We took out $40 at the bank and spent it thusly:

-1 lb lamb chops ($19/lb)
-4 pretzel rolls ($3)
-box of peppers, 3 ears of corn, 1 cucumber, 1 apple ($7)
-block of aged cheddar, carton of fresh cheddar ($11)

We went home and had cucumber and cheese sandwiches like we was royalty.

Then we went to peep out an open house and the permanent grocery store for some other things we needed. Bethie got the lady at the cake counter to put “Happy Birthday, Samuel” on a tiny cake.

We got home to realize we didn’t have the lemons we needed to make a proper dinner. Walked with the dog to park, then the corner store. Got two lemons. Bethie decided she wanted plants at the plant store so we walked to the plant store. The plant store was closed. We walked home and were tired because we walked around all day. Super tired.

For dinner I dressed up these lamb chops with garlic, lemon, mint, thyme, salt and pepper. I buttered and grilled the corn then did ‘em elotes-style with mayo, parmesan, chili powder and a squeeze of lime. We made our classic arugula salad with avocado, parmesan, lemon and olive oil. Had cake and ice cream for dessert while watching the Emmy’s.

Other things I had did… Friday, went with Alex to go see Dan give a talk about art.

Saturday, I lamented my broken TV while Bethie was out with her friend Lynnie. That night, we went to the Bears game with Zach, James, Lynnie, Bethie’s mom and her people. We made a whole big thing out of it. Afterwards, we were dismayed at the state of the blue line and how long it was taking to come get us. We planned to go get another drink at Richard’s because it should have been a close, easy place to get to. It was not. It took forever. But we got there and it was like a movie scene with everyone there getting their party on. William was there having his bachelor party.

So, in summary, farmer’s markets are very expensive. I can’t wait ’til next summer when we will be moved and I can significantly expand my own summer-farming operation. I plan on growing a lot of stuff next year and will be comforted to know that those farmer’s market people can’t be getting one over on me. All that’s left is for Bethie and I to figure out where in the yard to put our chicken coop.

Saturday Bethie and I went to the ol’ waterpark out there by the state line. She was still mad at me because I smelled like the previous night’s beer and the salmon on a bagel I had for breakfast. She got over it.

We went down almost all of the slides. We went on one that had injured a child when it first opened. It was terrifying. I had to ride in the lazy river afterward just to calm down and collect myself. Then we had some $10 beers and some nachos. Then we rode on a coaster or two and called it a day.

We went out for an awesome seafood dinner with Bethie’s parents. I had some oysters and some gumbo and some fried catfish.

Today we went around looking at a couple other houses, and then we walked to the grocery.

Nothin’ and it was grand.

Let me elaborate on all the things I did that added up to nothin’.

Friday night, I was real antsy to put in an offer on this house Bethie and I want to buy, so we met with our realtor to go over the contract. Quickly come to find out the listing agent is “expecting multiple offers.” Yeesh.

Then we go to Mixteco Grill for their very good molé like they do.

Then we try to do a classic pop-in at Mark and Adele’s, but they were away.

Then we went to Claire and Libby’s house for a party, and it was stiflingly hot, then torrentially rainy, then I was pretty drunk from all the cans of beer.

Saturday, we did our walk.

Then we went to look at this house again, because we like it so much.

Then we went on a multi-stop grocery grabbing extravaganza at Stanley’s and at Trader Joes. Stanley’s is always frantically crowded with people zipping around there like vegetables are just about to go out of style. Trader Joes always seems to have weird-looking people coming in and out of there. But we were there, so maybe we’re weird-looking also.

That night we made one of them beer can chickens like they do. And had some real good corn and some tomato salad.

Over the course of the weekend we watched an ultra-marathon of two seasons of Weeds.

On Sunday, more walking. Then more nothin’.

Went out that afternoon to meet up with George to look at a couple more houses. The first one was very nice, but the sale wasn’t figured out at all. Probably would be long and drawn-out. The second one was more fixer-upper than I was prepared for, and Bethie walked into the upstairs unit and right back out on account of the cat hair everywhere. We’re still hoping for the one we seen on Thursday, but we’ve got some more on the list to see.

