Just for the record, we made it a four-day weekend. On Friday we went Grill hunting.

Fun Fact: We haven’t owned a grill in almost 7 years.

The sick part is that Jamie really loves grilled food. Just one of those things that kept getting pushed to the side and next thing you know, you’ve gone 7 years without buying a grill. Whatever.

So we head out on Friday afternoon to find a grill.

Yep.

The Friday before Memorial day.

To buy a Grill.

Needless to say, everbody was out of stock. All that anyone had were the $100 el-cheapos or the $1000 I-don’t-think-sos.

I threw in the towel around 7pm, but Jamie called a friend and went back on the hunt.

She arrived with an unassembled grill just before 9pm.

Knowing that Saturday was going to be an all-day trip to Kings Island and that she wanted to be grilling on Sunday, I got to work. It was surprisingly easy. I put it together in the middle of the living room. VH1 Classic was doing a Heavy Metal Memorial Day Weekend, so I turned that on and listened to/watched Motley Crue’s Carnival of Sins show (the same tour we saw in Cleveland in 2005) and wrestled with the worst instructions ever as I pieced the thing together.

On Saturday we went to Kings Island. We arrived a little before noon which seems to be customary for us and knew we’d be spending the day. The park had all kinds of stuff going on and even though we broke the first ruler of amusement park visiting (don’t go on a Saturday) we still had fun barely riding and doing all the extra stuff they had going on (checking out the Clown Band, wasting time in front of the Kings Island Theatre with the retro thing they had going on there, seeing the live bands in Action Zone, witnessing the Robbie Knievel jump, hanging out for the badass fireworks) – just wasting a day at the amusement park.

We got home around midnight with a craving for Pizza. The only ones still delivering was Dominos. I ate Pizza and crashed…hard.

Sunday morning we headed to Dorothy Lane to score some meat for the grill. This was only our 4th or 5th time there. It’s a really neat place and has quality fucking food, but there’s a level of snobbery or pretentiousness that I don’t feel comfortable with.

We snagged some big fat steaks (a porterhouse and two sirloins), 4 of their gourmet hamburgers (a Greek, a Black and Bleu, a Turkey Ranch and a Bacon Cheddar) and some Chicken Drumsticks for the kids. I also grabbed some California Roll because it was fresh. We kept it around $70.

Then we hit Meijer and stocked up on the rest, hot dogs, chips, sparklers, bubbles for the kids – the good stuff.

We did the hamburgers and hot dogs on the grill. Good stuff. There were all kinds of kids from the neighborhood out playing for a change and it just felt like a warm spring holiday evening. After it got dark we became the sparkler pushers and blew through 6 packages of sparklers quicker than I thought we would. Kids came from all over to play with the sparklers. I wish I would have gotten some pictures because I haven’t seen that many kids hanging out and playing together since we moved here. In fact, I don’t think that many kids even live nearby. But I still had fun lighting them for everyone while Jamie handed them out – we had an assembly line thing going.

The kids had friends sleep over and they all disappeared upstairs and before too long it got quieter and quieter as they dozed off.

We used the night for out Tri-annual Desperate Housewives viewing. Yes, I watch Desperate Housewives – fuck you for asking.

What we do is DVR the episodes and then watch them in batches – usually after each sweeps period. It makes for a fun night of TV and rather than wasting time in little blocks each week on such mindless entertainment, we get it out of the way in one big block…and it’s so much more fun when you don’t have to wait to see the storylines play out.

So we had all the episodes since the writer’s strike ended to catch up on. 7 hours of Housewives can be done in 5 when you can skip the commercials and such. We started at 10pm and were done around 3am.

They ended the season with a flash-foward thing like Lost has been doing. Not sure if I dig it or not.

Monday was a lazy ass day for me. I slept in WAY too late and by the time I crawled downstairs, the kids were raring to go and everyone was on their way out the door to go play with a hose at the neighbors. The like to turn a hose on the trampoline and go nuts. It seriously amuses them for hours.

I said good-bye and plopped my fat ass onto the couch and vegged the afternoon away. I actually watched Rocky Balboa from start to finish.

They got back a little before 5pm and I fired up the grill. We had a friend over and I grilled up the steaks and chicken and potatoes and asparagus and it kicked ass.

We just kind of hung out for a bit and I spent the evening making sure the kids were ready for school tomorrow. (only 6 days left!)

Everyone went to bed and I got pics of the Robbie Knievel Jump online and now I’m typing this at two in the morning.

All-in-all I can’t complain.