That, remarkably, was a fine weekend.  It was only “remarkable” in that we’ve had a string of way-too-busy weekends recently, and this past one finally felt like we kind of dialed it back and took it easy.  The weather was uncharacteristically poor Friday for Halloween, but we managed to make the most of it.  We kicked it off with a short happy hour at Hop House, then we joined some friends for Trick or Treat.  I haven’t made the rounds with little kids in a long time, and I must admit it was a good time.  Them little buggers were wound up tight.  The littlest was just over one year, and she was quite comical.  It took her about two houses to figure out “go up to door, get some candy,” and then she was off to the races.  Had to keep an eye on her or she’d be a block in front of us before we knew it.  It sprinkled most of the time, and when it finally started raining hard we scooted back to the house for some chili and pounds of candy.

Saturday was “errand day.”  I don’t know if we’ll ever get another weekend without at least one of those;  Not in the foreseeable future anyway.  Before making the rounds, I went out and planted my new garden in the backyard.  The landscapers built a large box out of redwood, and I was sorta excited to get some Fall veggies in it.  I went with cauliflower, onions, beets, chard, (whatever chard is,) and kale, on the advice of the guy at the garden center.  I don’t know how long I spent making sure I had everything spaced according to the directions, mixing in fertilizer, watering it all in, etc.  Two days later Teagan dug it all up though, so I guess however long I spent was time wasted.  After that we “went to town” and got our provisions for the week.  Geez, we live in the boonies.  Hit the hardware stores, the grocery, the Costco, all the places you have to go when you make it to The Big City.  We managed to sneak in a good lunch at Chicago Fire too, which took the edge off the trip.

Sunday we decided the house was in enough order to have some guests over for the football games.  Or, at least it was after three hours of furious unpacking/sorting/rearranging.  I fired up the smoker and threw on a small brisket (imported from KC on Donette’s last trip) and a pork butt.  While those smoked away, I lit up my new gas grill and put on four pounds of wings to tide us over.  I used a recipe from the KC Star that supposedly mimics The Peanut wings.  Honestly, I’m not sure I could come up with any resemblance to the ‘Nut, but they were darn good at any rate.  It was a keeper recipe for sure.  Not to mention, I was just excited to use my new grill.  As far as the games, the Chiefs weren’t even on so we missed that one, and the 49ers were rather depressing.  But, the feed all came out good so it all evened out.

Here are some pictures of my outdoor kitchen progress.  Bet you didn’t know I was so skilled in stone-work, I think it’s turning out nicely.

The unpacking continues.  And continues, and continues, and continues.  I feel we made a sizable dent this weekend, thanks in no small part to Donette’s sister Victoria showing up and helping.  “Hey, glad you come see us, want to help unpack?”  That’s how we roll.  We have a good part of our garage back;  One (or maybe two) good trips to the recycle center to throw away boxes and the car will be back inside where it belongs.  Admittedly a large part of the stuff just went into the dining room, but at least it moved.

That took up a relatively major chunk of our weekend.  Her sister showed up Friday and we headed down to Hop House for a short happy hour, then it was home to watch the Royals.  Saturday we did some (very) light sight-seeing around the area, in a half-hearted attempt at being cordial hosts.  Didn’t want to let her out of the house too long though, there was just too much work to be done.  Sunday her sister had to move on to work in a nearby town, while Donette and I dug in and kept moving boxes.  We really got a lot done that afternoon, I was quite pleased.  Hung some shelves, moved stuff around, random organization…  All good.  I suppose it helped that the Chiefs weren’t on to distract us, although I’d have liked to see the game.  Then again, we watched the Royals game and look how that turned out;  Maybe our bad luck is filtering down to our favorite teams.  Sigh.

I have a few pics this week.  Actually, I have several pics but, alas, they aren’t where they are supposed to be.  I’m still blaming Uverse, something funky is going on.  Matter of fact, I can’t even get the ones I have to post correctly.  Sigh, check back please.

OK, so I got two whole pics to post.  Apparently it only works from Firefox for some odd reason.  Super, something else to work on.

I better make some kind of attempt at posting something I guess, although I’m still a bit put out with my Internet provider.  Apparently the mysterious people who lived in my brand new house before me called up and disconnected my service.  Sigh.  We were out for darn near a week before they finally came back out and hooked it up again.  (And acted like they were doing us a favor at that.)  The guy that came out and installed it was pretty helpful, the entire rest of the company I had the displeasure of working with were beyond pathetic.  Something tells me the whole episode isn’t quite finished yet either, I’m taking a “wait and see” stance on it.

So, Uverse aside, things have been going OK at the new house.  As of Friday, we are officially OUT of the rental house.  Geez I didn’t think we were ever going to get all our stuff moved.  I took the day off, rented a van from Uhaul, and got it over with.  My best guess in the morning was two trips at the most, and best case I was going to get it all in one trip.  Four full loads later, (and one trip to the Thrift store to give them some stuff,) the house was finally empty.  The BAD news is we don’t have anywhere to put it all.  It’s just kind of randomly piled in the dining room and garage right now, like an episode of Hoarders.  It is a sad thing when you’ve got a three-car garage and can’t put your one car in it because it’s too full of junk.  Ahhh, for a basement.  Meanwhile, the back yard project slowly continues.  A little TOO slowly for my tastes, but as long as it’s making progress I guess.  There was a guy delivering a truckload of plants when I left the house this morning, so maybe I’ll have trees when I get home.

How ’bout them Royals?  We are more than excited for the series.  Donette is a bit put out with me for not buying tickets to see a game in San Francisco, but I just can’t pull trigger.  Too rich for my blood!  We’ve got a nice new TV to watch it on, that’ll just have to do.  Got a few bets at the office on the outcome too, maybe I’ll win enough to cover the price of the tickets.  (Oh wait, none of the bets are for money…  Never mind.)

That is all.