Whew, I was hopping this weekend.  Fortunately most of my events were fun-related.  That doesn’t do much for the house and it’s state of disrepair, but what can you do.  I kicked things off Friday at the Brooksider with my usual band of compadres.    It was a nice day out, if a little cool.  I hung out a little longer than usual enjoying the patio.  When I finally did get home, Teagan was most displeased with my late arrival so I had to play ball with her for a good hour.  Sheesh, do the responsibilities of parenting ever end??!?

Saturday I got up and, with some difficulty, rode the scooter down to the Westside area to meet my friends Ann & Mark for breakfast at Los Alamos.  I mention the difficulty because I ran smack into the Hospital Hill run.  This is a popular area of town for such events, but I forgot all about this one or I honestly would have rescheduled breakfast.  I eventually detoured my way down there though, with a rather late arrival.  By the time I finally got there, it had warmed up considerably, so I tossed my keys in my jacket and locked it securely in the under-seat storage for safe keeping.  Literally as soon as I slammed the seat shut I started replaying that sequence in my head.  “OK what just happened there…  Take keys out of scooter, put keys in jacket pocket, lock jacket under seat. No that can’t be right, because that would mean…  Aw shoot.”  Rats.  I stomped around fretting about this unfortunate situation for a bit, then decided there wasn’t much to do about it and crossed the street to enjoy breakfast.  And, enjoy it I did.  Pretty interesting place, and very good.  I opted for a standard plate of chorizo con juevos, with rice and beans.  While that’s pretty standard Mexican Food Menu fare, it was definitely an above-average entry in the category.  Ann got a “platter,” where she selected three meats from their large steam table, with sides of rice and beans.  When I get back there, I’ll go that route.  I should have Saturday, but I was a bit intimidated by the conversational exchange required to figure out what you wanted.  (Mild language barrier going on at the order counter.)  She ended up with short ribs, carnitas, and an as-yet unidentified pork in red chile sauce.  It was a ridiculously large serving, the remainder of which is in my ‘fridge;  Score!  After breakfast they kindly transported me back home, where I set about the arduous task of finding the spare key to the scooter.  Literally hours later, I found one in an old coat I hadn’t worn for some time.  I took the Metro back down there, and after a refreshing hike through the ‘hood the situation was resolved.  Being moderately stressed after this, I rolled back to the Brooksider and hung out watching the baseball game with the boys, even getting to see a rare victory.

Sunday was event-filled also.  I got up early-ish and met Munkirs and his neighbor for a brisk morning bicycle ride.  In this case, “brisk” refers to the weather, not our pace.  We had a leisurely bit of exercise;  I’m still not up to any faster paced rides.  After that solid start to the day, I met Mom out in Raymore for brunch.  I rode my motorcycle out there, and it was still quite chilly!  Apparently I went by the calendar and not the thermometer when I left;  I about froze.  After enjoying my tasty omelette, I headed back home to prepare for a trip to Emporia to celebrate my niece’s birthday.  It would have made sense to leave from Raymore directly, but I was most definitely under-dressed for the weather so I needed a few more layers.  After donning some flannel-lined jeans and a heavier shirt, I headed south for Emporia.  I had grand thoughts of taking a relaxing, scenic motorcycle ride to get there, but that was thwarted by 1) my inherent geographical challenges, and 2) my desire to arrive on the same calendar day.  My phone did courteously provide a few alternate routes, but they were so long as to be quite impractical.  So, I just blasted down I-35, nervous as that made me.  I’ve got a nice jacket and helmet, but something tells me if a semi decides to pull over into your lane they aren’t going to make a whole lot of difference.  I arrived intact though, and enjoyed a tasty taco dinner in their brand spankin’ new home.  Happy #9 Faith!

I don’t have a terribly large amount of events to work with, and definitely nothing exciting, but I’ll slog through my obligatory post.  Actually it was a relatively good weekend, and a long one at that, but it wore me out.  I think I’m going to have to scratch Friday off the list, as I can’t remember that far back.  I think I may have gone to the Brooksider and enjoyed the patio, but don’t quote me on that.

