I really should be relieved of any responsibility for updates today, because it’s a holiday.

Not only is it a holiday, but I’m in a peculiarly foul temperament too.  Not all that peculiar I guess.  Makes it hard to concentrate though.

Let’s see… Weekend summary.  Friday we did zippo.  I was too spent.  I sat out on the back porch and burned some stuff; Had a nice little fire actually.  After I ran out of wood, I went inside and watched “The Incredibles” with the wife.  Cozy little movie night, even if the movie was a little unsettling.  Cartoons freak me out.

Saturday we did a little lawn work, then headed out to Martin City for some BBQ at Jack Stack.  Threw down on some ribs, then did a little shopping.  After glutting myself on a slab of baby backs, I went home, put the dog away, and went to a barbecue party.  All BBQ, all weekend baby.  Bad part was that the fiesta was in Olathe KS.  But, what the heck, I cheerily made the long drive and didn’t even mention what a horrible inconvenience the location was.  OK, maybe it did get mentioned a few times…

Sunday was a day-o-work again.  All this weekend activity is making me feel very important and needed.  And possibly a few other things.  Keeps me out of trouble I guess.  But, I did get to watch all the games so it wasn’t that bad.  My Fantasy Football team got crushed, bringing my season record to a remarkably decent 4-4.  It doesn’t help when half the guys you start are on bye weeks… Oops.  I don’t pay much attention to the whole thing apparently.  Did a little PC work too… Had my first experience with a Linspire machine.  I thought it sucked, which is another way of saying I couldn’t figure it out.

Tonight we’re going to a Halloween party, which will be outside so it will likely be a pretty short party.  Still debating on taking the pup… I had a costume all designed for him but didn’t get it finished.  I would encourage everyone to bring their kids by for some candy.  We’ve got tons of it, and I’m not talking dum dums and starburst.  We’re talking premium treats.  And nobody will come by and get any.  “I’m not bringing my kid to that neighborhood.”  C’mon man, this ain’t exactly the ‘hood.  True, our average trick-or-treater is 24 years old and not wearing a costume, but it never hurts to try and swing the demographic a bit.

Oh yeah…   One of my buddies down at the coffee shop hooked me up with two fine meat carving sets.  Munkirs and I (Team Brisket) are gonna be stylin’ at the competitions next year.

I feel bad that I have nothing to relate from the weekend.  Really, I do.  Believe me, the pain of a wasted Saturday weighs just as heavily on me as anyone.  But, it happens.  I worked all day Saturday, into the wee hours of Sunday, which pretty much shut me down for the remainder of the day.  I’m not a young man anymore;  Can’t deal with those all-nighters like I once did.  The mortgage department at Wells Fargo will stay happy for another month though.  What can ya’ do.

So, having no material to work with, but not wanting to “mail in an update” for two weeks running, I shall resort to random babbling.

Falling squarely into the category of worthless news:  I’ve started going back to the gym again.  After roughly a three month hiatus, I actually made it up there three times last week.  The latest iteration of my sporadic fitness phases started last Tuesday.  I pounded out a hard 45 minutes on the elliptical machine… Worked up a pretty good sweat.  I was feeling good; Back in the swing of things.  On the way out the door, I ran into Todd, and we retired to the bar to go over our workout schedules and watch TV.  Three hours later, we wrapped things up and headed home.  Hmmmm… 45 minutes on the exercise equipment, 3 hours in the bar… Ohhhhhh the irony of it all.  Thursday was my second attempt; relatively uneventful, save the stop by the Brooksider on the way home.  Hey, it’s half-price burger night… That’s a gimme.  The third trip was Sunday afternoon, when we met the Munkirs at the gym for the breakfast buffet they put on.  I never touched the exercise equipment but put down about 2 pounds of bacon.  Again… Ohhhhhh the irony of it all.

Monday was my third week of doggie school with Gabe.  I won’t say what class we’re taking; I don’t want to jinx us.  Suffice to say it’s a lot harder than our last class, and I’m not holding my breath for a diploma.  Honestly though, we’re doing pretty well.  I would go so far to say that Gabe is the star pupil, not withstanding a few “incidents.”  Sure, there’s only four dogs in the class, but a star is a star.  Since the “Great Poodle Incident of ’05” he has been pretty well behaved.  His bad mark came the first night, during introductions.  That’s when you go around the room, introduce yourself and your dog, tell where you got your dog, blah blah blah.  I was well into my patented speech, which consists of “I’m Phil, this is Gabe” when this big 80 lb. standard poodle next to us growled.  I am not exactly sure what the poodle said, but it didn’t go over real well.  To quote “Apocalypse Now”, Gabe moved to “Terminate with extreme prejudice.”  Worse, he kinda took me by surprise and I didn’t react very quickly.  I chose the tact of reasoning with him, which he was far beyond.The conversation went something like:

Phil:  “Now Gabey, the puppy just growled at you, are you really sure you need to hold onto his throat like that?”