That night, we made pizzas for dinner… practically from scratch. We were having a pizza-making competition, Bethie and me. Only she didn’t know it, because I secretly really wanted to win. I won.

Bethie couldn’t figure out how to get her dough rolled out in a circle, so she just kinda made a shape out of it. Then she baked hers in the oven.

I, on the other hand, mashed mine’s out and for lack of a rolling pin, I went at it with a wine bottle and surprisingly made quite a circle out of that dough. Then, I cleaned the grill real good and oiled it and the dough. I tossed it on there. Grilled one one side. Flipped. Grilled on the other side. Removed. Sauced. Topped with cured meats like capicola and salami. Topped with roasted peppers. (Back up to before I grilled the pizza dough, and that’s where you’d find me using the grill to roast the peppers. I use the grill in many of my cooking applications.) Topped with cheese. Returned to grill. Frustrated with lack of cheese-melting, transferred to broiler to finish off. Tossed some basil leaves on top and that’s how I won the secret pizza-making contest.

And that was a whole lot of nothin’ that was really something else.

Emily, Jose’s wife, gets the Best In Class Airport Delivery Service Award, for picking me up in Kansas City and dropping me off in Junction City.

Pete gets the Top Honors Finalist Beef Jerky Competition Medal for having made a whole bunch of the stuff. I brought a giant bag home and I’m thinking of just using that as my food for the next week.

Candy gets the Exceptional Bystander Award for waiting around on Saturday morning for us to decide whether we needed her to drive us to the river or not. It turned out we didn’t but she was still nice enough to drive away then turn around and come back to give me a water bottle I had left in the car. A true example of selflessness.

Chris Roles get’s the Future Mike Munson Award for keeping us all entertained on Saturday. But he also gets the Sad Ol’ Downer Commendation of Misery for depressing us all on Sunday.

Chris had a pretty banner outing this canoe trip, as he, along with BJ, also managed to pick up the Filthy & Weird Comedic Duo award for sharing their exploits with us around the campfire. This one wasn’t even close, as it was pretty much just them two with maybe some slight consideration given to Nick.

Jake gets his Canoe Trip Sobriety Chip for not drinking too much and promptly passing out in the middle of the trip like last year. He also gets the Silver Star Gold Spoon Chef’s Ribbon for cooking a bunch of good meats and breakfast items.

Also, I’ll give Chris the Journeyman Award for having traveled all the way from Seattle, Barnes gets the Tomato Juice Stamp Of Approval for having made some really good tomato juice out of things from his garden, and not, as we were led to believe, ketchup and water. For everybody that did not get an award - let that be a lesson to you to try harder next year.

A couple other things to note…

It would have been impossible to have canoed on the Kansas River, like we like, so we wound up on the Republican River instead. It was just as good, save for it seemed a little dirtier, and all the river banks were lined with old cars.

On the way back to the airport, we stopped at the Arthur Bryant’s in the outdoor mall, as opposed to the original Arthur Bryant’s. It was probably just as good, and a whole lot more convenient. On the way out, this lady was trying to ask me if it was good like I was some sort of barbeque expert. I guess maybe I look like that. I made up a bunch of BS about how it was definitely in the top five of barbeque. She bought it.

I got upgraded to first class on my flight’s there and back, just like that George Clooney! These United miles are finally starting to pay off, and it was fantastic… even if it is less than an hour flight. But you also get a thing put on your bag that says “priority” so it’s the first to come off the plane. You also get to cut everybody else in line at the desk and at security and to get on the plane. Then you get to sit there feeling all smug while all those plebes make there way back to steerage class.

Here’s some pictures of this year’s trip, although they pretty much look identical to last years trip.

Later that night I met up with Bethie and her mom and cousin at a charming restaurant on the river. By the way, you can now follow Bethie’s mom on Twitter.

Then we went to John and Deanne’s housewarming party on South State street. It was kinda hot, and we talked with some couples about what married life is all about. “Does your wife not know how to squeeze a toothpaste?” “Does your husband just throw those little drycleaning tags on the ground and not in the trash?” and so forth.

On Saturday, Bethie had it in her mind to lounge around, but I said “No way, we are going to the park!” Lots of little, tiny, tiny kids playing baseball in the park. Well, kind of playing baseball. Mostly just standing around waiting for the adults to tell them what to do. It’s kind of like how I play softball.

