Wow, it seems like I’ve been gone much longer than a week.  Guess I got my money’s worth.  I spent the better part of my vacation in Branson/Silver Dollar City with my family, including all eleven nieces and nephews.  Actually there were only four little ‘uns, but they were really fast;  Seemed like more.  It was a good get-away, made even better by the choice of lodging.  Mom rented a “cabin” at a place called Stonebridge, about ten minutes from Silver Dollar City.  Ahhhh, camping at it’s finest.  If I had researched it a little better I would have brought a fishing pole, as our cabin backed right up to a stocked lake.  But, it backed up to a nice swimming pool too, so that worked out fine.  Most of our time was spent at the amusement park.  In two days of attendance, the rides I went on included the train.  That was it.  Oh, and the tram from the parking lot.  It was too hot to stand in line for the rides so I just hung out.  I had plenty of amusement watching the kids ride everything, and counting the teeth on the locals.

We got back home on Thursday, and started planning for a nice long weekend in the ‘hood.  When Donette woke up on Friday though, she got it in her head that she absolutely had to be at Kim’s bachelorette party that night… In Cincinnati.  What the heck, she was still packed from the Branson trip, so she threw her suitcase back in the Pilot and headed east.  She was sort of upset about missing Pigfest this year, so she got to hit that also.  Sounded like a good time, although I don’t have all the lurid details yet…  She hasn’t made it back home so far.  Last I heard from her, she was too tired to drive and was holing up in some seedy hotel in Illinois.  I thought I heard another voice in the background, but it was probably the radio.

Left to our own devices, Gabe and I did a whole lot of nothing over the weekend.  Let’s see…  I did some cooking, including a practice brisket that took up the better part of my Saturday.  We went for a few walks.  I had dinner at the Brooksider and Tanner’s.  Mowed the yard.  Went on a short bicycle ride.  You get the idea.  Oh, and I watched “The Fast & The Furious:  Tokyo Drift” three more times, bringing my total to somewhere around 27.  I really need to drop HBO.

That weekend wasn’t much to write about, and I don’t have any more pictures to post. Quite the dilemma. Actually it works out nicely, as I’ve got today off and would rather be out doing “something” than sitting here typing.

I had to go to the Orthodontist last Wednesday, and I think this likely precipitated my rapid slide into a weekend-long funk. Man, they cranked the hardware down good this time around. He was so nice as to even inform me, “Wow, you’re gonna feel this one for a week or so.” Gee, thanks, Dr. Evil. His other line that oddly amused me for some reason was, “Whoops… Can somebody bring me a magnet over here?” At any rate, he was correct in his assessment of discomfort; My teeth friggin’ hurt.

Friday night we went to a retirement party down at the Brooksider. Our friend Jerry (finally) retired from Hallmark after 55 years. Fifty-five!! Good grief, did he start working when he was 10 or something? It was a good party though, and I stayed quite a while. I spent the majority of my time off to the side working on Ritchie’s laptop that he brought down for me to look at though. Wow, what a mess. He had somehow managed to install an antivirus program that is just short of being a virus itself. (Actually most sites I looked at DO classify it as a virus.) If there’s anything worse than getting a virus on your PC, it’s paying $50 for the privilege. And, just when I thought I had it licked, the battery on the laptop went dead.

Saturday, after a morning at the gym and lunch at Jalapeños, Donette took me shopping out at Cockrell Mercantile in a blatant effort at snapping me out of my bitter streak. I’d never even heard of this place, but she’d been there with my Mom before on a shop-a-thon. It was a cool place, I must admit; Several building full of likely every kitchen gadget you can imagine, as well as pots and pans, knives, etc. Toys upon toys. Impressively though, I didn’t buy a single thing. I made a list of things I’d like to have though… I can email it to you if you are looking for my Christmas presents already. I even tried to sign up for their bridal registry, but they wouldn’t let me. C’mon people, this is the 21rst century, open your minds a little.

OK that’s enough random rambling for one entry. I’ve got a three day “vacation” at Branson staring me in the face and I have to go get psych’d up. I’m not entirely sure how one does that, but we’ll see what happens.

