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.

So I will just be late with this.

So I guess the football season is over, at least for all practical purposes.  This ideally will lead to a more efficient use of our Sundays.  That’s the theory anyway, we’ll see how it actually plays out.

Well,  I really didn’t do much last weekend.  Donette had several events, mostly centered around Susan’s upcoming wedding, but since I didn’t go to any of them that doesn’t do me a whole lot of good, now does it.  For the most part we watched movies; “The Green Mile” on Friday night and “Cars” on Saturday.  Both of them provided moderate entertainment value for me, if not for the purposes of my Weekly Update.

Sunday was the only time I got out of the house all weekend, when we attended a Superbowl party out south.  I was a bit hesitant to make the drive, but was lured out by a few mitigating factors:  1.)  They had my check for my spectacular second-place Fantasy Football finish, and 2.) an enormous BBQ spread.  One of the guys drug his smoker out and cooked up ribs, brisket, pork, sausage and chicken.  There was a big crowd there, but not enough to finish that feed pile.  There may have been some side dishes too, I’m not sure…  I stuck to the ‘Que.  We only made it until half-time though before bolting back to our safety zone.  For one thing I ate entirely too much and was thoroughly miserable, and there was an unusually high attendance of little ‘uns, which lent a somewhat nervous quality to the atmosphere.  So, I went home, cranked up the surround sound, and watched the rest of the game on the couch.  Lame, I know.

Other than that, it was just another frozen weekend.  Sounds like a few more of the same in store too.  Speaking of BBQ, I actually did watch that little poll over on the right with some interest last week.  Burnt ends were the winner, although not by an overwhelming margin.  Who voted for sausage?  I just put that one on there for filler.  Hey, to each their own though.

As you can probably surmise from that generic title, not a whole lot went on this weekend.  I think our social life is frozen right along with everything else in the city.  Friday we actually did absolutely nothing.  I sat in front of the PC and toyed with my “backup” web server, and Donette stayed downstairs, presumably in front of the TV.  Motivation is at an all time low in our household.  Not to mention, I am pseudo-oncall this week so I’m kind of taking it easy anyway.

Saturday I think we may have done something fun, although the exact details escape me.  Guess you’ll just have to trust me on that one.  Whatever it was, it was a real hoot and left an indelible impression on me.  After that mysterious, non-recallable event was over, we drove out to the cleverly named “Great Mall” in Olathe.  Who thought that title up?  Might want to look into a new marketing director out there.  I suppose it’s catchier than “Crappy Mall,” which might be a more accurate description despite a rather negative connotation.   Anyway, I picked up a few pairs of pants at the Eddie Bauer shop, and Donette got some new boots.  Woo hoo.  Saturday night, we went to an engagement party for our friends John and Susan.  It was held at one of the classier venues available in the area, known as the “Brooksider.”  I like going to events at the good ol’ Brooksider.  It’s conveniently located, and they only let you have the room until ten o’clock, which coincides nicely with my bedtime.  Donette and her merry band of troublemakers coordinated the event, and it went very well.  I kind of got caught up in the inescapable excitement of the UMKC game on the television and didn’t get a chance to do a whole lot of mixing with the crowd, but I did enjoy all the good food that everybody brought.

Sunday didn’t bring a whole lot to the table.  I believe I am ready for Spring.  While I didn’t think I really minded the cold weather, it seems to do a good job of keeping me indoors so maybe I actually do mind it.  We did get out of the house for a bit, and met Munkirs up at the dog park.  This little exercise session got cut short when some pansy showed up with his huge Weimaraner.  Despite the fact that his dog weighed probably 100 pounds, he was not-too-subtlety bothered by Gabe’s presence.  I have a hard time convincing people that Belle is probably going to cause trouble before Gabe will;  The boy just doesn’t look very nice, bless his lil’ heart.  Maybe I should get him a flowery sweater or something?  Oh well, it didn’t hurt my feelings too much;  I was about half frozen anyway, so we left.  We stopped by the house and put the pups down for a nap, and then rolled down to Jalapeños for some lunch.  Still grappling with the new menu, I opted for the recently added fish tacos.  I guess they were OK;  I ate the whole plate so it must have been pretty good.  The fish was battered though, which was a little odd.  I would liken it to Mrs. Paul’s on a soft flour tortilla.  Fortunately, I happen to enjoy Mrs. Paul’s products.  That was effectively the end of our weekend.  In a rather impressive feat of lethargy, Donette went to sleep when we got home, and didn’t wake up until this morning.  Now THAT’S a nap.  While I did stay awake, I can’t say as I accomplished anything more than she did.  I wandered back and forth between the TV and the computer, not really watching anything.  One can only hope the Superbowl provides us with some diversion next weekend.

** Exciting addition!!  I remember what we did Saturday…  We had lunch at Oklahoma Joe’s BBQ.  This was one of the places high on our “Why Haven’t We Ever Gone There” list.  I’d say it lived up to the billing, although I doubt we’ll make regular trips out there.  The fact that it’s in a gas station didn’t really bother me as much as some;  I’m not real big on the atmosphere factor.  Donette had a pulled pork sandwich, which was quite delicious, if not quite on par with Brice’s product.  (But then what is???)  I had the burnt end lunch, which was served open-faced on white bread.  It was good, but not what I would consider burnt ends;  It was a pile of large brisket cubes.  This might have been a byproduct of being on the wrong side of the state line, who knows.  The fries were top-notch, the beans were “weird.”  Overall though, good feed.  Four outta five rib bones.