Christmas is almost here.  Rather, Christmas is almost over, if you view it as more of a nuisance than anything.  Actually this Holiday season isn’t shaping up too bad;  It’s still early though.

While that was a busy weekend, I am not particularly inclined to detail all the events.  I’m just plain ol’ tired and I don’t feel like typing.  In the interests of consistency though, I’ll try to at least make a passable effort at a weekend overview.  Things started off solid on Friday with Donette’s company Christmas party, which was at Morton’s.  You just can’t go wrong there.  I had an enormous bone-in ribeye, and Donette had the slightly-less-gluttonous cut of the same.  In a well-executed plan of attack, we skipped the salads and took it easy on the appetizers, which left enough room to focus on the truly important part of the meal.  I almost polished mine off.

Saturday we spent most of the afternoon shopping.  We started at Office Max, where we picked up a new computer desk.  Donette has been into some heavy remodeling upstairs, and our current desk doesn’t fit into her grand scheme.  After that mundane purchase, we headed out to Scooterworld  in Overland Park, because I wanted to show Donette some of the nerd-mobiles I’ve been eying for a while.  She was so enamored with them we ended up going ahead and picking one up!  Unfortunately they didn’t have a helmet to fit my melon, so I have to wait on riding it.  Donette is set up and ready though, complete with a neon pink jacket.  Oh yeah, we’re styling.  After that thoroughly exhausting  ordeal, we took a little nap and then headed over to our friend Susan’s house for her annual Christmas Extravaganza.  That was a festive time as always, and even better with the 60-degree weather.  We spent most of the evening out on the back deck; can’t beat that for mid-December.

Sunday turned into a rather unfortunate work-a-thon for me, while Donette worked on her painting project upstairs.  That ate up most of the day, although I did get around to assembling the new computer desk.  For evening entertainment we met Ed and Kim down at the Brooksider and watched the unfortunate debacle of the Chiefs game.  Because I strive to always find the positive in every situation though, I will point out that I needed mucho points out of Ladainian Tomlinson for my Fantasy Football team, and he delivered in kind.  Before his offensive barrage I stood to get knocked out of the playoffs; as it stands now I at least have a chance of surviving, depending on the outcome of this evening’s game.

Well, that was a “work weekend” so I ain’t got much to go on.  I could go all the way back to last Wednesday when we went out to dinner with the Martins to celebrate Donette’s birthday.  We met them at O’Dowd’s and hung out there for a bit, then ate dinner at Kona Grill.  Uhhhh… and that was it.

Friday we stayed in and watched movies.  The featured selection of the evening was the critically acclaimed docu-drama “Nacho Libre.”   I thought it was pretty good, in a “could this possibly be any dumber, why am I watching this” kind of way.  It got a few chuckles and at least one outright guffaw.  I found it a rather quotable flick if nothing else.
Saturday was a wash… I stayed home and rested up all day for the pending all-nighter at work.  Played with the dogs, surfed the ‘Net, and that’s about it.  Man those Saturday nighters at work a young man’s game, I have to rest up for them.

Sunday morning I got up semi-rested at 9:00 or so.  In my old age I find I can’t really sleep in, no matter what time I get home.  I was feeling a little jet-lagged, but I downed a pot of coffee and headed over to work on some guy’s PC for a while.  It seems his trusty Windows 98 computer was making constant calls to Madagascar.  Nice.  Hopefully that little problem got fixed.  After that I went back home and tried to nap for a bit, then I went on a shop-a-thon with Donette.  Woo-hoo.  For dinner, the Martins and Todd came over and Donette made stacked enchiladas.  Good stuff.  That kind of wrapped up a boring weekend for the kid.  I tried to watch the football game but couldn’t keep my poor lil’ eyes open.  Got some parties next weekend, maybe that will make for some update material.

That was a miserable weekend, on many fronts.  Things started off well on Friday, with a day off from work.  I kind of slacked off all day, not accomplishing much.  That evening we hooked up with the Munkirs at the Blue Moose for some dinner.  Quite a tasty meal;  I’m rather fond of that place.  The atmosphere was a bit sullied by the mob of children that somebody had unleashed in the dining room, but otherwise an enjoyable dinner.

