Wow I don’t feel too whippy.  I think I might be getting the crud that has been going around the office.  Perhaps I better stay home and sleep until Float Trip.

Well that was a relatively quiet weekend, at least compared to last week.  We started off Friday at the Brooksider on the deck, watching a little basketball.  None of the games were particularly exciting though, so we left early and went to dinner at Minskys with John & Susan.  I can’t recall that I’ve ever been to Minsky’s;  Maybe as a kid or something.  It wasn’t bad though…  Maybe we’ll even go back some day.  Anyway, we turned in early.  Nothing like a big plate of pasta to finish a day.

Saturday we sort of hid in the house.  I worked on my webserver most of the morning;  I’m sure everyone will breathe a big sigh of relief to know I am back on my usual server, complete with the latest greatest updates and patches.  I was supposed to go on a group scooter ride at noon, but didn’t make it.  There were several reasons I didn’t go, not the least of which was that the scooter was in the shop.  I could’ve gone and picked it up in time to go, but the weather wasn’t really all that nice, and I didn’t think it a very solid idea to go riding on St. Patrick’s day in the first place.  Probably get splattered by a drunk leprechaun or something.  We watched basketball at home the rest of the afternoon, and then the Martins came over for dinner.  I boiled up a pot of corned beef and cabbage, which I am quite fond of.  Now before you go griping on corned beef not being an authentic Irish meal, let me quickly point out that I don’t really care.  I like corned beef, it’s on sale for St. Patrick’s, hence that’s what I have for dinner on said holiday.  After dinner we traded in the usual card game for a round of dominoes.  I thought the game quite stupid, and I hope we never ever play it again.  Cards are much more entertaining.  Obviously I lost by like 200 points.

Sunday was similarly quiet.  It was a little nicer out, so I took a short motorcycle ride around town, and then we took the dogs on a nice long walk around the neighborhood.  After that I went down to the Brooksider to watch the KU game, and that was pretty much it for the weekend.  Donette fixed a tasty pot of red beans and rice for dinner, and we sat around and watched TV the rest of the evening.

In closing, I must say I was a bit disappointed in the results of last week’s poll.  The vast majority of those responding did not go to any parade at all last weekend?  Geez, what kind of fun-haters are reading this thing anyway?  I suppose I know the answer to that.

I’m too spent to put a lot of effort into this, but I’m trying.  That was a long weekend, and busy too.  Way too many activities for my liking.  We kicked the weekend off on Thursday night, since I had Friday off.  We motored over to the downtown Peanut to see if our friend Ann was working, which she was.  When she’s in the kitchen it usually leads to a mammoth feed-a-thon, and this trip was no exception.  We started things off with a pile of potato chips, beautifully paired with a cup of blue cheese and hot sauce for dipping.  This was followed by a dozen of the best hot wings in the city slathered with more blue cheese, and then topped off things off with a triple BLT served with piping hot cheese fries.  Perhaps not the healthiest meal I’ve ever eaten, but certainly one of the best.

Friday’s events centered around John & Susan’s wedding reception down on the Plaza.  We decided to make a day of it, so we took the dogs to the kennel, made the arduous journey down to the Plaza and got a room at the hotel.  The day kind of got away from us and we didn’t do a whole lot, but we did have lunch at the recently opened Jack Stack.  I had the burnt ends, and Donette ordered the always-solid Poor Russ sandwich.  The burnt ends were typical; Big hunks of brisket.  I don’t think any place around here puts a whole lot of effort into their burnt ends.  Maybe LC’s, but they’re hit and miss there too.  I’m still looking.  Don’t get me wrong, they were good, just not what I was looking for.  Can’t complain;  It’s definitely an upgrade on the KC Masterpiece that was there before.  After lunch we went back to the hotel and took a little nappy, then Donette had to go take pictures with the wedding party.  After that, well, the reception.  It was a little on the hoity-toity side, but fun all the same.  It was pretty funny seeing the Brooksider crowd all dressed up;  Pretty much everybody had a suit on.  (Except me of course… what a slob.)

Saturday we woke up and got ready for the trip back home.  We got the car all packed and gassed up, filled our coffee mugs, and headed out.  When we finally pulled into our neighborhood, we were so exhausted we had to go straight to Sharp’s for some breakfast.  I just can’t stand traveling in my old age.  Mapquest put the trip at just under 3 miles but it seemed a lot further.  Maybe that’s if you take Ward Parkway;  We went down Wornall.  Anyway, a solid plate of biscuits and gravy fixed me up.  For our afternoon entertainment we headed down to the Brooksider and watched the KU – Kansas game, which was relatively entertaining.  Most of the crowd was pro-Kansas I’d say, or at least anti-KU.  Even more specifically, anti-KU-fan.  There was a small group of KU’ers but they left shortly, leaving behind their usual pile of cigarette butts and 25-cent tips.  Unfortunately the game conflicted with the Brookside parade going on outside, so we missed all that action for the ump-teenth year in a row.  Oh well, gotta pick your events.  We saw most of it through the front window I guess.

