Another short week in the making, nice.  Thursday begins the long weekend at the American Royal BBQ, so I took off Thursday and Friday.  Let the marathon begin…  Now if I can just get through Monday, Tuesday and Wednesday.  Today has already kicked off with a little car trouble…  I guess I left something on in the “truck,” so we woke up to a dead battery this morning.  It will be interesting to see how long it sits in the garage before we take the trouble to get it jumped;  I’m conservatively guessing two weeks, unless we need it to haul stuff around this coming weekend.

The BBQ activities have already started, actually.  Friday I crossed the river and went up to Martin’s house to start prep work for the party.  We trimmed up a little meat so we’d be ready to cook the next day;  Nearly 160 pounds of brisket and pork butt.  Whew, that’s a lot of flesh.  Gets a little bigger every year;  That doesn’t even count all the ribs, chicken & sausage that we still have to get done.  We got it all carved up and seasoned, then I retreated back to the safety of the southlands, stopping by the 810 Zone on the way for some socialization.  I went to a guy’s 24th birthday party, just to make myself feel younger.  And I supposed it worked, at least until I went home at 8:30 because I was getting tired.

Saturday I once again crossed the river;  Twice in one weekend!  Geez that’s more miles than we put on the car in the entire last month.  Martin had the smoker fired up and we cooked up all the meat that we had prepped the night before.  That pretty much killed the entire day, but it was fun.  He put the TV out on the back deck, so we watched college games, and cooked, and…  That was it.  After everything got cooked, we broke out the trusty food saver and got everything vacuum sealed too;  I’d say we are in pretty good shape for a party this Friday.

Sunday, well, I guess I wasted the entire day again.  As I’ve done the last several Sundays, I sat on the couch watching football games that I wasn’t even remotely interested in.  Occasionally I would glance out the window and think “Sure looks nice out there, I should probably do something.”  But I never did, just sat there and clicked through channels.  At least next Sunday is already spoken for with the BBQ, so it won’t be a totally wasted day.  (Depending on your definition of a wasted day, naturally.)  The highlight of the day was lunch I’d say;  Donette whipped up a five-way for us, with a few chili dogs for appetizers.  That made for a “unique” little diversion in the day, I suppose.

My long weekend is over, time to get back to work.  Bummer.  It was a good weekend though, I’m moderately rested up.  I did come to the critical decision that I’m quitting the sport of BBQ though, so if you have any new hobbies for me, feel free to offer up some ideas.  Needless to say the BBQ competition didn’t go so well.  They took my whole enthusiasm for the contests this time, I don’t think I will do another one.  I turned in my best brisket, a veritable masterpiece of beef in my opinion, and they chewed it up and spit it out.  Quite literally, from the scores they gave me.  @#()$%!!!!  I’m not going to let it bother me though.  I’m over it already actually.  @#%*^.  Zim did get a ribbon in turkey though, saving the team from total disgrace.  Our other entries just didn’t do well for some reason.  We did manage to eke out a slim victory over our arch-rivals, the Red Glove BBQ Team, but we’re not in much of a position to gloat over it.  I guess you could say we did just a little less terrible than them.

Since that effectively wasted my entire weekend, I have nothing else to relate.  However, I do have another fascinating tidbit of info.  This guy at work, who has several “unique” hobbies (even better than BBQ’ing) recently built a homemade chicken plucker.  “However would you do that,” you ask?   Well, you simply buy the best-selling book on the Internet, “Anyone Can Build a Tub-Style Mechanical Chicken Plucker.”  I am thankful I was busy the weekend the chicken-slaughter went down, because he was looking for volunteers.  He did have the courtesy to video the event though, which was nice of him I thought.  Check it out:

Probably one of the top 10 amazing things I’ve ever seen.

Whew, it was a crisp ride in on the ol’ scooter this morning.  Dang near froze my ears off.  Hey, nobody said it was easy being green I guess.  And, it should pay off this afternoon when it’s 68 degrees and sunny;  Perfect scooter weather.  Let’s just hope it holds out all week, because I took the day off Thursday to go to the Royals game, and Friday I’ll be up in Kearney for the BBQ contest.

I think I’ll give that weekend around a C+,  and that only due to my generally positive disposition.  We started things off strong on Friday at the trusty Brooksider.  It was a nice evening to sit out on the deck and hang out, and we maximized the opportunity.  After that we went over to Carmens for a late dinner, which was delicious as always.  We haven’t been there in a long time, which I think made the food even better.  I don’t know why we waited so long between visits, but I imagine it has something to do with my rather frugal dining habits.  I estimated the tab roughly equaled three weeks of chicken-finger dinners across the street at the Brooksider, or two weeks of relleno dinners at Jalapenos, or 1.5 years of Cheezit lunches out of the machine at work.  Maybe I should have just enjoyed my linguine and not worried about it though.

Saturday the majority of the day was spent down at Operation Breakthrough, where some brainiac on the BBQ team had volunteered our services for the afternoon.  I just don’t think I’m cut out for do-gooding, I dunno.  I can’t even do any good around my own house, much less go help out some place else.  I’ve got two foot high saplings growing out my gutters, my windows that were installed three years ago still haven’t been painted, and the basement leaks like a sieve.  Yeah, I think I’ll go spend a day working on somebody elses place.  Sigh.  Anyway, our designated task was to move a small library from one end of the building to the other.  As with any other task, it proved to be a lot harder than it initially appeared, exacerbated by the fact that the air conditioning was broken.  The original estimate of three hours ended up turning into six, but for the most part we got the job some in some fashion.  There was a bit of confusion on the actual book moving part…  Apparently they were in some kind of order before we got ahold of them.  “Alphabatized,” I think was the term they used?  Whoops.  Oh well, there were only 10,000 books, how long could that take to straighten back out?

