No rain for a weekend finally!!  The weather was most welcome.  We kicked off the festivities on Friday by doing absolutely nothing.  Doni was kind of worn out from a trip to lovely Omaha, NE, and as for myself I’m still rather fascinated by the number of channels I’ve got on the TV now.  So we just did a big ol’ bunch of nothing.

Saturday afternoon, Doni had one of those “parties” that the girls rotate through.  They go to each others houses and donate money to each other so the hostess-of-the-week can get some free stuff.  You know the drill, I don’t imagine I need to describe it in any more detail than that.  Meanwhile, Gabe and I went to puppy school, where we worked on “down,” a.k.a. “lay down.”  He had kind of a rough go at it… For some reason he keeps rolling over.  Amusing, granted, but not too technically correct.  We also received the rather startling news that he actually has to test out to “pass” the class.  Heck, I thought it was like Kindergarten; You just go on to the next class, you don’t really pass or fail.  We better buckle down on the homework a little more; I’ve been letting him slack.  Too much “fetch” and not enough “sit” spoils the puppy.  Saturday night, we went to the first show of the Starlight season, called “Disney’s On The Record.”  This was absolutely, bar none, unequivocally the single worst show I have ever seen in my life.  It had no plot, no dialogue, and no characters; Just a never-ending barrage of 60-some-odd revised Disney songs.  It was nothing short of brutal.  Over the past three seasons that we’ve been season ticket holders, I’ve devised an elaborate rating system for the shows, ranging from a low end of “tedious” to a high end of “tolerable.”  After watching this train-wreck though, I’ve added a special new category called “hara-kiri.”  I’ll have to remember to pack a sword to the remaining shows.  Fortunately, it looks like the schedule is generally downhill from here on out.  Mercifully, Doni pulled me out at intermission on this one.  The Martins came over for a while and we enjoyed the nice weather on the back porch, in blissful silence.

Sunday I got up at the unholy hour of 4:30, rousted by an uncomfortable stomach situation.  This was likely brought on by either the number of ribs I had at dinner before the Starlight show, or the show itself.  This worked out OK though; I wanted to fire up the smoker anyway.  I had a brisket on by 5:45, allowing plenty of time for it to finish before dinner.  This was the first brisket of the season, and it didn’t come out so hot.  There were a few contributing factors to the less-than-stellar results: For one thing, I used a “trimmed” brisket for the first time.  I’ve always wanted to try it, and now I have.  Won’t happen again.  Second, I didn’t do much in the way of seasoning, in an effort to accommodate Doni’s current “no salt, no sugar” rule.  This didn’t work out too bad, as you can always just dump on some sauce for flavor, but it was definitely lacking standing alone.  Oh well, plenty of time left to experiment before the big contest(s).  I’m out of wood though… Anybody got any pecan trees down?