Sunday we slept in a bit, then headed downtown for lunch at Willies.  If you haven’t checked it out yet, it’s not a bad place to hang out.  Lots of TV’s, standard menu, pretty solid location.  My stomach was still a bit out of sorts from Thursday’s dinner, so I stuck to a grilled chicken sandwich with cottage cheese on the side.  Not bad;  Kind of hard to mess up a chicken sandwich.  After lunch, it was off to the big auto show.  Donette has decided she may need a new vehicle for whatever reason.  Yeah, ours is 10 years old, but it still has a lot of life in it.  We’ll see what comes of that; we picked out a few “favorites.”  I should say, SHE picked out a few favorites.  I pretty much hated everything she showed me, and she literally wouldn’t even look at the ones I liked.  What can you do.  Apparently I have been shut out of the decision making process on the new vehicle.  I didn’t catch the associated reasoning but I heard something about “blah blah blah motorcycle blah blah mumble mumble scooter blah blah blah.”  Something like that.  We walked around down there for like 2 hours, which pretty much wore us out.  I took a ride around the city on the motorcycle for a little practice, and that’s about it.  For evening entertainment I watched “The Visitation,” which was absolutely awful.  I was highly amused by the cast though, which included Kelly Lynch (a.k.a. “the hot chick from Roadhouse”) and Randy Travis.  Man, hard to believe the movie wasn’t a bigger hit with a star-studded lineup like that.

Wow, were did THAT weekend go?  Somebody owes me two days of entertainment, or at least an explaination of why they went by so fast.  Friday escapes me totally…  I went out after work for a bit with my co-workers, but after that is a black hole.  I imagine I sat in front of my PC and worked on my web site.  Those of you with an extra keen eye may have noticed the “Slug-II” designation on the menu bar in place of the defunct recipe link.  This is hopefully the only noticeable indicator that I’m running on my “backup” server.  (Well, that and the omission of the recently added “Poll.”  There’s a good reason for that, which wouldn’t interest anybody at all.  It’ll be back shortly.)  The bad news is that my regular one died, the good news is my super-duper backup plan worked near flawlessly.  OK now I remember what else we did;  We watched two episodes of “The Dog Whisperer” off the DVR.  Boy how could I forget that.  Fun for the whole family.

Saturday was relatively busy.  We got up at the crack of 9:00, got ready, and drove out to Overland Park for the big sale at Scooter World.  Yeah, this was an EVENT baby.  We got a trunk for our machine, and a “battery tender” which will work for both the scooter and the motorcycle.  The shop was pretty packed;  It’s the way of the future I tell you.  After that exciting melee, we headed on down to Microcenter to buy a replacement part for the aforementioned dead server.  That trip doesn’t warrant a whole lot of detail.  We then headed back to the proper side of State Line and hit Dick’s Sporting Goods, in the quest for new gym shoes.  As usual, their inventory consisted of absolutely nothing;  I don’t really know why I even go to that place.  We left empty-handed.  That effectively wrapped up our Saturday;  we took a nap, then I watched “Master of the Flying Guillotine” for the fifth time, and then I went in to work.  Yee haw.

Sunday I woke up rather early and got to work again on restoring my web server.  I don’t remember it being that hard… I think I’m missing something.  Oh well, keeps me out of trouble.  I got pretty close to bringing it back online… Some mysterious SQL sync’ing to do and it should be set for another year or so.  After a while I noticed it looked too nice out to be sitting inside, so I went out and installed the trunk on the scooter.  This involved a few trips to Sutherlands and lots of bad language, similar to every other time I’ve picked up a screwdriver.  Suffice to say nothing that says “universal fit” ever is.  That fact, coupled with my inherent tool incompetence, always leads to adventure.  Hey, I got it attached though, if in a rather unique fashion.  We’ll see how long it stays that way.  By the time I finished that project, it was REALLY nice out, so I hopped on and took it for a road test.  I zipped around for an hour or so, ending up at the Brooksider to hang out with the boys for a bit.  That pretty much ended the weekend;  Todd came over and watched some bad TV and ate crab cakes (??) but I was too tired from working the night before, so I retired early.

Well Donette left me to babysit the dogs last weekend while she flew to Vegas for Susan’s wedding.  Left to entertain myself, I will generally either A) watch TV or B) dial into work.  I did a healthy amount of both over the weekend, leaving me relaxed but a bit lacking on update material.  Incidentally, she is STILL in Vegas.  She took a bump on last night’s flight, leaving me alone for the evening once again, but this will provide us some travel money for the summer.  That is assuming she doesn’t hock her vouchers to somebody for $25 so she can play the slots.

