This weekend, we went back to Kansas City and Manhattan, Kan., for a weekend of friends and football.

We were able to meet Jeff and Katie’s son, Parker. On Saturday we met A.J. and Sara’s guy, Joe. We also learned an important lesson about the protectiveness of a stupid weimaraner. Chris bent down to pick up Joe and was bit on the back of the leg by Jack, the dumbest dog alive.

We also watched K-State cream Baylor. The first half of the game was a little shaky, but the Cats regained their composure and came back for a definitive win. The only downside was a crazy old fan right behind me that screeched “Go DDDDDDDD…(this goes for a minimum of five minutes)” at the top of her lungs so often I left the game with a headache. Chris made me leave without rebuking her.

We made a quick visit to Aggieville after the game and soon realized that we are old and work far too many hours Monday through Friday to really hang with the college kids. We were asleep by 10 p.m., and it was still an awesome and exhausting weekend.

I spent this weekend in Fort Collins, Colo., helping with a scoping event at Colorado State University. My client hosted an event that offered a free scoping (read: stick tube down horses’ noses to check stomach for ulcers) followed by a panel discussion.

I barely made it out of Denver as a snow/ice storm rolled in. Oddly, Milwaukee was sunny and downright hot when I made it home.

I spent the week in Columbus, Ohio, to set up for the 2007 All-American Quarter Horse Congress. The show is one of the largest (and longest) trade shows we work with during the year. It lasts from Oct. 11-28, and is open every day. It takes a lot of manpower, and we hire students from “The” Ohio State University to help. Many Merial representatives also come in to help out. Myself and a couple of other Merial folks had the first shift to set up for the show.

On Tuesday, a Merial representative and I trained a few students from The Ohio State University on ZIMECTERIN GOLD (a dewormer) and ULCERGARD (a stomach ulcer preventative). The next day, I set up the booth. Thursday and Friday were the first two days of the trade show. I ate a lot of gummy worms in between answering questions about the products and making sure people knew about the exciting Merial-sponsored activities going on during Congress.

I spend the day today tailgating, and watching football at the Chiefs v. Bears game. 

Chiefs fall to Bears 20-10

By JASON KING

The Kansas City Star 

CHICAGO | The Kansas City Chiefs are 0-2 for the second straight season following a miserable offensive performance in Sunday’s 20-10 loss against Chicago at Soldier Field.

The Bears opened the scoring early in the second quarter on Rex Grossman’s 2-yard touchdown pass to 315-pound offensive lineman John St. Clair, who had checked in as an eligible receiver.

The Chiefs went three-and-out on their ensuing possession, and Chicago capitalized when Devin Hester returned Dustin Colquitt’s punt 73 yards for a touchdown.

(more…)

This week, I drove to the Chicago suburbs to attend the American Eventing Championships for work. This time, I was able to see a lot of dressage, which is like “horse ballet” in that it is series of precise movements. It’s also a little slow. The previous eventing shows I’ve attended were upper level, but this event had a wide range from novice to advanced, which demonstrates how good the advanced riders really are.

Here are some highlights of our wonderful weekend at the Ryan Ranch. A much-needed vacation and a chance to catch the last few moments of summer with Mom, Dad, and the Hughes family. In between these pics, we ate great barbeque and sipped a few cool drinks.

  Potential property with an erosion problem.

  Does someone smell gas? The Hughes boat breakdown.

        Skiing on Blackwell.
One side of the lake.    And the other side of the lake.

      Chris skiing.

The triumph of blogs is their ability to track the every day, the mundane. Their failure is giving equal reverence to events with more gravity. It’s easy to move on after blogging about the last place you’ve eaten or a funny joke. It is much harder to see more momentous occasions slowly make their way into the archive.

As you may have noticed, we haven’t posted much since Doc died. Blogging about our newest trip didn’t really seem as important next to his post. Recently, we’ve seen our friends’ blogs stall out while they mourn their friend’s passing. There are events that are just too big for a blog.

This is not to say we haven’t been living. So here are a few things we’ve been up to in the last few weeks. We are lazy and don’t have pictures of our own, but I hope you will forgive us just this once. 

• During Memorial Day Weekend, friends from Indiana University visited for a “highlights of Wisconsin” weekend. This — in case you do not know — includes beer, cheese and sausage. We took care of beer the first night with a few samplers at the Milwaukee Ale House. The next day, we took a tour of Cedar Creek Winery in Cedarburg, Wis. with a tour guide who was a part-time 4^th-grade teacher, part-time tour guide and full-time wine drinker. The only good wine was the pinot grigio (if you like those in the first place). We drank wine and ate cheese in the park afterwards. Finally, we enjoyed brats at Brewers Stadium and sat in far left field watching the Brewers lose to the Atlanta Braves.
• We celebrated our fourth anniversary on June 7 with a trip to Brewers Stadium to watch a baseball game a few days before the actual date.
• Last weekend, we took a brief trip to Hutchinson, Kan., to see our friend Vern marry our new friend Annie. The happy couple should be honeymooning in Colorado right now. It was a beautiful wedding (the ceremony took 17 minutes, Chris timed it), and then we all headed out to AJ’s parent’s house for some porch sitting and beer drinking. We got to meet the newest member of the Crockett family, Addison. We also got to hear about the preparations for Sara and AJ’s upcoming addition, Milroy (okay, that’s just a nickname). On Sunday, we had a nice, long lunch with James and Kay before flying out.