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.

Wow, Thanksgiving is almost upon us.  The “pie” poll was surprisingly well-received, I’ll have to come up with more food-related surveys.

I was oncall last weekend, so it was a rather low-key few days.  Friday, as a matter of fact, I don’t think we did anything at all.  I was a little under the weather all last week, and I needed one more day to recover.  Plus, we had big plans for Saturday morning;  The first run of the holiday sales!!!  Yippee.  We drove out to Nebraska Furniture Mart semi-early to score our first deal of the year;  An eighteen quart roaster.  You may wonder why a household of two people would need a roaster that big?  Well I’m not really sure myself, but it was a great price and I figured it fell in the “If you ever needed one it would be nice to have” category.  (Like we don’t have an entire basement full of items in that category already…)  After escaping the NFM crowd, we made the obligitory trip next door to Cabelas (no purchases) and then had a quite tasty lunch at the Yard House.  I went with the cubano sandwich, mostly for the sake of comparing it to the one I had at the Brooksider a few weeks ago.  It was definitely a good lunch, although I’m not convinced it was twice as good as the ‘Siders.  (The price was, so that’s where I set my expectation.)  After our little shopping trip, we returned home to watch a little college ball.  We tried to hook up with some company for the MU game, but couldn’t get any takers.  Martins were busy, Munkirs were incommuncado, and our pizza-victim neighbors have quit returning our calls.  Well, fine for them, we just sat at home at watched it by ourselves.  Wasn’t a very competitive game anyway.

Sunday, still being somewhat tethered to my PC for work, I stuck around the house and worked on some odds and ends.  Perhaps my most arduous undertaking proved to be replacing the broken pull-cord on the lawnmower.  Wow, that proved to be a lot bigger challenge than anticipated.  I had to draw on every bit of my extensive military wrenching skills to accomplish this seemingly simple task.  The project was further complicated by the cat, who kept waiting until I just about had the rope in place, then would dash in and attack it.  It was kind of funny the first hundred or so times, but then it started getting a little tiresome.  Just when I was starting to think about what kind of features I needed on my brand new lawnmower though, I got it figured out and everything went back together.  Guess the clunker is good for another few years now.  After that drudgery, we went over to John & Susan’s house, west-of-wornall, to work on their PC and eat a little dinner.  I didn’t make much progress on the PC (it was just kind of an initial consultation) but we got a free dinner out of the deal.  We’re going back this evening for a follow-up assessment of the situation.  (And another free dinner.)  Should take three or four more visits before things are straightened out.

Man it got cold out in a hurry.  I may have missed my window of opportunity to (comfortably) get my motorcycle out to Mom’s for winter storage.  If you happen to see somebody screaming southbound on 71 wearing five layers of clothes, that might be me.

That was a moderately entertaining weekend, if not too productive.  That’s a good thing;  I’ll take entertainment over productivity any day.  We started off Friday night by meeting the Martins at the Crossroads district to check out the First Friday event.  That’s been on our list of “things we should probably do” for quite some time now.  You pretty much go down there and walk around looking at all the interesting characters our city has to offer.  There’s also a lot of art to look at, but I didn’t find that part nearly as interesting as the people-watching.  One of Donette’s friends was showing a few pieces of pottery, so we checked that out, and that was really about it.  I expect First Friday has been crossed off our list for a while.  After that we stopped by the Power & Light for a bit, and had dinner at the Flying Saucer.  Despite being a long time fan of that place, I’d never eaten anything there but the cheese and cracker plate.  It just never really looked like the sort of place that would have good food.  This hunch proved to be true;  It was rather marginal.  At least now I know.

