That falls pretty squarely in the “you know you’re going to have a bad day when…” category.  I lined everybody up against the wall for a harsh interrogation, but nobody was fessin’ up.  I did catch the cat nosing around the scene of the crime later, with a rather annoyed look on his face like “Hey, who moved my litter box?”  So, at this point he is my prime suspect.  However, Donette was pretty upset that I beat her in Mario Brothers, and Gabe doesn’t like going out in the cold much, so I haven’t totally eliminated them as the culprits either.  Remarkably, the day shaped up to be not so bad after that rather unsettling beginning.  Donette made some delicious breakfast burritos, and then we headed down to the Brooksider to watch the weekly debacle at Arrowhead.  Donette’s Mom & nephew came down and joined us for the Steelers after that, so we effectively made up for our recent absence at the ‘Sider by staying there all day.  After football was over, yep, you guessed it, we fired up the Wii and gamed all evening.  Good stuff.  I can feel my brain atrophy a bit every time we turn it on.

When I wasn’t playing video games, I  (finally) got around to putting up a few donated pictures from the American Royal, so check those out.

We are back in the (literally) frozen tundra of KC.  After 3 days of 60 – 70 degree weather, constantly listening to whines of “Why did you move me back to KC??!!!??” you can imagine my consternation when the plane landed and it was dumping snow at a frightful rate.  What luck.  Anyway, after the two-hour crawl from the airport, we’re back home.

We flew to Dallas on Friday evening to visit our friends David & Jill, and to celebrate Donette’s birthday.  It wasn’t quite as big as our celebration last year in Playa, but we didn’t need passports and still stayed at an all-inclusive resort (their house) so it was close enough.  We got to their house around 12:00 at night, which is generally about 3 hours past my bedtime.  But, there was a lot of catching up to do and we ended up staying awake until the rather unholy hour of 2:00.  Quite possibly the first time I’ve seen 2:00 in the morning that I wasn’t either in college or working.

Saturday was the “official” birthday, so we kicked it off at the crack of 10:00 with some omelets.  After breakfast, we loitered in the hot tub for a few hours, burned a few stogies, did some napping, listened  to some music…  Kind of generally enjoyed the afternoon.  Later in the day we headed over to their daughter Casey’s place for a somewhat impromptu wine-tasting, then headed down the street to her haunt of choice, the Knox-Henderson district.  It’s a cool Westport-ish little place;  Which is to say, too expensive and too young for the likes of me.  But, you know, “when in Dallas” and all that.  We started off strong with two enormous bowls of steamed mussels at Vickery Park.  I don’t think I’ve ever tried steamed mussels, but you can bet I’ll be dragging everybody back for more next time we’re in town.  They were awesome.  I thought about dropping a few in my pocket and trying to duplicate them at home, but I was afraid they wouldn’t travel well.  Immensely pleased with the beginning of the evening, we headed to Victor Tango’s next.  Now this place was definitely more “Power & Light District” than “Westport.”  They mostly featured “Scratch Cocktails,” described on the menu as “the precise rendering of vintage and modern cocktails using freshly squeezed juices, local herbs and fresh vegetables.”  I tried reading a few of them and then panicked and said “Uhhhhh, you got any draft beer?”  Dang Kansas Citians, what can ya’ do.  It was a lot of fun watching the bartenders though, they were some artists.  Last on the list, we hit Cuba Libre for some dinner.  Everybody went with an assortment of their tacos, which were quite possibly even better than the tacos back home at Jalapenos.  (That last statement is roughly on a par with saying “The steak at Capitol Grille is quite possibly even better than the steak at The Brooksider.”)  David had picked up a few fine CAO cigars to round out the evening, but towards the end of dinner Casey got mysteriously fatigued, so we headed back to the house and enjoyed them on the back deck.

Sunday brought still more food and hot-tubbing.  Hey, it’s what we like to do when we go out of town.  We finished off the left-over tacos from the night before, then headed out to Rio Mambo for some lunch.  We do like the Tex-Mex.  Bellies stuffed once again, we drove around and checked out the new Dallas football stadium, then it was off to my favorite shopping destination; Costco.  I picked up some rechargable batteries and some DVD burning software.  They looked remarkably similar to the ones at the Costco 5 miles from my house, but I’m pretty sure these were cooler since we were in Dallas and all.  David, meanwhile, picked up a few pounds of beef tenderloin and some cilantro-lime shrimp for the next round of gluttony.  (And a Christmas tree, but frankly I was only interested in the beef and shrimp.)  Thusly armed, we headed back to the house, fired up the grill, and…  See the end of the last few paragraphs for details on the rest of the evening.

OK I’m tired of typing, much as you may be tired of reading.  Monday we rounded out the feed-a-thon with oysters and gumbo at Pappadeaux.  After that, the girls went shopping while I snuck back to the house to read a book.  Spent the rest of the day hot-tubbing, snacking, and smoking cigars.  Some things I just don’t get tired of I guess.

We are on vacation;  I don’t want to post a summary or the weekend and possibly omit some tidbit of excitement that may happen today or tomorrow.  Thank you for your patience and understanding.

Yes, I am a bit late with my update today.  I’m having something of a difficult time getting back into my routine.  For the past four days all I’ve done is eat and play video games;  Switching straight from that to work is not a smooth transistion.

