I’m too spent to put a lot of effort into this, but I’m trying.  That was a long weekend, and busy too.  Way too many activities for my liking.  We kicked the weekend off on Thursday night, since I had Friday off.  We motored over to the downtown Peanut to see if our friend Ann was working, which she was.  When she’s in the kitchen it usually leads to a mammoth feed-a-thon, and this trip was no exception.  We started things off with a pile of potato chips, beautifully paired with a cup of blue cheese and hot sauce for dipping.  This was followed by a dozen of the best hot wings in the city slathered with more blue cheese, and then topped off things off with a triple BLT served with piping hot cheese fries.  Perhaps not the healthiest meal I’ve ever eaten, but certainly one of the best.

Friday’s events centered around John & Susan’s wedding reception down on the Plaza.  We decided to make a day of it, so we took the dogs to the kennel, made the arduous journey down to the Plaza and got a room at the hotel.  The day kind of got away from us and we didn’t do a whole lot, but we did have lunch at the recently opened Jack Stack.  I had the burnt ends, and Donette ordered the always-solid Poor Russ sandwich.  The burnt ends were typical; Big hunks of brisket.  I don’t think any place around here puts a whole lot of effort into their burnt ends.  Maybe LC’s, but they’re hit and miss there too.  I’m still looking.  Don’t get me wrong, they were good, just not what I was looking for.  Can’t complain;  It’s definitely an upgrade on the KC Masterpiece that was there before.  After lunch we went back to the hotel and took a little nappy, then Donette had to go take pictures with the wedding party.  After that, well, the reception.  It was a little on the hoity-toity side, but fun all the same.  It was pretty funny seeing the Brooksider crowd all dressed up;  Pretty much everybody had a suit on.  (Except me of course… what a slob.)

Saturday we woke up and got ready for the trip back home.  We got the car all packed and gassed up, filled our coffee mugs, and headed out.  When we finally pulled into our neighborhood, we were so exhausted we had to go straight to Sharp’s for some breakfast.  I just can’t stand traveling in my old age.  Mapquest put the trip at just under 3 miles but it seemed a lot further.  Maybe that’s if you take Ward Parkway;  We went down Wornall.  Anyway, a solid plate of biscuits and gravy fixed me up.  For our afternoon entertainment we headed down to the Brooksider and watched the KU – Kansas game, which was relatively entertaining.  Most of the crowd was pro-Kansas I’d say, or at least anti-KU.  Even more specifically, anti-KU-fan.  There was a small group of KU’ers but they left shortly, leaving behind their usual pile of cigarette butts and 25-cent tips.  Unfortunately the game conflicted with the Brookside parade going on outside, so we missed all that action for the ump-teenth year in a row.  Oh well, gotta pick your events.  We saw most of it through the front window I guess.

Sunday we slept in a bit, then headed downtown for lunch at Willies.  If you haven’t checked it out yet, it’s not a bad place to hang out.  Lots of TV’s, standard menu, pretty solid location.  My stomach was still a bit out of sorts from Thursday’s dinner, so I stuck to a grilled chicken sandwich with cottage cheese on the side.  Not bad;  Kind of hard to mess up a chicken sandwich.  After lunch, it was off to the big auto show.  Donette has decided she may need a new vehicle for whatever reason.  Yeah, ours is 10 years old, but it still has a lot of life in it.  We’ll see what comes of that; we picked out a few “favorites.”  I should say, SHE picked out a few favorites.  I pretty much hated everything she showed me, and she literally wouldn’t even look at the ones I liked.  What can you do.  Apparently I have been shut out of the decision making process on the new vehicle.  I didn’t catch the associated reasoning but I heard something about “blah blah blah motorcycle blah blah mumble mumble scooter blah blah blah.”  Something like that.  We walked around down there for like 2 hours, which pretty much wore us out.  I took a ride around the city on the motorcycle for a little practice, and that’s about it.  For evening entertainment I watched “The Visitation,” which was absolutely awful.  I was highly amused by the cast though, which included Kelly Lynch (a.k.a. “the hot chick from Roadhouse”) and Randy Travis.  Man, hard to believe the movie wasn’t a bigger hit with a star-studded lineup like that.