Saturday we got up early and headed across the state line (gasp) for our friend Katy’s birthday party.  She put together a nice little breakfast spread for everybody, which was quite delicious.  Most of the group planned to have breakfast and then head to Westport and the boats, but we decided we’d just eat and run.  I stuck to the plan, but Donette fell victim to peer pressure and headed out with the crowd.  Later in the evening we met up with the Martins again and went to a party over at our friend John’s house.  He throws a big Blues and BBQ party every year, which we have only managed to make it to once.  The calendar was all clear this weekend though, so we got to go again.  John hosts the Blues Kitchen show on KKFI, so he’s got access to all kinds of good local blues bands, making for a night of quality entertainment.  Last time we were there the party was in his big garage, which I guess is pretty much just a big metal outbuilding.  Same building this year, but he’d done the entire inside of it in barnboard with a corrugated tin ceiling.  It’s a pretty cool place, not to mention the music sounded a lot better.  We stayed through the third band, mostly because they had probably the coolest bass ever and we wanted to check it out.  I wouldn’t be surprised if Martin isn’t out shopping for an upgrade as we speak.

Sunday we got up and went to the gym again;  Two weeks in a row!  Didn’t do the buffet this week though.  We decided that, for the same money, Jalapenos is a better choice, so we headed there instead.  After that Donette called it a weekend, and went home to curl up on the couch.  Meanwhile, I spent my afternoon in the Brooksider watching all the games and listening to many fascinating recaps and views on the week’s political events.  Mmmm hmmm.

A quick scan of the previous paragraphs seems to indicate incoherent rambling;  I think I’ll quit now.  FYI, I have caved in to the will of the people and reverted back to the lame, spam-ridden message board of old.  Ingrates.

We spent our weekend in Branson, for the second time this year.  I don’t think I’ve been to Branson since I was just a little ‘un, (with the exception of their emergency room) and here I’ve been twice already this year.  Not a good sign.  I really don’t have any explaination for the trip;  We just happened to have a free room, gas was cheap, and we like to go out of town on Halloween.  So we went.  In our defense, at least we didn’t do anything Bransony while we were there.  (Like that word?  Made it up myself.)  No shows, no minature golf, no go-carts…  We pretty much just read books and relaxed.  I think the highlights of the trip, for me anyway, was lunch at Lone Star Steakhouse (woo-hoo) and watching a bunch of feral cats attack the garbage sacks that somebody left outside our door.  Yeah, I entertain pretty easily.  Actually, the cats really did provide me several hours (yes, hours) of amusement.  Got to see a few pretty good throw-downs, and at one point a fox came and chased off all the cats.  I was kind of hoping for a bear or something to come chase off the fox, but it never happened.  Guess he was the top of the garbage-bag foodchain at the condos.  Oh, and I got a phone call from work, reporting “We’re having a firewall problem, and we need a hand-made quilt or a pecan roll to fix it so we called you.  Please call us back when the Andy Williams show is over.”  Ahhh, what a bunch of comedians I work with.  I guess we did spend the obligatory afternoon at the outlet malls too.  That was Friday, and it was storming so bad there wasn’t anything else to do.  Donette bought a new purse, which seemed to please her immensely.  It was… Brown.  Please contact her if you need additional details.

Sunday we were feeling rather rested from our relaxing trip, so we got up and went to the gym.  Sundays at the gym are good because they’ve got a nice brunch set up.  So, we basically worked out for about 15 minutes, showered, then ate several plates of bacon, sausage, hash browns, and biscuits and gravy.  I often question the actual health benefits of our “gym.”  Oh well, what the heck, it’s good food.  After that Donette drove up north to get Gabe from Ronda’s house, who baby-sat him while we were gone.  I was quite dissappointed to learn that he’d gone on another of his little anxiety attacks and tore her front door all up.  I thought he’d finally grown out of that phase, but I guess that’s not quite the case.  The boy just doesn’t care much for being left alone.  Meanwhile, I spent my afternoon down at the Brooksider watching football.  They had the TV’s set up on the back deck, and I intend to enjoy this weather as long as it holds out.  Martin wandered in after a while and we watched a bit of the late games, then meandered down to try the pizza at the Blue Grotto.  Donette and I have walked through there several times but never actually sat down to eat because it was always too busy.  Martin and I were able to grab a couple of seats at the bar though.  The pizza was solid, if a bit hoity-toity.  (Like the rest of the place.)  It was really very good, I just think I’m more for the Waldo style of pie.  Geez, I didn’t even see pepperoni on the menu!!