The Holiday funk has set in.  I see no future for me but constant driving and eating.  Wake me up when January gets here.  I have to admit I am looking forward to Thanksgiving though, although I’m trying to shift to a more negative aspect.  No matter how much of a pain it might be, that menu sure sounds good.

I took off work last Thursday and Friday, so I had a nice little four-day weekend.  I’ve got a few extra days of vacation floating around that I need to burn, so I’m sort of throwing random days on the schedule.  Nothing of note to report on though, really.  Friday I rode my motorcycle out to Mom’s house and put it in her garage for the Winter.  I was sad to see it go, although I really don’t ride it much any more.  All the same, I like to see it there in my garage in the morning;  Gives me something to look forward to next Spring.  But, what can ya’ do;  It’ll be snowing before you know it and we need to fit our car in the garage.  We went to the new Mexican Restaurant for lunch while we were out there, which was quite delicious.  Solid menu, we’ll have to go back and try a few other items.  I finally narrowed my choice down to a chile verde burrito, which was quite delicious but there were several other choices calling my name too.  Friday night we popped “300” in the dvd player for some evening entertainment.  I was a little disappointed I must say, but Donette liked it.  Actually I fell asleep pretty early in the movie, so maybe I should give it a second chance.

Saturday I continued the cinematic bonanza with an early morning showing of the under-rated classic, “Cool As Ice.”  Considered by many to be the final undoing of Vanilla Ice, I none the less find it a veritable show-case of his wide ranging talent.  From rapping to dancing to motorcycle riding, he fits it all in this hour and a half train wreck.  It’s a pretty funny movie, and you find yourself constantly wondering “Did I actually like this guy when he came out?  Nahhhhh, surely not.”  After that, I clicked through the channels and came across “O Brother, Where Art Thou?” on one of the HD channels.  This is one of the several movies that I have most likely seen in their entirety, but in 15 minutes pieces and all out of order.  Kind of hard to follow that way, but I still have a bad habit of watching movies in that manner.  I caught it about 10 minutes into the show this time though, so I went ahead and stayed on the same channel.  Good show; highly quotable and a good soundtrack.  Next in the tv-a-thon was the MU football game.  I made it through most of that, but then we had to leave to go to a birthday party.  Oh, and not just any birthday party, a party for a one year old.  Somehow or another I’ve managed to escape going to the “kid parties” my entire life, but as in every other facet of my life, my luck finally ran out.  Ahhhh, it wasn’t bad.  I was saved in no small part by two factors;  1) It was at KC Masterpiece restaurant so there were brisket sandwiches, and 2)  Martin had to go too.  Plus, it did my heart good to know the little birthday girl will always cherish the time her good friend Phil pulled himself away from a day of college football to come to her first birthday party.  (You remember your first birthday, right?)  After that, Martins came over and we engaged in a lively evening of cards and dominoes.

Sunday, well not much to go on there.  We went to Sharp’s for breakfast and laid down a good base of biscuits and gravy.  As it turned out though, we didn’t really need a good base because we didn’t do anything all day.  My Sundays, it would seem, are getting increasingly non-productive.  Other than watching football and reading the paper, I can’t think of a single useful thing I did all day.

Another weekend “off.”  I’ll report what I can with what I have to work with though.  Friday night Donette was gone by the time I got home from another arduous work week.  Something about needing to have some fun, which automatically excluded me, or something like that.  She had an outing planned with her friend Susan actually… They hit the Plaza, Bobby Bakers, and various other haunts.  Meanwhile, given the peace and quiet of an empty house, (rampaging Pit Bulls aside,) I decided to embark on a mission to finish “rating” all the music in our iTunes collection.  This is a moderately important undertaking, as it affects which songs go on my iPod, and consequently what tunes I will hear all day at work, and so consequently my relative level of sanity.  That project didn’t get too far though;  After about an hour and a half of alternating country-western, 80’s tunes, symphony music, and metal, I was about to go on a bi-state killing spree.  Perhaps I need to do some type of pre-filtering before I wade into the actual ranking process.  After that failed effort, I settled in for a night of movies, starting with “Wild Hogs.”  That was a pretty awful movie.  Just as I was thinking, “Well, at least Travolta isn’t dancing,” he even crossed that line and threw in the obligatory dance scene.  Puke.  I watched the whole thing though, so it must have been entertainment at some level.  I followed up that cinematic debacle with “Texas Chainsaw Massacre:  The Beginning.”  Now THAT was a great film.  Pure, unabashed trash horror, with no pretense of usefulness at all.  No plot, horrible acting, cheesy special effects;  Right up my alley.

