Another weekend “off.”  I’ll report what I can with what I have to work with though.  Friday night Donette was gone by the time I got home from another arduous work week.  Something about needing to have some fun, which automatically excluded me, or something like that.  She had an outing planned with her friend Susan actually… They hit the Plaza, Bobby Bakers, and various other haunts.  Meanwhile, given the peace and quiet of an empty house, (rampaging Pit Bulls aside,) I decided to embark on a mission to finish “rating” all the music in our iTunes collection.  This is a moderately important undertaking, as it affects which songs go on my iPod, and consequently what tunes I will hear all day at work, and so consequently my relative level of sanity.  That project didn’t get too far though;  After about an hour and a half of alternating country-western, 80’s tunes, symphony music, and metal, I was about to go on a bi-state killing spree.  Perhaps I need to do some type of pre-filtering before I wade into the actual ranking process.  After that failed effort, I settled in for a night of movies, starting with “Wild Hogs.”  That was a pretty awful movie.  Just as I was thinking, “Well, at least Travolta isn’t dancing,” he even crossed that line and threw in the obligatory dance scene.  Puke.  I watched the whole thing though, so it must have been entertainment at some level.  I followed up that cinematic debacle with “Texas Chainsaw Massacre:  The Beginning.”  Now THAT was a great film.  Pure, unabashed trash horror, with no pretense of usefulness at all.  No plot, horrible acting, cheesy special effects;  Right up my alley.

Saturday morning, Donette got up at the crack of 9:00 and headed to my Mom’s house for an afternoon of cookie baking.  Now THERE is a homey Saturday afternoon activity.  They had a “girls day” out there, baking up a storm;  Not something achieved very often in our own house.  Meanwhile, I spent my afternoon sitting at the Brooksider with Martin & Brice, continuing on my never-ending quest to become a sports fan.  The place was remarkably uncrowded and relatively quiet, so I made it all the way through the MU game.  After the game I suggested, of my own free will no less, heading up to the Northlands and playing some dominoes at Martin’s house.  In some veiled attempt at steering me elsewhere, he got out his pocket knife and threatened to stab me if I came within 2 miles of his house.  Wow, what’s up with the unsociable attitude, Martin?  Since Mr. Grumpy wasn’t going to entertain me any further, I went home and put down the rest of the sod in the back yard.  For the best, I suppose;  It had to be done sometime.  I ought to take a few more pictures, as it really does look quite nice, at least for the time being.  There is still a solid chance it will just die, or our sprinkle system will freeze and burst, turning the neighborhood into an ice-rink.

Sunday didn’t bring much of note.  We watched the entire, riveting drama that was the Chiefs game, then took the dogs for a nice walk.  (Maybe the “nice” qualifier is a stretch;  There is nothing “nice” about Belle on a leash.)  After our walk I washed the motorcycle and scooter, and as far as I can remember that was pretty much the day.  I watched bits and pieces of the rest of the football games;  It was apparent early on that both of my Fantasy teams were going to receive an unprecedented drubbing, so that kind of knocked out what little value I get out of them in the first place.  Donette fixed us a delectable can of soup for dinner (no, really, it was good) and I retired upstairs to alternate between the Sunday night game and “Two Mules for Sister Sara.”  My last gasp at winning one of my Fantasy games was Peyton Manning, and it was obvious that wasn’t going to work out for me, so a good Clint movie gave me an alternate diversion.