Man I like my new coffee maker. I didn’t realize how bad of coffee our old one was making until I tasted a cup from the new one. I’d have cashed in the Braun a long time ago. Plus, the new one has the “schedule” feature, so when you get out of bed you’ve got a nice hot carafe of coffee brewed up and ready. (Actually the old one had that too, we just didn’t use it for whatever reason.) The only downside is that the bean grinder sounds like a jet airplane taking off, but I’m getting used to that; Just another alarm clock. We picked up a Roomba too, and that’s working out very nicely. My biggest fear when we bought it was that the dogs would attack it, but they don’t even seem to pay attention to it. We schedule it to run while we’re sleeping, so when we wake up in the morning we’ve got a fresh pot of coffee and a clean floor. Ahhhh, wonderful times.
Friday afternoon I went out to some gun range in Independence with a few guys from work for some shootin’. Fun stuff there. It was an indoor range though; All-in-all I’d rather be outside, at least if the weather is decent. After that episode of manliness, I met the wife down at the Brooksider for a “date night.” (I spare no expense on these events, obviously.) We socialized there for a few hours, then walked down the street a few doors for dinner at Jalapenos. (This is remarkably similar to every other Friday night; We just decided to call this one “date night.) Usually you have a long wait for dinner on a Friday night, but since they went non-smoking we just sit at the bar if there’s a line for a table, which was the case on this night. Being the last Friday of the month, they were serving my favorite too; The chicken verde burrito. SCORE. After dinner we went home to watch a movie. The evening selection was 3:10 to Yuma, one of the 8 movies in existence we both agreed sounded interesting. I found it so exciting I fell asleep about 10 minutes into it, effectively ending date night.
Saturday I had planned to go out to Mom’s and pick up my motorcycle, which I was pretty fired up for. I wasn’t entirely certain where to put it once I got it home, since Donette parks her new bus in the garage, but I decided to just worry about that part later. So, we waited for it to warm up a bit, then made the arduous journey to Peculiar. We had a typically fine lunch at “The Best Burrito” to start things off. I had the chile relleno and enchilada combo plate. Their rellenos are quite good, and I find them easy on my braces too, so that’s been one of my common orders lately. After lunch we went back to the house and I tried to fire up the Yamaha; Alas, no joy. Drawing on my extensive military mechanic skills, I was able to diagnose the problem as a dead battery. In reality, the issue could be anything from a dead battery, to bad fuel, to a faulty fetzer valve. But, a battery is the only thing I know how to fix so that’s what I diagnose everything as. If that doesn’t fix it, well, time to figure out how to get it to the shop. So, I hooked up a charger and we drove back home bike-less. For dinner, given the exceptional weather, we fired up the grill and cooked some pork chops. We did some green beans on the grill too, and that worked out surprisingly well. After dinner I retired to the computer chair to work on installing a new bulletin board on my web server. The time has come to ditch the old reliable cgi script I’ve used for years. It attracts spam like a friggin’ magnet; I get like 75 to 100 crappy posts every day on that stupid thing. Of those, at least a few make it through and actually get posted, and I’m tired of cleaning them up. So, I decided it would be easiest to instead go with the most popular “forum based” one, phpBB. Having a somewhat quirky web server though, nothing is ever too easy, and I gave up after a few hours.
Sunday morning started off very early, when I had an early-morning revelation what was wrong with my server. Naturally this precluded going back to sleep, so I got up and started working on that again. It took a few hours, but it’s up and working now, at least at some level. Get to figuring it out if you want to use it, ’cause as soon as I waste some time getting it to look a little better I’m getting rid of the old one. It was still rather early when I got done with that project, but I decided to just get on with the day instead of going back to bed. Incidentally Mom called and said the indicator light on the battery charger had turned green, so hopefully that means my motorcycle will start now. Given the gale force winds and the threat of rain I decided not to go try it out though. After reading the paper and watching a few hours of news on TV, I headed off to loiter at the gym for a while. I like going up there on Sundays because I have time to enjoy some of the “amenities,” like the sauna and the pool. Nobody seemed to appreciate me practicing my cannonball technique in the lap pool, but they’ll get over it. Pools are supposed to be fun. After that moderately healthy activity, I met up with Martin at the Brooksider to have a stogie and watch some TV. Alas, for some reason or another the place was full of college kids, whoopin’ and hollerin’ and making a generally unacceptable racket. I don’t know what the deal was; It’s not Spring Break yet is it? Oh well, we stayed for a while and then went to the Westport Flea Market and met the wives for dinner. I had a blue cheese burger with extra onions and fries. Aside from having to sandblast the film off my braces when we got home, it was delicious.
So tell us more about the Roomba!! I keep looking at those thinking they sound interesting, but too good to be true. Do they work? Do you have to empty them daily? Do the brushes hurt the wood floors? Do they do the whole house or just a room at a time? Are they noisy? Scratch your furniture when they hit it? Get under the beds and couches good? Come on! I don’t want to watch the advertising video I want to know what they work like in a real home. Also, your pork chop recipe didn’t come up…course I might be the only person to click on it! AND what about “other St Patty’s” parades in your weekly poll for those of us who don’t live in the KC area???
Well, the problem there would probably be a level of expectation. Our house doesn’t get vacuumed very often, so relatively speaking, yes it does a GREAT job. Ours will do the whole downstairs; It can handle like 4 rooms at a time. And yeah it does a lot better at going under stuff than a vacuum cleaner. (I think it’s about 4″ high?) It is noisy, but it doesn’t seem to scratch anything up. We’re thinking of switching it to run during the day when we’re not there because it does make quite a racket. And yeah, we have to empty after almost every use but that is probably all the dog fur; It’s not that hard anyway; definitely easier than cleaning out our “bagless” vacuum cleaner. We know some other people that have them and they recommended it, so we decided to give it a try!
That link to the pork chops works OK for me; What’s the deal out there in the stix?
Well I guess I”m just impatient and need faster wireless….oops, when it said it was “done” and just showed the food network and blank green page, I thought it was DONE….but upon hitting it again and waiting a few more seconds the recipe FINALLY showed up….good thing I have “fresh thyme sprigs” growing right in my kitchen in my handy dandy Aerogarden! But the problem in the “stix” is I’m too darn impatient! Enjoy the sun!
That appears to one snazzy ROOMBA and the pork chops look My-T-Fine!! Aren’t you glad you have relatives to write comments?!!
That’s right, somebody needs to!
That roomba is much fancier than the one we have, but even ours is/was an awesome investment. I think we are gonna pick up the mopping scooba at some point too. We love these little things.
Yeah Donette already wants one of the mopping ones too. (Kinda makes sense for hardwood floors I guess.) Ours got in a fight with an area rug yesterday and lost… Need to find out where to buy replacement parts already.
More details on the coffee maker please. Where is the link?
Well it’s a Cuisinart Grind & Brew, sold at Costco naturally. It does have sort of a design flaw; After it grinds the beans and dumps them in the filter, it lets steam come back up and makes kind of a muddy mess in the grinding bowl. This one looks better, and I really wanted a burr grinder, but they didn’t have it at Costco. And, lately my mantra has been “If they don’t have it at Costco, I don’t need it.”