We rounded out the first portion of our trip by taking the train to Denmark today.  We spent the afternoon walking around Copenhagen with the newlyweds, just kind of hanging out and taking pictures.  So far so good;  Tomorrow we fly to Spain.

OK my Swedish is a little rough…  We arrived in Sweden (Denmark, actually) sometime Friday evening after limited mis-adventure.  Our flight was delayed out of KC, so that kicked off a series of mild inconveniences, like our luggage not arriving.  Since we had the wedding on Saturday and our good clothes were packed, this wasn’t going to work out, so we had to sit around the airport several hours waiting to see if it showed.  It eventually did and we were on our way, no worries.  We took a train from Denmark to Malmo, Sweden, where Johan’s brother Martin picked us up and drove us the rest of the way.  By the time we hit the hotel in Vaxjo we’d been traveling 29 hours;  We  slept well that night.

Saturday, after a solid night of sleep, we spent the day with the wedding events.  The ceremony was at a nearby Chapel, then we took a short walk to the ruins of Kronoberg Castle for the reception.  (At least I think that’s where we were…  That’s what my 10 minutes of research leads me to believe, and the pictures looks similar.)  We had a good time, even if we didn’t understand 5 words the entire evening.  There were lots of speeches, toasts, songs, and TONS of food.  We just kind of hung back with silly smiles on our faces, laughed when everybody else did, and held our glasses up when everybody else did.  I’ll post the pictures soon so everbody can see the impressive feast that was laid out, and the awesome room we were in, and all the wedding decorations.  Oh wait, I don’t HAVE any pictures, because I took two sets of dead batteries with me.  Oh well, maybe I will just happen to be back at the castle some time soon and I can take some then.  LOSER!!!

Yesterday Johan’s parents took us on a nice tour of the area surrounding Vaxjo.  We had lunch at their house, looked at (everybody else’s) pictures, and watched them open gifts.  When we got back to the hotel we borrowed some bicycles and went downtown for a bit, which was quite comical to us but nobody else seemed to notice.  We found the bikes rather amusing, but they are pretty standard issue over here.  A rather “utilitarian” style…  Sure beat walking though.

Today we are heading back south to Malmo with Johan, where we will spend the rest of our stay in Sweden.  I may even get fancy and throw out a mid-week update, who knows.

I spent the better part of my holiday weekend working and getting ready for our upcoming European adventure, leaving the update material a bit sparse.  In the interests of consistency I’ll throw something out here though.

Saturday Donette’s parents come over and joined us for dinner.  This gave us a chance to try out the rotisserie attachment on our new grill.  I am officially “for” the rotisserie at this point.  We threw on a 4 lb. pork loin and it cooked it to “just right” in just under two hours, using only the back infrared burner.  Granted, not a lot of grilled flava, but I liked the results all the same.  After dinner we went down to Foo’s and had a round of concretes.  I went for the “raspberry cheesecake.”  Highly recommended, although next time I’ll leave out the cheesecake part.

Sunday, in between some very disappointing bouts of work-related stuff, I added a little more bling to the motorcycle.  I bought some used chrome foot controls off the RSWarrior site, which made for a nice little upgrade.  I got some extensions for the brake and shifter too, but I didn’t get that part done; it looked a little too intimidating.  Naturally, it rained all day AGAIN so I didn’t get to go riding.  Hopefully it dries out while we’re gone on vacation.

Monday brought more work stuff, boo.  We did squeeze in an exciting shopping trip to Metro North mall, where I purchased a new suit for our trip.  I don’t want Martin to out-dress me, you know.  We made it out of the neighborhood a second time for dinner, when we headed due south to the Munkir’s house.  They grilled up some Iowa-cut pork chops, which were, in fact, actually from Iowa.  We hadn’t seen the Munkirs clan in a while;  It was nice seeing them again but I was really interested in checking out the new dog, who I hadn’t met yet.  She is a pretty chunky lil’ pup, but not quite ready to go a round with Belle just yet.  We’ll give her another 6 -8 months and check back.  Throw a tug-rope in the living room and see what happens.