Gabriel: “#()%*&^$ SON OF A #$)*($ MUTHA #)$(&$^&”

Phil:  “Easy boy, easy, it’s OK fella, good puppy”

Gabriel: “##@*% RIP YOUR @**%^&* THROAT OUT ##*%^&”

And so on and so forth.  Yeah, not working.  It wasn’t that bad, but it wasn’t that good either.  I’ll tell you, the boy looks a lot bigger than 60 lbs. when he’s pissed off.  For some reason nobody sits on our side of the room any more.  That’s OK, ol’ Gabe works better without distractions.

Lastly, I’m well into my latest artistic creation:  “Fat Boy Phil In Black, III.”  That being, of course, my latest Johnny Cash compilation.  I have collected no less than 65 Cash tunes, including three versions of “Long Black Veil.”  I am now engaged in the rigorous process of weeding out the “not worthy” tunes, if there are any.  Looks to be a double album at a minimum… More to come.

Finally the weather I like has arrived, if only for a few days.  It’ll probably turn cold shortly…  Can’t have it stay this nice for long.

I’m a bit short on material this week.  Despite the glorious climate, I just didn’t do much.  This was our first weekend at home in a remarkable run of 5 weeks, so we laid low and caught up on a few household maintenance items.  Spent some quality time with the pup, mowed the lawn, grilled some chicken, that kind of stuff.  Actually, the only time I left the house at all was to walk Gabe down to the Brooksider for some lunch on Saturday.  He was remarkably well behaved too… Either walking during daylight hours calms him down or he doesn’t feel well.  Hmmmmm.  Might have to look at rescheduling my daily walks.

Man I’m really struggling here.  I worked a whole lot this weekend too, that didn’t help matters.  Got a few comical stories to relate there, but nothing that should probably be re-told in this forum.  Doni went out with “The Girls” Saturday night, but I wasn’t there so I don’t have any details.  I watched Napolean Dynamite on HBO.  Three times.  I dunno… Just kind of a lazy weekend.

Oh yeah, the American Royal pics have been up for two weeks now, I just keep forgetting to post the link.  So here you are.  Speaking of the Royal, I was going to launch into an extended diatribe on my “brisket conspiracy theory” but I’ve sort of gotten over it.  Suffice to say I have, in my possession, indisputable evidence that the brisket category was rigged.  Don’t doubt it.

OK, our traveling is finally done for a while.  Good thing, because it was taking a nasty toll on our bank account.  We’ve been “somewhere” for the last four weekends in a row.  Just boarding the pup that often was getting a little pricey.

Our trip this weekend was to St. Louis for a wedding.  In the interests of maximizing our trip, we went down a day early so we could hang out with the Eisenbargers on Friday.  We messed around at their house all night, eating dinner, playing kickball, ping-pong, air hockey, and various other forms of entertainment.  After that we met up with some friends back at the hotel and caught up on their recent events, then called it a night.

Saturday was a wedding ceremony for our friends Ameet and Lori.  They had a traditional Hindu ceremony at the hotel.  (I’ll let you guess which one of them has a Hindu background from the names.)  I must say, I’ve never seen anything quite like it… Pretty radical departure from the weddings I am used to.  Lots of chanting, incense, fire, and pelting people with flowers.  The guy officiating it all (whose exact title escapes me) did a good job of keeping us filled in on what was going on though, so we weren’t totally lost.  It was a little long, but anything involving fire is generally considered pretty interesting in my book.  So, now I can check “Attend Hindu wedding” off my list of things to do.

Sunday was taken up with the miserable drive home.  Man I hate that trip.  OK, I hate any trip, but the St. Louis drive is particularly miserable.  Not even a Chiefs game to pass the time with either.  We did break it up a little bit;  We stopped and joined the Martins in Rocheport for a glass of wine up on the bluffs.  Other than that brief respite though, it was an uneventful day.

