Honestly, that was a pretty solid weekend.  Ups and downs, as always.  We started off strong Friday night at the Brooksider.  I stopped by Diebel’s on the way and grabbed a few top-shelf cigars, and made it there shortly after four.  Our friends David and Jill were passing through town again, so they joined us for a little revelry.  A fine evening on the patio was somewhat marred by the deluge of rain, but we were able to hang out under the small covered portion for several hours.  After a while we were getting hungry, so we headed down to the Thai Place in Westport for dinner.  I was expecting a wait, but I guess we were well past the dinner hour and we didn’t have any trouble getting a table.  I hadn’t been there in years, but we had a Groupon expiring so we figured what better time to use it up.  It was as good as I remember;  Probably the best meal I’ve had in a long time as a matter of fact.  We ordered three entrees and a few appetizers and just shared it all, which was plenty of food to go around.  I found myself wondering, as good as it all was, if it might have been even better had I not smoked two cigars earlier.  Hmmm.

Saturday, Donette got up early in the morning and headed up to the northlands for a training event, for her upcoming 1/2-marathon this winter.  While she was out bettering herself, I rode my motorcycle to Blue Springs to gorge myself on BBQ.  I was signed up to judge at the Blue Springs Blazeoff competition, which I’d done for the last several years.  Donette usually joins me, but this year she had her training going on, and besides that she was still holding something of a grudge from last year’s not-so-pleasant experience.  Well, it’s hard to say if all the tables had good luck this year, but we certainly got some solid entries at our table.  With the exception of some mediocre brisket, every thing we tried was excellent, to include the “Kid’s Que” we tried.  (Matter of fact, we all agreed one of the steaks the kids turned in was better than several local “steakhouse” offerings we’d had lately.)  Mostly I judge this contest to get opinions and advice from other judges, and I was at a great table for that this year too.  Four of the five other judges at my table also cooked on competition teams, which I’ve found sort of rare.  One of the more interesting things they said was that they all refused to either judge or compete at Kearney, as they consider it a sham contest because of the less-than-50% certified judge participation.  (In comparison, only 9 of the 84 judges at Blue Springs weren’t certified.)  This information won’t keep me from competing up there this year, but it will give me another valuable excuse when we do crummy again.

After the BBQ I enjoyed a nice ride home, then we set about a little home project.  At least we tried to, ultimately ending in another epic failure.  A friend of ours had given us an old kitchen sink they had torn out of a rental property, and while it did have a few scratches it was significantly nicer than ours, so we decided to set about installing it.  We hadn’t even begun the tear-out stage when my first odd injury occurred.  I was walking barefoot to the garage when that freakishly strong rainstorm hit, so I decided to sprint, or as close as I’ve come to sprinting in the last 20 years anyways.  I immediately pulled up when I felt something strain in that tendon behind your ankle.  Ouch.  It was pretty painful, so I just had to limp through the thunderstorm and get the tools.  Back safely in the house, I headed up the stairs to get something-or-another from the bedroom.  I was heavily favoring my left ankle, and bam, my right knee gave out on me.  It wasn’t a strained kind of feeling like the other one, it was a flashes of light, speaking in tongues, knock you off your feet kind of pain.  It put me on my butt for several minutes.  Good grief, I wasn’t aware I had to do ten minutes of stretching before crossing the house these days.  After a while I was able to mimic some form of normal locomotion, and we set about our sink project.  Despite several YouTube videos and a couple of trips to the hardware store both Saturday and Sunday, we still don’t have a kitchen sink.  At one point we actually did have it setting in the counter with water coming out the faucet;  Unfortunately water was coming out everywhere else too so we just tore it all back out.  Sigh.  I guess we could wash dishes in the bathtub, but it’s on the second floor and I can’t get up the stairs.

We didn’t work on the sink the entire weekend though;  We mixed in a nice dinner at 75th Street on Saturday, the abysmal sort-of-almost-football game on Sunday, and our friend Susan joined us for dinner at Jalapenos last night.  I guess we are relegated to eating out every meal for the immediate future;  Could be worse.