Yes, I am aware that is a lame summary of a three-day weekend, but it’s all I’ve got.  I’m tired, distracted, and generally dis-interested.  It’s the best I can offer under those conditions.

Whoa, big weekend for the Kenagys. I feel like I’ve been beat with a stick. The good news is we actually went out and celebrated my birthday, the bad news is I am apparently too old to celebrate.

We flew out to Denver last Thursday with the Martins, for the sole purpose of my birthday. OK maybe not, but I’m going with it. Upon our arrival, we picked up a sleek, sexy minivan rental, because that’s what 41-year-olds drive. We then drove this hot machine over to Ed and Kim’s place to begin the weekend festivities. First on the agenda was the Killers concert. I wouldn’t say these guys are exactly my favorite band by any stretch, but we wanted to check out Redrocks Amphitheater, and that’s who was playing, so that’s who we went to see. The event took a nice upswing when one of Ed’s buddies called him before the show and offered him some passes to what he described as “the best seats in the house.” When we got there we made the rather arduous climb to the top of the theater and met up with this guy, who gave us some “FOH” stickers to wear. It turned out these things were like two steps below wearing a halo. There was no assigned seating, so it was pretty much a “get there really, really early if you want a good seat” kind of deal. With our super-duper stickers though, we waited up until the first band started, then trotted right down to a roped-off section around sixth-row center. So, while everybody else was getting jostled around by 15,000 screaming, bouncing knuckleheads, I had my required 15 feet of space around me on all sides and an awesome view. Perfect!! On the downside, The Killers only played two songs before the lead singer was supposedly stricken with a mysterious and sudden case of bronchitis. However, I would venture a guess that there were some fans in the crowd who were more upset with this than I. We’d been there a few hours, the second band was pretty good, and I think I was starting to suffer some inner ear damage from the excessive volume level. So, we feigned a little disappointment and started the march back to the minivan. At this point I have to at least attempt to relate a rather humorous event, although it likely falls in the “you had to be there” category. During our trek back to the car, Martin felt a sudden compulsion to go wandering away from the group, which was certainly of no surprise to anyone. He saw some markers off on the side of the road, somehow determined that these marked a trail head, and took off full tilt into the darkness. Unfortunately, he quickly and painfully discovered that they instead were marking a rather precipitous drop-off. Unaware of this misfortune, the rest of us continued on to the car. After several minutes of waiting, we started getting a little antsy and began hurling some rather misguided comments back in his direction. Luckily, he was eventually able to pull himself out of the ravine under his own power because I’m not sure we ever would have caught on that something just might be amiss. On the downside, he’d taken such a tumble that it knocked his wallet out of his pocket. It was apparent that we had absolutely zero chance of finding it in the dark, so we had to just drive home. Between this mishap and the header that Ed took in the bleachers, we made up a pretty bruised and bloodied group of concert-goers.

Friday, we started the day with a tasty breakfast at Lucile’s. After laying down a delicious base for the day, we loaded up the van and headed back to Redrocks to look for Chris’ wallet. In what everyone agreed was a certain good luck omen, he found it pretty quickly, right at the bottom of the ditch he’d tumbled down. Plus, we all got a good laugh at his expense looking at the cliff he’d run off; it did indeed look painful. Buoyed by this bit of good luck, we headed on up the hill and explored the amphitheater and took lots of pictures; it was quite a cool place. They have a visitors center with all kinds of history on the place, and you could walk down and check out the stage, and just generally interesting junk. After walking around there for a while, we headed back to the small town at the base of the hill and enjoyed the weather out on a cool roof-top deck. The name of the restaurant escapes me… some Mexican place. Doesn’t really matter, we were just enjoying the afternoon. After a while we headed back to Denver and hooked up with Todd, who had just driven in from a little vacation in New Mexico. We took the light rail down to Coors Stadium and caught a Royals game, and they actually won?!?! Most likely they knew it was my birthday and put out a little extra effort. And speaking of baseball and my birthday, Donette gave me tickets to the Yankees vs. Mets game at Yankees Stadium next month. This has many levels of coolness; It’s the last year the Yankees will play in this stadium, it’s a big “rivalry” game, and we’ll be sitting in the bleachers in New York on a (hopefully) fine June day watching a baseball game.

