{"id":1154,"date":"2011-09-12T10:54:45","date_gmt":"2011-09-12T15:54:45","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.pkenagy.com\/blog\/?p=1154"},"modified":"2011-09-12T10:54:45","modified_gmt":"2011-09-12T15:54:45","slug":"old-age-and-treachery","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.pkenagy.com\/blog\/old-age-and-treachery\/","title":{"rendered":"Old Age and Treachery"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>Honestly, that was a pretty solid weekend. \u00a0Ups and downs, as always. \u00a0We started off strong Friday night at the Brooksider. \u00a0I stopped by Diebel&#8217;s on the way and grabbed a few top-shelf cigars, and made it there shortly after four. \u00a0Our friends David and Jill were passing through town again, so they joined us for a little revelry. \u00a0A 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. \u00a0After a while we were getting hungry, so we headed down to the <a title=\"The Thai Place\" href=\"http:\/\/www.kcthaiplace.com\/\" target=\"_blank\">Thai Place<\/a> in Westport for dinner. \u00a0I was expecting a wait, but I guess we were well past the dinner hour and we didn&#8217;t have any trouble getting a table. \u00a0I hadn&#8217;t been there in years, but we had a Groupon expiring so we figured what better time to use it up. \u00a0It was as good as I remember; \u00a0Probably the best meal I&#8217;ve had in a long time as a matter of fact. \u00a0We ordered three entrees and a few appetizers and just shared it all, which was plenty of food to go around. \u00a0I found myself wondering, as good as it all was, if it might have been even better had I not smoked two cigars earlier. \u00a0Hmmm.<\/p>\n<p>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. \u00a0While she was out bettering herself, I rode my motorcycle to Blue Springs to gorge myself on BBQ. \u00a0I was signed up to judge at the <a title=\"Blue Spring BBQ\" href=\"http:\/\/www.bluespringsblazeoff.com\/location\/\" target=\"_blank\">Blue Springs Blazeoff<\/a> competition, which I&#8217;d done for the last several years. \u00a0Donette usually joins me, but this year she had her training going on, and besides that she was still holding something of a grudge from <a title=\"Blazeoff 2010\" href=\"http:\/\/www.pkenagy.com\/blog\/current-events\/man-this-sure-is-fun\/\" target=\"_blank\">last year&#8217;s not-so-pleasant experience<\/a>. \u00a0Well, it&#8217;s hard to say if all the tables had good luck this year, but we certainly got some solid entries at our table. \u00a0With the exception of some mediocre brisket, every thing we tried was excellent, to include the &#8220;Kid&#8217;s Que&#8221; we tried. \u00a0(Matter of fact, we all agreed one of the steaks the kids turned in was better than several local &#8220;steakhouse&#8221; offerings we&#8217;d had lately.) \u00a0Mostly I judge this contest to get opinions and advice from other judges, and I was at a great table for that this year too. \u00a0Four of the five other judges at my table also cooked on competition teams, which I&#8217;ve found sort of rare. \u00a0One 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. \u00a0(In comparison, only 9 of the 84 judges at Blue Springs weren&#8217;t certified.) \u00a0This information won&#8217;t keep me from competing up there this year, but it <strong>will<\/strong> give me another valuable excuse when we do crummy again.<\/p>\n<p>After the BBQ I enjoyed a nice ride home, then we set about a little home project. \u00a0At least we tried to, ultimately ending in another epic failure. \u00a0A 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. \u00a0We hadn&#8217;t even begun the tear-out stage when my first odd injury occurred. \u00a0I was walking barefoot to the garage when that freakishly strong rainstorm hit, so I decided to sprint, or as close as I&#8217;ve come to sprinting in the last 20 years anyways. \u00a0I immediately pulled up when I felt something strain in that tendon behind your ankle. \u00a0Ouch. \u00a0It was pretty painful, so I just had to limp through the thunderstorm and get the tools. \u00a0Back safely in the house, I headed up the stairs to get something-or-another from the bedroom. \u00a0I was heavily favoring my left ankle, and bam, my right knee gave out on me. \u00a0It wasn&#8217;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. \u00a0It put me on my butt for several minutes. \u00a0Good grief, I wasn&#8217;t aware I had to do ten minutes of stretching before crossing the house these days. \u00a0After a while I was able to mimic some form of normal locomotion, and we set about our sink project. \u00a0Despite several YouTube videos and a couple of trips to the hardware store both Saturday and Sunday, we still don&#8217;t have a kitchen sink. \u00a0At one point we actually did have it setting in the counter with water coming out the faucet; \u00a0Unfortunately water was coming out everywhere else too so we just tore it all back out. \u00a0Sigh. \u00a0I guess we could wash dishes in the bathtub, but it&#8217;s on the second floor and I can&#8217;t get up the stairs.<\/p>\n<p>We didn&#8217;t work on the sink the entire weekend though; \u00a0We 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. \u00a0I guess we are\u00a0relegated\u00a0to eating out every meal for the immediate future; \u00a0Could be worse.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Honestly, that was a pretty solid weekend. \u00a0Ups and downs, as always. \u00a0We started off strong Friday night at the Brooksider. \u00a0I stopped by Diebel&#8217;s on the way and grabbed a few top-shelf cigars, and made it there shortly after four. \u00a0Our friends David and Jill were passing through town again, so they joined us [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"ngg_post_thumbnail":0,"footnotes":""},"categories":[2],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-1154","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-current-events"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.pkenagy.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1154","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.pkenagy.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.pkenagy.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.pkenagy.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.pkenagy.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1154"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/www.pkenagy.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1154\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":1155,"href":"https:\/\/www.pkenagy.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1154\/revisions\/1155"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.pkenagy.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1154"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.pkenagy.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1154"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.pkenagy.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1154"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}