So what'd everyone do this weekend?
Friday I took the afternoon off and helped clean up Casa Krashpad because my sister and brother-in-law from Ft. Myers were staying the night, on their way up to Atlanta to see their college-age daughter in some singing competition. Friday night after they arrived they took us out to one of our favorite resaurants, La Fiesta. We went to a branch that's a little further away from Casa Krashpad than the original location, as we tried a different restaurant first that was full. I'd never been to this location:
My old pal Moe Rodriguez (who originated calling me "Brian Krashpad" before even I did) was tending bar. This is Moe, not taken at his bartender job:
As you can see, Moe is an entertainer as well as a bartender; he also does show promotions and has a local music radio show.
We all had a good time at dinner.
Saturday my wife went out with some of her friends and was gone all day. While she was gone I took my son Jack for his flag football tryouts. They grade the kids so as to try and get the teams as even as possible. On the way there, we discovered he'd outgrown his cleats. So we stopped here:
We took Jack's old cleats in as trade-ins on "new" ones. Since the "new" ones we bought were really used ones that only cost a tenner to begin with, and we got 4 bucks in trade for the old ones, he got a new (to him) pair of cleats for $6. I highly recommend this approach to parents with kids who need sporting goods clothes/accessories they may grow out of! Cheap, and one less thng in the landfill.
Sunday we played hooky from church in the morning,as Mrs. Krashpad had not got back from her dinner with friends until quite late. In the afternoon, my wife took us (me, the kids, and one of Jack's friends) out to the place she'd been with her friends during the day before, the La Chua Trail, part of the Paynes Prairie state preserve here in Gainesville. The prairie is a large semi-dry lake bed south of town that has lots of wildlife. We saw blue heron and cattle heron, LOTS of gators, bison, turtles, migrating sandhill cranes, and ducks. There's a raised trail that leads to an observation deck about a mile and a half out into the prairie, and we walked all the way out and back. I should have some photos we took posted later this week, for now here's one I found on the web already:
That night after we returned home we went to a different Mexican restaurant I'd never been to, Mexico Lindo. It was good too, although the service was a little slow. There were a few TV's around the place, like in a sports bar. During dinner I went back and forth between watching the Pro Bowl and a match from La Liga Mexicana, Pachuca versus America. Football, and futbol!
After getting home from dinner, I checked our messages and my side band were having a practice, so I jumped in the Rockmobile and drove over to the office for practice. Got to try out my "new" bass, for the first time, an old '80's Peavey Fury I:
The bass sounded good although the action was a little high. My right hand was tired by the end of practice. It'd been so long since our last practice I had problems recalling my exact bass parts at the start of a couple songs (this is a band I've gone back and forth between bass and guitar at various periods), but in general it went well and we had a good time.
Got back at around 9:30 or 10:00 and my son had overlooked one of his homework assignments and Mrs. K was tired and angry at him. I told her to go to sleep and I'd handle it, so we worked on his last assignment until about 11:30.
The end.
You?