Wow, that was a lot of typing, but I’ll briefly summarize the rest of the weekend. Saturday we drove up to Fort Collins and spent the whole day up there. We toured Fat Tire Brewery, had a good lunch at a local restaurant, and went to a little festival that just happened to be going on. We managed to find all these fun places with much unwanted assistance from Todd’s stupid talking GPS, which he kept changing the language on to make it even more annoying and useless than it already was. The good news is I thought I wanted one of those things until I spent 3 hours in a car listening to one, so he saved me like $300.

Sunday we finally took it easy and just sat around Ed and Kim’s house, where several of their friends joined us for barbecuing and playing cornhole. It was relaxing but for some reason I still feel pretty beat-up today, likely because we didn’t get to our house until around 11:00 last night. It ain’t easy being 41.

Wow, straight from the monsoons to the 85 degree weather.  Nice.  How about a little moderation for once?  Oh well, I’ll take it over the rain… I think.

Friday didn’t bring a whole lot of excitement for us.  I was ticked off because I lost yet another auction on eBay and it made me pouty.  I just don’t get why people pay so much for junk on there, I haven’t seen a good deal yet.  I was bidding on some handlebars for my motorcycle, which finally went for $102.  You can pick them up brand new any day of the week for $125, why pay that much (plus some ridiculous S&H charge) to buy somebody’s scratched up junk?  Crazy.  Luckily I got so mad I blacked out, fell out of my chair and missed the end of the auction or I’d have probably gotten caught up in the excitement and bid too much.  After that mayhem, we went up north and picked up the scooter from Martin’s house, where it had been stranded all week because of the rain.  It was a pretty dicey ride home in the KC pseudo-rush-hour, but I made it in one piece.  Once I got home, we shut down for the evening and watched a movie.  “Bruce Almighty” was the selection;  It wasn’t bad.  Better than the last several choices we’ve watched.

Saturday we slept in a bit, then took a little ride out to Lee’s Summit to that nightmarish shopping district on Chipman Road.  Normally I would prefer to avoid such congested areas, but the MPR people were having an adoption event so we wanted to check out the pups and say hi.  After finally escaping the gridlock about an hour later, Donette rode the scooter on down to the Plaza, where she met Kelly and Lori at the Classic Cup for lunch.  Meanwhile, I kind of aimlessly rode the motorcycle around, eventually ending up at Knobtown Cycles.  I’m still trying to find somebody to work on my motorcycle, and they just kind of caught my eye on the way by.  It was an “interesting” place, and their rates were cheaper than the dealer, but I sort of got the impression they prefer the American bikes.  Who knows, I might take it there anyway.  They’ll probably take a crowbar to it, but at least I’ll save $10 an hour labor costs.  When we got back home, the temperature in the house had hit like 80 degrees, so we broke down and turned on the AC for the first time this year.  Bummer.  Since we were paying for it anyway, I sat inside and soaked up the cool air for the rest of the afternoon.  Stupid weather.  Martins came over for dinner;  We grilled some fajitas and sat around making some initial plans for our upcoming European adventure.

Sunday was mostly taken up with an unplanned work-a-thon.  Never shoulda logged on I guess, what can you do.  We did sneak out for a little lunch at Jack Stack, which was solid as always.  It was a little more crowded than anticipated, presumably because of Mothers Day, but we were able to snag a table in the bar area right off.  That’s always a roll of the dice, sometimes you end up getting stuck next to a bunch of smokers, but we did OK this time.  I had a short end dinner and Donette had the baby backs.  I might have been just extra-hungry, but I think that was the best ribs I’ve ever had there.  They were no TFB product, mind you, but they certainly served the purpose.  I spent the rest of the afternoon logged on to work, while Donette went out for some shopping.  She brought home a new boom-box for our ipod’s, and a new gas grill.  I got the grill put together that evening; steaks tonight!  It had gotten so late by then that we missed the Sopranos, which throws my whole week out of sync right off the bat.  We did catch Entourage though.