Seriously, I guess I need to update this.  What can I say, we’ve been busy, and 90% of it you don’t want to hear about.  Heck, nobody probably wants to hear about the remaining 10%, but I paid for this thing and dang it, I’m going to use it.  Sometimes.  I’m going to just pretend the last few weekends never happened and jump right up to this past weekend.  This past weekend kicked off Friday with absolutely nothing.  Well, the Royals were playing out here on the west coast and those 7:30 games just killed me.  Who even stays up that late?!?!?  On the positive side, they were very watchable on the back patio as it cooled off nicely by that time.

Saturday I got a strong start with a decent bike ride.  I still don’t get many long-distance rides in out here, usually between 15 and 20 miles.  Heck, Munkirs and I used knock out 30 miles on any given week night, 20 is one of my “long weekend” rides out here.  Oh well.  But, what my rides lack in distance, I feel they make up for in climbing.  I’m sure I’ve probably mentioned it before, but no matter what direction you ride here in El Dorado Hills, you will no doubt hit some hills.  I usually ride “this hill” or “that hill” so far this year;  Saturday, for whatever reason, I decided to ride this hill AND that hill.  They aren’t the worst (best?) hills in town, but they ain’t flat either.  Indeed, in my short 20 mile ride I got in 2,000+ feet of climbing.  About the only perspective I can offer on that number is that my all-time record for one day of climbing is 4,000 feet…  And that was spread over 100 miles.  Yeah it’s a little “rolly” out here.  I still have 2 hills on my “list” that I haven’t even been able to make it up.  I almost tried one of the two Saturday since I was in the area, but chickened out.  I’ll wait until it gets really hot and give it a try.  Anyway, fun ride.  I saw some turkeys, which are always sort of cool to watch, and some really nice old cars that were driving around, and quite a few fellow bikers.  Not so cool things, I dang near hit a big snake.  Scared the crud out of me.  I was on a road that was closed to traffic, focusing on trying not to hyperventilate from the climb, and didn’t even see it all laid across the road.  I barely missed it’s head at the last second.  I don’t THINK it was a rattler because I’m pretty sure I’d have been bit if it was.  I sure wasn’t going back to look.  Note to self…  watch the road.  After that bit of exercise we took the pups to the dog park for a little play time, then we all went to the El Dorado Saloon for lunch.

Sunday took a rather unexpected pleasant turn.  Can’t remember the last time that happened.  I had to work that evening, which generally causes me to just write off the entire day and lay on the couch.  But when some friends called and said they were heading up to Camino to check out a new winery, we figured what the heck.  It was a quite pleasant day out, so we dropped the top on the convertible and met up with everybody.  Good times.  We spent the entire afternoon up there in the area, just kind of hanging out and enjoying the weather.  When we got home, everybody came over and fired up the grill while I snuck off to work.  I’ve been on something of a bad run of luck with my work stuff lately, but for once everything couldn’t have gone smoother.  Wrapped up my stuff in about 45 minutes and had a nice plate of grilled chicken waiting on the table for me, woot!

Well, I made it one more time around the sun.  To hear my physician tell it, I seem to be aging at twice the normal rate, but I’m sure he’s misreading the charts.  BMI-Schmee-MI.  Bunch of gobbly-gook nonsense.  Anyway, I had a very nice birthday, which is always something of a surprise.  I will admit I went into it with very low expectations, which I guess is how I go into most things.  Things started to look better when I had a moderately tolerable day at work though, and then when I went home and found a big cooler full of Jack Stack BBQ on my front porch things really started to look up.  Add in a few nice birthday cards in the mailbox, several well-wishes via text, and a fine steak dinner with the wife, and I rated it a very fine day indeed.

The steak dinner was a pleasant addition to the day.  Donette made 5:30 reservations at a new steakhouse nearby, C. Knights.  Yes, I know, that’s blue-hair dinner hour; do your worst.  Well the only other availability was 7:30, and yes, that is too late for me.  So, I guess if the shoe fits…  At any rate, the dinner was very good, and I got home in time to catch Matlock.  I ordered a 16 oz ribeye, Donette ordered the lobster tail, and we split them to make our own little surf-and-turf dinners.  Both were perfectly cooked and delicious.  The service was just a bit shaky, (I tend to get a little picky when the prices are that high I guess,) but not too bad.  Overall I gave it a solid B+, I’m sure we’ll be back.  Bellies full, we headed back home and watched a few movies.  I guess I need to start writing this stuff down because I can’t remember what they were;  Must have been great.