Saturday was a fine day, as my days go.  Martin hooked me up with tickets to the Royals game, along with three other fellow ne’er do wells.  We didn’t have time to tailgate, which is generally just a hassle anyway.  He’s got awesome seats, so it makes the game pretty entertaining no matter what the outcome.  (I.E. they lost…  Again.)  We made it to the eighth inning but then it started getting a bit warm so we retired to the Brooksider for a bit.  After wearing out our welcome there, Kelly ventured south and joined us for dinner at our house.  We don’t have people over for dinner very often, so this was an exciting event for me.  (Something about constantly having to guard your plate from the cat or having a slobbery tennis ball dropped in your lap every five minutes tends to make people shy away from our table I guess.)  But, I recently purchased a fancy new grill and was anxious to cook on it, and we figured if anyone could tolerate our invasive pets it would be the Martins.  It came out well for a hurriedly planned menu.  My original plan was to ditch my gas grill and just stick with the new charcoal-fired machine, but I’m doing a bit more thinking on that.  The gas one provides a nice bit of additional space to keep things warm on, cook side dishes, etc.

Sunday started off strong and then tapered off sharply.  We began our day by riding our bicycles to Jerry’s Cafe for breakfast.  I’m inclined to agree with Donette’s assessment that they cook up the best plate of breakfast in the area.  On the downside, several others seem to share this opinion, so we had to wait 30 minutes or so.  That gave us time to recover from the ride though, which was a bit more strenuous than anticipated.  While only five miles each way, there are some rather imposing inclines along the way.  We rode Wornall getting there, and Holmes on the way back, both of which proved to be arduous journeys.  Oh well, maybe I worked off some of the delicious chorizo omelette I scarfed down at breakfast.  After that, we kind of took the rest of the day to recover.  I fired up the grill again later in the day and threw on some steaks;  If nothing else this new toy is helping to clean out our freezer.

Monday was a bit of a bust.  I had a corned beef I intended to throw on the smoker, but the rain threw me off schedule considerably.  I had also planned to try and straighten up the garage a bit;  Again, foiled by the downpour.  By the time the rain finally stopped it was too hot and humid to work in the garage, so I tossed the beef on the smoker and headed to the Brooksider to hang out.  I came home around 6:00 to find the smoker holding temperature nicely, but alas the meat was nowhere near finished.  Stumped by this turn of events, I ended up wrapping it in foil and heading to the Bier Station for dinner.  From smoked corned beef (one of my favorites) to a grilled cheese sandwich:  That’s a pretty hard fall.  By the time I got home the foil had done it’s job nicely.  The meat temp had rocketed from 135 to 195, but it was far past dinner time so I just threw it in the fridge for another day.  Sigh.

Yes I’ve been slacking this week.  Only on the blog front though, I’ve actually been very busy.  I won’t bore you with the details for once;  You’ll just have to trust me.  So, lacking a summary of my past weekend, I’ll opt instead to sneak in a beer review.  Going through my copious notes, one of the more interesting entries I came across was Odell’s 90 Shilling.  “What? That’s a rather generic beer,” you may be saying to yourself.  (Or, more likely, you may not be saying that.)  Indeed, it is a rather everyday brew, albeit one of my favorites.  It’s a very nice representation of the Scottish Ale style.  I think it’s probably a bit lighter in body than most of the well-known examples, but as such I find it more drinkable for a go-to everyday brew.  On this particular evening though, it was also the subject (victim?) of the weekly “randalling” project at Bier Station.  In short, they select a beer every week and basically infuse it with whatever flavors they happen to think sound good.  Sometimes they do this inline with the tap, and sometimes using a French Press.  As it happened, the flavor of the day that evening was “90 Shilling Randalled with Smoked Black Tea and Wild Cherries.”  Wow, how can you go wrong with a name like that?  Well, for one thing, you could not like smoked beers.  I am going to estimate I’ve tried at least six smoked ales in my life, and I can without reservation say I’ve despised every one.  I tasted no cherries, no tea… Just smoke.  And, for whatever reason, I do not like it.  As best I can describe, they all have a rather “oily” taste to me, which is as unpleasant as it sounds.  While it certainly looked like my familiar pour of 90 Shilling, the flavors I usually enjoy were completely lost.  No nicely toasted malt, no nicely balanced sweet/bitter flavors;  Just oily smoke.  I don’t guess I need to carry on all day. Suffice to say I didn’t exactly care for it.  I haven’t given up on the Randall project:  I tried one a few weeks later that was very enjoyable.  I’ll save that one for another day.

