This hat wasn't the weirdest part of the weekend

I suck.
Shot by K.E.B.

Last week was pretty grueling. I was treated to a kick in the jewels during my first Monday back in the real work world. Thursday was even worse than a Monday. My only clean shirt had French cuffs. I couldn't find my cuff links for at least 15 minutes. I dirtied my shirt upon entering my car. I drove past the cleaners during my attempt to drop off my other dirty shirts. And, I had to be a hardass 30 minutes after I walked into the office. That all happened before most people had even hit the snooze button.

Friday's lunch was the only bright spot in the week.

I woke up at the crack of 7:10 AM on Saturday morning after five straight days of 6:30 alarms and subsequent snoozes. SUNOVA! I contemplated the spinning fan blades for 15 minutes before I realized that sleep would not overtake me again. So, I did the most illogical thing ever: I started weeding the planter in the front of my house.

Oops. Sorry. I should have told you to take a seat first. Try an icepack and some Advil for that conk on the head.

Los Pedros and I had been chatting about lawn conditions (krikey I sound grown-up...and Australian) on Friday night in between my maniacal work-related rants. Six months of relative neglect topped off by a week of European vacation had left the planter a blooming weed infested eye sore. At least it matched the flower bed at the base of the tree in the front yard. Thus, the Saturday morning weed weeding session.

Friday night I realized that my house was quickly approaching the least attractive on the block. Now, I'm not really that into image, but I also didn't want my crib to look like The Klopeks. By 8 AM the tree bed and the planter were weeded. I actually felt better. Imagining that I was pulling the heads off of troublesome colleagues seemed to alleviate some of my residual work week stress. Who knew?

I completely annihilated the backyard bouganvilla and mowed the hay in the frontyard in the ensuing two hours and even had time to squeeze in a quick shower before the crawfish dealer called at 10:15 AM. 177 pounds of medium/large Louisiana crawdads with my name on them were about to be delivered to a nearby restaurant parking lot. Time to fire up The Heater and head out to Austin via the parking lot.

Los Mackies hosted a berle on Saturday at their ranch, which is actually ranched size and in the country unlike FPR. Two berlin' rigs made quick work of the five sacks, as did the gathering of eaters. The batches seemed perfectly timed to satisfy all diners with a constant stream of freshly berled goodness. And, trucking in the crawfish from Houston probably paid for the keg of Abita that we nearly floated. Damn, we're old. Not floating the keg is also a sure sign that Homie and Roscoe were not present.

Oh, well. The crawfish were stellar; the beer was cold; and the company was outstanding.