MAN I like 3 day weekends.  I have enough vacation to take off every Monday for the rest of the year… I may just give that strategy some thought.  We spent the entire holiday weekend at Smithville lake, so I see no need for a multi-paragraph update.  Doni took the lead on the planning this year, after the spectacular failure of last year’s event.  (The details of which can be perused in the archive files from exactly one year ago.  Suffice to say that we ruled out tent-camping early on in the planning.)  The first major upgrade was to leave the tent at home and upgrade the living accommodations.  Doni’s folks lent us their mojo-motorhome to cover this area.  Doni drove it up there (??!!) last Tuesday to insure a premium spot.  Ed, Kim and I drove up there Friday afternoon to a fully setup camp, complete with a/c, shower, ‘fridge and freezer… Pretty much all the comforts of home.  Saturday we rented a pontoon boat for half a day, so we could take Gabe out on the water and see how he liked it.  He didn’t mind the boat, but wasn’t too keen on jumping in the water.  That was OK, because I wasn’t entirely sure how I was gonna get him back out if he did jump in.  Sunday was the same drill, except we left the pup back at camp and floated around on the Martin/Schmidt vessel all day.  Good times man.  We did have an incident with a particularly ferocious perch; this evil little creature bit four people, with Ed getting the worst of it.  Sunday night was rained out, which kinda stunk.  We got back to the camp site all cranked up and ready to go, and it rained non-stop the entire evening.  Oh well, made us appreciate the motorhome all the more.  Monday we broke camp and headed out.  Doni and I drove all the way home, then decided “hey it’s kinda fun up there…” so we turned around and went back.  What the heck, the site is paid for through Wednesday.  So, we hung out with the dog another day and watched the fireworks.  Just pulled back into town this morning, hence the lack of update yesterday.  My major failing for the weekend was in the photo arena…  Just didn’t get around to snapping any pics.  And I don’t take my camera on the boat… That’s just a bad idea.  I got a picture of the dog and some shrimp fajitas in my fancy tinfoil grill-wok, and that’s it.