That was a nice little unplanned 3-day weekend.  I kicked it off Thursday night, going out with a few guys after work.  As we sat around discussing the state of world affairs, the topic somehow swung to weekend plans, and one of the guys mentioned he took the day off Friday to go fishing.  Well, I just so happen to have more vacation than I know what to do with, so I took the day off and weaseled my way onto his boat too.  I’m not really much of a fisherman, as the other guys on the boat found out pretty quickly.  I’ve never even used a baitcast reel before, and when I heard what they cost I was somewhat afraid to try.  I couldn’t figure out the magical loop system used to put the bait on either, so they had to bait my hook for me every time like a 3rd grade girl.  Oh well, that way I didn’t have to touch the icky bait.  I ended up getting skunked on the fish, which was no surprise really.  As a matter of fact, the fishing was pretty slow for the whole boat, the group only caught two salmon and one steelhead over the six hours we floated around.  You can bet it was funner than sitting in my cubicle all day though.

Saturday we attended the fifth annual blind beer tasting up at our friends Michael & Alaina’s house.  This was the third time we’d been, and it just keeps getting bigger and better every year.  This year even featured official commemorative tasting glasses;  Fancy!  They had three stations set up, and we enjoyed several hours of sampling. When all the entries had been tried, everyone marked down their scores and a winner was determined.  Some lame cider-ish brew won, blech.  Oh well, different tastes for different folks I guess.  It was a good time at any rate.

Sunday we met Michael & Alaina at the El Dorado Saloon for a late breakfast.  Late as in lunchtime, but luckily they still had their breakfast menu on.  It was a solid breakfast, maybe not as good as The Purple Place but the outdoor seating was a draw for us.  I enjoyed a quite passable plate of eggs, hash browns, and biscuits & gravy, and Donette had a big southwest omelette that she said was delish.  I expect we’ll be back to try a few more menu items in the near future.  After that it was a typical Sunday on the couch watching my fantasy football team once again spiral downward into a painful defeat.

On a somewhat random note, one of my home pc’s crashed and burned over the weekend, and it’s the one I use to store all my pictures off my phone.  Bummer.  Waiting for some parts to come in, but in the meantime I don’t have my super-duper photo app to easily get my pictures.  I managed to pull off a few to share though.

I expect anybody that actually reads this knows we lost Teagan to cancer yesterday.  I’m a medium-to-high level hot mess, so I’m taking a short break on my website.  Oh, I’ll start it up again though.  Get some rest lil’ Teagan, we’ll play ball again some day.

Not a whole lot to work with today, mostly because in my old age I really can’t remember what went on last weekend.  I know that on Friday we went to a pizza party, so I’ll start there.  We met up with a few other couples after work, and headed up to Hart2Hart vineyards for a glass of wine and a few slices of brick-oven baked pizza.  It was a good time, and the weather was perfect outside.  Naturally, I do have a few quibbles…  For one thing I wish it wasn’t on a Friday.  I do not like “events” on Friday night, I like to sit home and unwind.  It does, however, start the weekend off right.  I’ve noticed whenever I DO go out on Friday, it makes it feel like a 3-day weekend.  Not worth it though, I’ll stick to my routine.  Otherwise, the only other fault was that it is, understandably, impossible to cook pizza for 100+ people with one small oven.This led to an endless line, and it was pretty hard to get food.  Since I’m fundamentally opposed to standing in line for my food I didn’t get a whole lot of pie.  They had a two-slice limit per trip, which was a good idea, but the slices were like an inch.  I think I made it through the line twice and called it good.  The little bit I got was really good though!

Fast forward to Sunday…  (What happened to Saturday?  I know it happened, it always does.  Every single week.  Lost day?)  Donette’s nephew Justin was in Vegas, and he made the 8-hour drive over to visit us while he was sorta-kinda-not-really in the area.  We were excited for the visit, and Doni decided to have a BBQ.  So, I got up and put two pork butts on the cooker early in the morning, and spent the day watching football and cooking on the patio.  There are certainly worse ways to spend a day.  In a not totally unexpected twist, it actually poured rain for a good part of the afternoon.  It’s been months since it rained, and I guess I was having trouble grasping the concept or I would have cooked on Saturday.  Oh well, I just rolled the smoker up under the patio and everything went fine.  We had a good visit with them, and the ‘que came out pretty good!  We sat on the back patio and watched the Chief’s game after dinner, could have done without that.

Being as I shammed out of last week’s update, I should have lots of material for today, right?  Well not so much.  We were supposed to go camping with our friends Michael & Alaina this past weekend, but it just didn’t happen.  We spent the whole week changing our minds back and forth, justifying each swing in direction with solid reasoning.  But, as the weekend got closer, we had to call the ball and the final decision was “no camping trip.”  The worst part was, (for me,) eating the cost of the campsite we’d pre-paid, but we saved a lot of money on other fronts by not going.  It’ll happen another time, hopefully.

So what did we do with our new-found free time?  Eh not a whole lot.  I spent all day Friday assembling our new breakfast room table and chairs.  Exciting, want me to break that down for you chair-by-chair?  Man I really hate that stuff.  Countless little bolts and washers, all to be slowly tightened down with the crappy 2″ long hex wrench they give you.  Blah.  It really was a long process, and of course me being me I even managed to screw a few of them up.  They are sort of together though, you just want to be sure and sit down carefully on them.  Then, I got to get rid of the enormous pile of cardboard and styrofoam left behind.  Luckily the recycle center is right down the street so I just had to cram all I could in the back of the car and go.