Well that was a rather pleasant weekend, unfortunately punctuated by brief bits of work.  Friday, for instance, I got rather caught up at work and totally missed out on my standard outing with The Boys.  By the time things got wrapped up I was pretty sure they would be gone, so I just headed home for some TV.  Donette, meanwhile, was out carousing with some bunch of hooligans, and stayed out until the unholy hour of 10:00.  Crazy!

Saturday kicked off bright and early with a visit to the dentist.  What a way to start the day, ugh.  I got through that bit of misery, then we headed to Costco for some long-delayed shopping.  Amid the usual load of groceries, we picked up ten bags of mulch for a little yard work.  That project took a lot longer than estimated, as most do.  It turned out quite nicely though, the front of our house actually appears as if people live there now.  Of course, as we stood back admiring our two hours of hard labor, Kane (our bitter old tabby cat) sauntered into the mulch and promptly fouled the entire area.  Nice.  After that we got cleaned up and met my Mom up at 75th Street to celebrate Mother’s Day.  We had a very nice dinner, and while it may have been rather lame of me to ask her to drive  out to my ‘hood for dinner it was certainly appreciated.  As usual, I ate far too much, so I headed to the couch and moaned for the rest of the evening.

Sunday, we let the post-church crowds clear out and then headed north to meet Donette’s parents for another celebration.  While I did have minor reservations about crossing the river, I must admit Donette made a good pick with Bonefish Grill.  I opted for the “mixed grill,” which was scallops, shrimp, and a small sirloin steak.  Other than some curiously prepared zucchini, my dinner was delicious.  Two nice dinners in a row, I made out like a bandit for the holiday.  That outing effectively covered Sunday, we didn’t accomplish much the rest of the day.  Notably absent from the weekend activities was bike riding.  That little pastime is simply not getting off the ground this season, at least so far.

Here’s a tasty entry from a few weeks ago.  I’ve been leaning towards the lighter end of the scale lately with summer coming on, and I generally enjoy the offerings from Green Flash, so I figured this one to be a winner.  It was on the board at the Bier Station, so I gave it a go.  It was poured from a tap in a 12 oz snifter for $4.50;  Very reasonable as their price scale goes.  This probably isn’t everybody’s favorite style, with all the push towards the super-hopped brews lately.  They are usually much less bitter (I think,) with a lot of fruitiness and seem to work well with other flavors mixed in too.  For instance, I tried an awesome ginger-saison a while back…  But that’s for another day I suppose.  Back to this one.  While it was served with a good two fingers of bright white head, that quickly subsided and it really didn’t leave a lot of lacing.  The color was a light golden, moderately hazy.  The taste made up for the somewhat boring appearance though, at least for me.  Very Belgiany (it’s my blog and I’ll make up adjectives if I want to) with prominent yeast flavors, and a lot of fruit, although as usual I’d be hard-pressed to pick out which ones.  If I was going to guess I’d go with lemon and maybe a little orange.  Definitely rather tart though, so I’ll throw out grapefruit too.  If I was going to give it a small knock, I’d say it was too carbonated for my liking.  Maybe that’s an indicator of the style, I don’t know;  It was just a bit much for me.  Definitely enjoyed it though, it made me feel like summer is coming, even if it did snow last week.