So, as mentioned last week, we made our third and final trip to Branson for the holiday.  We drove down there on Wednesday, along with approximately three million other holiday travelers, judging from the traffic.  When we finally got there, we spent the rest of the day unpacking our “truck” and getting settled into the digs.  (Which were quite nice, incidentally.)  Thursday was kind of a blur of cooking, eating, and subsequent suffering.  We had a nice meal for sure, if way too big.  Oh well, it’s traditionally a holiday of gluttony, so we were just doing our part.  The bird came out pretty well;  We used Alton’s recipe with the exception of the candied ginger (what the heck is that?) and we didn’t do the initial 1/2 hour at 500 degrees because we had it in an electric roaster instead of an oven.  In addition to that we had the semi-traditional host of side dishes;  Buttered corn, mashed potatoes and gravy, noodles, salads and relishes, homemade bread, broccoli-rice casserole…  I’m starting to feel over-indulged again just thinking about it.

Friday was a down day for me.  We had a photographer come over for a big family picture, and then a lot of the crowd went to the Outlet Malls for the big after-Thankgiving sales.  I figured there wasn’t going to be anything there I wanted so I hung back.  (No Microcenter???  Puh-leeze, don’t waste my time.)  I enjoyed a rather relaxing day outside on the deck reading a few books and enjoying the fine view of Table Rock lake.  I also spent a rather inordinate amount of time watching these mutated woodpeckers that were pretty common in the trees behind the house.  They looked like red headed woodpeckers on steroids;  They were HUGE.  After a short consultation with Wikipedia, I’ve decided they were Pileated Woodpeckers.  Had I only noticed them on Thursday, we could have saved the turkey for another holiday.

Saturday, in what would mark the only time I left the house all weekend, we all went to Silver Dollar City.  Naturally, this outing coincided with a 20-degree drop from the beautiful weather we’d enjoyed the previous few days.  The park was… Well… It was Silver Dollar City.  Being season ticket holders as we are, we pretty much know what to expect by now.  There is some premium people-watching to be had, particularly if you are an appreciator of mullets, camouflage, blaze orange, and unique headgear.   On the downside though, most of the rides were closed, all of the shows had ridiculous lines, and the crowd was in general just way too large for me.  Here’s a little fact for you, which I wasn’t aware of, should you ever make your way to the Ozarks for Thankgiving:  That weekend is considered the single largest crowd of the year at Silver Dollar City.  Plan accordingly.

Wow that was a busy weekend, at least as far as mine generally go.  Actually, it was a rather busy week overall.  We had a festive event stuck in the middle of things when we celebrated Donette’s parents 50th wedding anniversary on Wednesday.  They came over to our house and we fixed pan seared ribeye steaks, which is one of my favorite dinners.  One would think that, being their 50th anniversary, I would fix one of their favorite dinners, but you gotta stick with what you know.  After dinner Donette gave them their gift, four nights in Branson with the entire mob of kids and grandkids.  She and her sisters have been planning this for well over a year, so it was good to finally get the secret out.  They rented a 5400 square foot house right next to Silver Dollar City, so hopefully there will be enough room.  Yes, this will be my third trip to Branson this year;  Heckle at will.

Friday I had the day off, and we made the most of it.  We dropped off Gabe at “school” and headed off to the gym, and then went on something of a shopping spree.  It was time to start getting ready for this big Branson trip, and there is quite a bit of grocery shopping to be done for 15+ people.  Luckily good ol’ Costco fit the bill well for this purpose.  That took up a good part of the afternoon actually, between finding everything on her enormous grocery list and trying to fit it all in our ‘fridge.  After that, in a blatant attempt at pacifying my rapidly declining attitude, Donette started calling around town trying to find a Wii for us.  We’d talked about getting some kind of game console for quite a while.  We debated the pros and cons of all the different systems at great length, taking into consideration what games are available for each, and the different options and packages available, etc.  After cross-referencing all the different factors in a complex matrix, we decided on the Wii because it was the cheapest.  That effectively killed the rest of our night;  We bowled and boxed and golfed our way well into the wii hours of the night.  (Wii hours?  Get it, get it?  Boy I slay me.)

Saturday I think we were busy again, but the exact details escape me.  I do remember I was really quite sore.  One can only hope it was from our trip to the gym and not the seven hours on the video game.  Granted, you do actually move your arms and stuff while playing it, but the whole thought of being sore from playing video games is a bit disconcerting for some reason.  We did a little more prep work for the Branson trip too, including boiling up enough chicken broth to make soup for the next year.  I’m not sure what happened there.  I did my math very carefully, but somewhere in the conversion from liters to quarts and doubling recipes and such, I must have carried my naught one too many times.  Somehow or another I ended up making two and a half gallons of stock, which I have no earthly idea what to do with.  Anybody need extra gravy on that plate?  (Not a question that really needs asked actually, at least with Donette and I.)

Sunday I spent the entire day cooking.  I put together a massive pot of gumbo for the trip, and smoked a traditional Thanksgiving brisket.  (At least it should be a tradition, if it ain’t.)  Meanwhile, Donette went on another shopping spree;  More groceries and more Wii accessories.  This time she came home with an extra set of controllers, and a Rock Band game.  We were so busy with the food that we didn’t get to play on it until pretty late in the evening, but it was a lot of fun.  It went a long way towards affirming my long-held belief that I was likely meant to be a rock star instead of a cubicle-monkey.  “Prodigy” was the word I kept hearing Donette use, if I remember right.  I have no doubt that if I practice consistently over the winter I just might find myself onstage with “Guitars For Christmas” next year at the BBQ.  Actually I got booed off the stage more often than not.  But, that would be nothing new for Guitars For Christmas either, so I still might make the band.  The extra controller set paid off too;  It should really be included with the game right off the bat though.  It was a lot more fun going head-to-head in everything, especially boxing.  It was all fun and games until I got overly excited and kidney-punched the wife.  She got back up though, she’ll be fine.  Hey I was just trying to add a little realism to the game.