Hey that weekend wasn’t so bad.  Actually I’ve had several “events” lumped into the last week, so I’ll throw out a brief overview of them all.  Last Wednesday, as mentioned a few posts below, was our annual AKL Alumni luncheon at the Brooksider.  Organized by our former social chairman James Munkirs, this is always a well-attended event.  Unfortunately I think some have chosen to substitute it for Float Trip, but I guess we all have choices to make.  At any rate, we all had a good time.  After lunch I migrated out to the patio to join the “regular” crowd and stayed a few more hours, making for a fine mid-week break.

Thursday, as you might recall, was Thanksgiving.  As we usually do, we headed out to Mom’s for the holiday feast.  Donette’s cousin Haleigh joined us this year.  She’s a student at UMKC and wasn’t making the long drive home, so it worked out well.  We had a grand spread.  I am quite a fan of the Thanksgiving staples, with the exception of cranberries.  In the spirit of the season, I thoroughly glutted myself.  After eating I joined my nephew in the front yard to toss the ol’ pigskin around a bit.  I can honestly say I haven’t thrown, or even held, a football since the demise of the Turkey Bowl series some ten or twelve years ago.  So severe was the taunting of my peers that I haven’t been able to even look at a football since then.  Luckily my kind-hearted nephew was more forgiving of my unique throwing style than those other bullies.  Plus, there was a 30 mph wind blowing, so I could reasonably blame much of my failure on that.  Given the unseasonably warm weather, I was almost tempted to go battle the crowd down at the Plaza lighting ceremony later that night.  Just almost though, I didn’t end up following through on it.

Friday was a regular ol’ workday for me.  Bummer.  Kind of broke up the tempo of the pseudo-vacation.  Had to be done though.  I put in my time, then ventured on down to the Brooksider for my regularly scheduled Friday gathering time.  Didn’t stay too long though;  The cold weather is kicking in.  Given the early ending to my day, and still in search of more entertainment, we headed over to our friend Susan’s house for some dinner.  After eating we settled in and watched “Hall Pass,” which provided some level of entertainment.  Pretty darn funny, actually.  It must have been relatively engaging, as I actually stayed awake for the entire movie.  Actually I was so wide awake that when I got home I decided to fire up another movie, despite the rather late hour.  I made a brief run through the Netflix listings and settled on “13 Assassins.”  I can’t offer much of an opinion on this one;  I think I was actually asleep before the opening credits were finished.

Saturday I can’t seem to recall what I did all day, leading me to believe it wasn’t terribly exciting.  Given the lack of cable TV at our house, I did wander over to the neighbor’s and watch the “Border War” football game, which despite the favorable outcome pretty much defined “not terribly exciting.”  I’m going to throw out an educated guess that the rest of the afternoon was spent playing Angry Birds on my PS3.  Luckily after dinner a friend from out of town called and rescued me from absolute boredom.  He and another guy were up at 75th Street, so I headed up there to catch up on the latest news in their lives, which, not remarkably, are somewhat more eventful than mine.  I headed home when they decided to move the party to Kennedy’s, as it was getting rather late in the day;  Well past my bedtime.  (This might explain their comparatively eventful lives…)

Sunday I made my long-delayed return to the gym.  Given the end of cycling season, I’ve been meaning to actually go get some use out of the money I give them every month.  So, we headed up there about 10:00, workout equipment in hand.  I’ve always found it best to ease into these things, so we spent the first 45 minutes in the hot tub, then another 20 or so in the sauna.  Then we went home.  Didn’t want to hit it too hard and pull a hammy right off the bat.  The remainder of the afternoon was wasted in typical Sunday fashion, watching football games I really had no interest in.  Donette’s parents came out for dinner, so that broke up the boredom nicely.  She whipped up a fine batch of red sauce with meatballs, which came out quite well.  Heck, she even made some bread pudding for dessert, my favorite.  After that I turned on the Chief’s game.  It was pretty evident how it was going to end up though, so I quit watching it at halftime.  Sounds like they made a run at it, but the end result was as expected.