Well that was an odd vacation.  As previously referred to, our cruise fell through, so that left us to our own devices for entertainment.  Having no devices, that translates to precious few options.  Let’s see…  I spent a prodigious amount of time at various dog entertainment venues around town.  Fun for Teagan I suppose, and to some extent I enjoy them also.  She had her first real attempt at swimming;  I see a doggie-life-vest in her future.  We rode the motorcycle up to Lexington, MO for a day, mostly just to enjoy the awesome weather.  We spent more than one afternoon basking in the sun on the patio at the Brooksider.  I got caught up in the whole March Madness event for once, but effectively lost all interest after Missouri crashed and burned.  And I think that about covers vacation.  Gas hit crazy prices right on queue for us, so we really didn’t want to go over a few miles away for anything, limiting our options even further.  What can ya’ do.  Our cruise has been rescheduled for late May, we’ll try it again.

The weekend itself was just sort of tacked on the end of the vacation I guess.  We got with the Martins to celebrate St. Paddies day and that about covers it.  Actually the girls did go out and celebrate;  Chris and I stayed home and slaved over a hot smoker all day so they would have a traditional holiday feast waiting when they got done carousing.  Ain’t that the way.  Maybe it wasn’t so traditional of a preparation though.  Convinced that anything worth eating is better on a smoker, we lit up some coals and prepared the entire meal over some nice hickory smoke.  I’ve done the corned beef on the smoker before, so I knew that was going to work out.  The cabbage and potatoes were something of an experiment, with mixed results.  I was a big fan of the cabbage, it was great.  We cored it, then stuffed it with butter, italian sausage, and some fresh thyme, then loosely wrapped it in foil and let it go about 4 hours.  Solid.  The potatoes we just tossed with oil and salt and put them right on the grate.  Eh, they were OK.  Probably should have foiled them also, at least for part of the time.