Saturday morning, Donette got up at the crack of 9:00 and headed to my Mom’s house for an afternoon of cookie baking.  Now THERE is a homey Saturday afternoon activity.  They had a “girls day” out there, baking up a storm;  Not something achieved very often in our own house.  Meanwhile, I spent my afternoon sitting at the Brooksider with Martin & Brice, continuing on my never-ending quest to become a sports fan.  The place was remarkably uncrowded and relatively quiet, so I made it all the way through the MU game.  After the game I suggested, of my own free will no less, heading up to the Northlands and playing some dominoes at Martin’s house.  In some veiled attempt at steering me elsewhere, he got out his pocket knife and threatened to stab me if I came within 2 miles of his house.  Wow, what’s up with the unsociable attitude, Martin?  Since Mr. Grumpy wasn’t going to entertain me any further, I went home and put down the rest of the sod in the back yard.  For the best, I suppose;  It had to be done sometime.  I ought to take a few more pictures, as it really does look quite nice, at least for the time being.  There is still a solid chance it will just die, or our sprinkle system will freeze and burst, turning the neighborhood into an ice-rink.

Sunday didn’t bring much of note.  We watched the entire, riveting drama that was the Chiefs game, then took the dogs for a nice walk.  (Maybe the “nice” qualifier is a stretch;  There is nothing “nice” about Belle on a leash.)  After our walk I washed the motorcycle and scooter, and as far as I can remember that was pretty much the day.  I watched bits and pieces of the rest of the football games;  It was apparent early on that both of my Fantasy teams were going to receive an unprecedented drubbing, so that kind of knocked out what little value I get out of them in the first place.  Donette fixed us a delectable can of soup for dinner (no, really, it was good) and I retired upstairs to alternate between the Sunday night game and “Two Mules for Sister Sara.”  My last gasp at winning one of my Fantasy games was Peyton Manning, and it was obvious that wasn’t going to work out for me, so a good Clint movie gave me an alternate diversion.

I think Winter is going to be here a bit sooner than I would prefer.  My morning scooter commutes are starting to get just a bit nippy.  But, since we only have one car these days, and Donette is working two whole days a weeks, my alternate transportation methods are somewhat limited.  I try to wait until the sun is out and the temperature is at least 40, but that doesn’t always work out.  So, I wear lots and lots of clothes.  Flannel-lined pants, double jackets, heavy gloves, etc.  I am worried that all those bulky clothes are going to detract from my “coolness” factor though.  That would be pretty hard, because nothing exudes coolness quite like an old fat guy on a scooter, but the thought has entered my mind none the less.  Maybe I should get a big snow suit or something?

We finally had a “down” weekend; Not much going on.  Friday night was a total wash.  I messed around with my PC’s a bit, with half an eye on some television show or another, and next thing I knew it was too late to go anywhere.  (Which is like 7:00 in my book.)  So, we built a cozy little fire in the back yard fire pit, broke out a cigar, (me, not Donette) and called it a quiet night at home.  Not so bad;  Rather relaxing actually.

