Where the heck did this weekend go?

     It was a 4 day weekend and you'd never have known it looking at my house.  I had the best of plans on what we were going to do, but then life got in the way.  Does this ever happen to you?

     It started like any other weekend, except I was still traveling on Friday.  When possible, although I do travel almost weekly, I like to keep it to Tuesday-Thursday so I don't endanger my home time with late planes and such.  Last Friday, however, I was still traveling home from a trip to Ontario Canada.  I had ambitious plans for Friday afternoon but on the way home I stopped by Molly's house in Buffalo to check out her car (she had a small fender bender) and then over to see her new workplace.

The bar inside of Nektar

She has started work as a waitress again at a bar/restaurant called Nektar that is located right around the corner from her.  She'll actually make more money in this job and the quality of life is definitely better, but for the life of me, I don't understand how in the health care field you can go from being worth $9.00 an hour to $35.00 an hour after you get your RN, but with no steps up in pay in-between?  I blame President Obama, can't say why, but he seems like an easy target.  I met the owner of Nektar, Stavros who complimented Molly's work ethic, which I liked, and then took a Gyro home with me to eat at my desk, which I liked even better.  I finished work late on Friday afternoon and then went down and opened the kitchen in the Garaj-Mahal to start prepping for a wedding rehearsal next week.

     I had to make a quick trip down to Penn Yan for a few things prior to starting, so being the hunter-gatherer that I am I also offered to grab a pizza.  I stopped at a local farm store for some Hungarian Peppers (shout out to Tomion's), and then at the grocery store for some cream cheese and Italian

Making Armadillo Eggs

 sausage, I then gassed up and headed home.  Char and Nolan offered to help me with making the appetizer, which was Armadillo Eggs ( How to Make Nolan's and Bill's Armadillo Eggs ) but even with the help, it took a couple of hours to do the 150 of them.  I actually kept track of what they cost to make this time and surprisingly it was only $.25 apiece but then if you add the labor, they cost $.85.   One of the things that makes it easier to work in the kitchen out there is the music.  I bring my Ipad out and use the free Spotify app, but I use my Bose Soundlink speaker that I set away from me to listen to it.  Char got this for me for Christmas, and it is probably one of the best gifts that I have ever received.  It was even more impressive considering that I mentioned it just one time at a Super Bowl party the year prior, and she remembered and bought it for me (I had 

My Bose Soundlink

long ago forgotten it and was a little stumped when I opened the box).  Anyway, it's great sound and you can control the volume from the Ipad that is nearby but still have the music coming from across the room.  Come to the Garag-Mahal sometime and you can check it out.  We finished the work, cleaned up the kitchen and then headed into the house.  We had just enough time to watch a taped episode of Castle, then we all headed to bed.

     We picked up watching Castle this summer during the rerun season, so we've been taping them and trying to watch them in order.  We like the show, but I'll agree with some other people that it is kind of like Bones but with the roles reversed.  I skipped breakfast with my brother Saturday am, but Nolan and I had an early work gig for Scouts.  We cleaned out the Troop room where we kept our things for the last few decades.  The building was sold and the church that purchased it needed the space.  We'll be buying a Troop trailer shortly, but a kind parent is letting us store the stuff in her barn in the meantime.  We had a quick lunch and then Char and I headed off to BJ's to do the shopping for

 the wedding rehearsal.  They had a great deal on 0X1 Strip loins so I bought one of those too, to cut into steaks later.  Char put some time in at work on the computer, while I set up equipment that I would need. I layered a crockpot with chicken to make some Mexican stewed chicken for use in another appetizer.   In the late afternoon we set up an old army tent that we found in amongst the old stuff in the Troop room.  We got an invitation to my girlfriend's ( My girlfriend Stretch) house to hang out at her fire pit, so we threw a quick entree together and headed out around 6:30.  Our friends built a beautiful big fire pit at their house with an inset pit and a stone patio surrounding it. We've got to enjoy it several times this summer.  We headed to bed as soon as we got home, no time for Castle that night.

     We made it to church the next morning and heard the new pastor, Father Stan.  We liked him.  We ran into close friends that we hadn't seen all year and managed to catch up before mass started.  Back at home Char had laundry to do and Nolan and I were checking on some drainage work on the property and fixing a split hose.  I got to wear a tool belt and everything.  We cleaned up by mid-day and we headed off to different parties.  Nolan's was in Cdga and ours was local.   That killed almost the rest of the day, but we did squeeze in a quick couple of Castle episodes (We are on season 2 now). 

     I got up early next morning to pull the chicken (stop it already, I was shredding stewed chicken).  I spent the am running around to my brother Ace's house to get some catering equipment and stopped in to see my sister Wilson too.  Wilson's son hit me up for some Boy Scout popcorn, he saw me

It's Boy Scout popcorn time

pulling in and ran and put his uniform on.  He knows that I have a standing rule about not saying no to a Scout in uniform.  I made some salsa after I got home and Char and Nolan walked the block to sell some popcorn too.  I packed for a trip but tried to stay out of the office.  I snuggled up with Nibbler and took a quick cat-nap and then went back to the Garaj to cut up the strip loin.  I got 16 thick cut steaks out of it and I set 3 aside for dinner.  The strip was 
$4.99 a lb and the per steak cost was $4.00, so I was pretty happy with both the price and the quality.  I roasted some corn to go with dinner and Char made a fruit salad and we ate on the deck to finish off our Holiday weekend.  There was enough time to watch a couple more Castle's before we headed to bed and so we did.  That's the long and the short of it, it doesn't seem like a lot, and no big projects got finished even with the 4 days, but that's how it goes some weekends, just slip-sliding away.