Ugh, my Uverse is still broken.  I thought they were going to come up with some miraculous fix, but by now I’m rather resigned to the fix being “wait until my contract is up and switch services.”  What a drag.  I think I MIGHT be getting close but there are still weird intermittent phone problems.  Oh well.

So today is my big birthday.  By “big” I refer to the number.  Large.  Huge.  Unfathomable.  I was having trouble coming to grips with the whole situation, but at the end of the day I guess it’s unavoidable.  At least I got some mileage out of it, in the form of a weekend-long party in KC.  Now THAT was fun.  We flew there on Thursday with another couple from CA.  By the time we got all checked in to the hotel and stuff it was pretty late, so we just kind of hung around the area we were staying in (Westport) and showed them the lay of the land, so to speak.

Friday morning we got things started with a 10:00 tour of Boulevard Brewing.  I’m not sure how many times I’ve done that tour, ten maybe?  It never gets old though, seems like there is something new every time.  This time, the biggest change wasn’t to the brewery itself, but the tour format.  You used to have to sign up online, and it was almost impossible to get in one.  They were booked nearly a year out.  Now you just queue up at 10:00 and get your tickets, first come first server.  We showed up a little early and stood in line for a while, and had no trouble getting in on the first one.  After that, we gave our friends a quick tour of the Brookside area.  After hitting a few of my favorite spots, we moved downtown to the Phoenix and caught the Lonnie McFadden show;  Always a good time there.  After a good dose of jazz trumpet, several friends from Nebraska let us know they had arrived.  We took that as our queue to go grab some food, so we moved up the street to one of the finest dining establishments in KC, The Peanut.  Can’t beat chicken wings, BLT’s and nachos for dinner.  After scarfing that down, we headed back to Westport and met up with the NE group at Kelly’s for a good round of story-telling from The Big One of ’91, as we always do when we get together, then moved on to some other spots for more of the same.  We shut down Westport, I think it was like 3:00 when we left.  Or maybe 9:30, somewhere between there.

Saturday started off with a solid lunch at Jack Stack‘s Plaza location.  I wouldn’t call it my all-time favorite, but it’s always a solid bet for sure.  At first they said they wouldn’t be able to seat our large group, but they came through and got us a huge table.  After an extreme gluttony session, we had to go back to the hotel for a nap.  For evening entertainment we headed down to the always-fun Knuckleheads to catch a Rainmakers show.  That was one of our favorite bands (way) back in our college days, so it was a fine coincidence that they just happened to be playing that night.  The only downside was they’ve opened a new enclosed building at Knuckleheads, and that’s where they played.  I much prefer the outdoor area, although I’ll admit it was pretty darn chilly out that night.  I had a great time at any rate.

Sunday the event-of-the-day was the Royals game.  Donette had rented the Hall of Fame suite, and several friends were able to join us to catch the game.  After a week of rain predictions, it turned out to be just about the ideal day to watch a baseball game.  Actually, it turned out a bit on the hot side, so it was nice to have the air conditioning to retreat to whenever we wanted.  Extra bonus, they even won, albeit in a rather drawn-out fashion.  After blowing their scant lead in the ninth, they pulled it out with a walk-off homer in the 13th.  Whew, long game!  We wrapped things up with a little food at Grinders, and then it was time to head back to good ol’ Cali.  For a quick weekend trip, I feel like we did a good job of hitting a lot of my favorite places.  Can’t get to ’em all, but maybe for my 60th.  I did an absolutely abysmal job of pictures, but I have a few.

Well good ol’ pkenagy.com is sorta-kinda-almost working.  I remain bitterly distressed that it is not working like I want it to though.  My home network is in an utter shambles, a piecemeal hodgepodge of routers, switches, and cables strung everywhere in a desperate attempt to achieve basic functionality.  Sigh.  As soon as my uverse contract is up I will likely switch providers over this.  Until then, I will most likely lay awake many nights fretting about my current situation.  This is a very stressful time in my life, as you can imagine.

As to more interesting facets of the Kenagy household?  Well, there aren’t any, I spent my whole weekend working on my network.  I would be more than happy to detail my attempted resolutions and the resulting outcomes, but the backlash from Munkirs would be more than I could bear in my current fragile state.  And as for my recently reunited spouse, well I guess you could say the honeymoon is over.  She happily abandoned me to my troubles and went out with friends, professing to not really give a flying crap what I was blithering on about;  She just wanted her phone to work.  Geez, all this stress over a stupid phone line.  Who even has home phones these days?!?!?!  Well, people with home offices I guess.

