We just got back from a nice Hawaii vacation, hence the late update.  Always an excuse, at least this time it’s semi-valid.  Rather than the “What I did on my summer vacation” spiel I’ll just post some pics.  Some are from Doni’s “good” camera so they’re a bit large, sorry.  Yeah, I could resize them.

That was not a bad weekend, as my weekends go.  A little shaky maybe but I made the best of it.  My weekend started Friday with a day off.  Donette was working though, so I just kind of wasted my day if I remember correctly.  If I was going to guess, a lot of time was spent in the back yard watching Bonanza.  I did leave the house for a short while to take a ride on my kayak, at nearby Lake Natomas.  Interesting learning experience:  When I bought the kayak, I ordered two paddles, as it’s a two-person kayak.  Makes sense.  Each came in two parts, and snap together.  The 4 or 5 times I’ve taken it out by myself, I’ve just snatched two pieces off the shelf in the garage and merrily paddled along.  Not being a lucky person, this brought me to the inescapable conclusion that all four sections were identical.  Well, my luck ran out Friday;  They ain’t.  I ended up with two parts that didn’t fit together, leaving me to rather awkwardly blunder around the lake with a very short canoe paddle.  Hey, whatever, I had fun, or so I told myself.

Saturday was a lost day.  I worked from pretty much the minute I got up until well past my bedtime.  (Hence the day off Friday.)  Not a whole lot of material to work with there.  While I pecked away at my keyboard though, we did get our fancy new doggie door installed.  We’ve long had the kind that fits in your sliding glass patio door, in between the frame and the door.  It’s served us quite well.  The downside is you lose a significant part of your door opening.  I knew this when I bought it, but it ended up bothering me a lot more than I thought it would.  So, we ordered the kind where they actually notch out the glass in your sliding door and fit it in there.  Pretty sweet setup.  I also got one for the screen door, which didn’t turn out quite so great.  Sounded like a good idea;  We like to close the screen and let the air in on nice evenings.  The problem is, when you open the glass door and close the screen door, or vice versa, it effectively looks like you have two dog doors.  This is a bad thing when your 60 lb. dog hits the wrong one with a full head of steam.  I’m confident she’ll figure it out soon.  Mmmm hmmm.

Sunday wasn’t exactly the craziest day we’ve ever lived, but it wasn’t the most boring either.  Somewhere in the middle.  I kicked it off walking Teagan down to the nearby Farmers Market to look around.  Actually I had a certain item in mind, some vinegar-based Carolina style sauce I’d bought up at Placerville a while back when my family was here.  I am quite fond of it, and needed a few more bottles.  Alas, despite the assurances on his Facebook page, he wasn’t there.  Oh well, I’ve wanted to check out the market for a long time anyway, and we got a nice walk out of it.  After that we kind of wasted the better part of the afternoon, then headed down to Casa Ramos to watch the 49’ers game.  We’ve been boycotting them (the restaurant) for nearly a year due to some sketchy dinners, but decided we’d give them another try because we wanted to watch the game on a patio.  Well, despite the beautiful weather, the patio seating was closed.  The boycott is back on.  We headed back home to our own darn patio;  Just as good anyway.

I’ve got nothing.  Didn’t do anything, didn’t take any pictures, worked a lot…  Nothing that makes for any type of update.  I could list out everything I THOUGHT about doing, but that’s not really useful either.  We made pesto yesterday out of our overgrown basil shrub.  Then we portioned it up and froze it, where it shall remain until our next freezer purge.  Uhhh…  Yeah that’s about it.

Another weekend in the books.  It was sort of a hit-and-miss affair:  A little bit of fun and a little not-so-fun.  Friday night kicked it off with a girl’s-only happy hour for Donette.  Yeah she just hung me out to dry, didn’t look real concerned about it either.  I ran through all my options to come up with a plan for my own entertainment, which effectively consisted of A) Watch the Royals game outside on the patio, or B) watch the Royals game inside on the couch.  After much deliberation I decided on A, and so went Friday night.

Saturday started slow but ramped up nicely.  We did some random stuff around the house, then later in the afternoon headed down to the big Town Center for a little Fall festival.  Our friends Michael and Alaina were volunteering at it, and I think sort of heading up the whole deal.  Indeed, I think a good 50% of the crowd had been invited by them.  We had a good time in a NorCal sort of way…   Sipping a few wines and chatting, and even enjoyed some passable ‘Que.  It was a great night to be outside, as hopefully it will be for several weeks to come.  The event ended early, around 7:00 or so, and our friends circled up to watch the Oregon game.  We took the low road on that one and headed home as it was our bed time, or close enough to call it a day.

Sunday we kicked the day off with a solid 7 mile stroll.  Wow, those long walks are pretty punishing on me.  We were supposed to go 8 miles, but when Doni turned into our subdivision at 7 I wasn’t about to say anything.  My ol’ bones were getting rocked, I was definitely headed for the couch.  As we laid around in recovery mode, it became rather apparent ol’ Kane the kitty wasn’t feeling too good.  We’d been kind of keeping an eye on him for a few days as he seemed even lazier than usual.  Without going into the gory details, yeah he was definitely not well Sunday.  He was bad enough that I took him to the vet, where they ran the usual expensive, useless battery of tests.  They sent him home, but after a very long night he’s back there this morning.  Poor lil’ guy is NOT feeling good!

** RIP Kane, the Big Red Machine.  Quite possibly the best cat ever!  I hope you enjoyed your 13+ years with us.

Yeah I’m slacking, missed another week.  Hey if Ed can go a full month without updates I figure I’m good for a miss here and there too.  We were out of town as it happens, in wonderful Cabo San Lucas.  I don’t really need a reason to go sit in the sun for a weekend, but as it happened we were celebrating my co-worker Josh’s milestone 40th birthday.  Ah to be young.  Good times, but man was it HOT.  Brutal, sweltering, punishing heat.  As soon as I stepped out of the room I’d just start pouring sweat.  Not used to that nasty humidity stuff I guess.  Despite that, we managed to have a great time.  The group as a whole was a bit more “active” than we’re used to, but I guess we got to see lots of stuff that way.  Geez, anybody just want to go lay in the pool?!?!  Some of the group even went to the onsite gym.  Every day.  Come on, that’s just embarrassing.  I’ll be at the buffet if you need me.

Out of like 500 pictures taken in Mexico, I filtered out around half a dozen that are suitable for posting.  The rest will stay safely stored on disc until somebody tries to run for public office I guess.  Other than that, I’ll just jump ahead to this past weekend, boring though it was.  Friday we did…  NOTHING.  We followed that up with a big ol’ day of nothing on Saturday.  We at least thought about doing something, but it didn’t pan out.  I had a lot of work Saturday night and decided to lay low.  Sunday, though, I enjoyed my day.  I got up at the crack of dawn (actually it was pre-dawn now that I think about it,) fired up the smoker and threw on a corned beef I found in the freezer, and a pork butt.  The weather forecast looked pretty good and that just sounded like a good way to spend the afternoon. After everything was all settled in and cooking, we took off on a rather taxing (for me anyway) six mile walk.  That is about 5.5 miles past my limit I think.  My ol’ bones are breaking down.  I’m actually sore today.  Anyway, after that I knocked out a few random chores around the house, (hanging curtains and washing the patio,) then kicked back on the patio and enjoyed the day.  Lots of good sports on the tv, meat on the smoker…  My idea of a good Sunday.  We didn’t even try the beef, but the pork came out quite tasty, if I do say so my darn self.