Monday Monday 9.17.2007

Good Morning All,

Today starts another week in paradise and hopefully none of you have a serious case of the Mondays because as the temperatures begin to change, we might have a longer week ahead of us. In battling the Carolina Heat, I actually opened windows and utilized a fan this weekend instead of running the AC. I'm looking forward to the cooler weather of the Autumn months as I'll not only witness a slight drop in my power bill, but I'll also be able to do more activities outside without burning my balding dome. . .

As you can tell by paragraph one, I must be getting older as alas I am talking about the weather as if it is a matter of gravest importance. Yes actually that paragraph does cause me to feel older as I read it a second time. . .for your review in that short three sentence paragraph, I mentioned not only the weather but also the rising cost of energy, and the ongoing doom of approaching baldness. . . Anybody have an opinion if I should start carrying a cane.

No major housework went down this past weekend, and I say this as it is probably the first weekend without a home improvement in several several weeks. Maggie had to work in Detroit this past weekend, so I had to entertain myself. On Friday Night, I met Gerard, Dustin, Kelly, and Rick at Carolina Wings for some late night dinner/comfort food. I was feeling like a fat kid, so I had no problem ordering like one too. I got the wing trio, which consisted of 24 wings coated with a choice of three different sauces (for understanding purposes 8 wings per sauce not 24 wings coated in 3 sauces). My sauces of choice were Buffalo Cajun Ranch (the cornerstone of my order), Carolina Rub (a little something different as this is a dry rub), and Blistering (the Buffalo part of my wing order). Of course there are 27 million different variations of hot, and this is not Carolina Wings hottest as they also have the waiver requiring "Beyond Blistering" flavor too. When the waiter set the wings down, I immediately asked him to bring me a picture of Soda figuring that I'd be able to finish one off fairly easily trying to take down my Blistering hot wings. Long story short, I ended up getting a picture of beer instead and as I took my first bite of the Blistering heat, I felt my throat seize and I knew it would be a battle. I finished that wing, but left seven wounded soldiers on the plate. The picture of beer also consisted of about 5 pints of beer of which I drank with relative haste. We'll see if Spurch can handle this brand of Buffalo when he comes down in a couple weeks.

We spent almost all of Saturday sitting by the pool and enjoying the most bearable temperatures that we've had in quite some time. Later in the evening we decided to have a BBQ at my place and then head uptown for a few drinks. We must have missed the memo because the main street running through uptown Charlotte was completely blocked off, vendors lined it instead, and people were drinking in the streets. We paid five dollars for our first beer (Aunt Pam can chime in as she knows this is an absolutely ridiculous price to pay for a Bud Light), and drank it down before ordering up some fried bread dough and continuing the fat kid challenge to the weekend.

Now to give you my plan for this weekend. . . just so we can maintain the theme of aging in this edition of Monday Monday. . . I will be assembling puzzles, gluing them, and having them framed this weekend. That's right you heard it right. . .Maggie and I will be doing jigsaw puzzles this weekend. No, I'm not 78 years old! No, I'm not 7 years old either!

Have a Great Week Everyone!
-- Ryan Joy