I survived my much-dreaded oncall week, and now have a nice, easy two-day week ahead.  That starts with today, which I have off for no particular reason.  I’m sure it will be well-spent though;  It’s certainly off to a bang-up start.

I went to happy hour at the Brooksider on Friday, for no other reason than that’s what I do on Friday.  I only made it about an hour though, then went home and sat around working on my itunes playlists.  So ended Friday.

Saturday went rather poorly, at least as far as website material goes.  I woke up with the fascinating idea of switching my website from Unslung to SlugOS… and there went my Saturday.  I’ve used Unslung for about 4 years now, and it works fine, but the SlugOS had a few new features I wanted to try out.  Plus, I dunno, I was thinking maybe chicks would find me cooler if I was running a bit more complicated operating system.  (The validity of that theory remains to be seen, although things aren’t looking good so far.)  Anyway, it certainly wasn’t a light undertaking, and it killed most of my day.  About the only other diversions were taking the dog for a walk and going out to dinner.  The dinner plans sort of fizzled though;  My original plan was to go up to Waldo Pizza and watch the MU game in their new “Sports Bar.”  As it turned out though, they had the room reserved for private parties, so I guess that will have to wait for another day.  We did go ahead and order a pizza since we were there though.  By the time we got back home and turned on the TV, the game was effectively over, but I sat down to watch it anyway.  Due to the score though, I found myself inexorably drawn back to my computer chair to do more work on my web server, and the rest of my evening was spent in a horrible vortex of dorkiness.  I almost got everything working I think;  Right now my biggest concern is that the logo on my home page says “uNSLUng,” when it’s really NOT anymore.  Gosh, is it any wonder I don’t sleep well at night.

Sunday was a bit more adventurous, at least as far as my Sundays go.  Determined not to waste my day sitting in front of my television watching football, we waited until game-time and then took a good three mile walk with Gabe.  It was a nice day out for a walk, perhaps with the exception of the rather chilly breeze.  That little stroll killed some time, then we went down to the Brooksider to eat lunch and watch some football.  So, my plan worked quite nicely;  I wasted my day sitting in front of somebody else’s television watching football.  That’s a good place to watch the games though;  They have so many TV’s you can watch all the games at once with just a slight turn of the head.  Saves wear and tear on my clicker thumb, you know.  On the downside, there was a brand new waitress working, which had everybody a bit out of sorts.  I took advantage of the uncomfortable situation though, and really shook things up by ordering a sandwich I had never tried.  It was a very successful experiment too, I think I have a new favorite sandwich at the ‘Sider.  After the games, I went back home and finished fine-tuning my new webserver, and then sat in front of the TV all evening alternating between the baseball game and low-grade horror movies.  I generally enjoy bad horror movies, so this is my favorite time of year for TV.  Last nights offering though, The Pumpkin Karver, was so bad I eventually turned it off.  Wow, it was poor.

Boy do I like Mondays.  A chance to start another week fresh, full of the promise of excitement and productivity.  Every Monday I wake up and think, “THIS could be my week.  To HECK with the last 2,210 of them, this week is gonna be different!!!”  Ahhhh, yes, I do eagerly anticipate my Mondays.  I was oncall last weekend, which contributed mightily to my extra-rosy outlook this morning.  If there is one thing I enjoy more than a good phone conversation, it’s having one in the wee hours of the morning with somebody I don’t know.  It just makes me feel…  Needed, I think.  Yeah, yeah, that’s it.  Like I’ve got all kinds of friends all over the country that just have to speak with me, and can’t wait until daybreak.  It’s really a super-duper feeling.

It wasn’t all fun and games all weekend though, I had to do some other stuff too.  Friday evening after work we bought a pizza from Waldo and barged in on our neighbors across the street.  Last Friday we crashed their party, ate all their pizza and scared their guests, so this week we felt we should make up for our prior intrusion by banging on their door and having ourselves over for dinner.  It made sense because their house is always cleaner than ours, they have a bigger TV, and their patio is a lot nicer.  Don’t you wish we were your neighbors?  Hey, at least we brought our own food this time.

