Now that was a little better. At no time during the past weekend was I over four miles from my house. Keep that up for one more week and I should be all better. Of course if the crappy weather keeps up I won’t be able to go anywhere even if I wanted to.
We started off the weekend strong with a good night of basketball and St. Patrick’s revelry down at the Brooksider. The St. Paddy’s stuff was kind of secondary to the games, but definitely couldn’t be avoided. There was a veritable mob scene in the bar all night. Luckily “the regulars” got down there early in the afternoon and secured prime seating for us. Even Zim and Chud made the drive down to join in the festivities. All was well in the world until the KU game came on, and lured in all the riff-raff that is generally associated with said games. Man, those freaks drive me nuts. Nothing to do with sports, per se’, as I’m not that big of a sports fan, it’s just that they are an unbelievably rude lot. I will put them well below the Denver fans that we keep in the basement during NFL season. At least the Bronco-lovers stay downstairs for the most part, minding their own business. If one of them does stray upstairs you can just give them a good scolding and they’ll slink back down the stairs like Gabe getting busted on the living room couch. But these KU people descend on the place like a horde of locusts, junking up the place with their chain smoking, screaming, and nonsensical chants that even they can’t explain. And I swear, I have never been asked so many times in such a short period if I was getting ready to leave. What is it that gave these supposedly educated people the idea that myself or anyone else at the table was leaving? Was it the half-eaten hamburger in my hand? No, no, that wouldn’t make sense. The 7″ cigar in Todd’s hand that clearly had another two hours on it? Nope, that wasn’t a good clue. One girl actually asked if she could share my stool, “since I was really only sitting on half of it.” GET OUT OF MY STATE!!! SHUT UP AND GO DOWNSTAIRS!!! JUST GO AWAY!!!
Saturday we went to the gym for a few hours, and then it was pretty much more basketball watching. This is the first year I’ve actually filled out a bracket, and it’s making things a bit more fun to watch. Remarkably, I’m even tied for first place, but things are looking rather grim after the last few games. I spent a good part of the day ripping our CD collection too. I got a good chunk of them done; at last count I had like 2700 songs on the computer. Still have a long way to go, but it’s progress at least. If you would like to partake in any of this collection, I’d recommend getting an AOL Instant Messenger account. If you prefer FTP I can certainly accommodate that too, just ship me an email. There’s yet another option for sharing via itunes, but I have no idea how to do that, if anybody does let me know. I got all the Christmas music you need in one convenient location.
Sunday, well, more basketball. Followed by more basketball, and then more basketball. While those were going on, I threw a corned beef on for dinner. I’ve been wanting some corned beef ever since the sales started running a few weeks ago, but never got around to getting one. So, Doni finally brought one home, and after quite a bit of looking around I decided on this recipe. The braising method worked out well, although it didn’t do my cast iron pot any favors. Susan and Todd came over and ate dinner with us, followed by the latest episode of The Sopranos. I might also add, that was the absolute worst episode ever, in the history of the show. Ever. It was all I could do to stay awake through it. The one exciting moment occurred when they applied that big bandage-thing to Tony’s gut. Those very same bandages happen to be marketed by our very own Chuckie Scotten, so it gave the show a little hometown appeal, you know. I think they shoulda cut away from the scene to a little sidebar with Chuckie: “The medical supplies in this scene can be yours by calling this convenient 1-800 number.” THAT woulda been more exciting.