The American Royal is finished, and so am I.  Spent.  Beat.  Done.  I think everybody had a good time; I know I did, and that’s what is most important.  I took over 160 pictures, I’ll try and work on those this evening or maybe tomorrow.  It takes time to weed out all the ones that might incriminate myself.

To recap:  We arrived onsite at the Royal Thursday afternoon to start setting up our spot.  We ended up with a huge spot this year, and it had some ideal qualities… It was in an alley, so we had wind blockage from at least two sides.  We backed up to one of the buildings, so there wasn’t anybody behind us.  We were on the end of the row, so we could park our cars at the end of the spot without getting hassled.  Overall, a great spot.  We dropped Zim’s 30+ foot camper at one end, giving us yet a third side protected from wind, so weather-wise we were in good shape.  The rest of the day was a blur of cigars, poker, and cheesesteak sandwiches.  We put the “party food” on sometime close to midnight and then sat around watching it cook for the rest of the night.  Somebody came up with moniker “Float Trip on Asphalt” for the Royal, which is very appropriate.  Same bunch of guys, doing the same thing we do all day and night at Pettit’s campground, just without the river.

Friday we got down to the business of preparing for the big party.  This involved lots more poker and cigars.  Unfortunately it didn’t involve any tasty cheesesteak sandwiches, since we’d eaten all those the night before.  Seemed like a good idea at the time.  Kevin hosted a little lunch party for his bosses around noon.  He served spareribs and chips, which came out pretty well.  Around three o’clock we started getting seriously busy; slicing meat, setting up tables, putting out the chafing dishes, etc.  We were a little better prepared than last year;  At the designated time of six o’clock, we had six briskets, four or five pork butts, around eight slabs of ribs, and then a bunch of chicken, sausage, and turkey, all sitting out and ready to go.  (OK we actually had FIVE briskets… I don’t want to hear any lip.)  For sides we had a tomato basil salad, two pans of beans, a black bean salad, and a big bowl potato salad that Doni’s Mom brought us.  When the smoke cleared, we estimated that we fed roughly 200 people.  This was based on a plate count:  We had a total of 300 plates, figure 100 of those got used for nachos and cheesesteaks and such that the team used, and that leaves a rather conservative estimate of 200 that went to guests.  Now THAT’S a party.  The party broke up around midnight, and then it was back to cooking.  We got our competition entries rolling and then it was another long night of sitting around watching the smoke roll.  I only put on one competition brisket, which turned out to be a grave judgment error.  Hey, I was tired, it happens.

Saturday was pretty much all business.  Lots of prep work, checking the fire, tending the meat, and getting the turn-in boxes ready.  Doni’s nephew Joshua came down to assist with the sampling and shuttling the entries to the judges.  All this effort resulted in scores that were roughly as dismal as last year.  Sigh.  I think I’ll just give up on brisket and do a dessert entry next year.  Stupid #$(*)^ judges wouldn’t know a good #$(@# piece of brisket if I hit them over the *@$%^ head with it.  Well, in all fairness, it WAS a little too tender.  I thought it tasted good though.  Oh well, what can you do.  I soundly thrashed our nemesis, the Red Glove BBQ team, so I’ll take small comfort in that.  Well, that and my AWARD WINNING ENTRY at Kearney.  Our best entry was sausage.  Let me recap the sausage entry for you:  Bruce wakes up around 6:00 in the morning and rolls off the pile of straw that he’d slept on all night.  He walks over to the ice box in his boxers and dress socks, grabs a handful of pre-packaged sausage links, and tosses them carelessly in the corner of the smoker.  He then stumbles back over to his little manger of straw and goes back to sleep.  Around 9:00 he gets back up, gets in his car and goes home, leaving his sausage to whoever cares enough to turn it in.  Not wanting to take a zero, Zim graciously chops it up and carries it to the judges.  Yes, naturally this effort resulted in our best entry by far.  Nothing short of maddening.

We did however have a few bright spots in the weekend, contest scores aside.  We set out a few buckets for ALS donations, and at the end of the party pulled almost $700 out of them.  I was expecting more along the lines of $200, so I was more than pleased with these results.  That’s a nice chunk of change there, thank you to all who contributed.  Also, our party was infinitely better than last year.  Our party site and our food preparation were head-and-shoulders above our last attempt, and since we’re in it more for the Friday night activities than Saturday, we can claim an unqualified success there.  And, Doni won a gallon of barbecue sauce in a raffle, so we didn’t leave totally empty-handed.  Call it a consolation prize.