Friday was movie night once again, despite my bachelor status.  The format changed slightly from the usual selections though.  The matinee showing was “Master Of The Flying Guillotine.”  This was some foreign language kung fu movie from the mid-70’s, complete with horribly dubbed english and ridiculous sound effects.  It brought me much joy.  The late-night show was “Saw III“.  True to most any series, this one gets progressively worse with each new title.  It passed the time though.

Saturday I spent most of the afternoon working or flipping channels.  I went down to the Brooksider to watch the MU game but it was crowded and generally annoying so that didn’t last long.  I walked the dogs.  Had some potato chips for lunch.  Boy I’m struggling for material here.  I guess I will have to break down and pull out the wild-card:  The ever popular “What I Did With My PC Last Weekend.”  Yeah, there’s a crowd favorite.  Well, since I know everybody cares, it just so happens that I set up VMware and got it all up and running nicely.  This serves a few practical purposes, not the least of which is finally getting rid of the PC that sits in the basement.  It lets me run Linux images under my XP machine, so I can do the occasional tinkering without needing multiple machines or dual-booting.  Quite nifty actually.  I loaded Fedora FC5 for managing my firewall, and Ubuntu 6 for playing around.

Sunday doesn’t really bear a recap.  I went down to the Brooksider, and while much quieter, there wasn’t anything good on TV to provide a diversion.  Funny how those things seems to coincide.  I sorta payed attention to the Ohio game while enjoying a delicious hamburger, and called it an afternoon. 

Since the most popular vote on the recent poll was “more pictures” I guess I can throw out a few random photos as a substitute for any actual content this week.  Here’s a couple of pictures of my new motorcycle:  1, 2.  I still don’t have any pictures of the Scooter, and Donette took the camera with her to Vegas.  I’ll also include a few obligitory pictures of the dogs and cat.  There you go, I posted some material.  Perhaps not in the approved format but you can’t have everything.

One would think that, given the week off from updating this, I would be absolutely bursting with news of the fun, exciting events of the past weeks.  Such is not the case.  This could be a result of my limited memory span, or an indicator of my recent lack of enthusiasm;  Take your pick.

We spent the last week in St. Louis.  I was working, the weather was crappy, and I couldn’t get a decent Internet connection at the hotel.  I could stretch all that into a scathing 500 word rant, but why bring everyone down.  We did have a nice Valentines dinner, if not quite as planned.  We had reservations at the Station Grille at Union Station, but that was a long drive from the hotel we were at and the roads were miserable.  So, we ended up at a nearby Macaroni Grill… Not exactly what we had in mind, but better than sitting around the hotel.  The wait was over an hour, but we didn’t have anything better to do so that was fine.  Other than a nice steak dinner over at Jeff and Victoria’s, the rest of the trip was pretty much comprised of work and cursing the hotel’s wireless connection.

So, on to this weekend.  This shouldn’t take long.  Yes, the bad weather is supposedly over now, but that starts today.  I spent the majority of the weekend looking out the window thinking how cold it looked outside.  Friday night, in something of an emerging pattern, we stayed in and watched movies.  This has been working well for us;  Cheap, relatively entertaining, and the dogs approve too.  The screenings for this week included “Monster House” and “Pirates of the Caribbean 2.”  Coupled with a delicious dinner of microwave popcorn, this pretty well passed the time for the evening.  One down, two to go.

Saturday afternoon didn’t bring much.  Still too cold.  Munkirs got a new dog, that was my excitement for the day.  I don’t have any of my own news, I have to borrow other people’s.  Sad, sad.  Donette went and got her nails done all afternoon, but that didn’t provide a lot of entertainment for me personally.  I guess I did watch a few dozen back-to-back episodes of King of the Hill;  Can’t go wrong there.  Thank goodness for cable TV.  For dinner we met the Martins and Habigers at Frondizi’s on the Plaza.  We were celebrating Martin’s 43rd birthday.  Wow, I know somebody that is 43 years old.  This would, just by association, make me old also, if not quite THAT old.  Wow, 43.  Wow.  I keep trying to shake the thought, with somewhat limited success so far.  Forty three.  Anyway, aside from the ominous underlying reason for the gathering, we had a delicious dinner.  The entire meal took a solid two hours, which I like to call the “Full Dining Experience.”  It sounds like a long time, but it was very nicely paced actually.  And, when you’re talking about a table full of “seniors,” you don’t want to rush things.  Savor the moment, so to speak.

Sunday’s excitement was provided by the big Nascar race.  Having absolutely no interest what-so-ever in Nascar, the level of excitement was somewhat muted, but it was a diversion.  I sat down at the Brooksider with the usual crowd and stared at the little cars going round and round though; seemed like the thing to do.  I didn’t make it all the way through though;  Couldn’t take it.  I went back home and sporadically watched the rest of the event on my own TV.  That’s about it.  I’ve got today off and I don’t want to waste a potentially exciting holiday playing on my PC.  Note I said “potentially.”  I did go to the coffee shop and read the paper this morning;  I’d say the day has pretty well peaked.