Saturday was day one of my self-proclaimed “birthday weekend” celebration.  At my advanced age I can only celebrate a limited number of hours in a day, so it helps to spread events over a longer time period.  It was a beautiful day outside, so we decided to dust off the convertible and go wine tasting.  After a short planning session, we decided on:  1) Baiocchi in Sutter Creek, 2) Scott Harvey in Sutter Creek, and 3) Wilderotter in Amador.  As is often the case, these plans got tweaked slightly over the course of the afternoon.  As luck would have it, they were having a little “event” at Baiocchi, with appetizers and live music.  This was probably in honor of my birthday, though they didn’t explicitly say as much.  Not being one to turn down free entertainment, we loitered there quite a while.  We had the dogs with us too, and as they seemed pretty comfortable we decided to just go with it.  We were there a few hours, then scratched the original plan and headed on to Amador.  Scott Harvey also has an Amador location, so we headed there next.  We hung out there for a while too, and then decided to just call it a day.  The pups were getting a bit antsy, as was I, so we rolled on back home.  For evening entertainment we turned on Black Panther, out on the back porch.  I fell asleep mid-movie, have to try that one again another day.

Sunday marked day two of the weekend celebration.  We started strong with a solid breakfast at Firehouse Cafe up the hill in Diamond Springs.  We’ve eaten there once before and really liked it, and this visit was a repeat performance of that success.  I had a fantastic chicken fried steak with gravy, and Donette had the corned beef hash.  Worth the drive to be sure.  I’m wouldn’t say it’s any better than the only place close to our house we like (Purple Place,) but it’s quite a bit cheaper and it’s nice to change up the scenery now and then.  After downing a few thousand calories, Donette took me up the road a bit and dropped me off for a bike ride.  There is a rails-to-trails project up in that area called, not-too-cleverly, the El Dorado Trail, and I’ve wanted to check it out for years.  It’s oddly difficult to get detailed info on it though, and I’ve never been too sure where to hop on it, get back off, etc.  Finally, I decided to just give it a go and see what happened.  Well….  That plan was only moderately successful.  I follow their page (or whatever it’s called) on Facebook, and they always post these scenic pictures with nice wide trails, and families riding their bikes down them.  Suffice to say, that is not the part I was on.  I still don’t know where that part is.  Instead, I rode 17 miles of overgrown single-track, with varying degrees of difficulty.  The fact that I didn’t see a single other bicyclist in the entire 17 miles was a pretty solid clue that I need to keep looking for the “fun” part.  There were sections when I lost the trail entirely, and had to just ride between the rails.  Yeah, that was a little bumpy.  It wasn’t horrible though, at least I got to enjoy some bike time.

I hope all the Moms out there enjoyed their special day.  If you didn’t, well I enjoyed it for you, so that’s something.  I did have a pretty grand day of it.  For the last several years we’ve gone out to brunch with a large group, which I have to admit has always been fun.  But, you’ve got the hassle of travel, crowds, reservations, expense, etc etc.  This year one of our friends agreed to just host it at their house, and it turned out great.  As an added bonus, said house was one block from us so we just trotted across the street, packing our slow cooker.  Fun was had by all, and I think the food was better than anything we’d have gotten at a restaurant, especially the ones near us.  After we ate, everybody stuck around on the back patio and hung out enjoying the wonderful weather for the better part of the day.  Good times, hopefully this new tradition continues next year.  (As long as it’s not at my house, mind you…  That was a lot of people.)

Tonight marks a potentially dark day in my life.  I will be fixing spare ribs for dinner.  In a pressure cooker.  GASP.  Yes, it’s true, I’ve been reduced to this.  Hey, if you want to have ribs on a Monday night, what else can you do?  I can’t imagine it going well, but we will see.  My brain keeps being whisked back to that horrible, horrible day 20 years ago when I parboiled a few slabs.  I still feel dirty.  And to make it worse, if you ask Donette what were the best ribs I’ve ever made, she will without fail respond with that travesty of food preparation.  Sigh.  Well, I guess I just feel the need to try something different.  To date, I have not found anyone out here that takes any interest in spending a day sitting in the driveway feeding charcoal to a smoker.  They just don’t get it.  Or I don’t.  We’ll see how they feel about steamed meat.  Honestly, I am scared of the response.  First person to say “They taste just like they do on the smoker!” gets kicked out of the house.

