Hopefully everyone still has all their fingers intact after the Fourth.  I can’t decide if the weather was a boon or bust at this point.  I could have done without all the rain, but at least it was reasonably cool.  I had Friday off work, and, ahem, Donette did too, so we started our weekend Thursday evening.  I started things off by “fixing” my webserver for a few hours.  There wasn’t anything wrong with it in the first place, but by the time I finished there certainly was.  I gave up after a while;  I’ll figure it out later, or start over, or something.  Luckily, I keep a spare for just such an emergency, so I moved everything over to the super-duper backup and went about more entertaining ways to kill time.  For the first evening of the long weekend, we picked up Brooke and went down to the newly opened Vox Theatre, where they were having an open house of sorts.  It was definitely worth the time;  They had a nice table of feed out with some good pulled pork and trimmings.  There was also Shatto ice cream, which I’ve always wanted to try but am too cheap to buy.  (It’s probably worth the extra coin after trying it.)  We also got to test out the new Tank 7 from Boulevard, which I think will be a hit.  We hung out there for a few hours and then it started getting a little crowded so I freaked out and left.  Fun gathering though.

Friday we got up and headed to Smithville Lake for some psuedo-camping, which would take up the rest of our weekend.  Donette’s folks have a big motorhome, which they let us borrow, so we pretty much just threw a few changes of clothes in a sack and headed up there.  Since all our northland friends were so rude as to sell their boats we really didn’t have any water-related entertainment, so we just kinda hung out.  And hung out, and hung out, and…  Hey it was “relaxing.”  We met our camping neighbors and spent a considerable amount of time talking with them.  Yep that’s us, making new friends, building bridges.  They were nice people though, and it passed the time.  The guy was pretty funny too;  By the end of the weekend I noticed that every time the dozen or so kids in their camp started getting extra wound up, he would wander over to our camp.  Hmmm, coincidence?  That was about the whole of the weekend.  We enjoyed the fireworks, at least the ones that didn’t get lost in the clouds.  There were several rainstorms, but that is relatively insignificant when you’re in a motorhome.  During those wet interludes and the 14 hours a day Donette was sleeping, Gabe & I watched movies.  Our cinematic entertainment included:  The Happening, The Strangers, & Max Payne.  The Happening was one of the worst flicks I’ve ever endured, but I didn’t have anything else to do so I sat through it anyway.  The Strangers was…  OK.  It might have been better if I didn’t watch the first 20 minutes without hearing any of the dialogue.  I could hear the music fine, but no voices, which I figured was supposed to be some sort of artsy-fartsy suspense builder.  It started getting ridiculous after a while though, and then I figured out I didn’t have my headphones pushed in all the way.  It wasn’t worth starting over though, so I just let it run from there.  I liked Max Payne better than the other two;  It was good enough to restore my faith in Marky Mark as the top-notch actor that he is, after watching “The Happening” disaster.

Sunday we broke camp and headed back  home around noon.  I was feeling mysteriously beat up for no more than I actually did all weekend.  I watched the Royals game, took a short bike ride down to the Plaza and back, and well, that was about it.  Our old neighbor Rick was in town again, so we went to dinner at Waldo Pizza with him and called it a night.  If I would have taken any pictures at the lake I would post them…  But I didn’t.  Sort of forgot I had the camera I guess.  There wasn’t much to photograph anyway though;  I guess I could have done a 48 hour time-lapse of Gabe sleeping on the picnic table.