Wow, the weekly poll hit a new high; 42 total votes.  I had to spend the majority of my evenings last week freeing up extra memory on my server to keep up with the vast amount of traffic.  Now, whether or not the results are actually valid is another question.  I happen to have it on good authority that Carl was seen at his daughter’s school several days last week, telling all the kids that the Easter Bunny was going to come take back their candy if they didn’t run home and vote for him.  Something shifty was going on, that’s for sure.

Friday doesn’t really bear recounting… I didn’t do much.  Donette was on the road returning from her Houston trip, so I just headed home to babysit the dogs, as I did every night last week.  Those little monsters really cut into my already mediocre social life.  I’ll be glad if it ever warms up and I can put the dog-door back in, so they can let themselves out.  I can’t even recall what I did for entertainment all evening. Something tells me it probably involved laying on the couch channel-surfing, if I was going to make a guess.

Saturday brought a little more activity, if not really any more accomplishment.  I had gotten it into my head on Friday that the brakes on the Accord were making a grinding noise, so I set about using my mechanical expertise to remedy the situation.   Coincidentally, there were already new brake pads in the trunk all ready to install, which Donette had thought to purchase roughly a year ago when we were told the brakes needed replaced.  Let’s not bring my tendency to procrastinate into the picture though.  I spent the better part of the morning laying out my plan, including trying to decide whether or not I needed new rotors.  I got a little expert advise for you;  If you decide to run your fingers over the rotor to see if it’s gouged up, do NOT do this immediately after driving the car.  By the time the pain registered, I’d lost the finger prints on all four fingers of my right hand.  Man, those fingertips just wiped right off like butter on a hot skillet.  After venting my agony on everything within reach, I continued on with the arduous process of jacking up the car.  Thankfully that went off without a hitch, only to find the wheel was stuck on like it’d been welded there.  I finally hit it with a big enough hammer to jar it loose, with only minor damage to the alloy wheel.  I then proceeded to puzzle over the brake calipers for a few hours;  They really looked like quite an intimidating hodge-podge of bolts and hoses and such.  I took off a few important-looking pieces of metal here and there, but eventually stopped after I started having flash-backs of my old Monte Carlo.  (I took it apart to “fix” something or another in the steering column but never figured out how to put it back together, and eventually had it towed off for junk.)  I ended up making the executive decision that the brakes were just fine, and (hopefully) put everything back together, effectively wasting my entire afternoon.  The aforementioned grinding noise was easily resolved by turning up the radio a little higher;  All good.  Meanwhile, Donette’s nephew Joshua was inside making better use of his time by doing a research paper for school.  The subject matter was “Steroids in MLB”;  Look for it to be published in the next issue of Sports Illustrated!  At least it should be, he spent all dang day on it.  I don’t know when this paper was due (I suspect today…) but he did the entire thing from start to finish over the course of the day.  This worked out well for us;  We left him home with the dogs while we went out and had dinner at Governor Stumpy’s around the corner.  We need to go there more often, it’s not a bad little hang out.  I’d add a link to their website so you could check out the menu, but it is probably the single most embarrassing excuse for a website I’ve ever seen, so I’ll spare you the agony.

Sunday I woke up and started the day with a massive breakfast.  I made a tasty three-egg ham & cheese omelet, hash browns, and a batch of sausage gravy to smother everything with.  It was quite good, and the cat didn’t even run through it this time.  After that feed-a-thon I read the newspaper, and then after much deliberation went to the gym for a few hours.  Then, feeling entirely too healthy, I headed down to eat chicken wings and watch the basketball games at the Brooksider.  I made it through the early game, but then the place was overrun with loudmouth KU fans and I had to bail back to the safety of my couch.  Donette, meanwhile, was out at NFM shopping for a new washer and dryer set.  Our dryer makes some squeaking noise (and has for about the last decade) which apparently necessitated the purchase of an entire new unit.  And, although I was not aware of this fact, the washer has to match the dryer in order to function properly, so you can’t just buy one or the other.  Anyway, she got some fancy LG front-loading super-duper industrial-grade machines, so we should be set for another dozen years.  It seems to me that whenever one of my friends spend that kind of money they get cool stuff;  Shotguns, or big-screen TV’s, or laptops, or what-not.  I get a washer and dryer that sit down in my crumbling leaky basement.  Clean clothes are a good thing though I guess.  She also bought a big bag of accessories for my prized food-saver though, so I did get something out of the deal.  This was obviously an attempt to divert my attention from the bill for the washer and dryer, but that’s OK.