Well, what can I say, another dead weekend.  I sat in front of my laptop so long I think I actually got a slight tan from the screen radiation.  Friday night, just to get in the swing of things, I did nothing at all.  I sat on the back porch and tried out my new cigars that came in the mail, listened to the Royals on XM, and swatted mosquitoes.  Woo hoo!!

Saturday, after a similarly slow start, I at least left the house for a while.  I drove out to the going-out-of-business sale at KC Creations in Merriam, mostly just to check out the bikes.  Wow, did they have some.  Unfortunately I could never hope to afford one, which I imagine is a common situation… Hence the sale.  They had some little things I would have liked to have, like some sunglasses, jackets, and helmets, but I left empty-handed.  For one thing the sale was “cash only” and I didn’t have a nickel on me, and for another thing I just really didn’t need any of it.  (Even I have come to the grim realization that I probably don’t need four helmets.)  After that brief outing, Gabe and I went to the park so he could get some much-needed exercise.  This had the desired effect of putting him in a deep slumber, while Donette and I went to dinner over at John & Susan’s house.  I tried to weasel out of this initially;  Not that I didn’t want to go but the oncall thing had me nervous.  I was informed that John had ordered live lobsters from Maine though;  Uhhhh, yeah never mind, I can make it.  I’ve never eaten a whole lobster that I can remember, and definitely never cooked one, so the evening was an experience.  To go along with the “main course” we had 10 lbs. of crayfish, corn on the cob, andouille sausage, and new potatoes.  Wow.  There wasn’t a speck of it left when we were done either.  It took John & I nearly two hours to mow through the 10 lbs. of mudbugs, but we finished ’em.

Sunday I spent the majority of the day prone on the couch, deeply remorseful for my gluttonous ways the night before.  I blamed it on fatigue from working into the wee hours of the morning, but it was more likely the multiple pounds of food I put away.  I waited until it got good and miserably hot out, then ventured out for short while to wash the scooter.  Also, in something of a monumental event, I dug my bicycle out of the basement and went on a (very) short ride.  This was literally the first time I have been on my bike since the 200 mile trip down the Katy Trail a few years ago.  I’d like to say it felt good but I’d be exaggerating.  We’ll see if I get it out of the garage again this summer.  After that, well not much else happened.  I grilled some steaks for dinner, which probably would have been worth retelling if not for paling in comparison to the lobster dinner the night before.  And, that was about it.  In my copious free time over the weekend I did post some new pictures finally, so feel free to click through those.  I really can’t explain all the food pics…  I was cleaning off my memory card and found all those so I went ahead and posted them.  Strange.

Wow, was that a three-day weekend or something?  I feel like I’ve been beat with a stick, or maybe BBQ tongs.  We spent our entire weekend on a large swath of asphalt in Raytown, participating in a BBQ competition.  Day one of this debacle was Friday, when Donette met her parents at the BBQ grounds to set up their motorhome.  They arrived to find the campground looking like something of a tractor pull;  There was a very steep, very muddy hill leading up to the grounds, and people weren’t having much luck pulling campers, smokers, etc, up it.  They decided to play it safe and just park in an adjacent parking lot.  This location ending up serving several purposes, mostly positive.  Most obviously, we didn’t have to deal with the mud.  Secondly, we didn’t have to deal with any neighbors.  Also, this was the first time we attempted to keep Gabe with us on such an event, so his potential for failure was minimized.  I didn’t go to the trouble to verify this, but I am pretty sure that doggies of Gabe’s persuasion are not welcome in the city limits of Raytown, despite the fact that they welcome every other type of miscreant in the universe.  Anyway, we set up a cozy little home roughly 500 yards from the nearest campsite, and went about our business.  We had the obligatory, if very small, gathering on Friday night, and then set about process of prepping everything about midnight.