Saturday we got up semi-early and walked up the street with Gabe to watch the KC Marathon.  It must have been pretty entertaining because we sat there and watched it for over two hours.  Plus we couldn’t really do anything else if we wanted to;  It effectively had the streets shut down every direction from our house.  I took several pictures, which I suppose I’ll get posted some time or another.  Not much to see though really…  A bunch of people running down the middle of Wornall road, woo-hoo.  After that we headed down to Sharp’s for a little late breakfast.  They were absolutely packed with people from the marathon, but luckily we walked right up and found two seats at the bar.  (Yet another benefit of the smoking ban;  No matter how busy a place is, two people can almost always find seats at the bar.)  After that meal, we digested a while and then rode the motorcycle down to Chappell’s to celebrate Josh’s 18th birthday.  It was a fine afternoon for a ride, and we had a good lunch too.  I can’t really remember if I’ve been there before or not, but it seemed like a solid enough place.  Probably need to go back there and eat again;  Since we’d just eaten a few hours before we didn’t really have much to eat for lunch.  The ride back home was all good too, except I blundered right into the middle of that stupid Obama rally down at the Liberty Memorial.  Good grief.  Friggin’ morons.  Seventy-five thousand people and not one of them knew how to properly cross a street.  Actually, cross the street however you want, just don’t do it in front of me.  After we finally navigated through that cluster, we spent the rest of the day watching disappointing college football games and intermittently napping.

I worked all night Saturday, so I didn’t even get out of bed Sunday until around noon.  Quite possibly the latest I’ve ever slept in my adult life.  When I finally dragged myself out of bed, I decided to start off the day with a semi-masterpiece of an omelet.  Sausage, tomato-pepper cheese, fresh basil, and jalapeno peppers.  Top that off with a side of hash browns, and it was one delicious “late breakfast.”  After that, I hunkered down in the living room to watch my Fantasy Football team take their weekly thrashing.  As has become the trend, I was not disappointed in that regard.  I really didn’t even have much intention of getting out of my pajamas since the day was 1/2 over anyway, but later in the afternoon the neighbors got home from the Chief’s game all cranked up and rallied me a little bit.  I don’t know how they could have still been wound up after watching that debacle of a game.  Anyway, we headed down to Jalapeno’s and had a little dinner, and that was about it for the day.  I stayed up and watched the late game, which managed to add a little insult to injury on my Fantasy team.  This is my last year I’m throwing my money away on that silly game, and this time I’m SERIOUS.

Happy Monday.  I really should try updating this silly thing on Sunday, before Monday hits and I start my rapid descent into foul-ness.  It might bring a cheerier tone to the page.  Yeah, I’ll put that on my to-do list.  Anyway…  We started the weekend off on Friday by, of all things, going to the Brooksider.  We really don’t go there much anymore, but I do enjoy my Friday afternoon table-time there, particularly when it’s sunny and 75 degrees out.  There was a rather festive crowd there on this particular afternoon too, so we had just a fine time.  Martin and Brice even showed up, and we spent a little time developing our plan for next years BBQ season.  (As usual, not much of the plan has to do with improving our scores;  Just how to make things easier on ourselves.)  After that we headed back home, then went over to our neighbors house and crashed their party.  We stayed just long enough to eat up all their pizza and meet their guests, then retreated back to our house.  Didn’t want to overstay our welcome, you know;  We were just hungry.  I can’t understand why we don’t get invited over more.

Saturday I got up pretty early and didn’t have anything to do, so I headed off to the gym to goof around for a while.  I should probably do that more, it’s a rather nice diversion.  That killed a few hours, then we walked Gabe down to the Brooksider for a little lunch.  Did I just say we didn’t get to the Brooksider much?  Well, it was a nice day for a walk, Gabe likes hanging out there, and we were hungry, so it just happened to work out.  Gabe did just famously of course.  I think he enjoys the attention from everybody.  He was a little too well behaved actually;  I tried to get him to eat a few of the noisy KU fans that were gunking up the patio, but he was having none of it.  After that, we headed across the state line (shudder) and went to my cousin Megan’s wedding.  Wow, my suit has been out of the closet twice this year, a new record.  The reception was at the Hobb’s Building downtown, which was a rather interesting place.  We enjoyed all the good food and the jazz band for a while, then headed back home just in time to catch the end of the Missouri game.  Shoulda stayed at the reception.