Anyway, that was not really the exact circumstances of the weekend.  While I was indeed preoccupied with my uverse service, I was also sort of stuck in the house attending to a weekend-long project at work.  Who schedules these things on Mother’s Day weekend, sheesh.  She went out with a large group to a brunch in nearby Placerville, and then they spent the rest of the day wine tasting.  Glad somebody enjoyed the wonderful weekend weather.  While they were out, I took my highly anticipated new sous vide cooker for a test outing.  Much like my home networking woes, nobody (save my Uncle Roy) seems to really share my enthusiasm for this new interest.  Fear of the unknown is a terrible thing, people.  So, while everyone was gone, I seized the opportunity for a trial cook.  The selected test subject was a 2.5 pound tri tip roast.  After probably way-too-much research, I elected to cook it at 134 degrees for 6 hours, then finished it on the gas grill.  I must say, I was quite pleased with the results.  Definitely the most tender tri tip I’ve fixed, and the marinade flavor was much more pronounced than when done solely on the grill.  That said, I’ll make a few tweaks next time.  It was just a shade too done for my taste, I’ll back it down to 132 or maybe even 130 next time.  And, I finished it for 6 minutes per side on the grill, my thought being that I like a really crunchy exterior.  That was way too long, I’d say a max of 3 minutes per side next time.  Overall I declared it a success, if only in comparison to the disastrous uverse issue.

Sadly, I have no pictures to share this week.  Actually, I DO have some to share, I just can’t get to them because of the ongoing uverse plot against me and….  Oh never mind, I’ve covered that one enough for one day I guess.

Well my website is broken, seemingly irreparably.  After 2.5 years of the exact same setup, my stupid uverse service has decided my website & home phone cannot co-exist.  Since the phone service is for work and the website for play, guess what won.  I shall continue my troubleshooting endeavors but it don’t look good for the kid.  And now, having posted this brief update, I must re-enable the telephone…

Well I’m still by myself in CA, excluding the dog of course.  As you likely know, Doni’s dad passed away so she is helping out with things in KC.  I’ll be joining her later this week, then I think she’s coming back with me next week.  Whew, long time.  In the meantime, I’ve not done whole lot.  The weather has been pretty darn awesome so I’ve been riding my bike some and piddling around in the yard.  And…  Well…  Uh….  That’s about it.  Thank goodness for Royals baseball or I’d go to bed at 6:30 every night.  I’ve had some bits of fun though;  I took Teagan wine tasting once, threw a pork shoulder on the smoker and had people over, and I’ve been up to a friend’s house for tri-tip cooks a few times.  I’m starting to think the tri-tip is a pretty ideal hunk of meat for having people over.  Relatively easy to cook, doesn’t take long, and darn tasty.  Here’s a few random pics.  I expect I’ll get back to more riveting, regular updates in the near future.

So, not much to go on again this weekend.  If I didn’t mention it, Donette has been out of town the last few weekends.  Left to my own devices, it’s a known fact I will typically just sit on the couch and watch TV, eating microwave popcorn and Ritz crackers.  (I was starting to feel a little faint by Sunday afternoon, so I mixed some peanut butter into the diet.  Paired wonderfully with the crackers.)  Both of my friends were otherwise occupied this weekend, so it made my sloth-like ways even more inevitable.  I did have big plans of going bike riding, but it actually rained all weekend and threw that off too.  I watched no small amount of Gunsmoke, several random sporting events, and even ventured out once to wander the aisles at Costco.  The Costco trip netted two items I feel inclined to mention, mostly from lack of anything else to type about.  First was a meyer lemon tree.  I’ve been wanting a lemon tree since we moved into the house.  I was supposed to get one when the backyard got landscaped, but for reasons unknown to me…  I didn’t.  (Never really figured that one out.  Whatever, it was $20 at Costco.)  I see them for sale occasionally, and then after I wait around trying to decide if it’s a good time to plant, if it’s the variety I want, blah blah, they’re all gone.  So, when I saw a few of these out front of Costco, I threw one in the cart.  No, it’s not really the variety I wanted, but I’m tired of waiting.  Second was a fancy new electric razor.  This was another item I’ve probably been over-thinking.  I’m a Braun man myself, but I’ve long been intrigued by the Norelco design.  A few weeks ago when I was wandering Costco, I couldn’t help but notice they had quite nice models of both brands available, for exactly the same price.  This set me on a bout of research between the two:  Which was better for shaving your head?  Which was better overall?  Which had better battery life?  How expensive were replacement parts?  Well, it was pretty much a dead draw, depending on which review you were reading.  I must say I was leaning toward the Norelco, mostly because I’m a bit peeved that my Braun wore out.  The head pops off it while you’re shaving, which is quite annoying.  Not like once a week, like five times every time you use it.  OK, it’s probably eight years old…  But still.  Anyway, when I headed in to make my final decision and saw the Norelco was $30 off, my final decision was made.  Initial results are very positive, I’m happy with the purchase.  Is it “As close as a blade?”  Heck no, I can’t believe anybody ever claimed that.  But, close enough to get me through the work day.  It IS a noticeably closer shave than my old Braun though.  I don’t believe anybody could tell the difference between it and a blade unless they ran their fingers over my face.  And honestly, that very rarely happens during my day-to-day encounters.  Thus concludes my product review, wasn’t that exciting and informative?