It IS Friday right?  Please?  Well I guess if it’s not, it will be some time.  That weekend went by entire too fast, it could still be last Friday for all I know.  Things started out rather unremarkably;  Spent Friday evening down at the Brooksider of all places.  Hey, this weather ain’t gonna be around for ever, I feel I need to take advantage of it while it’s here.  Nothing of note from down there;  The same guys, sitting at the same table, talking about the same things.  A routine I am quite comfortable with, I might add.

Saturday brought another fine day outside.  We spent our morning running errands, which took a lot longer than normal with the big marathon going on.  I think we drove about 15 miles on the 5 mile trip to Costco.  We got everything done though, just took a bit longer.  Later in the afternoon we headed over to our friend Ron’s house, AKA “Brooksider North,” for a gathering.  (He insists on referring to these events as “gatherings,” as the term “party” would somehow require too much responsibility.)  Officially dubbed the Annual Fish Fry, it’s morphed into a more diverse buffet over the last few years, presumably because nobody wants to go catch and clean a bunch of fish.  (I know I don’t.)  We did fry up some obligatory fillets, but there was also fried chicken, ribs, and two kinds of smoked pork.  For our part, we brought the fryer for the fish and threw some hush puppies in the grease too.  The pups came out well this year;  I just bought a few boxes of mix and then stirred in a few “extras.”  Much better than the home-made route, and easier to boot.

Sunday we got out of our routine a bit.  Niece Dee was having some kind of BBQ at her dormitory in Columbia and needed a cooker, so she’d called a few weeks back to see what we could come up with.  Details were a bit…  “sketchy” around the event, but we borrowed our friend Troy’s cooker and headed up there early Sunday morning.  It was a good time;  Our responsibility pretty much consisted of starting the fire and then sitting in lawn chairs enjoying the weather.  Never did really figure out what the party was for but that’s OK;  Something to do with Homecoming I think.  They set up a bunch of games and decorations and food, all of which was judged around 4:00.  (I’m not even sure what the judging criteria was, but they seemed pleased with the event so that’s good…)  The grill served admirably;  Dee and a few friends churned out some serious burgers and dogs on it.  I was rather surprised (shocked?  scared?  disturbed?) at the amount of food they went through.  Final damage was 160 hamburgers, and at least that many hot dogs.  And there were only like 35 people there.  (OK maybe a few more than that.)  You definitely wanted to pull your fingers back quickly when setting down a pan of food, or they would end up on a bun with relish and mustard.  We spent the whole afternoon down there;  By the time we got the cooker cooled down enough to pull it was around 6:00.  A few hours driving back to KC, then add another hour for me to finally get it backed in the driveway when we got home, (180th time is a charm) and it was bedtime.