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.

Honestly I don’t have much more to go on this week than last.  I think I’m in a funk;  The Memphis trip knocked all the energy out of me, and I didn’t have that much to start with.  It’s not like I didn’t do anything at all over the three-day weekend, I just didn’t have the inclination to retell it.  We hit the Power and Light district a few times, checked out the new Bass Pro shop, and I judged the Great American BBQ contest, to summarize a few of the “highlights.”  As far as this weekend goes, I guess I’ll work with what I have.  Friday I went oncall, so we kept things low-key.  We went to a neighborhood “happy hour”, and then I think we might have, um, watched TV or something.  Maybe the Royals game?  Oh, we went to dinner at Jalapeno’s.  Chicken verde burrito night, quite exciting.  (See my dilemma here with the whole boring weekend thing?)

Saturday, Donette got up at the crack of 10:00 and we took Gabe to the dog park.  He has fun there, but much like his owner he runs out of energy pretty quick.  He generally runs like a crazed moose for around 15 or 20 minutes and then lays down and goes to sleep, at which point we shove him back in the car and go home.  Wears him out I guess, so it’s worth the drive.  After that short foray, I dropped Donette down at the Plaza where she met up with a dozen or so other girls for the big “Sex in the City” festivities.  That was an all-day event apparently, so I set out on a somewhat circuitous journey around the city on my motorcycle.  That’s pretty pricey entertainment these days, but what the heck, it was a nice day and I couldn’t think of anything else to do.  I had a little bit of new “gear” to road-test, so that was moderately exciting.  I got a new helmet, a new tank-bag, and a new jacket, as well as a new seat that I bought over the winter.  My main theory behind the tank-bag was to have someplace to put my ipod, but it turns out that if you get much over 40 mph you can’t hear anything but wind noise anyway.  Oh well, it’s still pretty handy.  Once Donette got home we grilled some dinner, and then it was back to another night of TV.

Sunday brought a moderate amount of activity, at least in relation to the rest of the weekend.  We fired up the smoker to practice some brisket and chicken, with several radical, cutting edge ideas to test out.  While the meat was cooking, we also set about cleaning out the garage.  Wow, they should feature that undertaking on that “Dirty Jobs” show.  ICKY!!!!  Geez, it’s only been six or seven years since the last time we cleaned it, you wouldn’t think it would be that gross already.  Blecht, I’m getting itchy just thinking about it.  We got it into pretty decent shape though, including ripping out what could well have been the most impractical shelving infrastructure in the world, and disposing of Kane’s secret litter box.  (BAD kitty.)  So, short of a trip to the dump to get rid of all the stuff we got rid of, I guess it’s good for another seven years.  The Martins came over later in the afternoon to test out the BBQ product, which they deemed “serviceable.”  Donette’s chicken experiment was more successful than my brisket I thought, although it did yield a little promise.  A few more tweaks next weekend and I might be onto something.

Please come back next week when I have done something.

Whew, that went by awfully fast for a three-day weekend. I took off work Friday, and we left for a driving trip to Memphis Thursday night after work. Since we got the late start, we only made it half-way that night, then got up Friday morning and drove the last several hours. Boy, nothing like a nice drive through scenic Arkansas to start a weekend! (Unfortunately there is no “sarcasm” font available, so you’ll just have to take it for granted.)

Upon our arrival in downtown Memphis, we immediately scanned the GPS for BBQ joints, and decided on Neely’s for our first visit. It was a pretty solid lunch; As with every other place we would try over the weekend, the ribs were good, the slaw was “different,” and the beans were nothing to write home about. After stuffing our bellies, we checked into a hotel downtown and handed the keys to the valet, marking the last time we would see the car for the weekend. We didn’t have any real plans, but our main destination was the Memphis In May BBQ competition, which was easily within walking distance from the hotel. After a quick nap, we headed that direction, via the famous Beale Street. I guess it’s famous anyway, they seemed pretty proud of it. Supposedly it is the second-most-visited street in the US after Bourbon Street; After spending considerable time there over the weekend I’d buy into that designation. We showed up at the ‘Que competition around 6:00, and spent the rest of the evening there just kind of walking around. It was a lot like the American Royal in that it was packed, had lots of deafeningly loud parties going on, and it would be better if you knew somebody in the competition. I still had a good time of it though, taking pictures and checking out all the booth setups, which were on average more elaborate than the ones at the Royal. A big thing there was to set up scaffolding to make a second party level, effectively doubling your booth space, while tripling the liability. Genius! Seemed to work well though, and I never did see anybody take a header off one of them. Anyway, we walked around for several hours checking it all out, wrapping up the evening with a concert by the world-renowned redneck band, The Kentucky Headhunters. Holy smokes, those guys are even uglier than I remember. Wow. They are just fascinatingly ugly. MESMERIZING ugly even. About the 150th “YEEEE HAW” we had to leave though. That was just into the third song, so we really didn’t make it too long. We had been walking so much we really needed to sit for a while, so we headed back to Beale street for a late dinner. The party was in full swing by that time, so we had a bit of trouble finding a place to eat, but we finally scored two open chairs at “The Pig.” These were my favorite ribs of the weekend incidentally. I’m not sure if they were really that good, or it was just that it was 1:00 in the morning and I was half-starved.

Saturday brought pretty much a repeat of Friday, we just got an earlier start of it. We headed down to the BBQ Competition around noon to check things out in the daylight. Without all the parties and noise going on, we talked to a lot more teams and kind of figured out what was going on. (Once we dropped the name “Triple Fat Back BBQ” we found them more than willing to chat with us.) The coolest thing (I thought) was the part where the judges walk around to each booth and taste the product. The teams all set fancy tables and then give a big spiel to the judge about their equipment, food, etc, then they sit down and eat. On the downside, I thought it kind of lame that the teams only enter one major category; Whole hog, ribs, or shoulder. It was fun checking out all the smokers and stuff though; Again, pretty much like a mini-Royal. My favorite line of the day came from one old guy, who we asked how his smoker towed. It was about a 20′ long trailer, and they had made the ill-advised decision to set their enormous rig on the very back end of it. He summed it up with his annoying drawl, “Well, you get ‘er much over 40 mph and she starts shakin’ like an 18-year-old in a topless bar.” Nice. For lunch we went with Corky’s ribs. They were pretty solid, although they likely suffered a bit from the re-heating. (We were at their booth down at the competition, not at the actual restaurant.) After spending the entire afternoon down there, we decided to check out the local minor-league baseball team, the Memphis Redbirds. The stadium was right across from our hotel and we like checking out ballparks, so we figured what the heck. We bought the cheapest tickets in the park, which put us in the grass out in left field. Being way too old to sit on the ground for long, we only made it a few innings, then we headed to Rendezvous restaurant for one last slab of ribs. Donette voted these her favorite, and they were indeed a fine rack o’ bones.

Yesterday we didn’t do anything but drive. Including lunch at beautiful Mountain Grove MO, the trip took us seven hours. Do the math on that one and it turns out the good ol’ Accord got a workout.