My weekend actually started a little early last week…  I had Friday off so Todd and I went out Thursday night and kicked it Plaza-style.  After nearly suffering an aneurysm trying to find a parking place, I met Todd at Diebel’s for a little shopping.  The reps from Partagas cigars were there, and they were giving away stuff and playing games and such.  Pretty entertaining, location not withstanding.  We played roulette for half and hour or so;  Todd won a $100 box of cigars.  And as for me… Well, I didn’t win.  I still got a bunch of free stuff though.  After that, we went down the street to O’Dowds, for what I have labeled “The Best Happy Hour in the World.”  They had all kinds of food out, and not just chicken wings and nachos either.  (Although they did have those.)  They had fish and chips, fruit and cheese plates, cheese sticks, all kinds of good stuff.  We walked out an hour later stuffed to the gills, and not a buck poorer for it.  Can’t beat that.  Hey, we WANTED to spend money, but nobody ever came by and asked us if we needed anything.  After a brief stop by the Granfalloon to enjoy our stogies, we headed over to Tomfooleries and watched Government Cheese play for a while.  (Todd’s favorite local cover band.)  After all that, I think I am “Plaza’d out” for a while.  I had a good time, besides the parking ordeal, so I better just quit while I’m ahead.

Friday afternoon, Doni and I took off for Omaha on a semi-business trip.  Business for her anyway, I was just along for the ride.  She had a work function Saturday night, so we went up a day early to visit our friends Tom and Tammy, who returned not long ago from a year-long Tour de Sand.  Since they have a little girl and had just bought a new house, this proved rather inconvenient, but the good ol’ Army apparently thought it a good idea.  We went out to dinner and relived “The Big One of ’91” and looked at a bunch of pictures they took on their recent trip.  Hmmmm, didn’t look as fun as Germany for some reason… Call me crazy.  I was reminded for the 4,245,628th time that I’m glad I gave that mess up.  Plus there’s always the chance they’ll get to go back for a second round too… What a friggin’ drag.  Saturday we messed around in downtown Omaha all day, checking out the “Old Town” area.  It was freezing cold though, and I forgot my jacket and hat of course.  I found a “Creighton Bluejays” sweatshirt in the 99 percent off bin at some place, and it did a good job of keeping me warm.  I was a little self-conscious wearing it though; I kept expecting Falhstrom or Brice to jump out and heckle me.  After that, we headed down to the arena and went to a party with all them crazy insurance people.  Same deal as last year;  They had a big party, then we caught the UNO hockey game.  Good stuff.  That college hockey is pretty entertaining.  After the hockey game we were pretty beat… We didn’t close the town down like last year.  We hung out in the hot tub at the hotel for a while and called it a day.

Sunday was taken up with the miserable drive back to KC.  We passed the time with some Books on Tape, and playing the “Count the Deer Roadkill” game.  Man I bet we saw at least 25 deer in the median; with our track record we were a bit nervous.  Luckily we didn’t see any of the live variety though.  We got home early enough to go down to the Brooksider and watch the 3:00 games.  Ed, Kim and Christie came down to lend a youthful perspective to the crowd.  Kim’s younger brother was in town too, and he even got us out of our chairs to play a little pool.  Football AND exercise.  (I have been so lethargic lately that I can rightly call pool “exercise.”)  About 6:00 or so we had to leave and get Gabe out of boarding, and that pretty much wrapped up the weekend.  We are tentatively planning another weekend trip to Omaha, just for fun… anybody in?