Hola!  Como esta usted?  And now, having exhausted my complete Spanish vocabulary, I will switch back to English.  Tsk, four years of classes down the drain.  That was my best attempt at referencing our activities for the weekend, which included a mighty fine Cinco de Mayo party on Saturday night.  Our friends Michael and Alaina hosted, and as usual they went over the top.  Me, I prefer theme-less parties.  Just come over and have a party.  That is, if I ever had a party, that’s what it would be.  These guys though, they had a full bar setup, a taco truck, festive mariachi music, the whole nine yards.  Hey, as long as I don’t have to put on any special type of clothing or help with any crazy decorations, I’m game.  It was a great time, I was particularly fond of the taco truck.  The guy put out a huge spread with 5 different fillings, all of which I tried at least once.  It was “all you can eat,” and I took that phrase to a possible extreme.  The lady’s house they held it at was pretty awesome too.  I should say, the back yard was;  I never actually went inside.  I had outdoor-kitchen-envy to be sure.  Every time I think I’ve got the ideal setup, I have to see something like this lady had.  Somebody just always has it a little better I guess.

Sunday was no slouch of a day either, especially considering we didn’t have any plans to start off.  A few quick texts later, we joined a few couples at Sienna for a fun brunch.  We haven’t been to their brunch in a long time, but it didn’t seem that much had changed.  We scored a great table on the patio, and proceeded to massacre the buffet line.  It was all good, I left feeling I got my money’s worth.  After that the day was just too nice to be inside, so we headed up to the scene of the crime from the night before and spent the rest of the afteroon hanging out in the aforementioned awesome back yard.  Once again, I never went in the house, but I’m not sure why you’d really need to.  The back yard had pretty much everything you’d ever need.  As an added bonus we took the puppies with us, and they absolutely ran wild.  They seemed a little overwhelmed with so much space to run around in, but once they figured it out they definitely took some laps.  Of course, as they usually manage to do, they found some disgusting pile of “something” in the yard.  And of course, they rolled all over in it.  We closed out the day with puppy baths.

Hey, we had more visitors last weekend.  Always fun.  At least it’s fun for us, I have to imagine our house guests usually leave feeling rather….  Underwhelmed.  As long as I am entertained, that’s all that is important I suppose.  So, anyway, our friends the Martins made it down for a weekend of fun.  Granted, they weren’t really here to see us, just passing through on the way to see their real friends.  That’s just semantics though.  We kicked things off on Friday with a short trip up the hill to Chateau Davell Winery.  Their new place is great, I’m glad to see them doing well there.  We enjoyed a few sips and then headed across the road to one of our favorite restaurants, Smith Flat House.  Always good food, and the place is just cool.  After that we headed home and got into a rousing game of 10 point pitch.  I do miss that game, the local savages out here refuse to engage in such high-brow entertainment.  I’ll mention that the boy’s team won handily, although I suppose that goes without saying.

Saturday was slated for a quaint afternoon of wine tasting in the convertible.  Because, well, it’s just fun.  Alas, the weather did not cooperate.  I won’t say it was COLD, per se, but it was maybe “chilly.”  Not an ideal day for zipping around with the top down, at any rate.  So, we made a last minute change of plans and did a little brew tour instead.  We started out in Auburn, visiting the venerable Moonraker and Knee Deep locations.  I must say, these are my two favorites out here.  They are great spots, and I’d put the beers up against anything.  Luckily for my belly they are pretty far away, so I don’t get to go there very often.  After that we made a quick stop at Goathouse Brewing, mostly out of curiosity.  I wouldn’t say the pint I had was anywhere close to the one from KneeDeep, but it was OK.  The main draw was, they had goats.  Lots and lots of goats.  I don’t really know why, but it was fun to watch them.  We rounded out the day at the new Out of Bounds back closer to home.  They’ve still got a few more chances left, but they are sort of struggling getting the kinks worked out.  We planned on having dinner there, but eventually gave up and left.

Sunday we got up early-ish and rolled down the hill to the Napa area.  Martins were meeting up with their Fancy Friends for a day of wine and food, so we kicked them to the curb and headed out on our own.  Actually, we met up with Michael & Alaina, who happened to be in the area, and took a little tour of our own.  See, we’ve got Fancy Friends too, so there.  We enjoyed a great lunch at an outdoor cafe, hit a few wineries, and then suffered a miserable traffic jam all the way home.  I still declare the day a success, despite the sketchy drive at the conclusion.