Not a whole lot happened last weekend, which was just fine by me.  Friday I met up with Todd, Martin, and KB down at the Brooksider to celebrate the double-digit temperature.  It was warm, sure, but not TOO warm.  Tolerable.  I only stayed until 6:00 or so though;  It was my oncall weekend again so I needed my rest.  The remainder of the day, predictably, was spent watching television and playing a little fetch with Gabe.  Oh, and speaking of Gabe, I forgot to mention last week that he passed his Canine Good Citizen class again.  Yeah, he already took (and passed) the test once, but a little tune-up never hurts.  Passing twice qualifies him for the rare and coveted “Canine Super-Duper-Extra-Good Citizen” status.  He celebrated his accomplishment by tearing up Donette’s day-planner and terrorizing Kane (the cat) all week.  They didn’t cover either of those topics in class apparently.

Saturday I got up and took Gabe for his walk, and then made the drive to visit Mom down by the Arkansas border.  Her PC was minorly messed up, so I got it fixed up (I hope) and then ate a tasty lasagne lunch.  Homemade, not even the frozen stuff like we make at our house.  After that, I did a little grocery shopping, and then I’m not entirely sure where the rest of the afternoon went.  We went to a wine tasting around 6:00 down at Cellar & Loft in Brookside.  We didn’t go so much for the wine tasting (that place is a little high fallootin’ for me… more Todd’s style) but to talk to this guy whose dog we are lightly considering taking in.  Donette met him last weekend at the tasting, and then we went and met his pup “Belle” on Monday.  I would describe young Belle as… “energetic.”  Yeah, that’s a nice adjective.  A common phrase beginning with “ram” also comes to mind, but we’ll stick with “energetic.”  At any rate, the guy wasn’t there so no progress on the new dog.  After that social event, we met up with the Martins at Starlight for the production of “Rent.”  You never know when children might be reading this, so I shall eschew the barrage of expletives that come to mind and just say that I didn’t care for the show.  Loud, confusing, pointless, and the girl in front of me kept flipping her hair on my leg.  Not to mention, I thought they were having prime rib for dinner and it turned out to be flank steak.  I don’t even LIKE flank steak, as evidenced by my two enormous helpings.

Sunday I started the day by hitting the gym, for the third time in the week.  That’s almost a routine!!!  Unfortunately since I’ll be out of town next weekend it will be a short-lived routine.  After that I went home and fired up the smoker to cook some spareribs for dinner.  The ribs were a bit of a sore subject;  I picked them up at Price Chopper, against my better judgement, because they were on sale.  I got home and unwrapped them, and they were friggin’ half slabs.  Not only that, but just the large end to boot.  Crap.  Get what you pay for, I guess.  But I couldn’t really just throw them out, so I gave them some dry rub and threw them on.  Todd came over around 2:00 and threw a few chickens on too.  While the flesh was cooking, I got out the food processer and made a basil-arugula pesto recipe I’d been wanting to try; not half bad.  All that cooking pretty much took up the entire afternoon.  Donette, meanwhile, was researching dessert recipes to enter for the ARB contest.  Ed, Kim, Susan and John (Susan’s beau of late) came over for dinner and helped with the taste-testing.  She made like four different styles of bread pudding, all them pretty darn good, most involving grilled or toasted bread soaked in cream, topped with fruit and stuff.  That was pretty much a night-killer for me.  Four plates of rich desserts after a barbecue dinner is a little much, even for a glutton of my magnitude.  We managed to get through the Entourage showing, and that was IT.