Hey guess what everybody it is “Weekend Roundup” times again I guess?
Hey, everybody! Brian’s back! That’s right, my good friend/alter-ego Brian is back. He authored a Weekend Roundup for us back in April; you might want to check it out for some background on this pleasant, sweet, and bewilderingly inarticulate young man from Findlay, Ohio. But enough of my yakkin’… take it away, Brian!
Hey thank you Price for inviting me, it is a “pleasure” to be here! (Ha, it is like I am on a “talking show”, the kind that comes on after the news, like that one with the guy who has a “hole” in his teeth in the front? Anyway that is a kind of thing you say when you are on a show like that, it is just a joke, I am not on a show like that, they do not invite people who work at hardware stores probably?) Okay anyway I have not done a “Weekend Round Up” in a long time so I guess Price wanted me to show everyone how I can tell a good story, it is true, I always “impress”. Also he said he was too tired and didn’t want to do it, that is something he says all the time here on his blog web site so I did not “pay attention” to it. Anyway here I go, I am going to do it. We will start with Friday night, not a bad idea, right? Okay here it is.
Okay it was Friday night and so they went to over to a friend’s house, yes there were a “lot” of other people there, they were not there to see the Horns you can bet! No, they were there to meet a guy, his name is Rob and he has a wife, she is named Corrie, I think that is how you spell it, it is a name you can spell a lot of different ways I guess (like for example it could be Coreyor Kori too, what I am saying is who knows how to spell named like that) (also it could be Choire?). Anyway he has a ”my space” blog web site thing but I can not find it. Wait no here it is, it is a “link”, you can click it, it will take you there http://www.myspace.com/robertcunninghamthefourth. Anyway so they were in Kansas City (that is the town) to “interview” for a job at the church, it is some kind of “music job” I think? Anyway they ate a bunch of food and played a game called “Taboo”, it is a game where you try to get people to say a word but you can not say some other words to get them to say that word, never mind, it is kind of complicated sort of. Anyway hre is a picture of Price playing the game, also he is sitting by a lady named Jetta, she is the wife of the “pastor” of the church (he is basically the “preaching boss”),
Wait, okay, that is not a very good one, I will try another one. Okay, this one is kind of better. Check it out, they have evil eyes,
Okay so Price says that “Rob and Kory” (remember that is their names, also remember I don’t know how to spell her name), anyway he says they are really cool “young kids” (Price says that because he is old) and it would be “sweet” if they get the job at the church, actually just Rob would get the job and not Corye, I guess she would come along though if he got the job (they would have to move.)
Also that night Steven went to a birthday party for some kid, they ate pizza (that is pretty “usual” for a birthday party with kids I guess) and they played a videogame called “The Rock Band Game” where you pretend to be a rock star. Steven said he played the “base”? (I am not sure what he is talking about, it is not a “sport game”!) Anyway he had fun I guess. And so I guess that is Friday night because then they went home and went to bed. A pretty good night, I guess it would be pretty good for me anyway, I do not do a lot on Friday night “mostly”, I “used to” have a girl friend a long time ago and we would watch a movie or something, that was pretty fun I guess until there was a “break up” situation (not fun you can bet). So you can believe I do not go to a lot of parties here in Findlay, I am not that “party animal” (this is a person who goes to a bunch of parties, I think?).
Okay then it was Saturday so they did a lot of things like they do on Saturdays always, like for example wash clothes and clean the house, not a bad idea probably. But of course there was breakfast time, oh yeah, it was pretty good (that is what they tell me anyway, I was not invited). They ate bacon, it is a “typical” breakfast, but also they were going to eat a “ham piece” but it was gray and green, not too tasty probably. But also they had a weird “dish”, it is called “toad in a hole” I think? Price says it is a “specialty” where you put a hole in a bread piece and then you cook eggs in the hole, they really like it but I am telling you I do not get why it is called a “toad”, you do not eat toad eggs, also I am pretty sure toads do not lay eggs, they are not birds! Wait, I looked on “wiki pedia” and it says a toad does lay eggs. Still I would not eat them (too small, also gross).
And then they went to a music store, here is why: Steven had to get a VIOLIN for a “string program” for school. Basically they play violins at school, I guess that is the program (wait also there is a bigger vioin, it sits on the floor, a “chello”?). Anyway he was getting a violin, don’t worry, they did not buy it (too much $$$) but it was a “renting” situation, basically you just borrow it but you pay a little money. So here is a picture of him holding it, I don’t know if he is holding it right, he has not had the class yet, anyway you can believe that I am not the “musical expert” man.
It is basically a “classic” instrument, you do not play it in a “rock” band probably! (See that is like what I talked about before when he played that videogame, kind of funny I guess? I guess not really.)