So then Bethie sits in the yard reading a book. I fixed her a sandwich and also rigged up the sprinkler for her so she could be entertained.

That night, we went to a high-powered business dinner with some business associates. Lamb chops were served along with drinks made of tequila and orange soda.

Sunday we did some more walking, and then we tried to make Thai food for dinner. The local grocery store does not have a very extensive “Thai ingredients” aisle, so we had to drastically scale back our plans. We did wind up making some pretty good chicken satay’s later on that night.

We also went to yoga, where they were having a handstand competition and I’m pretty sure I came in third. It used to be I could do handstands for days… back in my youth.

So then I finished out last night playing Red Dead Redemption. I went to Fort Mercer to get that Williamson feller, but he had slipped out before my gang got there. So I’m chasing him over into Mexico, and once you get to Mexico for the first time, this song starts playing, and there’s this big ol’ Western moon, and I spent a long time just riding around from mesa to mesa thinking “This is beautiful. I can’t believe this is a videogame!” Then I went out and lassoed and broke a rare, white horse and I was riding it around looking for some wild boars to kill so I could get my “master hunter” ranking up, and this cougar comes out of nowhere and kills my rare, white horse! So naturally, I killed it and called up my less good horse to get me out of there. I stopped off by the “hanging rock” to find a buried treasure, then I went around looking for some herbs I needed to give to this guy back in Mexico so he could get his airplane to fly. I was going to stop and get the latest edition of the newspaper, but it was getting late so I shut the game off.

Friday morning, we take the bus to the train to the plane. We were flying out of Midway, which is pretty convenient, save for one excrutiating detail - the outright lack of Starbucks. I’m not trying to promote for Starbucks, but in an airport setting, you can always count on their consistency compared to some of these other more “fly by night” (pardon the pun) coffee operations. Actually, we didn’t need the caffeine because we both slept on the plane. Upon arriving in KC we DID go to the Starbucks, but Bethie poured a ton of sugar in my pre-sweetened drink and so I had that to deal with.

My parents picked us up along with my sister who got there at the same time. We went to a big ol’ Missourah fireworks combo liquor store. They had some great old-timey looking bottles of $7 bourbon, like “Cabin Still” and “Old Grand-Dad” but I obstained. I spent $40 in the fireworks tent and Bethie, as per usual, thought I was crazy for blowing up that much money.

We stopped in Lawrence for lunch, and I found the food at Free State to be better than usual. The beer is always good, but the food can be hit or miss. Bethie has decided she’s a KU fan now, so we went up the Union on campus to do some T-shirt shopping. The less-refined K-State-supporting side of my family had to grit their teeth as we walked up that big hill.

We got to Junction City, and had to get Bethie right to that pool. We had some beer and I alternated between reading old issues of the New Yorker and People magazines. For dinner, my parents boiled up some crab legs. Good as usual. We spent the rest of the evening doing some fireworks and planning out how we could get rid of 200 or so sparklers that we had left over from the wedding.

Saturday was the big parade day, and Bethie and I were planning to go visit my grandma. We walked downtown, got some coffee and went to the Senior’s Apartments. Had a nice visit, then walked home, just missing the parade. Apparently, they changed the rules of the parade this year and nobody could throw candy from their float. I was imagining this a pretty politically-conflicting decision. On the one hand, free candy… on the other hand, a kid could get run over. I don’t know what side I’d fall on.

Bethie and I go back to the pool. The sky was going to fall soon, so we needed to do as much swimming as we could get in. After the pool, we go down to the park for about 20 minutes. Bethie reckoned that was the perfect amount of time. I reckon I could have spent a little more time, but it started raining so we went home. We played dominoes for a while, listening to Stevie Wonder. For whatever reason, we were waiting until super-late at night to eat ribs and shoot more fireworks. The ribs were great, but we didn’t eat until 10:30.

Sunday was the big party, but it was a total rain-out. Everybody stayed inside and ate. Nick, Kayley, BJ, Kelly and Chris came over and we proceeded to drink it up. Did wind up going swimming despite the pouring rain. Got pretty drunk.