Saturday was a blur of activity, as most of these nightmare competitions are.  It proved to be a lot harder trying to manage all the different steps without the full team there.  (It was just Martin, Donette and I.)  We got everything submitted on time though, so that was an accomplishment.  As for the results?  Well, in her grand debut of competition BBQ, Donette got a ribbon in chicken at ninth out of 60+ entries.  As for the other three entries that Martin and I managed, well, we’re seasoned veterans so our results were not of that much concern.  You know, we were just there in kind of a supporting role, so I don’t want to go into our entries and risk taking away from her moment of glory.  I’m not pouting or anything, but I will never wield a set of tongs again as long as I live.  I quit.  Screw it, I’m done.  Stupid dummy-head judges wouldn’t know a competition brisket if I smacked them with it.  Which I might have done, had I not thrown a fit and winged it in the woods.  I’m not going to pout though.  As for the competition overall?  Well, the motorhome was great, the A/C paid off handsomely.  Gabe also did very well;  He spent the majority of his time asleep, just like at home.  We took him up to the awards ceremony to test his limits a little bit, and he did just peachy.

Sunday was a write-off.  I spent the entire day on the couch watching TV and trying to recover, with the exception of our routine lunch at Jalapeños.  I honestly can’t think of another thing we did, just several things we should have done.  High on that list was unpacking and cleaning up from the BBQ, but we just didn’t have the energy.  Everything is still piled high in the middle of the living room, where we threw it when we got home Saturday.  Some of it is biodegradable, it should decompose over the next few years.

I am trapped at home today, unable to leave the house due to the relentless deluge of rain which has rendered my scooter useless.  I suppose, in a pinch, I could drive the car, but the resulting increase of my carbon footprint would leave me sleepless for days.  Actually I just took the day off to catch up on an ever growing to-do list.  Among the higher priority items are sorting some pictures off my camera, upgrading the code on my router, and watching the Royal’s game.  In retrospect, I probably should have just gone to work.

That wasn’t a bad weekend.  It wasn’t really a good one either, but in keeping with my naturally optimistic outlook I’ll lean towards the positive.  We warmed up on Thursday night by checking out The Drop down in the swanky Martini Corner.  One of the neighbor girls is moving out of town so they had a little “going away” gathering for her.  It was a nice place, and the food was great too;  Heck we might even make the forty-block pilgrimage up there again some day.  Or, we might not.  You know, while I’m delving back into the weeknights for material, we went out Wednesday night too.  We went to, of all places, the Brooksider for our friend Anne’s birthday party.  Apparently this little walk on the wild side knocked the wind out of us though, because Friday night we hunkered down and did nothing.  Well, I guess we did something, but we didn’t go anywhere.  As part of our current “money saving” effort, we decided to just stay home and enjoy the moderately tolerable weather on the back porch.  We grilled some fajitas, played catch with dog, listened to music, and other such homey activities.

Saturday I started the day by going out to Mom’s to work in her yard.  One of the recent storms split a big pear tree in her front yard so I headed out there to try and clean up the resulting mess.  By the time it was all cut up I could barely stand under my own power, and I’m actually still quite sore from all the manual labor.  I was a little distressed to look at my watch and see that it only took about two hours;  I figured it had been at least twelve.  It was worth the effort though;  I got lunch at the Best Burrito and a nice pile of pear wood for the smoker.  After cleaning up and knocking back a 1/2 bottle of ibuprofen, we headed down to Bo Lings for Mary’s 40th birthday party.  If there is one thing better than dinner at Bo Lings (one of our favorite restaurants,) it’s dinner at Bo Lings on Schmidt’s tab.  SCORE.  Their food is always delicious, but it tasted just a little bit better watching Scott cringe.  After dinner, the crowd all headed down to Harrah’s for gambling and socializing, but I couldn’t bring myself to contribute to that den of iniquity so I went home.  While I vacuumed the living room and mopped the kitchen, Donette pumped the better part of our retirement savings into the slot machines.

Sunday was yet another in our recent string of BBQ practice sessions.  I fired up the smoker in the early afternoon and threw on a mid-size chunk o’ beef, and that pretty much killed the day.  Between the intermittent rain and the howling wind it proved to be a rather challenging undertaking, but it came out OK.  One of the neighbors came over to taste-test and didn’t get sick (yet) so that counts as a success.  Why all the practice?  Well, next weekend we are participating in the Raytown BBQ competition.  By “we” I mean Donette and I, and Martin has agreed to moderate.  (Errrr, I mean “assist.”)  Should be interesting.  And if we’re not still married a week from now, hey, we had a good run of it.  Plus, I’ll have a good headline for next week’s update.