Another weekend gone, WHOOSH!!!  At least it was a little calmer than the last few.  Almost relaxing, even.

Friday night we wanted to go out with the Munkirs.  They still have that newly-wed aura about them, and we just wanted to bask in it for a while.  It’s healthy, you know.  Alas, they had “other plans,” so we had to default to the Martins.  See, that’s the downside of the Munkirs union…  Imagine, James having plans on a Friday night.  It never even crossed our minds.  I guess we will have to start planning a bit earlier in order to get on his (their) schedule.  Anyway, we headed up North to get a little dinner and throw some cards with the Martins.  When we got there, we ended up going over to one of his neighbor’s houses to see their new baby.  We were there so long, fascinated by the beauty of new life, that by the time we left it was too late to go to dinner.  (OK, actually the guys sat out on the back deck and talked about BBQ for three hours…)  So, instead of going out, we just hunkered down at the Martin residence, ordered some pizza and played cards.  The boys won, just for the record.

Saturday, as sort of a “make up” for declining us the night before, Munkirs met us at Microcenter for a little geek browsing.  Remarkably, I couldn’t find a single thing I “needed.”  Munkirs, on the other hand, picked up a nice new home wireless setup, immediately drawing just a bit of jealousy.  My setup is pretty last-year in that respect.  I have begun counter-shopping…  After that, we hung out at On The Border for about an hour, going through 4 baskets of chips and salsa and about 2 pitchers of iced tea.  Best deal in town.  For dinner, Doni’s sister Ronda and her boyfriend had us up to his house in the Northlands.  Man, we had some good stuff.  Big thick-cut pork chops on the grill, portabello mushrooms, garlic bread, homemade apple pie…  Dinners like that make me want to take up cooking at home again.  Of course, it’s even better if somebody else cooks it I guess.

Sunday we didn’t do a whole lot.  I worked in the yard a bit (!!) and Doni went to Tanners with me for lunch.  After Tanners, I went down to the Brooksider to watch the football games, and ended up playing some cards.  Joe, Bob, Chris and I played some spades, which I previously considered a darn fine, and generally straightforward, card game.  Unfortunately, the entire event was somewhat marred by Joe and Bob’s unsportsmanlike conduct.  They tried quite persistently to change the rules of the game as it progressed, in such a fashion as to accommodate their combined poor bidding skills.  In the spirit of the friendly game, Chris and I tried to humor them as much as possible, but eventually we had to put ’em down.  The situation was really rather embarrassing, but they finally admitted their fault, albeit not particularly graciously.  Buoyed by our convincing victory, we headed over to Susan’s house to watch a few old episodes of “The Sopranos” and called it a weekend.