Sunday, for the most part, was spent watching football on the TV.  That proved to make for a pretty darn boring day though…  I might just be done wasting my Sundays in that fashion.  My fantasy team has already been decimated by injuries, the Chiefs are pathetic…  What’s to watch.  Maybe I’ll turn off the TV and paint the windows next week.  Or, maybe I’ll just be bored again and then complain about it;  Much more likely scenario.  Between the afternoon and evening games we did walk Gabe down to Foo’s for a frozen custard break, but that was about the sole accomplishment for the day.

I declare summer officially over, from a weather standpoint.  I don’t know if it is on the calendar, but I think the cooler weather is here to stay.  Get your sweaters out, people.  Man, this site is just chock full of invaluable information.  Or unvaluable information, or something like that.

We didn’t really do much last weekend,  hence the unsolicited weather report.  Just trying to bulk up the content a little.  Saturday we did go to a BBQ competition at Blue Springs.  We headed out there with Brice and volunteered our services for judging.  It was a good sized competition as local ones go;  I think I heard 83 teams were entered.  It was raining pretty hard towards the end, so we didn’t do any walking around the grounds, but the judging part was entertaining.  We feasted on some good, some not so good, and some mediocre ‘que for about three hours.  After judging three of these competitions this summer, I’m a bit surprised that there aren’t more judges who also compete.  As a matter a fact, I haven’t met anybody else who competes.  I guess they are all just there for the free grub, which is fair enough.  Me and Bob, we were checking out the entries and interviewing the other judges, looking for some ideas of what to do and what not to do.  Well, that and enjoying the free grub.  After our bellies were full, we dropped by the Brooksider for a post-bbq wrap up, then headed back home.  Far as I remember, that wrapped up the day.

Sunday I got up rather early and fired up a roux for the first gumbo pot of the season.  I don’t guess it was really that cold out, but it was the first football Sunday of the year and I had a fridge full of scraps, so it seemed like the thing to do.  A few neighbors came over to help eat it up, and the rest of the day was spent on feed and football.  Let the wasted Sundays begin!!

As for the weekly poll, yeah I know that’s been used at least once.  But, in the spirit of the season, and lacking any other ideas, I put it up again.  By the way, TFB BBQ will be competing in Kearney on the 19th – 20th, mark your calendars.

Happy three-day weekend to all.  Mine was more of a nice round six-day, as I was on vacation starting last Wednesday.  Wednesday I did absolutely nothing, then Thursday we flew to Cincinnati for Ed & Kim’s wedding.  I’m not sure exactly what the big hurry was, but apparently they felt they had to get all hitched up, official-like.  You’d think they would want to kind of test the waters first, maybe get to know each other.  But, hey, to each their own.  Donette was one of the bridesmaids, so she went to a luncheon and then the rehearsal on Friday.  Meanwhile, I took this time for my “down day” and hung out reading at the hotel pool all afternoon.  I probably haven’t shed my shirt in public for around three years now, so I figured it was time to catch a few rays.  What the heck, I don’t know these people or their dinner plans, so I didn’t really care if I ruined a few appetites.  So, I popped in the headphones and set about reading “The Dante Club,” which I’ve had for a few years but never got around to opening.  A few hours later, I was rather startled to notice that the air had an odd reddish hue to it.  Curious as to what was causing this peculiar atmospheric condition, I glanced up at the sky, half expecting to see some kind of ominous storm clouds.  Alas, it was not the sky at all, but the glow radiating from my fully baked chest.  And my belly, previously comparable in color to the underside of a catfish, had taken on an almost purple tint.  Seriously alarmed, I threw on my sandals to head inside, and quickly discovered my feet were also near blistering.  Good grief.  I tried to “tough it out” for the rest of the weekend, but it sort of took the wind out of me.  Movement of any kind was a bit torturous.  Donette, with her typically compassionate nature, reminded me that “If I would have been at the wedding rehearsal like I was supposed to be, that wouldn’t have happened.”

The rest of the weekend was spent gingerly shuffling around enjoying the nuptial events.  The rehearsal dinner was Friday evening, which was a lot of fun.  I had an awesome filet mignon, which was I believe the first steak I’d tackled since getting these stupid braces.  I must say, it was worth the effort.  Saturday was pretty much all-day wedding stuff.  Donette went to Kim’s house about 10:00 in the morning, where all the girls met up to have their hair and makeup done.  Ed’s brother Tim picked me up around 11:00 and we went over to the hotel where the boys were staying, where I found them bright-eyed and bushy-tailed, furiously preparing for the day ahead.  (And that’s the honest truth, no matter what stories may have leaked to the press.  Well, maybe not the whole truth, but they did in fact at some point get ready.  Details are of no consequence here.)  The rest of the afternoon was spent on pictures, driving to the church, etc, etc.  The ceremony itself was at 5:00, in a very nice, if a bit warmish cathedral downtown.  You’ve all been to weddings, I don’t suppose I need a lot of detail here.  After that was the reception, highlighted by I would say the best wedding band I’ve seen since one of our friends hired Swingcrew.  They were called “The Mistics” and they were quite entertaining to say the least.  They had everybody out dancing on the first song they played, and I don’t think anybody left the floor from then on.  Well, everyone but me…  My sunburned feet hurt, you know.

Sunday we flew back home, picked up Gabe, and pretty much shut ourselves in the house for the rest of the long weekend.  I have a brisket on the smoker today, so we’ll see how that project turns out shortly.  I posted a few pictures of the wedding in my photo gallery;  For much more comprehensive coverage check out Claire’s (Ed’s Mom) page on flikr though.  She doesn’t have the actual wedding pics up yet I see, but it’s a safe bet they will be there soon, and in the meantime there are “a few” photos of the rehearsal and stuff to keep you busy.