Saturday was somewhat more eventful, if not as busy as our recent weekends.  The first project of the day was laying some sod in the back yard.  Since the addition of the second dog to the house, the yard has taken an absolute beating.  I think most of the damage is just from their constant game of “chase,” although Belle’s mysterious penchant for digging random holes doesn’t help matters either.  Donette and Ronda tilled everything up last Spring and put down a bunch of seed. It tried to grow, but never really stood a chance against the galloping mooses.  By mid-summer, despite constant watering and fertilizing, our once-green lawn looked like this.  Yeah, the seed project didn’t work out so well.  So, for our second attempt, we decided to try some sod.  Donette ordered a load of 100% fescue from the Grasspad.  That crap is just this side of a noxious weed, but it’s supposed to hold up good under heavy traffic.  (Which we have…)  I recruited a buddy of mine from work to help, and we got started pretty early in the morning.  Unfortunately, a mere hour or two later, we discovered we had grossly underestimated the amount of sod needed.  Dang.  Oh well, the part we got done looks better, for the time being at least.  The entire time we were working, Gabe was sitting in the corner thinking “FOOL, that stuff doesn’t stand a chance.”  We shall see.  Anyway, I was at something of a crossroads at this point in the day.  I’d planned on an entire day of yard work, and here it was noon and I had nothing left to do.  Luckily Zim called right about this time, and wanted to meet up at the Brooksider to watch some football.  Whew, just in the nick of time, saved from an otherwise productive afternoon.  Indeed, that pretty much killed the rest of my day.  We sat down there all afternoon, then I bailed back home to watch the MU game in the safety and relative calm of my own house.  Meanwhile, Donette went out with a bunch of friends for a “girls night out.”  I think they went to La Bodega or something like that.  I’m sure they didn’t have any fun without their men around though.

The first thing we discovered Sunday morning is that dogs do not observe daylight savings time.  We thought we were ahead of the game when we set all our clocks back before we went to bed Saturday night.  It was a flawless plan, and should have resulted in an extra hour of sleep.  Alas, the pups have it in their simple little heads that breakfast is served at 6:00, which was 5:00 on this particular day.  It is a total waste of time to try and convince them to go back to bed for another hour too;  They will not be ignored.  So, we had an unusually early start to our Sunday.  (I’m not really sure how we’re going to get their clocks reset actually;  The same thing happened this morning.)  I had lots of time to kill before football started, so I went to the gym and then stopped by the grocery store and got stuff for a pot of gumbo.  The gumbo came out pretty mediocre.  My roux didn’t get dark enough, and it was downhill from there.  I don’t know what happened, I stirred that stupid stuff for an hour and it still didn’t get dark enough.  I used peanut oil instead of veggie oil;  Is it possible that you can’t make a good roux out of peanut oil?  Very mysterious.  Anyway, the rest of Sunday was spent watching football and eating mediocre gumbo.  All-in-all a rather poor day;  Marginal food and I got beat by a stupid girl in Fantasy Football again.  Dang.

Happy Halloween all.  Hopefully everyone has their costumes ready to go for a big night of trick-or-treating.  Not us though.  We kind of gave up on Halloween;  Too much of a nuisance.  Plus, we’re still on a diet so we can’t have candy around the house, you know.  Maybe we’ll give out carrot sticks or something.  Actually, we are planning to leave the front door open and the porch light on, and then when kids ring the doorbell the dogs can rush the storm door and scare the crap out of them.  We’re going to take some snacks over to the neighbors house and watch out the window and laugh.  Come on over, it’ll be a hoot.

Well we had a pretty busy weekend again.  Friday I started things off by going to Kennedy’s with Brice and Martin, for their “grand re-opening” event.  Personally I’ve never been much on Kennedy’s anyway, and their “temporary” location doesn’t do much for me either.  But, what the heck, gotta keep the local shops open.  Supposedly they are re-building on their old location, so if that ever actually starts the construction should provide a diversion, as it’s right outside the window from their current spot.  (The sorta-historic Kennedy’s burned down last winter, if you don’t remember.)  We hung out there for a while, and then picked up a pizza (so much for the diet) and met up with the girls at home.  I spent the rest of the evening kicking everybody’s butt in dominoes.  Nobody was very sure on the rules, but since I won they must have been right.

