That was a nice, relaxing weekend.  That’s short for “I didn’t get anything done that I was supposed to.”  Hey, it happens.  I saw lots of good movies.  Maybe “good” is a stretch.

We started off strong on Friday… Perhaps a little too strong.  Coulda burned ourselves out early for the rest of the weekend.  All Doni’s co-workers came over (and Ed) and we held a little Corn Hole tourney.  (Tip:  Use that link and that link only to find information on the game of “cornhole.”  Do not stray from the recommended site.  That’s all I’m saying on the subject.  Hopefully I still have a job tomorrow after a few guesses at finding the official site went horribly wrong.)  Anyway… This is some kind of Ohio equivalent of “washers” I guess.  Once we convinced Gabe that it wasn’t some new type of “fetch” game we had a good time of it.

Saturday found Doni in poor health.  Run down from work, or the night before, or heat, or diet… Who knows.  At any rate, she pretty much hunkered down all day.  Gabe and I went to his final session at Puppy School, where he graduated Magna Cum Laude.  He really does quite spectacular while he is at class; Unfortunately it doesn’t always carry over to when he’s not in class.  I think the little bugger has associated obeying commands to when he is in that one particular building.  At any rate, we might sign up for another class, but haven’t decided which one yet.  After school, I went to a birthday party for a guy on my Fantasy Football Team for a few hours, then out to Mom’s for dinner.  Both sisters were there with the entire complement of nieces and nephews, so I got to see everybody in one fell swoop.  Plus, we had an awesome dinner; baby back ribs, fresh corn-on-the-cob, ‘tater salad, baked beans… Good stuff man.  In other epicurean news, her neighbor gave me about 3 pounds of garlic that he grew in his garden.  I hauled that home, minced some up, and whipped it up with some basil that’s growing in the back yard.  It made a fine little pesto that we put on some grilled Mahi Mahi Sunday night, but I overdid it on the garlic a bit.  I am suffering, as is everyone else in the general vicinity.

Sunday, aside from the aforementioned Mahi Mahi, about the only event of note was going out to lunch with the previously-feared-missing Mr. and Mrs. Munkirs.  We hit “On The Border” for some noontime grub.  Also of note, we were there about an hour and I don’t think the subject of Float Trip ever came up… Odd.  After that, I thought about fixing the weedeater, thought about fixing the electrical outlet in the kitchen, thought about going to the gym, thought about re-doing the web site, and thought about installing my new anti-virus program.  As an alternative to all these less-than-attractive options, I sat on the couch and watched movies all day.  What can ya’ do.

** Oh yeah, by the way, Ed put up some pictures from our Smithville trip last weekend.

MAN I like 3 day weekends.  I have enough vacation to take off every Monday for the rest of the year… I may just give that strategy some thought.  We spent the entire holiday weekend at Smithville lake, so I see no need for a multi-paragraph update.  Doni took the lead on the planning this year, after the spectacular failure of last year’s event.  (The details of which can be perused in the archive files from exactly one year ago.  Suffice to say that we ruled out tent-camping early on in the planning.)  The first major upgrade was to leave the tent at home and upgrade the living accommodations.  Doni’s folks lent us their mojo-motorhome to cover this area.  Doni drove it up there (??!!) last Tuesday to insure a premium spot.  Ed, Kim and I drove up there Friday afternoon to a fully setup camp, complete with a/c, shower, ‘fridge and freezer… Pretty much all the comforts of home.  Saturday we rented a pontoon boat for half a day, so we could take Gabe out on the water and see how he liked it.  He didn’t mind the boat, but wasn’t too keen on jumping in the water.  That was OK, because I wasn’t entirely sure how I was gonna get him back out if he did jump in.  Sunday was the same drill, except we left the pup back at camp and floated around on the Martin/Schmidt vessel all day.  Good times man.  We did have an incident with a particularly ferocious perch; this evil little creature bit four people, with Ed getting the worst of it.  Sunday night was rained out, which kinda stunk.  We got back to the camp site all cranked up and ready to go, and it rained non-stop the entire evening.  Oh well, made us appreciate the motorhome all the more.  Monday we broke camp and headed out.  Doni and I drove all the way home, then decided “hey it’s kinda fun up there…” so we turned around and went back.  What the heck, the site is paid for through Wednesday.  So, we hung out with the dog another day and watched the fireworks.  Just pulled back into town this morning, hence the lack of update yesterday.  My major failing for the weekend was in the photo arena…  Just didn’t get around to snapping any pics.  And I don’t take my camera on the boat… That’s just a bad idea.  I got a picture of the dog and some shrimp fajitas in my fancy tinfoil grill-wok, and that’s it.

I don’t really have anything to report for last weekend, but I’ll make a cursory update for the sake of keeping up appearances.  We did have a little impromptu gathering on Friday night; I was watching TV when Doni stormed the house with all kinds of people she invited over.  They played “beanbag toss” in the back yard for a while… I abstained.

I had to work for the rest of the weekend.  Boo hoo.  You don’t want to hear about it.  I do however get some level of interest from pondering this little factoid:  If I go out for “fun” I’m doing good to make it until 10:00, yet I can still manage an “all-nighter” at work.  Does this mean that I find work more interesting, and it keeps me awake?  That I use more energy playing than working and wear out quicker?  Hmmmm.  I’ll do some cipherin’ on that.