Okay then Maya (remember she is the girl), she went to a birthday party also, this was at the Zoo in Kansas City, yes, you can have a birthday party there, do not worry, they are in a “lion cage”! It is just in a little place at the Zoo, but you can see animals I guess too, that makes sense because youare at the Zoo anyway. Okay, here is a picture or maybe two pictures, this is a “chin chiller”?
That doesn’t make sense because it is furry and it would be warm and not a “chiller”? But I do not know science. Okay this is gross, also she saw a roach, it could “hiss” at you, too creepy.
Anyway it is from “Madagascar” (yes I had to look it up), it is a real place, not just a “cartoon movie”.
While they were gone Price and Steven watched a cartoon movie about “Hell Boy”, yes it is a movie about a “Devil Man” except he is actually good even though he is like a devil person with horns and also he has a tail, I forgot to tell you about that, but anyway the point is he is a good guy, not a bad guy (a lot of people think he is a bad guy probably because he has devil horns, also he is red, but like I said don’t worry he is really a good guy). Anyway it does not matter because Price fell asleep watching, basically it is because he is pretty old.
Then on Saturday night a bunch of people came over to eat and “hang out”, now that I think about it they did a whole lot of stuff this weekend, just on Saturday they did all kinds of stuff, like for example to go to the “groceries” store (I guess that some of it is not too fun, like the grocery store is not like an “amusement” park for example! anyway I am “Rambling”). Okay so their friend Tom came over, also their friends the “Crows” (not birds). They ate a bunch of food that Price cooked, he is not too bad at the stove, basically all I can do is eat a frozen pizza (of course you cook it). But I can not fry any thing, except maybe an egg? Except it is “usual” I just “scramble” it, mixing it up is just easier. (That is what “scrambling” is, just mixing it up, also sometimes you can put cheese in there, that is not too bad, except when the cheese is “spoiled” and you can bet that is not good, I was in the toilet for a long time.) (Wait, I should probably not put that on here.)
Okay, they do not have a photo of this.
That is about it really. Sunday was basically “church” time, but they do that all the time, not too exciting. But that Rob guy (remember he is the guy from up at the top of this thing that I was talking about where they went to the party and met him and his wife Correy), he played music at the church and it was really good, kind of loud but I guess that is okay, if it is too “soft” maybe you would go to sleep and they do not like that I can tell you, because that time I fell asleep in church when I was a kid the “preacher” yelled at me to wake up and you can believe that my dad was not happy so we just did not go back there, maybe we should of gone to a church where they yell about Jesus instead of just talk about him I guess.
Okay that is about it. Maybe I will write one of these again, who knows, it is not like I am so busy I can not do it again, I do not have a “planner schedule” that is so full! I guess what I am saying is I am pretty lonely so anyway bye.
Now that guy knows how to wrap up a Weekend Roundup.
A Weekend Roundup in pictures
And they’re not even great pictures, at that. But it’s late, and I’m tired, and I don’t have the energy to wax poetic about eating hot dogs or driving to the grocery store. So, in no particular order, some pics and a Very Special Video. And I’ll warn you, it’s pretty Maya-heavy this week. (She’s the only one of us who did anything interesting. Steven spent the whole weekend playing video games, and who wants to see photos of a kid rotting his brain?)
Dining out at Tomfooleries at Zona Rosa.
Sweet, sweet dessert at Tomfooleries.
Maya holding a toad we caught at the park on Saturday.
Maya and the Mackenzies strike a pose. Yes, they’re both named Mackenzie. And yes, Maya and the Mackenzies would be a great name for a band.
Maya jumping in a bounce house at Mackin Park in North Kansas City.
Maya dancing to the dulcet tones of Dead or Alive, a (shudder) Bon Jovi tribute band playing at Zona Rosa.
And now, let’s put that picture in motion, in a video that will haunt and bewilder you.
Can’t you see the Weekend Roundup standing here? It’s got its back against the record machine
I just realized that this week’s title may go right over the head of many readers under the age of, say, 30 or so. “The what machine? What the heck is he talking about?” Nonetheless, readers of a certain age will probably get it, though it’s admittedly a non sequitur that makes little sense out of context. I’m only using that line from Van Halen’s popjunk classic “Jump” because it was playing in the van on the way to church this morning. I was suddenly awash in misplaced nostalgia for that summer of 1984, when I was 13 awkward years old, riding my beat-up 10-speed in the sticky central Arkansas heat, trying to get the attention of girls who were only dimly aware of my skinny, nerdy existence. Geez, I’m rambling here. Anyway, point is, I was listening to “Jump” in the van this morning. I turned it up–way up–and found myself loudly screeching the lyrics along with Diamond Dave, when the complaints from the backseat finally forced me to dial it back a little.
