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.)

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.