No rain for a weekend finally!!  The weather was most welcome.  We kicked off the festivities on Friday by doing absolutely nothing.  Doni was kind of worn out from a trip to lovely Omaha, NE, and as for myself I’m still rather fascinated by the number of channels I’ve got on the TV now.  So we just did a big ol’ bunch of nothing.

Saturday afternoon, Doni had one of those “parties” that the girls rotate through.  They go to each others houses and donate money to each other so the hostess-of-the-week can get some free stuff.  You know the drill, I don’t imagine I need to describe it in any more detail than that.  Meanwhile, Gabe and I went to puppy school, where we worked on “down,” a.k.a. “lay down.”  He had kind of a rough go at it… For some reason he keeps rolling over.  Amusing, granted, but not too technically correct.  We also received the rather startling news that he actually has to test out to “pass” the class.  Heck, I thought it was like Kindergarten; You just go on to the next class, you don’t really pass or fail.  We better buckle down on the homework a little more; I’ve been letting him slack.  Too much “fetch” and not enough “sit” spoils the puppy.  Saturday night, we went to the first show of the Starlight season, called “Disney’s On The Record.”  This was absolutely, bar none, unequivocally the single worst show I have ever seen in my life.  It had no plot, no dialogue, and no characters; Just a never-ending barrage of 60-some-odd revised Disney songs.  It was nothing short of brutal.  Over the past three seasons that we’ve been season ticket holders, I’ve devised an elaborate rating system for the shows, ranging from a low end of “tedious” to a high end of “tolerable.”  After watching this train-wreck though, I’ve added a special new category called “hara-kiri.”  I’ll have to remember to pack a sword to the remaining shows.  Fortunately, it looks like the schedule is generally downhill from here on out.  Mercifully, Doni pulled me out at intermission on this one.  The Martins came over for a while and we enjoyed the nice weather on the back porch, in blissful silence.

Sunday I got up at the unholy hour of 4:30, rousted by an uncomfortable stomach situation.  This was likely brought on by either the number of ribs I had at dinner before the Starlight show, or the show itself.  This worked out OK though; I wanted to fire up the smoker anyway.  I had a brisket on by 5:45, allowing plenty of time for it to finish before dinner.  This was the first brisket of the season, and it didn’t come out so hot.  There were a few contributing factors to the less-than-stellar results: For one thing, I used a “trimmed” brisket for the first time.  I’ve always wanted to try it, and now I have.  Won’t happen again.  Second, I didn’t do much in the way of seasoning, in an effort to accommodate Doni’s current “no salt, no sugar” rule.  This didn’t work out too bad, as you can always just dump on some sauce for flavor, but it was definitely lacking standing alone.  Oh well, plenty of time left to experiment before the big contest(s).  I’m out of wood though… Anybody got any pecan trees down?

Man this excess precipitation is bringing me down.  Can’t walk the dog, can’t mow the lawn, can’t sit on the deck.  It sucks.

The biggest news from last week was our switch from Time Warner to Everest.  Big news for our house anyway.  I’ve been wanting to upgrade the cable service for some time now, and Road Runner wouldn’t cut me any breaks for getting more service.  On the other hand, I could sign up as a new customer on Everest and get a month free service plus a free install.  All for the minor inconvenience of switching my email address, which Time Warner is going to do anyway when they give all their KC customers to Comcast.  Sounded like a no-brainer to me, so I went ahead and pulled the trigger.  We went from having 20 channels to all the digital channels, high definition channels, and HBO.  Just in time for all the rain too; it’s working out nicely.

As far as the weekend goes, our entertainment was definitely hampered by the stupid rain.  Kim and Ed came over Friday night and we sat around and played some 10-point pitch.  Ed and I dominated thoroughly of course; we had to wrap up around 11:00 when the girls wouldn’t quit crying.  Kind of embarrassing, really.

Saturday started off with doggie school at 10:30.  We’re working on leash-walking still, and threw “lay down” into the mix.  It’s going “pretty good.”  The boy ain’t too fond of sitting still, so it makes it kind of hard.  I think his attention span might be even shorter than mine, if that’s possible.  I can’t really think of anything else we did Saturday.  Probably sat around and cursed the rain and watched HBO.

Sunday I had planned on cooking a brisket, but got rained out.  MAN I’m sick of rain.  I kind of messed around all afternoon, then finally moped down the Brooksider around 3:30 to watch the Royals game.  After taking in my weekly dose of second-hand smoke, I went back home and watched the rest of the game there.  We finished up the weekend by going over to Susan’s new house and watching TV.  Had a little spaghetti, watched some Sopranos, tuned up her PC, and called it a night.

Thus ended another weekend.  Sigh.  If it ever dries out I’m gonna try the brisket thing again; keep it in mind for next weekend.

** Slight addendum.  I missed updating my website one place to reflect the new Everest service, thus the late update.  Didn’t feel it worth leaving work to fix; James can wait an extra few hours.  Also of note regarding the new cable:  Tonight will be my first night watching Monday Night Raw in over a year!!