I do enjoy three day weekends.  That one was definitely tempered by the fact that I was oncall, but I enjoyed it all the same.  Perhaps to a lesser degree, but that’s probably good for me anyway.  Things started off strong on Friday with a happy hour down at Harry’s Country Club in the River Market.  I’m still not quite sure about ol’ Harry’s.  I try to like it;  I think that’s about the third or fourth time I’ve been there.  They’ve got a great deck too, which was definitely a plus on one of the nicest afternoons of the summer.  Their service is a little spotty though, and the food a little so-so.  Both of these could be easily overlooked (by me anyway) if the prices were a bit lower…  But they aren’t.  It was still a good time, and that weather was not to be missed.  After a few hours, I left there and headed down to the P&L to meet up with Donette and our friend Lisa.  Alas, I was denied entry, a victim of their harsh dress code.  (I had my Camelbak with me;  Stupid motorcycle, what can ya’ do.)  Maybe I will write an incendiary letter to the KC Star.  Or, maybe I will just happily go elsewhere.  We decided on Grinders, and headed a few blocks south.  Alas, there we found an absolute mob scene;  We’d forgotten about “First Fridays” and the associated crowd.  Not so big a deal, but we didn’t feel like finding a parking place, so we meandered west a bit to La Bodega.  Donette has been there several times with “the girls” but I’ve never been.  As it turns out, this was due to the fact that it is a girls only restaurant.  Don’t ask me exactly what gives it that qualifier;  I haven’t narrowed it down yet.  They might as well put the sign on the door, though:  “Women Only.”  Could be the very small portions, coupled with the extremely high price tag.  Could be the metered serving pace, geared towards sitting around and chatting for a few hours.  At any rate, the food was very very good, (if a bit sparse…) but I think it’s checked off my list.  Not my kinda place.

I had to work late Saturday night so I took it easy all day, preparing for my night of trying to stay awake on the couch.  I headed over to Brice’s house to keep myself occupied for the afternoon, where he had a cooker full of pork working.  He was tuning his competition butt recipe for the upcoming stretch of ‘ques, and had a slab of spare ribs on for good measure.  I didn’t stick around for the pulled pork, but the ribs came out excellent.  We watched the smoker for several hours, listened to the MU game on the radio, then I headed to the couch for the inevitable.  Wasn’t so bad, and it’s over with for a few more weeks.

Sunday I slept in a bit, then about 10:30 decided to head out for bicycle ride.  I took a nice route through Leawood, and then down through the City Market to the river and back;  Ended up just under 35 miles.  I wanted to see if everything was still in working order after last week’s debacle.  I’d say it went OK, if a bit inconclusive.  I didn’t have any trouble riding that far;  But then again 35 miles is a long ways from 75.  After that rather half-hearted attempt at exercise, we rolled down to the ‘Sider to enjoy the sun.  Turned out the better part of the city had the same idea, it was pretty packed.  There was enough room for us though, so we pulled up to a table and hung out for a while.  The usual suspects were all in attendance, and then a co-worker even dropped by to socialize.  Donette had her fill of deck time after a bit, and went down to Jalapenos for dinner with the girls.  I stayed on the deck to foul the air with a cigar and hang out with the men-folk.

Monday was a relaxing day off.  I was still oncall so we kept things low-key, but had some fun all the same.  By the time we got around in the morning it was nearly lunch time, so we wiped the cobwebs off the motorcycle and thought about a destination.  We ended up deciding on Weston;  As good a place to go as any.  We took a nice back-road route up there, and had a good lunch at O’Malley’s.  Luckily we got there around noon;  By the time we left it was packed and there was an hour wait for a table.  Tons of bikes too, it seems like a popular destination for a ride.  The ride home was a bit dicey, my bike is bit light to cruise through a 30 mph wind.  Matter of fact, we were both pretty beat up by the trip;  The rest of the day was wasted resting up.  Watched the Royals take their daily thrashing, and then watched maybe the biggest cinematic disaster of all time.  I found it under the “action/adventure” section on Netflix, cleverly titled “Beer For My Horses.”  I will take a small amount of blame for watching it even after I saw Toby Keith was the main character, and a bit more blame for actually sitting through the entire movie.  The largest share of culpability rests with Mr. Keith for ever creating that disaster though;  I consider myself an innocent victim for the most part.  It was bed time when it mercifully ended, but I had to stay up for another hour and a half watching Undisputed III in an attempt to erase the previous nightmare from my mind.