It was easy for me to forget that there were little kids with me, considering they had been in St. Louis for the better part of a week, visiting the in-laws and all the multitudinous cousins that are all over that city. Shannon was over there with them, too, for the last part of the week, so I had the whole house to myself. Freedom! Horrible, horrible freedom! It’s horrible because my time to myself gave me a sickening glimpse at what life would be like if I were still a swingin’ bachelor, which is to say, not swingin’ at all. It would be crushingly boring and depressing as all get out: small dinners eaten alone in a deathly quiet house. (Quiet I like. Deathly quiet, not so much.) No one to greet me when I come home from work, except for the dog, who mostly ignores me, pissed that I’m not Shannon. What a life.
My attempts at a social life on Friday night left me feeling even more down: a meager fast food meal with Tom, then watching a forgettable movie, then going to bed. A lifetime ago, while all my college peers were out drinking and acting promiscuous and girls were still ignoring me, this is exactly what I did every single, lonely, lame Friday night. So there I was, 15 years a decade several years later, pushing 40, and I was lying on the couch in front of the TV as the world was passing me by. (With a girl ignoring me, too: my wife. Okay, she was out town, but still.)
So yes, for perhaps selfish reasons, I was ready for my family to come back to Kansas City on Saturday. At the same time, though, I felt a little guilty for all that time I got to spend alone. I know, I know, it wasn’t exactly a party. Well, maybe a pity party. Still, I did get to sleep late on Saturday morning, so I felt I needed to atone for that mad luxury by cleaning the house from top to bottom.
Oh, sister, did I clean! I…
- Laundered and changed the sheets on every bed
- Scrubbed every surface in every bathroom
- Swept and mopped the floors
- Dusted and polished the furniture
- Used the vacuum duster attachment on curtains and lampshades
- Vacuumed the carpets
Heck, I even gave the dog a bath and took everyone’s books back to the library (I hope they were done reading them?).
And so, when the family pulled into the driveway on Saturday afternoon, as glad as I was to see them, I didn’t exactly run to meet them. I was too exhausted. Nonetheless, after hugs and kissed were accepted and administered appropriately, I helped them lug their suitcases back into the house (dirtying up my fresh cleaning job!). After a few minutes, things were blessedly back to normal: barely controlled chaos, kids yelling, crumbs on the floor.
Ahhh…. heaven.
Happy Anniversary!
August 6, 1994.
Weekend Roundup: In Review
Every Sunday evening, I sit down and write the Weekend Roundup, in which I review the events of the weekend. This week, I’m going to literally review the events of the weekend, discussing the pros and cons of each item and giving each one a rating of up to five stars. Let’s begin!
Friday Night’s Dinner of Peppercorn-Crusted Pork Loin
Pros: Pork loin cooked on a grill is tender and juicy. Accompanied by creamy homemade whipped potatoes, buttery sweet corn, and a hot batch of beer bread muffins. Shannon made chocolate chip cookies for dessert. Everyone cleaned their respective plates.
Cons: Propane tank conked out halfway through, so I had to finish it up in the oven, which threw the cooking schedule way off and we ended up eating later than planned. Everyone only metaphorically cleaned their plates, so tidying up the kitchen took forever.
Rating: 
Staying Up Late Watching L.A. Confidential
Pros: Movie was well written, well acted, gorgeously shot, and riveting.
Cons: Up late, so we were exhausted the next morning when Elly and the kids woke us up early. Not a problem for Tom, who slept through the movie and who does not have kids or a dog anyway.
Rating: 
Saturday Morning’s Breakfast of Homemade Blueberry Pancakes
Pros: The pancakes were as good (or better!) than any blueberry pancakes I’ve ever had at a restaurant.
Cons: Steven grabbed the last piece of bacon, and I wanted it!
Rating:
Doing Yard Work in the Stifling, Humid August Heat
Pros: Boy, the yard sure looks nice.
Cons: But was it worth the sunburn and heatstroke?
Rating:
Taking the Kids Swimming at the Municipal Pool
Pros: Pool was cool and refreshing. Nothing better than swimming on a hot August day. Kids had fun.
Cons: Too many ugly kids and fatties.
Rating:
Long Nap on Saturday Afternoon
Pros: Made up for staying up so late the night before. Cleared the head.
Cons: A waste of time that I could have spent doing something useful, such as spending time with my children. Just kidding.
Rating:
Saturday Night’s Dinner of Burgers-’n'-Potato Wedges
Pros: Cooking the burgers–prepared using my secret recipe–on a searing hot flat-top griddle gave them an old-school, diner-style flavor. Everybody gobbled them up.
Cons: The only reason I cooked the burgers on that searing hot flat-top griddle is because we never went to get a new propane tank for the grill, and it was a chore to clean up. Everybody devoured the burgers because we didn’t eat until nearly 8 p.m. and they were starving.
