Ahhhh, finally a relaxing weekend.  I needed that.  We kicked things off Friday with a fine dinner over at John & Susan’s house.  John flew in several dozen assorted kinds of oysters, which I haven’t had in a long time.  And, I’ve never actually shucked oysters, so that was an adventure in itself.  As if the oysters weren’t enough food, we had a big pot of shrimp, ‘taters & corn to go with it, and Donette made a bowl of shrimp ceviche.  The oysters were definitely the stars of the meal, although we had a little trouble finishing them off.  They all had to be eaten though, so we did;  Not much you can do with leftover oysters.

Saturday turned into a nice lil’ day.  Donette had taken off with a bunch of girls to celebrate our friend Anne’s 50th birthday.  The one chore she left me with was to go to the Starlight box office and get some tickets for a few of the summer shows.  So, I dutifully headed over there on my motorcycle around 11:00.  I got the tickets, and headed back home.  It was such a nice day out, I decided to turn left on Holmes and stop by my buddy Wally’s house to see what was going on.  Well, he wasn’t home, so I decided to ride on down to the Yamaha dealership and see what was going on there.  So I headed a little farther south to Martin City, and when I got near the dealership my fuel light came on.  At this point, or somewhere near this point, my trip took on sort of a Forrest Gump-like quality.  When I got to the dealership, I thought maybe I’d just ride on down to Snead’s and get a tank of gas.  And when I got my tank of gas, I thought maybe I’d just keep going a little further on Holmes.  And I figured, since I rode this far, maybe I’d just ride all the way to the end of the great street of Holmes.  And that’s what I did.  For no particular reason, I just kept on going.  OK enough Forrest Gump.  Anyway, it may be no surprise to anyone else who has lived in the area 40+ years, but Holmes turned into D highway, which ended all the way down at Drexel, Mo.  I was kind of wishing I had my Garmin with me, because I wasn’t exactly sure where I was at.  (Other than that 71 was somewhere east of me.)  I studied on it a while, and enventually decided that, since I wasn’t going anywhere particular, it really wasn’t too important how I got there.  Armed with this logic, I headed east, and indeed ended up at 71 highway in the fine town of Archie, population 890.  (Salllllllute!)  From there I worked my way north-east to Z highway.  About that point I noticed, even through my sunglasses, that my arms were getting pretty pinkish where my sleeves were blowing up, so I decided to start working my way back.  I headed north, and Z ended at 2 highway, which with my photographic memory I remembered I had passed riding down D.  Indeed, it took me right back to D, where I headed north right back home.  When I got home I was rather surprised to see my whole loop had been a little over 135 miles.  Holy smokes, I had no idea I had gone that far.  I gave an A+ to the ride, it was fun…  With the exception of the ridiculous farmers tan I ended up with.  It took up a good part of the afternoon too;  After that I grilled myself a hamburger and sat on the back porch with Gabe, listening to the Royals get thrashed again.

Sunday I picked up John, and we headed way up north to do some shootin’ at my friend Mark’s house.  It was quite a drive (Lathrop, MO) but there sure isn’t anywhere closer I know of that allows random gunfire, so it was worth it.  We stood out in his field and killed cans for a while, then it started getting hot so we headed back to the A/C at the Brooksider to watch the Royals get thrashed.  Again.  After that I headed home for dinner and grilled up some burgers again.  I liked the ones I made Saturday night so I wanted Donette to try them out.  A rather interesting mixture of burger, blue cheese, and chopped herbs.  (The Aerogarden is getting a little wild, everything is getting a good dose of chopped herbs.)  Luckily she liked them too;  They are pretty darn good.  So ended the weekend.  She was tired from her overnight party with the girls, and my sunburn was still a little uncomfortable, so we settled in at our respective TV’s for an evening of bad programming.