Honestly I don’t have much more to go on this week than last.  I think I’m in a funk;  The Memphis trip knocked all the energy out of me, and I didn’t have that much to start with.  It’s not like I didn’t do anything at all over the three-day weekend, I just didn’t have the inclination to retell it.  We hit the Power and Light district a few times, checked out the new Bass Pro shop, and I judged the Great American BBQ contest, to summarize a few of the “highlights.”  As far as this weekend goes, I guess I’ll work with what I have.  Friday I went oncall, so we kept things low-key.  We went to a neighborhood “happy hour”, and then I think we might have, um, watched TV or something.  Maybe the Royals game?  Oh, we went to dinner at Jalapeno’s.  Chicken verde burrito night, quite exciting.  (See my dilemma here with the whole boring weekend thing?)

Saturday, Donette got up at the crack of 10:00 and we took Gabe to the dog park.  He has fun there, but much like his owner he runs out of energy pretty quick.  He generally runs like a crazed moose for around 15 or 20 minutes and then lays down and goes to sleep, at which point we shove him back in the car and go home.  Wears him out I guess, so it’s worth the drive.  After that short foray, I dropped Donette down at the Plaza where she met up with a dozen or so other girls for the big “Sex in the City” festivities.  That was an all-day event apparently, so I set out on a somewhat circuitous journey around the city on my motorcycle.  That’s pretty pricey entertainment these days, but what the heck, it was a nice day and I couldn’t think of anything else to do.  I had a little bit of new “gear” to road-test, so that was moderately exciting.  I got a new helmet, a new tank-bag, and a new jacket, as well as a new seat that I bought over the winter.  My main theory behind the tank-bag was to have someplace to put my ipod, but it turns out that if you get much over 40 mph you can’t hear anything but wind noise anyway.  Oh well, it’s still pretty handy.  Once Donette got home we grilled some dinner, and then it was back to another night of TV.

Sunday brought a moderate amount of activity, at least in relation to the rest of the weekend.  We fired up the smoker to practice some brisket and chicken, with several radical, cutting edge ideas to test out.  While the meat was cooking, we also set about cleaning out the garage.  Wow, they should feature that undertaking on that “Dirty Jobs” show.  ICKY!!!!  Geez, it’s only been six or seven years since the last time we cleaned it, you wouldn’t think it would be that gross already.  Blecht, I’m getting itchy just thinking about it.  We got it into pretty decent shape though, including ripping out what could well have been the most impractical shelving infrastructure in the world, and disposing of Kane’s secret litter box.  (BAD kitty.)  So, short of a trip to the dump to get rid of all the stuff we got rid of, I guess it’s good for another seven years.  The Martins came over later in the afternoon to test out the BBQ product, which they deemed “serviceable.”  Donette’s chicken experiment was more successful than my brisket I thought, although it did yield a little promise.  A few more tweaks next weekend and I might be onto something.