I don’t want to deprive anyone of the possible crazy action that I could partake of tonight or tomorrow.  I have everyones best interests at heart in this decision.

For those of you who have been losing sleep with concern about the demise of my wrt54g, you can now rest easy.  Thanks to some help from Mike, my router has been revived.  It took some scotch tape, copper wire, a magnifying glass and this web site, but it’s back in business.  Not only am I properly firewalled again, I don’t have to drop $50 on a new router.  WHEW!!  Don’t pretend you weren’t worried.

I really don’t have a whole lot to cover from last weekend.  Friday, I went to the Brooksider by myself and sat on the deck, while Donette hung out downtown with Kim and Christie.  With nobody to entertain me, I went home pretty early.  Relatively useless evening really, at least from my standpoint.

Saturday kicked off with Gabe’s second-to-last agility class.  I’m ready for that class to end, mostly because I’m a bit tired of waking up and driving out to Peculiar every Saturday.  And, it’s been too hot to really enjoy anyway.  Gabe still seems pretty excited about the whole thing though, so I guess that counts for something.  I will grudgingly admit that the little Sheltie in the class is now running the obstacles a bit better than Gabe, but not by much.  Gabe gets bonus “enthusiasm” points though.  For dinner that night, we went to the Hyatt Regency for Donette’s 20-year class reunion.  I suppose it goes without saying that meeting an entire room full of people that I don’t know and will never see again isn’t really my cup of tea, but it wasn’t so bad.  Never hurts to brush up on the ol’ “mingling” skills, you know.  Unfortunately I had the spectre of having to go in to work at midnight hanging over me like a black cloud, so that kind of cut into my normally enthusiastic demeanor also.

Sunday kind of got shot down with a little unplanned work-a-thon.  I didn’t get the lawn mowed, didn’t go to the pool, didn’t go to the dog park, just sat on the couch and typed away all day.  Darn them bills and the need to pay them.  That debacle ended just barely in time to get ready for dinner.  Kelly, Susan, Kim and Todd came over and we grilled burgers, with homemade fries, corn on the cob, and Kelly’s nuclear baked beans on the side.  Actually dinner got started an hour late, and we finished eating just in time to catch Entourage.  That was the end of the weekend.  Kind of a slow one, but we needed the rest anyway.

Lastly, a special note of condolence goes out to Carl as he struggles with the potential demise of his favorite band.  Let’s all keep Carl in our thoughts as he struggles with what must be a very difficult time for him.  First Buck Owens and now this…  When will it end?  Truly this could mark “The day the music died” for Carl.

Well we’re back from our tour-de-midwest, still in good working order.  I’d say that was a good, relaxing vacation.  Wednesday Donette was working in Omaha, and I just kind of hung out at the hotel and surfed the Internet.  Not too wacky, but I entertain easily so it worked for me.  Thursday we made the short drive to Lincoln, settled into the hotel, and then decided to go check out the town.  I’ve been “through” Lincoln several times, but can’t recall that I ever stopped, so it was something new to check out.  Donette pointed the car downtown and we ended up wandering into a district called the “Historic Haymarket.”  It turned out to be a lucky guess;  There was plenty of shopping, eating and drinking to keep us entertained for the rest of the day.  If you go down the list of establishments on that website there, that will pretty much tell you what we did all day.

Friday we made the drive to Lovewell Lake to do a little “camping.”  The quote marks are to indicate that we had no intention of actually staying in a tent or anything crazy like that, but since we were in fact at a State Park, and would be spending some amount of time in the outdoors, we called it camping.  The reason for the trip was the 15 year reunion of the group I went to Germany with during “The Big One of ’91.”  Wow, it’s been a long time since I’ve seen some of these people.  You know it’s been too long when people bring their teenage kids that you’ve never met.  Heck one guy brought his six grandchildren.  Wow.  There was a great turnout though, good times.  You can probably make a pretty accurate guess how the weekend went from there…  Buncha people sitting around telling our old “war” stories and laughing until our guts hurt.  Several of them had also been on some much less desirable tours since our Germany trip, so we caught up on all that too.  On the downside, it absolutely dumped rain pretty much the entire time.  Didn’t really bother us too much though, because we were in a cabin Friday night and bummed a bunk in one of the many campers Saturday night.  There were a few tent-campers in the group, but they just bailed to a nearby hotel and then came right back.  Oh, and in the category of “it’s a small world,” my younger sister and her family ended up not only in the same State Park in the middle of nowhere, they actually camped directly behind us.  WEIRD!!  So, we also got to see them for the weekend, including the monumental event of my nephew Thomas taking the training wheels off his bike.