Nick gifted us a .380 to celebrate the supreme court overturning our Chicago handgun ban. We all sat at a picnic table looking at this gun. Bethie would freak out whenever anyone would touch it; which was pretty funny because she’s actually said more than once that we should get a gun. Nick was real excited, telling us how it was the perfect condo gun. I thought it looked more like the perfect “in my parent’s basement” gun, which is where it is now. Hopefully, next time we’re in Kansas, we can shoot some cans or something. I bet Bethie throws up.

So then, we got my mom to drive us over by Jake’s parents house to see him and Kristin and Ben. Jake had made some fantastic beer. Even in my heightened drunken state I could tell it was really good.

We got back to my parents around 11 and ate leftovers, whilst everyone was in the driveway doing even more fireworks. My mom was talking a bunch of stuff about “sparkler bombs” and how dangerous and stupid they were. So, I went ahead and conducted a little social experiment, wherein, I made one and handed it to my mom, then went back inside for five minutes. As I had hypothesized what would happen, despite my mom’s initial protestations that it was dangerous and stupid, I went back outside in time to see three of them running across the street to light it. Point Proved. Despite how dangerous and stupid something is, the curiosity to see what might happen will overwhelm common sense! My construction was a little off, so it wasn’t as impressive as the ones we had made in high school, but it was still a rewarding process.

On Monday, Kelsey and I went with grandma to visit grandpa. Then, Bethie and I left for Kansas City, stopping at the mall so that I could buy this video game she’s been wanting me to get. We got back to the CHI, I went across town to pick up the dog, and shop in a practically deserted grocery store and then the weekend was ovah.

In the meanwhile, I had an awfully suburban weekend the last weekend. Bethie’s parents had a big graduation to-do for Michael on Friday night and then we spent the night out there. Saturday, I did a day-drinking session then went to visit ol’ BJ who was in Chicago for the weekend.

Sunday, we went back to the suburbs, I won $275 on a $1 bet at the racetrack, and then we ate bison burgers.

Bethie and I finally got our wedding video delivered, so we watched it the other night. Boy, that was a big deal. A real event! I kept telling her she really lucked out. But maybe we BOTH lucked out?

She is out of town for the weekend so she can’t tell me what to do. I’m going to wrap lots of foods in bacon.

Do you give a RIP? Because I don’t give a RIP!

(I know, that video is pretty old, but I was just thinking about it.)

So Bethie and I stayed local.

On Saturday, her little brother came by and accompanied us on a grocery shop, then we drank sangria and played xbox. We took him downtown to the metra so he could make it back to Mt. Prospect, stopping on the way for a beer or two. Then Bethie and I attempted to go shopping at Macy’s, but our heads weren’t in it. Instead we went to meet up with some folks at The Gage, where we dined on fried zucchini, poutine and fondue.

We had 8:30 tickets to go see Mike D’s Ballhawks movie. It was brilliant. But then, you know me and how much of a nut I am for baseball.

On Sunday we socialized with Bethie’s parents and then had a fantastic dinner at Joe’s. Absolutely fantastic. Maybe the best ever? Maybe.

Monday was rainy and I went for lunch with James. Bethie went to see The Sexy Cities, Too.

I left to go home, and wound up walking instead of dealing with all that hassle of paying a cab driver. (I should have just paid a cab driver.) In my wanderings I seemed to subconsciously steer myself in the direction of Arturo’s. So I got a burrito, and I was so excited to eat it that I stopped halfway home and ate it standing up in an empty parking lot. That felt weird. But man was that a good burrito. I think because I ordered it in Spanish. I don’t know Spanish except when it comes to ordering food. (”comida”)

Just now I went to go buy a record from this store down the street but it wasn’t open, so I went to the coffeeshop instead. It felt like a “Friends” episode circa-2010. I had a brief exchange with this feller I know who was having a latte, and with the guys who run the place. The topic discussed was record stores. There are three nearby but none as close as the one that was closed.

At the coffeeshop they were playing “American Beauty” and everybody seemed to be nodding along. Say what you will about the Grateful Dead - I wouldn’t really say anything about them, because I’m not into that scene - but that is one really good record. Every song is good. Maybe I’ll buy that record if I ever go make another attempt at an in-store purchase.