Sunday I got up with high hopes of implementing my new plan of using the day wisely.  Didn’t really work out though.  Hey, there were some really exciting games on, what could I do?  Heck, for a while it even looked as though my fantasy team might win their first game.  (Didn’t happen.)  Donette, meanwhile, went on a rather rare cooking spree.  She spent her afternoon making a big pot of chili, and baking a birthday cake for one of our neighbors.  I found the cake a rather curious undertaking.  I’ve had a good 20 birthdays since she has known me, and she hasn’t made me a cake on a single one of them.  Yes, curious.  Probably because I don’t really like cake that much.  Yeah, that’s probably it.  Anyway, after wasting my day in front of the TV, I finally managed to migrate from the couch to the patio to enjoy the nice evening weather a bit.  We made a nice little fire and sat around eating cake;  Can’t beat that.  The cake, incidentally, was quite good.  Maybe I’ll get one for my birthday next year.

Well, another season gone by for the Triple Fat Back BBQ team.  I’m too tired and beat up to objectively re-tell the events of the weekend…  Rignt now I still feel like it’s the stupidest thing I’ve ever done in my life.  It really was a fantastic time though;  I know this because everybody else told me so, and they seem like reliable enough people.

The events of the weekend started Thursday, which I would say might be my favorite night of the weekend.  We get down there and set a few things up, and then just sit around and enjoy the day.  Fix a little dinner, listen to some music;  Pretty much just hang out.  If not for the $(@*#%^ trains rumbling by, blowing their stupid horns every 30 friggin’ minutes, it would be downright relaxing.  We actually went to bed at a rather reasonable hour, but it’s hard to get a quality night of rest when it sounds like a freight train is about to run into the camper.

Friday, of course, is the big fiesta.  I thought we put on a pretty good event this year;  I might have even had fun for a bit.  Man is it a lot of what can only be called “work” though.  All told, I’m sure we cooked up over 300 lbs of meat this year, which then of course needs chopped/sliced/sauced or whatever the case may be.  I’ll admit it’s a good time though, once it gets rolling.  We had the same band as the last few years, The Unusual Suspects.  They put on a solid show, plus I like that they mix in some good blues;  Fits the atmosphere better than most of the bands down there.  This year’s TFB production also featured the inaugural show of “Guitars For Christmas,” a new local band that treated us to a short three-song set, just to get their name out there on the music scene.  Actually, if you didn’t have the pleasure (??) of enjoying their show, Guitars For Christmas is made up of Martin, Scotten, Belanger & Zim, each of whom got new instruments for Christmas last year.  Isn’t that cute.  While I could probably come up with a string of adjectives as long as this page to describe their performance, I think I’ll just go with “entertaining.”

Saturday the Royal was still dragging on, but I didn’t put in much face-time.  I was pretty beat down from the whole Friday debacle I think.  Not that there was much going on anyway;  It’s sort of a dead day that they mixed into the event to get more money out of us.  We had friends in from Nebraska that drove in for the party Friday night too, so wanted to see them as much as we could while they were in town.  Later in the day Martin got a TV set up at the spot and everybody came down to watch the MU game.  Not the best game ever, but at least we were on the MU side of things;  I think our Nebraska friends got less entertainment out of it than we did.  After the game was over, we fired up the smoker and got to work.  This is without a doubt my least favorite portion of the event.  Every single time we do one of these, I find myself shivering in a lawn chair at four o’clock in the morning, swearing I will never do another BBQ.  Hmmmm, what does this mean?  I’m a slow learner?  I don’t hate it as much as I’m absolutely positive I do?  I’m not really sure.  It was as brutally miserable as ever, that much I can say, made only worse by the fact that I forgot to bring warmer clothes.

We got all our stuff turned in and got the heck out of there around 2:30 Sunday afternoon.  I actually thought I was feeling rather rested compared to a few of these things I’ve done, but I didn’t even get all the way home before I was fast asleep.  (Donette was driving luckily.)  The rest of the day was spent on the couch, watching television and drifting in and out of consciousness.  They finally got the results of the competition up this morning, and I’m happy to say Team TFB did “respectable,” which is about all we really strive for.  I was particularly pleased that my brisket got back to middle-of-the-road scores, as opposed to the drubbing I’ve taken at the last two competitions we’ve done this year.  Of course you could also say that, after trying several different things, I’m right back where I left off from last season.  Oh well!

Now before all the hate mail starts about getting the pictures up, I’ll admit there was a little technical glitch with the photos this year.  I didn’t take any.  Seriously, I think I took like 3 or 4, and those were nothing of interest.  My camera was in my supply box and I just didn’t get it out for some reason.  So, if anybody happened to be there over the weekend and has a few pictures for me, send them my way.

Triple Fat Back BBQ will be in booth 476 again this year, hope everybody can make it.  (This is really just a test post for my own entertainment/project.)