Well I broke my recent trend;  Went with two lame weekends in a row.  I probably shouldn’t say “lame,” because I rather enjoyed it.  “Restful” maybe.  Friday night sort of set the tone.  We skipped happy hour and walked up the street to Cantina Del Ray (yes, that’s how they spell it…) for some dinner.  That place is probably my favorite Mexican restaurant by now, perhaps on location alone.  The food is certainly solid, and reasonably priced, but at the end of the day I like any place I can just walk a block to get to.  Happily stuffed, we went back home and fired up the Wii for an evening of gaming.  After running all the way through the standard “Wii Sports” game (new record in golf) and a little Mario Kart, we rounded out the night with a few hours of Rock Band.  I always forget how much fun that game is, and wonder why I don’t play it more.  (The Wii in general.)  Maybe if I played too much it wouldn’t be fun anymore?  Hmmmmm.

Saturday we both slept in.  Not too unusual for Donette (part of her daily ritual actually) but I have a hard time sleeping past 7:00 most days.  But, I’d stayed up late honing my drumming skills, and I guess it got the better of me.  It was noon before we knew it, and we had a big fish fry to go to.  Our friend Ronnie (of the “Brooksider crowd”) has an annual fish fry, which always makes for a solid afternoon of entertainment.  As with all Brooksider-related events, it seems to get bigger every year too;  I am guessing at one point there was 25 – 30 people there.  I pretty much stuffed myself on everything…  It’s kind of a pot-luck deal and there was some delicious feed there.  (Not the least of which being the actual fish;  Farmed crappie, deep-fat-fried.)  The party was still going when we left, but I had to work at 8:00 so we took off a little early.  The rest of the night was spent working from the couch while watching college football games.

Sunday was similarly modest in the entertainment arena.  After once again sleeping in (this time because I worked well into the wee hours of the morning) I spent a good part of the day on the couch watching football.  Donette had crossed the river to go to Josh’s birthday lunch, but I didn’t get up in time to make that trip.  So, I watched the rather tedious Chiefs game.  So tedious, in fact, that I mixed in some garage-cleaning for entertainment.  Winter is coming quickly, time to clear some space so we can stuff everything in there for the cold months.  After the 3:00 games, Donette got back home and we spent our evening making tamales.  This was our second attempt (well my first, Donette made the first batch alone) and I was rather pleased with the results.  Since the first try, we had quizzed several “in the know” resources, and found out that “ready to use” masa really isn’t.  As a matter of fact, I am still a bit mystified as to the purpose of the “ready to use” stuff.  I don’t get it.  Anyway, this time we used dry ingredients, with a generous helping of good ol’ lard, and the results were much more satisfactory.  Our next project is “smoked brisket tamales” in the near future, maybe next weekend even.