Lots going on in the neighborhood. We were disappointed to notice our neighborhood Mexican restaurant, Cantina del Ray, had shut down, but then found it had just moved to a new location nearby. In its place, they are supposed to be opening a wine bar, which sounds like a nice concept. Additionally, they are looking to open a Craft Beer Tavern right down the street from us. Not sure how that one will fare, as that location has quickly failed the last four businesses that were there, but maybe it just hasn’t hit the right market yet.

A decent weekend, all in all.  Donette came back from a work trip late Friday afternoon, and still had enough energy left to join me on the patio at the Brooksider.  We actually stayed quite a while, as the weather was just too nice to pass up.  Some of her friends from her teaching days were there too, so they kept her entertained while I hung out with The Boys.

Saturday was sort of a “rest and relaxation” day.  I squeezed in a quick bike ride, then we headed down to Hooper’s for lunch to enjoy their $1.50 hot dog special.  (I really don’t like hot dogs that much, but for whatever reason they sounded good.)  Since they were so cheap, I had the not-so-bright idea to eat two of them, which effectively relegated me to the couch for the rest of the afternoon.  Whew, them some big ‘dogs, complete with queso, black beans, and turbo-hot jalapenos.

Sunday morning I sat on the couch watching the second half(s) of all the movies I’d slept though Friday and Saturday night.  A productive use of time I suppose.  After that, we met up with the Martins at Bryant’s for a massive BBQ lunch and then headed to the stadium to watch the Royals game.  Man, that was a good game, complete with good weather.  I was rather excited to see Guthrie pitch, and dang near got to see my first no-no.  That part got blown, but they won all the same.  After the game there was still plenty of nice weather left, so we rolled down to the Brooksider for a bit, then headed home and watched another movie on Netflix.  (The second half of which I will have to watch another time, as I fell asleep again.)

Another one in the books.  Not a whole lot to report on either, save a rather nice bike ride on Sunday.  But just for the sake of consistency I’ll at least briefly recount the other two days.  Friday, well, you know the drill.  Went to the ‘Sider and hung out with the boys.  We did throw in a bit of a twist though.  Around seven o’clock or so, Donette came down dressed up  all fancy-like and said she wanted to go out to dinner.  A little notice might have been nice on these plans, as I was wearing some random tee-shirt, shorts, and flip-flops.  That usually bothers her more than myself though, so we wrapped things up on the patio and walked down the street to Domo Sushi.  I don’t recall how we came to an agreement on this place, as we’d been there once before and were definitely somewhat less than impressed.  It had been at least a year since our last visit, and all I could remember was thinking “over-priced and mediocre.”  This time I left feeling like I’d found my new favorite restaurant;  Matter of fact I’m quite excited to get back there soon.  We had four rolls;  Avocado, spicy tuna, cucumber and alligator.  They were all very good, and there was so much we could barely finish it all.  The price was more than reasonable too, I would even say inexpensive.  All I can think is we must have ordered wrong last time we were there.  At any rate we’ll be back for another try in the near future.

Saturday was sort of an off day.  I was getting ready for a bike ride on Sunday so I wanted to rest up.  Spent most of the day watching the Olympics, and we did get out for a few hours of shopping.  Took the bicycle in for a last-minute tuneup, went and picked up my packet for the ride, blah blah.

Sunday I rode in the “Sunflowers to Roses”  bike ride with Munkirs and my friend Don.  This was the first time participating in this one for all three of us, and I’d say it received mixed reviews.  As far as support I’d give it an A+.  They gave you some cool freebies before the ride, had plenty of rest-stops along the route, and a nice BBQ after the ride.  The negatives I’d say all fall in the “what can you do” category.  It was a very hilly route, which gets old after a while.  And, while it was mercifully cooler than it has been, it still got a little toasty and quite windy too.  All-in-all I had a good time though.  We all three rode the 57 mile route option and didn’t have much trouble with that distance.  (Mind you, I’m typing this standing up, but that’s just part of the fun of cycling I guess.)  After that I felt like I’d earned a calorie splurge, so I picked up Donette and we headed up to 75th Street for lunch.  I opted for the Kobe Beef Burger with blue cheese and a side of fries, always delish.  The rest of the day was spent on the couch recovering, both from the burger and the bike ride.  Watched the Royals game and a few horrid movies.  The first selection was “Eye of the Tiger.”  I’ve never been much of a Gary Busey fan, and now I remember why.  Boy did that soundtrack rock though.  After that I watched “Tank,” which about made me want to discontinue my Netflix account.  Rather inexplicably, before I watched it I actually saw that it starred James Garner and Shirley Jones, yet I STILL elected to play it.  Maybe it was morbid curiosity spurred by the Partridge Family episode I’d watched earlier in the afternoon, I don’t know.  And James Garner as the hard-core, old-school Sergeant Major?  Good grief, what a train wreck.

Another weekend in the books.  Not a bad one at that, either.  We got a much-needed rain last night, I’d guess a good inch and a half , maybe two inches.  Unfortunately it was all in our kitchen;  Apparently something broke in the shower upstairs.  Hey, we’ve been meaning to remodel in there anyway.  (How’s that for Monday morning optimism?)