Rating:
Watching The Secret of NIMH with the Kids
Pros: Never saw this classic animated movie when it originally came out back in the early 80s.
Cons: Probably will not see it again.
Rating:
Doing Laundry and Vacuuming
Pros: Had to be done anyway.
Cons: Had to be done by me.
Rating:
Sunday Evening’s Mexican Dinner Out with Our Friends Doug and Lynda
Pros: Nothing’s better than good friends, a cold Pacifico, and hot queso dip. The restaurant, El Maguey, is cheap and close to our house. And Doug and Lynda paid!
Cons: Afterwards our clothes and hair kind of smelled like refried beans?
Rating:
Having to Write This Weekend Roundup
Pros: Better than having to read it.
Cons: Only marginally better.
Rating:
Vacation Video Highlights
Okay, now I swear we’re done with vacation stuff.
Probably.
I hear the Weekend Roundup a-comin’, it’s comin’ round the bend
After a week of nothing but vacation-related posts, I realize that you’re probably getting sick of all the vacation stuff. Well, good news! Now that we’ve been back in the real world for a solid week now, I’m almost done with reliving our time at Table Rock over and over again. Only one more vacation post to go, and that’s a YouTube highlight video that’s coming tomorrow.
I was up until about 1 a.m. Saturday morning working on that particular video. I don’t know why I was so bent on getting the thing done. There was no real hurry; it’s not like Old Lady Horn was breathing down my neck and crowing about a deadline or something. But the way I figure it, if I didn’t get it done this weekend, I’d forget how everything went down on vacation and everything would be out of order and I would be so discouraged that I would just give up and probably just erase all the files and none of us would remember that the vacation never even happened. So you see, I had to do it, you see.
Even though working on the thing meant that I spent all Friday evening ignoring my family and Tom (of course he was over there–surprised?) as they debated whether to a) watch The Secret of NIMH with the kiddies, or 2) wait until the kiddies went to bed and watch L.A. Confidential, or III) do neither, and just waste time watching an old Simpsons episode while Tom falls asleep in the recliner. Guess which came out on top?
Saturday was a day for housecleaning: toilets were scrubbed and floors were vacuumed and dust was rousted from its resting place on every horizontal surface of the house. Or so I hear, anyway. I left after breakfast to go see The Dark Knight with a bunch of friends from church. And let me tell you… it’s an incredible movie, as intense and visceral and disturbing as any movie I’ve seen in a long time. There were moments where my gut was clenched in dread, and I’m nearly 40 years old. I can’t imagine how the five-tear-old kids in the audience were taking it. Honestly, had their parents done any research on this movie at all? “Well, it’s a Batman movie,” I imagine them saying. “The kids will love it!” Enjoy those sweat-soaked nightmares, kiddies!
Anyway, I eventually made it home and made myself useful cutting the grass and performing general housecleanery duties. We were tidying the place up in advance of a little soiree Saturday evening. We (and by “we,” I mean, of course, “Shannon”) invited twenty-or-so people over to the house for brats and burgers and some low-key hangin’ out. Thing is, while our domicile is larger than the cramped, one-bedroom campus apartments that we lived in for the first several years of our marriage, as houses go it’s not really all that big. And so it can get a little tight when that many people show up, especially when they all congregate in one room.
So yeah, our wee house was a wee bit crowded. Nonetheless, no one was complaining about the cramped quarters. They were too busy laughing and shouting and shoving bratwursts down their gullets.
We stayed up late Saturday night getting the house back into fighting shape, so Sunday we didn’t have to worry about the typical Sunday getting-ready-for-the-week-to-come activities. That left us free to take long, deep, head-clearing naps and then take the kids to the pool. (No, I mean, literally taking our kids to the pool. I’m not using the phrase in its scatological sense.) Maya’s friend Mackenzie King and her mom joined us at the pool for Coppertone-scented, sun-soaked splashitude and then some wicked awesome Minsky’s pizza afterward.
Here’s the thing… we had a really nice vacation, an entire week free of obligation. We slept late, ate junk, and did pretty much whatever we wanted. It was hard to come back to our workaday responsibilities in Kansas City, and to tell the truth, we were pretty bummed much of the week. But this weekend was just what we needed. It helped us to remember that while time away is an important part of life, time spent laughing and eating and hanging out with friends and family… that is life. And a pretty decent life, at that.
Vacation Photos Aplenty
I’ve been doling out vacation photos one at a time over the past week. Nuts to that! Here’s a whole bunch of ‘em.
Created with Admarket’s flickrSLiDR.
Vacation Photo of the Day, 7/26
Sunset on the lake, just behind the lakehouse.
Vacation Photo of the Day, 7/25
Yeah, the water was a little high at the Table Rock Lake State Park Marina.