Saturday morning started off as usual, which is to say I was up enjoying my coffee and reading the newspaper.  Somewhere around 8:30 Donette was rudely startled out of bed by the Nebraska Furniture Mart truck out front.  I have often heard people complain about the delivery service of NFM, apparently with good reason;  They had called me on Friday to confirm that they would be there between noon and 2:00.  Knuckleheads.  So, Donette shot up out of bed and got dressed, while I tried to corral the dogs and get them out of the way.  Anyway, to make a long story short, none of our new furniture fit up the stairs.  Actually, they didn’t even really try.  They tried the armoire, and I will certainly agree that piece wasn’t going to happen.  The mover-dudes were then convinced that none of was going to fit, so they didn’t even try the remaining pieces.  I was pretty bummed.  It was nice furniture, all solid oak with solid cedar drawers.  Not to mention, we haven’t had a freaking dresser EVER and I was looking forward to not having my socks spread across three bedrooms.  Well, I guess we still don’t have one.  So, they stuck it all in the garage and said somebody would be by to pick it up in twenty minutes or so, and went on their merry way.  As soon as they left, it struck me that I really didn’t feel well at all.  Omitting the gory details, this feeling was confirmed very shortly thereafter.  I spent the entire rest of the day in bed watching movies and popping nyquil.  Bummer.  Oh yeah, my day of misery was punctuated when the NFM jokers called at 8:00 that night to let me know that they were finally on their way to pick up the furniture.  Apparently 20 minutes had morphed into 11 hours.

Sunday was about the equivalent of Saturday, except Donette ended up with the same bug I had and joined me in the sick bay.  In short, I got cheated out of my entire weekend by an untimely illness.  Gosh, good thing it didn’t hit during the work-week, I would have had to dip into my 11 years of built up sick time.

We at pkenagy.com will be approximately one day behind in this week’s update due to an illness in the administrative department.

I hope everyone had a good Thanksgiving.  Ours was all good; Even the grilled turkey experiment turned out favorably.  It only took 3 hours, kept the stove freed up for other stuff, and didn’t make the mess of deep-frying one.  After dinner we took a quick nap and then headed down to Todd’s, where we watched the Plaza Lighting from the relative safety of his living room.

Friday was a work day, albeit not much of one.  I managed to get Gabe in to the Vet, as his horrible tummy issue from last week wasn’t magically going away.  Poor lil’ guy, it got so bad we couldn’t stand to have his stinky butt in the same room.  Not remarkably, it turned out he had another one of his intestinal infections.  (Like anybody in the same zip code couldn’t diagnose THAT one.)  They gave him a few shots and sent him home with some medicine, a can of industrial air freshener, and a hefty bill.

Saturday I went over to a neighbor’s house and worked on his PC issue most of the morning.  He’d been unable to connect to the Internet for a few weeks, presumably because of a suspect email he’d clicked a while back.  After at least an hour of head-scratching, we found out that the problem wasn’t a virus, but that his wireless card was turned off.  Literally, there was a little switch on the bottom of his laptop that had been inadvertently set to “off.”  Clicked it to “on,” and the mysterious connectivity problem was solved.  Good grief.  After that humbling experience, I headed over to Microcenter and bought a few of their big “sale” items.  Nothing too spectactular, I just felt I needed to contribute my little part to the post-Thanksgiving economy.  The miserable drive from Wornall to Metcalf via 95th street reminded of two very important words though;  “Online Shopping.”  Henceforth, I declare that if I can’t get it in Brookside, Waldo, or online, I don’t really need it.  Later in the evening, we headed to Northtown for Schmidt’s 40th birthday party.  It was a surprise party, and a well-disguised one at that;  He’s not 40, and it wasn’t his birthday.  Sneaky.  Hey, that’s one way to catch somebody off guard.

Sunday I spent the better part of the afternoon making a pot of gumbo from the leftover Thanksgiving turkey.  It came out much better than my last pot… I’m starting to get the method down.  I think I will call gumbo-making my winter project.  It serves lots of good purpose;  Keeps the leftovers down, makes the house smell good, and roux-stirring seems to be the only exercise I can do these days without hurting myself.  Sad, but true.  I had to work Sunday night, so the rest of the day was spent dreading that.  Kind of a day-killer.