A really nice weekend!

I had such a nice weekend that its only fair to share it with the rest of the world, or both of you that regularly stop by for updates to my life along the Wasatch Front.

Friday was one of my regular every-other-Friday, days off and I spent the first portion of it wrestling with my laptop, the Compaq, Symantec and Comcast tech centers trying unsuccessfully to get my Outlook Express working again. At Bob's recommendation, I have downloaded the Thunderbird mail and newsreader program from Mozilla and have it working to a degree. I never was able to get OE working and since Thunderbird went directly to the Comcast mail server and pulled in my mail, I'm pretty certain it’s a Microsoft failure. I'm still interested in making OE work if there is anyone out there with suggestions.

The BSU and I took the afternoon for one of our Friday date lunches and returned to Roosters on Historic 25th Street in Ogden for our repast. We were seated at a shaded table in a beautiful courtyard and had the nicest lunch we have had in a long time. Appetizer was grilled shrimp in a pepper jack cheese sauce that was tasty and plentiful enough it could have been an entrée. My lunch was Spicy Mango Chicken and the spouse enjoyed her beer batter dipped fish and chips. Afterwards we had a walk down 25th Street and back and then went to the movies for the matinee show.

Miami Vice was our movie choice for Friday afternoon and it was a pretty good action/adventure film. It worked a little too hard switching between gritty and artsy but overall it’s a pretty good flick. There's enough stuff blowing up and high speed boat chases and gunfights to make it worth the price of admission. One very cool item, if you see the movie- Crockett & Tubbs, acting undercover as drug smugglers, use an Adams A500 aircraft for their first smuggling effort. The A500 is a very modern, twin engine aircraft that is just about to begin production here in Ogden. Currently the airplanes are built in Colorado but Adams has invested in a plant on the north end of the airport and production is either already underway or will be shortly. I especially enjoyed the climatic gunfight scene at the boat docks where most of the fire was from bad guys with scary, black, fully automatic carbines blazing away while Tubbs takes a 12 guage shotgun and uses it to silence almost all the bad guys, one 12 gauge hole at a time.

Saturday, as I've already reported was spent with Noah at Miller Motorsports Park. I'm working on a separate post regarding this new, world-class facility just 75 miles from my house. Needless to say, but I will anyhow, it is a great addition to the motorsports scene here in Utah.

Yesterday it was time for a second coffee and chit-chat meeting with Carol at the local Hastings book store. She's getting pretty anxious to get her hubby home from Iraq and her under-construction home to get finished. I can't say I blame her in either case. Later I got the yard mowed and cleaned up and once that was all done, I was done for the day! I took a shower after mowing, slipped on clean clothes and spent the rest of my afternoon sitting in the shade, reading, drinking beer and smoking my cheap cigars. I read until I was tired, talked to my Mom for a good bit and watered the lawn, all fine, simple things to do on a perfect, late summer, breezy afternoon.

Boy it felt good just to sit for a long while!

What was I reading, you ask? A delightful book I purchased Saturday at the MMR gift shop- from the author, BS Levy. I purchased his first book in a trilogy, called The Last Open Road. It’s a story of a young man's decent into an automotive racing addiction, taking place beginning in 1952. Buddy Palumbo tells his story of working in a local garage but discovering MGs and Jaguars and a pretty girl, all in the same season and how he gets pulled back and forth between the sports cars, racing and the pretty girl that likes him right back. Its hilarious! I love this story! Obviously, it takes place before my time and involvement in automobiles of all kinds but this is a great story. It reminds me of many of the stories I read back in grade school, when I fell in love with auto racing and reading with about the same fervency. Those books, written years ago, were all about some hungry driven, underfunded team finding their way through the Midwestern bullrings and eventually to the big show known as the Indianapolis 500. I wish I owned some of those great old books. Anyway, The Last Open Road is terrific and I've read most of it already, meaning I'll have to be ordering the next two books shortly. My copy of the book has even been autographed by the the author!

So that was the weekend, time spent with the spouse, time spent with the boy, time spent with a new friend and time spent on my own priorities. It was wonderful, especially for the rarity of the opportunities, all in one weekend.