Saturday I started my day off with a decent mountain bike ride.  It was a nice morning out for a ride, even if I did loaf around a littlelong and let it get almost too warm out.  I’ve found a trail near the house that, while maybe a bit on the tame side, lets me build up my confidence for the harder ones.  That’s my big scheme anyway.  I hope to ride it again a few times this week, but the days are getting short quickly.  After that bit of fun, I took a some time to wash the ol’ bike, then our camping compadres came over to watch TV on the patio with us.  Hey, we didn’t want to just totally give up on our weekend plans.  We were, uh, outside anyway.  We watched “31” which was sort of a Disney off-shoot.  OK maybe not so much.

Sunday we continued our camping trip with our friends, once again on the patio.  We cooked up a big breakfast to get things started, even using the camp stove for effect.  After that we set out to try a few new places nearby.  First was Cielo winery, which is about 15 minutes from the house.  It was a hit, if nothing else just for the convenient location.  Nothing wrong with the winery either, we enjoyed it.  On the downside, we were just a bit rushed and had to sort of run out to make our 3:00 tour of Dry Diggings Distillery.  We’ve been curious about this place for quite some time, mostly because it’s located in the business park right across the street from our house.  It was an interesting tour.  They’re big into local history and had a lot of info on that, and had even created a sort of “old time saloon” room for their tastings.  We were there quite a while, then headed back to the house/camp to grill some dinner.  Ah, yes, the great outdoors.  We wrapped it up with an episode of Sopranos, then broke camp and called it a weekend.

We hit a first in our time here last week;  Two good dinners out!  Our first hit was at Sutter Street Steakhouse on Tuesday.  We’ve been meaning to get there for a long time, and rather randomly decided Tuesday was as good a night as any.  I’ll have to say, after all our restaurant fails here in the last three years, I went in with a large amount of skepticism.  Luckily it lived up to its billing though, we both had great dinners.  Actually, we both had the same exact dinners;  ribeye steaks.  I had no doubt the quality of the beef would be up to par, but I did have serious reservations about anyone in this entire area cooking it as requested.  They were spot on though, we were both quite happy.  Overjoyed, even.  Elated.  Ecstatic.  Euphoric.  OK you get the idea.  Good meal.

Thursday night we joined our friends Michael & Alaina at Rudy’s Hideaway in nearby Rancho Cordova.  The main attraction here was their Thursday evening lobster special, and I’d made up my mind on that before we even saw the menu.  I’m pretty sure I’ve never ordered a whole lobster before, so that was my excitement for the meal.  Luckily it wasn’t nearly the dining challenge that I’ve always feared, it was actually pretty easy to deal with.  Quite delicious too.  I’d definitely go back to either of these restaurants if the opportunity came up.  The only downside is, neither of them were exactly “every day priced” menus, at least not in our book.  Heck, I’d like to go to one of them every week, but the checking account wouldn’t hold up very long.  At least it’s nice to know there is something good available if a special occasion comes up though.

As for the weekend, we stayed relatively occupied.  We took it easy Friday night, in preparation for our big garage sale on Saturday morning.  It was a “community event,” the one sale a year our hoity-toity HOA allows, so we figured we better take advantage this time around.  It was, in short, absolute mayhem.  We were very quickly overrun by hordes of bargain hunters, and it didn’t slow down for several exhausting hours.  Our goal wasn’t so much to make money as to get rid of stuff, and we did a pretty darn good job of that.  Our motto was “No reasonable offer refused,” and for that matter we didn’t refuse any unreasonable offers either.  Get that stuff outta here.  I was definitely overwhelmed by the turnout though, it was stressful for a while.  Donette was running around the yard yelling “YUP!!!” like an auctioneer, and people were throwing cash at me faster than I could keep track.  When the smoke cleared, we had an extra $750 in our pockets.  That sounds like a lot for a morning’s work, but the downside is our house is completely empty.  As in nowhere to sit.  Nowhere to eat.  No area rugs on the floor.  Oh well, mission accomplished.  After that debacle, we headed over to the clubhouse where Donette was hosting the monthly “Friends of the Vine” wine tasting.  Our friend Michael had hooked us up with a local winery, and they graciously provided a lot of wine for the event.  Usually she just invites people to bring a bottle of wine and an appetizer, and come meet your neighbors.  That’s usually good for one other couple showing up, sometimes two.  Man, you offer a few free sips of wine and the entire neighborhood shows up.  Funny how that works.  It was a great time though, everyone seemed to enjoy themselves.

Sunday we turned it way down.  That big day before took it out of me.  I found the Chiefs game on the TV, and then after that watched the other random games all afternoon.  It’s starting to cool down a little bit, so it was a fine day to waste time on the back patio watching the season openers.  For dinner we headed over to a friend’s house for a delicious tri tip, and watched a few episodes of The Sopranos in their back yard.  We’ve started up the whole series with them, gives us something to do on otherwise quiet Sunday nights.  We’ve made it to Season 1, Episode 4, we’ll see if we can keep it up.