Welcome to this week’s edition of “what I didn’t do last weekend.”  I have many exciting tales of life from the couch again.  Cold weather is rough on us, what can I say.  Things started off reasonably strong with an evening at the Brooksider on Friday.  I stopped by Diebels on the way and picked up a cigar for the evening.  I even let them talk me into a new selection this visit, a Siglo Limited Reserve.  While a bit trendy for my usual taste, and certainly higher priced than my usual taste, it made for a good “special occasion” cigar;  Said occasion being the last time we will be outdoors for the foreseeable future.  We went home and ate a little dinner, then watched Public Enemies.  I found the movie a bit disjointed, never really following where the plot was going.  This may have been in part because I kept nodding off for 5 minute stretches throughout the show.  I finally managed to work up to some level of alertness for what was presumably the big showdown, as the agents closed in on the gangsters hideout.  Just as the shoot-out was about to begin the DVD messed up and wouldn’t play.  Oh well, another two and a half hours of my life wasted.

Saturday…  Well, Saturday never quite got started for us.  We made a few very half-hearted efforts at getting around, but they never came together.  I had intended to kick around the gym for a while, but the next thing I knew the college basketball games had started.  Victimized again by the television.  After  watching all the games that at least moderately interested me, it was dinner time.  So, I fixed myself some leftovers, and while I was eating I noticed that the weather had turned quite unfavorable outside.  Just what I needed, another excuse to return to the couch, which I promptly did.  Fired up the Netflix and spent the rest of the evening suffering through a few painfully unremarkable films.

Sunday brought a limited more amount of entertainment.  We spent the better part of the morning convincing Kane that he is, in fact, a feline, and as such is well within his rights to use a litter box.  For whatever reasons swirl around in his little pea-brain, he had abruptly stopped using it last summer, insisting instead on being let outside for his business.  Hey, all the better for us, who wants to clean out a litter box anyway.  This convenience hit something of a snag when the temperature dropped to the single digits and a few inches of snow fell, though.  It was an amusing situation, if also a bit annoying.  He would repetitively come upstairs and loudly voice his discomfort, only to wail even louder upon stepping out the back door and immediately retreating back inside.  Any effort to show him the litter box was met with an indifferent stare and more wailing.  The deadlock was finally broken when Donette, rapidly nearing insanity after the tenth trip down the stairs, forcibly set him in the litter box.  He looked like one of those cartoon characters when they get a bright idea and the light bulb comes on over their head.  He’s been perfectly content to use it since then, like it’s some wonderful new kitten invention…  One that he hadn’t consistently used the first seven freaking years of his life.  Cats are odd.  Hopefully he switches back to the great outdoors next spring.  After spending our morning re-training our cat, we headed over to our friend Ronnie’s house to watch the Chief’s game.  The “theme” of the day had been declared a chili pot-luck, and as such we had four or five excellent variations to choose from.  Naturally I sampled them all too, much to the dismay of my ever-aging digestive system.  Aside from the uninteresting, embarrassing debacle masquerading as a football game on the TV, we had a fine time of it.