BBQ fail, flaming idiots and birthday dinner

Once again, a weekend that went by too quickly.

I'm slowly but surely getting our bedroom together.  My closet apparently has something called a floor.

I haven't seen it in about 6 years (not kidding) and assumed everything just levitated.  I got four bins down to two and will have to go through the guest room bins to see what I can move over to the empty ones.  I am shuttering over moving on to that task.  I've got almost a trash bag full of shredding done with a little more to go.  Oy.

Saturday, The Mr mentioned BBQ for the second weekend in a row so I figured I'd better cave on that one or it would continue to be brought up for the foreseeable future.  He mentioned a chain that has that vinegar based sauce.  I told him I'd get something else.  I mentioned another BBQ joint I bookmarked and he agreed.  We checked Yelp and headed out.  As we journeyed into a not so great part of town, we park in front and tried to open the door and it was locked.  Okay, they probably open at 11:30am.  No real biggie since we had about 15 minutes to wait.  We drove around a bit, came back at 11:34am, still no open sign and still people waiting in the skeezy side lot.  At this point I was ready to eat my hand.  We drove around again and the Mr's phone was all wonky and not getting service.  By the time we called, they said they opened at noon.  Friggin' Yelp man.  They are wrong on hours about 30% of the time and when a place doesn't have a website, you can't exactly look them up.  We almost didn't go because at this point, my tastebuds were fueled with hate.

We relented and drove around until they opened.  Of course, despite sampling some of the goods before ordering, it wasn't good.  The mac and cheese was so bad, I had one bite and was done.  The turkey I had was so overcooked, it turned to mush.  The baked beans were fair.  If there's one thing worse than a bad lunch, it's waiting for an hour longer than expected for said bad lunch.

We got a little shopping done between pop up showers including grocery shopping so we could have Sunday to workout, shower and finish cleaning before my mom came over for her birthday dinner.
We went out to dinner at an artisan pizza place that has been pretty reliable up to this point.  They gave less on the appetizer by about 1/3 and charged the same price.  Then the pizza's sausage smelled and I assume tasted like the Alpo my childhood pup used to eat.  They obviously went for something cheaper or something and it did not taste good.  I told him to enjoy it because it may be our last time there.  Every good restaurant seems to slide.  Sigh.  There seemed to be an abundance of jerkwads on the street from the start to the end of the day.  It was maddening.  Every time I wanted to punch someone in the puss, I just punched my hand repeatedly and we'd crack up.  So I spent Saturday night listening to relaxing music on The Jazz Oasis on KCSM.org while the Mr killed people on the Watchdogs video game.  Clearly, we unwind in different ways.

For mom's dinner Sunday, I made the old Chi Chi's Chicken El Paso entree.  I used good cheese that I shredded myself for the cheese and onion enchiladas using small tortillas and tried to make it fit as best I could.  I know it was definitely less than Chi Chi's would've been calorie wise but I'm still going to do an extra half hour of something this week to help counter balance.

I wanted to do a slightly healthier dessert for her cake so I got angel food cake, some fresh strawberries and macerated them with a little sugar to pull out the juices and some light cool whip.

I think I probably could've gotten away with less calories with a grocery store cupcake.  Oh well.  At least I burned 970 calories doing Powerstrike earlier in the day.

She seemed to like her gifts...money and a gift certificate along with some cashews we picked up at Try My Nuts in Corolla, NC.  (If you're ever in the area, they are liberal with the samples!)  I feel kind of bad because we just plain didn't do a family dinner this year.  Her sister is about to get screwed by her employer of many decades so she is being a little more careful with her money.  The grandparents are no longer really able to do them so that left me asking if she wanted to come over for dinner.  I have a feeling if family dinners for birthdays are going to continue, it may have to be me cooking them.  We don't have much room but if it means we don't stop this tradition, I'm more than willing to do it.  I'd be paying less to feed 6 people than I would've if we went out and bought ours plus hers and I have control over what goes in it.  We'll see if I still feel that way when the next one rolls around.

What did you guys do this weekend?

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