That entire weekend was spent in Karnie MO, at the Jesse James Days BBQ contest.  We had a good time, but our ‘Que SUCKED!!!  I went into the weekend with grand visions of repeating last years’ success; it was not to be.  Due to myriad issues, we placed so far down on the list I won’t even admit where we came in.  Flat embarrassing.  My brisket did better than I thought it should have at least… I think they may have mixed it up with somebody elses truthfully.  I keep trying to give it the “Oh well, it was a blast” attitude, but in truth I’m perturbed.  KB is trying to weasel us into the Liberty contest this weekend so we can practice up, but it probably won’t happen.  Last we checked they were all full.  That would make the next contest the Big ‘Un, the American Royal.  We certainly don’t put a lot of effort into our competition entries there, other than trying not to get any zeros, so I guess our next real attempt will have to be next year.  DANG IT!!!

Sunday I was home huddled in a bitter funk on the couch all day, thinking of things that could have been done differently at the contest.  Watched some football, and watched my Fantasy Team do well for once… that was about it.  I guess we did go to breakfast at the new, recently re-opened Georgie Porgies.  They used to be up around 85th and Wornall, then mysteriously shut down earlier this year.  A few months ago they suddenly re-surfaced at Gregory and Troost, right around the corner from our house.  Good food but they won’t last any longer than the last several places to occupy that spot if they don’t get their service issues squared away.

No special news on the puppy front.  I guess we are now a two-pitbull family.  Going for that “Urban Chic” look.  Next week we will be installing the meth lab in the dining room and the picture will be complete.

Wow that was a full weekend.  Full of, for the majority of the time, good stuff.  Friday night we went over to Ed and Kim’s and met up with them for a wedding.  I expect everyone has been to a wedding;  How much should I have to detail that.  Good food, lovely ceremony, blah blah blah.

Saturday was an especially fine day.  I headed over to Ed’s house at 3:30 (yes, A.M.) and fired up the TFB BBQ smoker, which Kevin had delivered Friday evening.  I had some minor issues getting it going, mostly due to my unfamiliarity with the beast.  It took a lot longer to heat up than I had allowed for.  Everything got going OK though, and I tossed on a 12 lb. brisket, two 6 lb. pork shoulders, and three slabs of ribs.  Obviously, they were expecting a few people over to their house that evening.  They had invited numerous friends and family down from Cincy for the home opener against the Chiefs, and wanted to put on a feed.  After everything got rolling, Ed ran some power out to the front porch and we sat out there with our laptops all morning, watching the food and surfin’ the Web.  Kind of a Nerd/’Que kind of morning, and on into the afternoon.  The “Dork Highlight” of the day was when Ed ordered Jimmy John’s for lunch.  Despite the fact that he was sitting two feet away from me, he opted to email the menu in a pdf file instead of just asking me what I wanted.  Truly a Munkirs-esque move.  Well, that was honestly the entire day.  The food came off promptly at 6:00, and it all came out pretty good.  Not a competition effort, but a darn sight better than last weekend.  I powered through until about 8:00, and then hit the wall.  I came home and tried to watch TV, but crashed in roughly 20 seconds.

Sunday was another Cincy-in-KC day.  We met up with the whole crowd down on the Plaza around 7:30, where Donette’s parents had agreed to pick everybody up in their RV.  We were in line for the gate at 8:00, through the gate by 8:45, and enjoying some grilled burgers and sausages by 10:30.  It was a good tailgate; I sort of liked watching all the taunts come in from our less-than-hospitable locals, especially from behind the relative safety of my trusty KC tee-shirt.  On the downside, I had to endure all of the standard nonsensical chants and songs, which I still don’t get.  Sorry, the phrase “Who Dey” just doesn’t really mean anything.  Everytime somebody said it I had the uncomfortable feeling I was supposed to respond in some manner, but was a little lost as to with what.  “Hey hey hey, we’re gonna beat the #$(*@ out of you.”  Now THAT makes sense.  Easily decoded, straight-forward, none of this mystery crap.  Anyway, I’m sure you know the rest of the story.  We sat through 3 miserable hours in the rain (thankfully not with the Out Of Towners,) watched a pitiful, boring game, and then partied in the lot for a while afterwards.  Even ran into the Munkirs, Belanger, and Frerking crowd, so I got a little respite from the “Who Dey” chants.  The only good thing to come of the day:  The Cincy crowd went into the stadium as staunch Pittsburg-haters, based on what they perceived to be a cheap shot against Carson Palmer last season.  By the end of the day, the tables had turned, and they all agreed that cheap shots against QB’s weren’t really that bad of thing after all.  I think I even heard several of them offer Josh good money for his Pittsburg jerseys, but he wasn’t selling.  : )

Other random news… I think we are keeping Belle, so I guess I better post some more pics.  Her and Gabe are pretty much buddies now.  My arm is still messed up, I have to wear this stupid sling for at least three more weeks.  Actually WEAR it, not just have it near me, according to the Doctor.  Good grief.  I had an MRI done last week, but haven’t had it looked at yet… hopefully no surgery.

Holiday weekends are a good thing.  I’m shooting for “thorough but brief” this week, because it’s nice out, I have the day off, and I feel like I’m missing out.

Friday the Martins came down and we went to dinner and played some cards.  Dinner was at Jalapenos, cards were on our back porch.  The boys’ winning streak continued at the card table; I believe the count is now 4,659 victories.

