I think Winter is going to be here a bit sooner than I would prefer.  My morning scooter commutes are starting to get just a bit nippy.  But, since we only have one car these days, and Donette is working two whole days a weeks, my alternate transportation methods are somewhat limited.  I try to wait until the sun is out and the temperature is at least 40, but that doesn’t always work out.  So, I wear lots and lots of clothes.  Flannel-lined pants, double jackets, heavy gloves, etc.  I am worried that all those bulky clothes are going to detract from my “coolness” factor though.  That would be pretty hard, because nothing exudes coolness quite like an old fat guy on a scooter, but the thought has entered my mind none the less.  Maybe I should get a big snow suit or something?

We finally had a “down” weekend; Not much going on.  Friday night was a total wash.  I messed around with my PC’s a bit, with half an eye on some television show or another, and next thing I knew it was too late to go anywhere.  (Which is like 7:00 in my book.)  So, we built a cozy little fire in the back yard fire pit, broke out a cigar, (me, not Donette) and called it a quiet night at home.  Not so bad;  Rather relaxing actually.

Saturday was somewhat more eventful, if not as busy as our recent weekends.  The first project of the day was laying some sod in the back yard.  Since the addition of the second dog to the house, the yard has taken an absolute beating.  I think most of the damage is just from their constant game of “chase,” although Belle’s mysterious penchant for digging random holes doesn’t help matters either.  Donette and Ronda tilled everything up last Spring and put down a bunch of seed. It tried to grow, but never really stood a chance against the galloping mooses.  By mid-summer, despite constant watering and fertilizing, our once-green lawn looked like this.  Yeah, the seed project didn’t work out so well.  So, for our second attempt, we decided to try some sod.  Donette ordered a load of 100% fescue from the Grasspad.  That crap is just this side of a noxious weed, but it’s supposed to hold up good under heavy traffic.  (Which we have…)  I recruited a buddy of mine from work to help, and we got started pretty early in the morning.  Unfortunately, a mere hour or two later, we discovered we had grossly underestimated the amount of sod needed.  Dang.  Oh well, the part we got done looks better, for the time being at least.  The entire time we were working, Gabe was sitting in the corner thinking “FOOL, that stuff doesn’t stand a chance.”  We shall see.  Anyway, I was at something of a crossroads at this point in the day.  I’d planned on an entire day of yard work, and here it was noon and I had nothing left to do.  Luckily Zim called right about this time, and wanted to meet up at the Brooksider to watch some football.  Whew, just in the nick of time, saved from an otherwise productive afternoon.  Indeed, that pretty much killed the rest of my day.  We sat down there all afternoon, then I bailed back home to watch the MU game in the safety and relative calm of my own house.  Meanwhile, Donette went out with a bunch of friends for a “girls night out.”  I think they went to La Bodega or something like that.  I’m sure they didn’t have any fun without their men around though.

The first thing we discovered Sunday morning is that dogs do not observe daylight savings time.  We thought we were ahead of the game when we set all our clocks back before we went to bed Saturday night.  It was a flawless plan, and should have resulted in an extra hour of sleep.  Alas, the pups have it in their simple little heads that breakfast is served at 6:00, which was 5:00 on this particular day.  It is a total waste of time to try and convince them to go back to bed for another hour too;  They will not be ignored.  So, we had an unusually early start to our Sunday.  (I’m not really sure how we’re going to get their clocks reset actually;  The same thing happened this morning.)  I had lots of time to kill before football started, so I went to the gym and then stopped by the grocery store and got stuff for a pot of gumbo.  The gumbo came out pretty mediocre.  My roux didn’t get dark enough, and it was downhill from there.  I don’t know what happened, I stirred that stupid stuff for an hour and it still didn’t get dark enough.  I used peanut oil instead of veggie oil;  Is it possible that you can’t make a good roux out of peanut oil?  Very mysterious.  Anyway, the rest of Sunday was spent watching football and eating mediocre gumbo.  All-in-all a rather poor day;  Marginal food and I got beat by a stupid girl in Fantasy Football again.  Dang.