Sunday, naturally, we woke to a bright, sunny, cloudless day as we packed up to go home.  Go figure.  On the good side, since we weren’t really camping in the true sense anyway, we didn’t really have much to pack, and hence no muddy wet crap to load up.  We made the miserable treck across Kansas in pretty good time, picked up Gabe from boarding, and went home for a solid nap.  We woke up in time to go over to Susan’s for a fine spaghetti dinner, then watched Entourage.  That has taken the place of Sopranos as our Sunday night entertainment, and so far has served as a fine replacement.  For one thing, it’s only 30 minutes long so it doesn’t test the endurance of those of us with limited attention spans.  And, today, I guess it’s back to work, most likely for (gasp) a full week.  Probably should have thrown a “buffer” day in there…

I am about to enjoy a nice two-day work week.  SWEET!!!  Wednesday morning I’ll be joining Donette on a trip to lovely Omaha, NE, and then we’re going to follow that up with a camping trip to Lovewell Lake in KS.  Should be relaxing.

Well I’m not really too keen on typing today, and I’m going to use that as an excuse for a brief update.  In addition, we really didn’t do much, so I don’t have anything to relate anyway.  I find this brutal heat rather oppressive so I just stay inside for the most part.  Friday night, case in point, we just stayed home and watched TV.  I did find time to work on my nifty firewall that I was bragging on in last week’s update.  This project culminated with me ruining my router;  Oops.  My beloved wrt54g firewall/router is now a blue and black plastic paperweight.  Oh well, it lived a relatively long life, I got my moneys worth out of it I suppose.  They aren’t very expensive anyway.  I found this an opportune time to read the documentation on the firewall software, and found the error of my ways.  Now I just need a new router.  Crap.

Saturday morning kicked off with Gabe’s agility class.  He continues to excel, and is even getting a bit better on the stupid weave-poles.  They introduced the “A-frame” this time, which is pretty much just a big ramp that they go up and over.  No problems on that one.  After class we went over to Mom’s and installed a new printer for her to use with her digital camera.  Pretty sweet printer… you can just plug the camera into it and print borderless 4×6’s with one button.  After that short project Mom made some lunch; Grilled ribeyed with sauteed mushrooms, and zucchini on the side.  Now that’s a lunch!!!  Far better than the chips and dip I probably would have eaten at home.  SCORE!!  We didn’t do anything that night… tried to watch King Kong but I fell asleep about 30 seconds into it.
Sunday Gabe and I got up early and went to the “Dog and Jog” at the Plaza.  I had some reservations about taking him down there, but he did just fine.  Sure, there were a few very minor confrontations, but no worse than any of the other mutts.  Hey, the boy doesn’t like having his butt sniffed, who can blame him.  I have thought about getting him a shirt that says “You leave me alone and I’ll leave you alone” but decided against it because A) if you’re close enough to read the shirt it’s probably too late, and B) dogs can’t read anyway.  We had fun though, I put up just a few pictures here.  The walk didn’t take too long, and after that we met up with Donette’s parents for some breakfast at Sharps.  I’ve had the chicken fried steak the last three times I’ve been there, might need to branch out a little next time.  It was mighty good though, except we got stuck with the crazy “psuedo-non-smoking” booth.  Exactly how you can call a booth “non-smoking” when smoking is allowed at the one right next to it kind of escapes me.  Joke.  After that we took care of our weekend “home maintenance” chores, then wound up the weekend down at the Brooksider.  Todd came over and watched “Entourage” with us, since the Sopranos is now over.  It rated “OK”.