Saturday was had a bit of a twist to it…  A guy we met a few weeks back has to get rid of his little female Pitbull due to the recent onslaught of bans, so we agreed to keep her for the weekend and see how she and Gabe did together.  The jury is definitely still out on this little experiment.  Lets just say they aren’t best of buddies yet.  When they are playing everything is good, but when somebody steps in the other’s space, or takes a toy away… not so good.  We’ll see how it goes.  Here is a picture of Belle, and one of her and Gabe during a “good” moment.  Non-related but still of interest, I caught the Scotten family rolling through the ‘hood in their minivan.  While they quickly threw out a cover-story about going to the zoo, it was apparent that they were on a house-hunting trip in an effort to “bring back the magic.”  More to come on that hot story, I’m sure.

Sunday was a solid day, as days go.  I definitely felt I maximized its potential.  In order to make sure I didn’t miss one good minute of weekend, I rolled out of bed at the unholy hour of 2:30.  I’m not sure why… I wasn’t sleeping anyway and it just seemed like the thing to do.  Maybe it had something to do with the 140 pounds of canine quarrelling next to the bed every 15 minutes, I dunno.  Anyway, I was planning to fire up the smoker anyway, so I went ahead and lit ‘er up and threw on a brisket.  Then I watched a few horrible movies on HBO, drank a pot of coffee, and waited for Donette to wake up.  When she finally got up, we headed up north to her parent’s house and had a fine breakfast of biscuits and gravy and more coffee.  I felt a little better about the whole two-dog-household idea after a visit up there:  They were kind of hard to count but I’m sure I tallied four dogs and at least two cats.  A veritable menagerie to be sure.  We didn’t stay too long because I was fretting about my smoker going out, so we rolled back home around 11:00.  The rest of the day was spent poking the fire and watching brisket cook.  Hard to go wrong there.  Martins came over and threw some ribs on, and their neighbor Dave stopped by to check out his old ‘hood (seems like the thing to do this weekend) and eat a little grub.  The brisket came out crappy by the way.  Very dissappointing.  My new recipe was a complete failure.  Back to the drawing board on that one.  After dinner the girls demo’d a few more dessert entries, and I called it the end to a very long day.

We have returned from our weekend at Tablerock with the Martins, slightly worse for the wear.  But more on that later.

Martin and I headed out for Tablerock on Thursday afternoon, with the S.S. Schmartin in tow.  With a full tank of gas in the boat, we averaged roughly 45 MPH all the way to Branson;  Munkirs would have been proud.  We arrived to find the cabin we rented would provide more than adequate accommodations, and settled in to smoke a cigar and wait for the girls.  They arrived shortly thereafter, and that pretty much wrapped up Thursday.  Long drives wear me out.

Friday started out kind of rough.  We weren’t getting a lot of weather cooperation.  It was freaking pouring, so the girls bailed out for the outlet malls.  Martin and I settled in to smoke a cigar and wait for them to return.  Sort of a trend there.  After a while the rain burned off and the chicks ran out of money,  so we hooked up the boat and headed for the lake.  We got in a good two hours of boating;  Kind of checked out the lay of the lake, swam around a bit, and enjoyed the sun.  Around 7:00 Martin had to head back in to take a conference call though;  One of the penalties of being an extremely important resource at his job.  While he feigned responsibility, the girls and I grilled up some fajitas, and then they cooked a few more “practice desserts” in preparaton for the American Royal.  I was “for” the grilled peaches with fancy cheese topping, and “against” the other dish.  I was so offended by it I can’t even really remember what it was.  I do remember it had “cardamom” in it, which I can assure you is the single worst-tasting thing that anyone has ever intentionally put in a recipe.  I almost called 911, as initially I was certain that Donette had finally fed me a rat-poisen cocktail, which is something of an ongoing concern at our house.  I smoked two more cigars and ate the leaves off a nearby tree to get the taste out of my mouth, and went to bed.

Saturday started off strong.  We laid down a base of Martin’s semi-famous breakfast casserole at the crack of 11:00, and then got the boat out on the water to enjoy what turned out to be a fine, sunny day.  Things were good until we tried to throw physical exertion into the mix.  We broke out the tube and drug Kelly and Donette around for a while, which went all well and good.  Then I had the bright idea to take a turn on the devil-donut on our way back to the dock.  It was fun, sure, but inevitably I crashed and felt a solid “pop” in my arm.  It rated an “uncomfortable” on the pain scale initially.  After I got back in the boat and felt the nice smooth slope where my shoulder previously was, the nausea and extreme pain set in.  By the time we got back to the dock, my head was spinning around and I was uttering vulgarities I didn’t even know were in my vocabulary.  Donette summoned a nice Ranger over, but all he did was give me a sling, despite my insistance I needed a quick round through the skull.  Donette ended up having to drive me to the emergency room, where they confirmed a dislocated shoulder.  I was still cursing like a demented sailer, begging for a sharp rap on the head, or a teaspoon of cardamom, or anything to take my mind off the shoulder.  I don’t think the poor doctor knew whether to give me anesthesia or an exorcism.  Eventually he opted for putting me under and snapping everything back in place.

That’s all the tale I am going to relate.  Things are still quite sore and I am deathly afraid of this thing popping out again.  It was pretty much a weekend-stopper at any rate;  What a drag.  If it weren’t for bad luck…

I am sorry to report that, due to a bad wing, I am currently unable to type at my full rated speed of 100 WPM, thus making a timely entry of the weekly update impractical.  I’ll get ‘er in tonight when I’m able to hunt-peck at my leisure.