Well it’s official, I am old. The odometer rolled over another decade last Thursday. I enjoyed something of a rather prolonged celebration by taking off work Thursday and Friday. I took a progressive approach to the situation, to sort of ease into the grim reality of things. Wednesday night started things off; I met Ed, Kim and Christie down at the Brooksider and hung out on the deck for a while. They got me some dry rub and a meat thermometer from Williams Sonoma, which I was just pleased as punch with.
Thursday and Friday I just kind of took it easy and enjoyed my time off. Munkirs came down to the ‘Sider on Thursday for burgers, and Friday afternoon I can’t really think of a thing I did. I hung out at the coffee shop for an inordinate amount of time, as old people will do, wandered aimlessly around the local shops and bought nothing, as old people will do, and ambled down the trolley trail with the dog, greeting everybody with “Morning” or “Nice day huh” or just “Hey”, as old people will do. Then I just sat around the house opening all my birthday cards and watching TV. Actually I only got one birthday card, from Southwest Airlines, so that didn’t take too long. Sigh. (OK my Mom gave me a card too, but that was last week.) Later in the evening, Doni took me to Morton’s for my official “birthday celebration” dinner. I’m gonna go out on a limb and say that place is even better than Capital Grille, an admittedly bold statement. Of course I don’t eat at either enough to make a head-to-head comparison, but I do order the same cut at both and in my admittedly addled memory the Morton’s offering is better. At any rate, we ate far too much, killing any hope of going out after dinner. We were both so miserably full we went straight home and to bed.
Saturday morning we participated in the big neighborhood garage sale with our neighbor Rick, which ate up the most of the morning and afternoon. We got rid of a little junk, but the Civic didn’t sell, dang it. I did score a nice humidor from Rick’s pile though. After the garage sale Doni had some girls over for some kind of makeup party, so I hunkered down and watched a little TV for the rest of the afternoon. After all that was over, we headed downtown to John’s Deck to celebrate Kevin Brown’s coming of age. Despite the horror of traveling twelve whole miles, we had a great time once we finally got there. We stayed out rather late (relatively speaking,) even later than the actual birthday-boy. Lil’ K.B. got sent home early.
Sunday I bought a few pork tenderloins and fired up the smoker. I wanted to test out the new weapons Ed and Kim gave me, and the weather provided a perfect opportunity. I made a few tweaks to the smoker too, due to some air-flow issues I’ve been having, and needed to test out those changes. The Martins joined us, and of course Todd and Susan. (Actually Todd is currently serving a 6-dinner suspension for poor conduct, but he came over anyway. He sat in the driveway and we tossed scraps over the fence.) Everything came off the smoker in good shape; the new dry rub was quite tasty, and my temperature-regulation problems seem to be fixed. Plus, Kelly and Susan found my lack of mail so pathetic that they brought me birthday cards too. All-in-all, I think I made the best of the situation and got through the whole incident in pretty good shape.
This morning I got back from my daily dog-walk to find Donette packing up a suitcase. It would appear that she is either going on another business trip or leaving me; in either case I will require amusement for the next few evenings if anyone has any suggestions.