We slowed things down quite a bit last weekend, mostly so I wouldn’t have to engage in a rambling, 3000 word update today.  Always thinking ahead.  But, in a huge bonus for all, I am not going to start with the usual “Friday” events, and instead jump all the way back to WEDNESDAY!!!  Oh yeah, we’re gettin’ crazy now!!!  Anyway… Wednesday I went to the DMB concert out at Verizon with Ed & Kim.  I’ve always wanted to see Dave, but I am quite a staunch Verizon-hater.  That place plain sucks.  While I’ve seen some good shows there many moons ago, everything about the whole amphitheatre experience has been crappy.  Actually, when declining the occasional concert invitations I get, my mantra has always been “I wouldn’t go see Dave Matthews & R.E.M together at that hole.”  But, Ed ended up with an extra ticket to this show, and in a possible indication of the apocalypse I went ahead and picked it up from him.  I will call the evening an overwhelming success.  I think the key was that Ed is much more show-savvy than I;  He had us in and out of that miserable parking lot death-trap with barely a slow-down.  It seems like they’ve lightened up on the rubber-glove-searches getting into the gates too.  Overall, much less painful than I remember.  And the show itself?? Nothing short of awesome.  Mind you, I have no intention of following him all over the country seeing all the other shows on the tour like Ed.  I’m more in the “OK I’ve seen my DMB show now, check that one off the list” category.  Definitely something to remember though.

Friday I don’t guess I have anything to report.  We shut down and watched movies.  At least I think we did… Honestly I don’t really remember.  Next thing I knew it was 9:00 at night and I was starving.  We fired up our hand-me-down Weber Kettle grill and cooked up some salmon and potatoes.  Man I haven’t grilled on charcoal for a long time, and I’ve missed it.  It came out rather well if I do say so my darn self.

Saturday started off with round two of Gabe’s agility class.  He did even better than last week, if that’s even possible.  Easily the star of the class, in my unbiased opinion.  Well, OK, there was that little incident where he panicked in the middle of the collapsible tunnel.  The instructor-lady has a little repair work to do on her equipment this week.  Oops.  Overall he did quite fabulously though.  After that we headed over to Mom’s for a little lunch.  My nephew Matthew has been staying with her all week, so we got to see him too.  (Sorry Carl, no pictures this time.)  After lunch it was back home to kick back and do a whole lot of nothing, save mowing the lawn.  I spent the greater part of the afternoon working on my new firewall project, which finally ended successfully.  I am now using my Linksys WRT-54G as a nifty little firewall, managed by “firewall builder” software running on a Fedora FC4 box.  Oh yeah, I’m cool.  After wasting the day in that manner, the Martins came over and joined us for a little Mexican take-out food.  I think we had plans to play cards or something like that, but we ended up just sitting on the back deck watching Gabe run around all crazy with the neighbor dog.

Sunday our big project was installing a doggie-door for Gabe.  I swear, that boy is a mess.  I would surely not be able to handle a child, I guarantee that.  Now that he is no longer welcome at his daycare place (which is a whole other story) we have got to find something to do with the boy during the day.  For the last year and a half, I’ve rushed home immediately after work to let the boy out of his kennel.  Something of an inconvenience, but tolerable with those couple of “daycare” days when I can stay at work if I need to, or stop by the Brooksider on the way home, or whatever.  Now that he’s stuck at home full time, we need some options.  We’ve tried leaving him in the house when we’re gone;  Suffice to say that did not go well.  We’ve tried leaving him in the yard, but he tears up the screens and gnaws on the fence.  So, the latest idea is to let him in and out as he pleases.  This is directly against all his training, which is that he gets told when to go in and out, but I’m ready to make some concessions.  He was howling pitifully at the back gate when I left this morning, which is not a good indicator of things to come, but we’ll see what happens.  We wrapped up that project just in time for the Martins to join us for dinner again.  I fired up the charcoal grill again and threw on some sirloins, while Martin did pork chops and tuna.  After that we watched the merciful end of the pathetic Sopranos season, and called it a weekend.

Well, look at that, I rambled into another long update anyway.  Just wordy I guess.  I turned on the “comments” thingy for these too.  Don’t ask me how to use it, I don’t even know if it works.  One spam message and it’s right back off, I can tell you that.