I don’t have a terribly large amount of events to work with, and definitely nothing exciting, but I’ll slog through my obligatory post.  Actually it was a relatively good weekend, and a long one at that, but it wore me out.  I think I’m going to have to scratch Friday off the list, as I can’t remember that far back.  I think I may have gone to the Brooksider and enjoyed the patio, but don’t quote me on that.

Saturday was a fine day, as my days go.  Martin hooked me up with tickets to the Royals game, along with three other fellow ne’er do wells.  We didn’t have time to tailgate, which is generally just a hassle anyway.  He’s got awesome seats, so it makes the game pretty entertaining no matter what the outcome.  (I.E. they lost…  Again.)  We made it to the eighth inning but then it started getting a bit warm so we retired to the Brooksider for a bit.  After wearing out our welcome there, Kelly ventured south and joined us for dinner at our house.  We don’t have people over for dinner very often, so this was an exciting event for me.  (Something about constantly having to guard your plate from the cat or having a slobbery tennis ball dropped in your lap every five minutes tends to make people shy away from our table I guess.)  But, I recently purchased a fancy new grill and was anxious to cook on it, and we figured if anyone could tolerate our invasive pets it would be the Martins.  It came out well for a hurriedly planned menu.  My original plan was to ditch my gas grill and just stick with the new charcoal-fired machine, but I’m doing a bit more thinking on that.  The gas one provides a nice bit of additional space to keep things warm on, cook side dishes, etc.

Sunday started off strong and then tapered off sharply.  We began our day by riding our bicycles to Jerry’s Cafe for breakfast.  I’m inclined to agree with Donette’s assessment that they cook up the best plate of breakfast in the area.  On the downside, several others seem to share this opinion, so we had to wait 30 minutes or so.  That gave us time to recover from the ride though, which was a bit more strenuous than anticipated.  While only five miles each way, there are some rather imposing inclines along the way.  We rode Wornall getting there, and Holmes on the way back, both of which proved to be arduous journeys.  Oh well, maybe I worked off some of the delicious chorizo omelette I scarfed down at breakfast.  After that, we kind of took the rest of the day to recover.  I fired up the grill again later in the day and threw on some steaks;  If nothing else this new toy is helping to clean out our freezer.

Monday was a bit of a bust.  I had a corned beef I intended to throw on the smoker, but the rain threw me off schedule considerably.  I had also planned to try and straighten up the garage a bit;  Again, foiled by the downpour.  By the time the rain finally stopped it was too hot and humid to work in the garage, so I tossed the beef on the smoker and headed to the Brooksider to hang out.  I came home around 6:00 to find the smoker holding temperature nicely, but alas the meat was nowhere near finished.  Stumped by this turn of events, I ended up wrapping it in foil and heading to the Bier Station for dinner.  From smoked corned beef (one of my favorites) to a grilled cheese sandwich:  That’s a pretty hard fall.  By the time I got home the foil had done it’s job nicely.  The meat temp had rocketed from 135 to 195, but it was far past dinner time so I just threw it in the fridge for another day.  Sigh.