That was a big week in The Life of Phil.  That’s not necessarily a good thing either;  I don’t like “big.”  I like “consistent,” thank you very much.  Well, things happen.  I went to a conference in Las Vegas all week, and it was a bit overwhelming.  Too many people, too hot, and, at the end of the day, it was work.  They can host those things wherever they want, try as hard as they want to make them fun, but it’s still work.  And by “hot,” I mean 110+.  BRUTAL hot.  You could hardly breathe outside the hotel.  This is not to say I didn’t have any fun.  One of my friends attended with me, and then our wives showed up mid-week.  Once the conference (mercifully) ended, we had one big party day too.  We got all fancy and rented a cabana down at the hotel pool, and that made for a great afternoon of relaxation.  That’s the way to go, I’ll say that.  No laying out in the sun on blistering hot plastic chairs for these high-rollers.  After that we met up with one of my college buddies who has lived out there since…  Well, since we got out of college.  He (again, mercifully) took us off the strip for a while, and was it ever good to get away from that mess.  We hit the new tiki bar in town first.  Ever heard of a tiki bar?  I surely hadn’t, but then I’m old and uncool.  After that he took us to a Thai food place, which was a wonderful change from the hotels, both in terms of taste and price.  Oh, and I’m sure everyone wants to know the results of our time at the tables.  Well, I don’t gamble, so I took all my money home.  Donette was the gambler of the group.  She dropped a ten-spot in the penny slots.  Gave it one pull, doubled her money, and cashed out.  I guess that makes her the top gambler in the group.

That was an exhausting week, but we still had “obligations” when we got back home.  Saturday was our friend Jana’s annual birthday party.  We’ve been three years in a row now, and it’s always a blast.  They’ve got an incredible back yard, pretty much made for such events.  I went over around noon and threw a bunch of ribs on, then Donette joined me later in the afternoon and we proceeded to enjoy the pool until way-too-late.  Good times.  The ribs came out OK too, much to my relief.  I hate cooking for large groups of strangers…  Too much pressure.

We rounded things out with a trip to some of the local wineries.  It occurred to us we hadn’t been wine tasting in quite some time.  The weather was reasonably nice, and our friends had a new car to squire us about, so we hit the tasting circuit.  We hit several favorites, and tried one new place.  Sunday Funday, indeed.

I’ve got an awful lot of pics from my trip, and the weekend.  I’d split them up into multiple posts, but I always forget.  So, here they are.

And just like that, it’s hot.  I feel like I got cheated out of the last few good weekends with some ill-timed stretches of work.  What can ya’ do.  The last few weekends were sunny and 70, now it’s sunny and 108.  108!  Yeah it’s “dry,” but that’s an unpleasant temp all the same.  We did get one last night on the patio Friday before the stifling heat rolled in.  As luck would have it, my favorite cut of steak (lately anyway) was on sale so I fired up the grill and cooked one up.  As a side note, that’s a pretty spot-on article I linked to there.  Yeah, they’re a little overpriced, hard to manage on the grill, and obscenely huge, but they sure are fun.  I get no small amount of entertainment cooking them.  I went the “reverse sear” route cooking it, which is pretty much the only way to get the huge thing cooked.  About 40 minutes on the Weber kettle, then finished it off on a cast iron griddle.

Fast forward to Sunday, the heat was out in full force.  We headed over to a friends house and horned in on his father’s day celebration.  They’ve got a nice big pool in their yard, which has the added bonus of being shaded most of the day.  We planned on just floating around for a few hours to cool off, but ended bobbing around the pool the entire day.  We finished the afternoon off with some fine carne asada tacos, then scurried back to the a/c at our house.

For the second week in a row, I got nuthin.  I’ll at least throw that much out though, last week I didn’t even have that much time.  Why so preoccupied?  Well, unfortunately it’s not because we’ve been out tearing up the town, I’ll tell you that much.  I’ve got a few random pics and that’s about it.

We managed to stretch that out into a four-day weekend, which felt much needed.  The highlight of this little vacation was definitely the Bottlerock festival on Friday.  I’d say probably our favorite thing to do is hit music festivals, and we don’t get to do it nearly enough.  Between the cost, the travel, the vacation…  They’re just hard to attend.  We went to this one in ’15 though and had a great time, so we went ahead and bought tickets to the Friday event this year.  And, once again, had a great time.  A full day of great weather listening to some great music, what’s not to like.  The highlights of my day were Frightened Rabbit and Silversun Pickups, while Donette liked the headliners, Maroon 5.  All great shows, and we made hotel reservations for next year as soon as we got home on Saturday.

Speaking of Saturday, it wasn’t exactly a bad day either.  We had reservations at the Rutherford winery for a nice tour, and it was well worth the 90 minutes.  There were only five couples in the group, so it was a nice little semi-private event.  After that we headed to Soda Rock winery (which was much further than I thought,) for another quick tasting, then wound our way back up the hill to pick up the puppy over at our friends’ house, and enjoyed a delicious bbq while we were at it.

Sunday & Monday, we dialed it back quite a bit.  Worn out.  That’s not to say we didn’t have fun, just more of the “bbq at home” kind of thing.  There were some ribs involved, and lots of Royals games and sunshine time.  Enjoyable relaxation.

And a quick clip of Silversun Pickups playing.  I videoed the entire 6.5 minute Lazy Eye but I’ll spare you that one.

Alright alright, I’ll update my stupid web page.  It seems like I’ve been entirely too busy to spend time on such things, but ask me what I’m doing at any given moment and I’ll invariably answer “nothing.”  Maybe it’s the old age.  Anyway, the major event of recent history was my birthday, woot woot!  Exciting!  Or, as it happened, maybe not.  As a matter of fact I got sick and didn’t really do anything but lay around and blow my nose constantly.  As whatever-it-was slowly passed, I ramped up my celebration accordingly though, culminating with having some friends over for a barbecue on Sunday.  I spent all day smoking a brisket and then we had people over to eat it.  One of my favorite ways to spend a Sunday, to be sure.  I even mixed in a little experimentation with the brisket.  Instead of my tried-and-true (but flawed) foil wrap, I used the trendy “butcher paper” technique.  (I didn’t follow that recipe, but that’ll give you some idea what the paper is all about.)  I was well pleased with the results.  The outside stayed nice and crispy as advertised, and I thought the texture was better overall.  The downside was, I cooked that sucker for 13 hours.  The foil definitely gets the edge there, I bet I would have shaved at least 5 hours off that cook time.  Luckily I woke up early and had it on by 6:00 in the morning or dinner would have been a disaster, instead of just a little late.

So what other fascinating endeavors did I enjoy over my birthday week?  Well, I spent no small amount of time on my new raspberry pi that my Mother-in-Law got me for my birthday.  Mind you, she doesn’t know that’s what she got me, or probably what a pi is, but that’s neither here nor there.  I got a new toy, that’s what is important.  I don’t know why, but I just have a good time playing with those little things.  I already have one, which I made into a sweet little game console that plays all the old Nintento games.  Fun stuff.  I didn’t want to mess that one up, so I got a second one for my birthday to do more super-neato stuff with.  After many dorky hours, the new one now runs my home wireless controller, as well as the good ol’ Kodi media center.  No clue or interest what I’m babbling on about?  Well, it’s really cool, just take my word for it.  You’re jealous, I know it.  I’m even giving some consideration to moving this website to it, under the “Because I can” theory.  Can’t decide if I want to spend that kind of time.