Saturday we had some friends in from Nebraska, Army buddies of mine from “The Big One of ’91”.  Tom and Tammy come up every and then, but the last time Dan and Denise visited us was for our wedding, so they haven’t seen KC in a little while.  Since it might be another 15 years before they make it out this way I wanted to do it up right, so I decided to take them to the Brooksider.  Spare no expense, I always say.  We introduced them to everybody down there, had some delicious chicken wings and nachos for lunch, then hung out watching the Huskers get their weekly beat-down.  After that, we hopped a bus down to the Plaza so the girls could take a mercifully short shopping break.  When they were done, we took everybody on a short tour of the Plaza, showing them all my favorite spots.  Since I don’t really like anywhere on the Plaza, this made for an extremely short tour.  My recommended spots consisted of Tomfooleries and the ‘Falloon, both of which went over pretty well with the group.  Actually I had very good tenderloin sandwich at Tomfooleries;  I’d even say it was good enough to merit a trip back some day.

Sunday we spent the better part of the day cooking.  The Nebraska crew came over for breakfast, so I made a big pot of biscuits and gravy and some fried eggs.  (Yeah, the ol’ diet ain’t going so well.)  They had to start their trek home around 11:00, and after they left I went to work boiling a chicken.  It’s been said that I am easily amused, and to that end I would say that boiling chickens is one of my favorite things to do around the house.  There is just a lot of “bang for the buck” out of a boiled bird.  You get a couple of quarts of broth that you can do all sorts of amazing things with, especially with soup-weather right around the corner.  And, you get a bunch of shredded chicken meat that you can use in countless fascinating scenarios.  Case in point, the Martins came over for dinner and voila’,  chicken burritos!!!  Wow, does the fun ever end at our house?  Donette made all kinds of good stuff to go along with the burritos too;  beans, salsa, pico de gallo, etc.  We cheated and had frozen guacamole though.  OK, that’s about all the text I can stretch out of a boiled chicken, I’m done.

Wow I am spent.  My bleeding edge lifestyle is catching up with me, and quick.  We started our weekend about Tuesday last week.  I went out with a few guys from work, for a standard issue “going away” gathering.  We went to Buffalo Wild Wings, which I actually kind of like, although I rarely actually go there.  Then on Wednesday, we went out with the girls that rent the house next to us.  Two of them were celebrating their big 24th birthdays, so we met them down at the ‘Sider for happy hour.  Apparently when you’re 24 you have a different concept of “Happy Hour” though.  We take it as a rather literal translation;  4-5 o’clock, or 5-6, maybe 4-6 if we’re feeling particularly energetic.  They seem to translate it into more of a “Happy Evening” or something along those lines.  We took Thursday off and rested up, and then Friday night the same girls had a party at their house.  We figured since they were going to be outside being all rowdy and generally disturbing the peace, we might as well head on over and have some fun.  Sort of the “If you can’t beat ’em, join ’em” tact.  Luckily their parents were there, so we had somebody to relate to.  I think their parents were actually a bit older than us, but I didn’t want to ask and find out differently.

Saturday was yet another party.  There was a benefit in Liberty supporting autism, so I went uncover with the Red Buffalo BBQ team and helped them cook the food for it.  Luckily it didn’t rain for once, so all we had to contend with was the 30 mph wind gusts.  I pretty much spent the entire day up there, cooking and enjoying the day.  The benefit started around 5:00 so that kept us busy for a while, but after everybody ate we enjoyed the party for several hours.  It was a “casino night” theme, but the only betting we did was on the mice races.  If you’ve never seen those, they just had this big plexiglass box, and they put in a bunch of mice and see which one reaches the end first.  It was definitely a hit;  mostly with the “10 and under” crowd.  Not sure what that says about me…  They had a big silent auction too, but I got outbid on everything I wanted.  I was particularly keyed in on a “weekend in Omaha” package, but my boss’ little girl outbid me.  I was gonna drop the hammer on her, but wimpy Doni said I should let her win it.  So, I let her have her stupid ol’ trip.  I stuck my tongue out at her when nobody was looking though.

Sunday was my “down day.”  Ran out of gas.  Down for the count.  Rest and recovery.  I watched football all day, and that’s about it.  I did mow the front yard, which took about 15 minutes, so I guess that counts for something.  And, since I was on the PC all day watching my fantasy football teams anyway, I put together some pictures from the American Royal finally.