Not a terribly exciting weekend.  On the entertainment scale, I’d put it somewhere between cleaning out the garage and picking up dog crap in the yard.  Kind of sets the tone for my 2008 I guess.  Speaking of the New Year, we had a good, albeit low key, holiday celebration.  The Martin’s came over and we threw some cards all evening.  We celebrated the New Year on east coast time, just in case we didn’t see midnight CST, but we ended up making it.

Saturday, Donette’s parents came over for some routine laptop maintenance.  (Hey, what happened to Friday??  I don’t know, I’m asking myself the same question.)  We went out to lunch at good ol’ Jalapenos, always a solid bet.  And, speaking of Jalapenos, we found out they have “customer appreciation” cards!!  Geez, I’d have appreciated them telling me that about 50 meals ago.  It’s only the 7th day of the year and they already owe us one free meal, and I need one more stamp on mine for another free-bee.  For dinner, I had a rather unusual urge to stir fry something.  So, I broke out the trusty wok and one of my treasured Jeff Smith cookbooks and got to cipherin’.  You can’t beat a Frugal Gourmet cookbook in some instances, particularly for a cheap, easy stir fry.  Heck, he was one of my favorite TV cooks until that unfortunate, alleged incident with…  Oh never mind.  Still good books.  Anyway, I decided on chicken with leeks in black bean sauce.  Solid.  For evening entertainment, I played “Call of Duty” (the first edition) all night, which my friend John loaned me.  I’ve been looking for some alternate means of entertainment, as my usual routine of clicking endlessly through 100 some-odd TV channels is getting rather tedious, and I’ve tentatively decided on PC games as that new hobby.  I’m not sure it’s going to work out, but we’ll see.  I’m not very good at them, generally ending up totally lost and having no idea what to do next.  Maybe you have to play them more than once or twice to figure things out, who knows.  Not being blessed with any sort of attention span, it might be a short-lived hobby.

Sunday I got up and fixed a fine frittata,  our recent weekend breakfast of choice.  Donette labeled it her favorite so far, so I guess I’ll keep that recipe on file for future reference.  (I didn’t like it as much as she did…  Needed some meat in it.)  After that we went on a short burst of “home maintenance” projects.  I have been meaning to work on our generator, which has been sitting idle in the garage since the ice storm in 2002.  I’d blocked out the entire afternoon for this project, convinced it would take hours of Internet research and several trips to the hardware store.  But, what do you know, I poured some gas in it and it fired up on the fourth or fifth pull.  Good ol’ Briggs & Stratton, can’t beat ’em.  Guess it’s good for another six years now.  Meanwhile, Donette was inside trying her luck at carpet patching.  We had a rather disappointing situation arise over Christmas involving Belle, a few pounds of butter she stole off the counter, and…  well, never mind the gory details, suffice to say the carpet needed patched.  The fit came out good, although the color is no where near a match.  It looks better than the previous color though, if you get my drift.  Emboldened by my success with the generator, I then undertook a little plumbing project.  We’ve had a slow drain in the shower for several months, and before dropping the standard $200 fee for the plumber visit I figured I’d at least take things apart and see if there was anything obvious.  I can’t really decide what was grosser, Belle’s mess on the carpet or what came out of the shower drain.  All I’m gonna say is that after that project I spent the rest of the day down at the Brooksider watching TV, trying to erase those horrible visions from my memory.  The shower drains now though…  VICTORY!!