Other than that horrible event, we just sort of plugged through the weekend as always.  I had my usual get-together with the boys on Friday.  Cut it a bit short to go pick up Donette from the airport though.  She’d been working out of town all week.

Saturday I spent the better part of my morning trying to piece together the neighbor’s garage, which backs up to our yard.  One rather determined terrier-breed doggy of ours has been slowly ripping through the back of it in a misguided attempt to do battle with their dog.  (Stupid Mabel, as I have referred to her on here before.)  Granted, the garage is about one strong wind away from falling down anyway, but I don’t need Teagan helping things along.  I pieced a good six foot or so back together, but there was another six foot section totally beyond repair.  So, I headed up to the hardware store, bought some siding, and made it look the best I could.  After that I tacked some heavy-gauge fence over it all, to prevent a recurrence of her evil deeds.  This little home project thoroughly exhausted me, so I rolled down to the Brooksider again for a rare Saturday appearance.  Not remarkably, all the same people were hanging out and I watched several hours of the Olympic games out on the patio.

Sunday I woke up early and found with some dismay that young Teagan had removed another section of the garage, just a bit higher than the fence I’d put up.  AAARRRGHHHHH!!!  I don’t even know what she did with the pieces, I can’t find anything.  We’re calling it a draw for now, it was too hot to spend my day working on it again.  Instead of working on that mess, we headed down to Westport to check out the Google Fiber open house.  It was cool, to be sure, but honestly I left feeling a bit under-whelmed.  Oh I’ll be getting it, make no mistake about that, although I still haven’t decided if we need the TV package or not.  The biggest problem I had with it is that they provide the router equipment, which means you don’t have any access to the config.  That, in turn, limits some of the admittedly odd setups in our house, not the least of which is running this website.  Could this spell the demise of pkenagy.com????  What would Munkirs and my other two readers ever do??!!!

We are officially back from our California vacation.  I’ve got the day off, because we didn’t get home until around 2:00 this morning, but as I stepped outside into the 90-degree heat this morning I quickly realized we were no longer in California.  Boooo.  We actually put some small amount of effort into extending the trip.  The Royals are at Angels stadium this evening, which would have justified another night.  We also wanted to put off facing the cat as long as possible;  The Wrath of Kane is indeed a fearful  display of spitefulness.  But, it just wasn’t to be.  For one thing, Donette leaves tomorrow on a business trip, and for another our debit card mysteriously quit working a few days ago.

Great trip though, I feel like I have been gone for a lot longer than a week.  There were a lot more “activities” involved with this trip than usual, which I think made it more enjoyable.  To skim the highlights, we flew into Oakland on the 13th with the Martins.  Donette and Kelly were running in the Napa to Sonoma 1/2 marathon on Sunday, so the first weekend events centered around that.  The run went off without a hitch.  Matter of fact, they really didn’t even seem tired and we ended up meeting some friends and going out for the evening.  Monday I got up semi-early and joined Chris, David (a friend of ours who just happened to be in town from DC,) and Steve (who lives there) for a quick nine holes of golf.  Believe it or not, this marked the first time in my entire life I’ve played a round of golf.  It was a great time, if maybe more due to the 68-degree weather than the actual game.  Mercifully, there is no photo documentation of this event.  After that, we picked up the girls and Steve took us on a tour of the Sonoma Wineries.  Tuesday marked the end of the Martin’s trip, so we dropped them back at the airport and started the next leg of our trip, which was a drive down scenic Highway One.  I am most definitely not a fan of driving, but if you have to be stuck in a car for any extended period of time that’s definitely the road to be on.  Honestly I would rate it over the famed “Road to Hana,” which we’ve driven a couple of times also.  Donette had planned the trip down the coast in relatively short hops so as not to exceed my notoriously short attention span, so we had lots of sight-seeing breaks along the way.  A few of the more interesting stops were lunch at Nepenthe in Big Sur, and a tour of the Hearst Castle in San Simeon.

Late Thursday night, we arrived in San Clemente for the Schirner Family Reunion.  This is my Mom’s side of the family, and this marked the third time we had all managed to get together from various parts of the country to descend on my Uncle Jack’s house in Laguna Niguel.  Mercifully for him, the reunions are pretty spread out.  Let’s just put it this way:  In the pictures of the first reunion, I had a full head of hair and Donette was sporting a sexy spiral perm.  And, at the last one all the younger kids were just starting their educations;  This time they were telling us what colleges they planned on attending.  Whew, time flies.  It would still be a pain though, I felt sorry for them.  At one point I counted 34 people in their back yard, ouch.  That’s what happens when you live in a “destination location” though I guess, something I don’t have to worry about.  I can even safely gamble a polite offer to host the next one, knowing nobody will actually take me up on it.  “Hey, how about everybody come to my house in beautiful KC for the next reunion?”  Uh, gee Phil, thanks but no thanks.  Perfect crime.