There was another busy weekend at our house. Saturday involved attacking the pile of boxes and putting some of them in their proper home. We have probably doubled the the amount of floor space in the living room. All of this was done because we were having guests show up late that afternoon. The wife and a friend decided they wanted to catch a concert and the friend's husband and I hung out while they were gone. We tried to catch dinner at someplace in the Legends shopping area out by the Kansas Speedway. Now, the wife and I have gone up there at about every time possible for a human to do so in the last month or so since we moved and never once have we seen a crowd like what we saw this past weekend. In trying in vain find a restaurant we found out that there was not just one or two special functions going on, but three! Most of the sit-down, nice places to eat had multi-hour wait-lists. Grrr. Dinner was later gotten at about five miles down 7 over in Shawnee. Afterwords, with the wives gone, we got to watch "V for Vendetta" on the big screen. I had forgotten how long of a movie it was, but I still like how well it's story is paced.

The wives were back well before midnight keeping the debauchery down to a minimum. They hung around for another hour or so talking before taking off. We liked having them over but living at the opposite end of town from them keeps us from having over more often.

A short aside: One of the many problems that Kansas City has is the lack of a good, centralized public transportation system. The leading cause, IMHO, of this is the fact that Kansas City is not a centralized metropolitan area. Call it whatever you want; suburban sprawl, urban blight, expansive tendencies, KC lacks the population density needed to support things like light rail or subways making busing the next viable choice. The problem here lies in two things: Keeping and maintaining a working schedule of buses and providing a usable service to those who don't live in the urban core. While I don't think the two goals are mutually exclusive, Kansas City seems to have complicated manners by creating a transpiration system filled with graft and cronyism.

Sunday was similar with the busy. Sunday is the traditional laundry day and there is a Sunday night hang out with friends who also have dogs that we've been trying to get ours to socialize with. There was also the shopping which needed to be done. For almost a month now we have not yet gone shopping for items en mass, instead choosing to stop and pick up the odd groceries as they were needed. Of course, the weather decided that it wanted to be uncomfortably hot again making the trip a sweat soaking treat.

I'm also still trying to get used to the Kansas style of driving. There are some odd streets in Johnson county which simply stop without warning or directions to where they pickup again and continue on. And then there was the utility work preceded by regular road work on 95th street that turned what is normally a two lane boulevard like road in to a one lane back and forth slalom race.

If anyone ever hears of an individual going nuts and blowing up the roads in Kansas there is a good chance that would be me. This past week I-70 was pinched from 3 lanes to 1 at its western junction with 435. The afternoon backup usually stretches for two or three miles. I can duck off at a side road and get home in about the same amount of time, but the idiocy in such a decision is astounding.

Another short aside: I have decided on a new saying to illustrate such things; Any sufficiently advanced incompetence is indistinguishable from malice.

Sunday night was fun. Got to experience my first L5R gaming session. I think I like the dice system for skill checks. The puppy was a handful because we did not go out on the walk with the other dogs before heading indoors for several hours. He still fell asleep on the way home, and did pretty well in getting along with the dogs. He is still filled with much puppy energy and tends to get on nerves through his natural exuberance. The evening went long beucase of needing to get through the entire introduction adventure so we ended up getting home around 1 am, making for a short night.