OK it’s sprinkling, at a rate of about six drops per minute.  There is, in fact, wet stuff falling from the sky however.  This phenomenon has not been seen for well over two months now, it is something to be enjoyed for sure.  As a matter of fact, Teagan and I just went for a two mile walk, it was very refreshing.  The rather unfortunate part of this is that, to read the news, the unexpected precipitation is being caused by the nearby wildfire, which is so large and so hot that it is creating it’s own weather changes.  Seriously, read the weather channel page!  Never heard of such a thing.  Anyway, we are close, if not dangerously so, to the huge Butte Wildfire.  Other than a constant smell of smoke and a loss of solar power, luckily it’s not affecting our day-to-day activities.  Let’s hope it stays that way.

As to our weekend events, it was a full one.  Friday, lame as it may sound, we kicked it at the grocery store.  Whoa, slow down there.  Yeah, we’ve been reduced to that.  They had a wine & cheese tasting, and we were somewhat spent from the work week, so we went with it.  It was, honestly, about as boring as a wine tasting at a grocery store sounds.  We met up with our friend Michael and endured our 4 tasting, then picked up some chicken and headed back to the house.  We threw the hen on the grill, opened another bottle of something-or-another, and enjoyed the evening.  Not much more exciting than the previous venue actually, but at least I was grilling and we weren’t inside a grocery store.

Saturday was a full plate, such as our plates go.  We started off with an hour trek north to Mt. Vernon Winery, just because we haven’t been there in a while.  I’m gonna say it is probably our favorite winery out here so far;  I just wish it wasn’t so far away.  We took a cooler full of picnic feed and enjoyed a glass on their nice patio.  As luck would have it there was some kind of tour group there too, and they had a musician playing tenor sax and singing for our entertainment.  He was so bad I actually enjoyed listening to him.  He was….  “enthusiastic” if nothing else.  I’ll give him style points, and he gave me hope that my chances of an alternative means of employment might not be out of the question after all.  After that we headed back to the home circle, and met up with some friends at the newly opened EDH Brewing.  Honestly, I don’t hold a lot of hope for the future for that place.  But, it was their first day, I’ll easily give them a pass on that one.  They only had two of their own brews on, and the one I had was less than remarkable.  On the possible upside, they do have a nice patio and a few familiar rotating taps.  We had one pint, assured them it was the best thing we’d had in ages, and headed across the street to Mraz for a few of their always-enjoyable products. As if THAT wasn’t enough excitement for one afternoon, we left there and went over Michael’s house to watch the Oregon game.  It was a great time, I felt almost like a sports fan for a while there.  Unfortunately their team lost, but we had a good time.  Actually I slept through most of the second half, but it sounds like they had fun.  Once the game was over I rallied a bit, and joined in on a rousing game of Just Dance 4.  We won’t elaborate on that unfortunate event.  I just don’t know if I’m going to fit in here.

Sunday was a day that will live in infamy, for at least another week or so.  I took my fancy new kayak rig for the inaugural trip down a river, and I was quite nervous and excited for the event.  It ended early, and quite poorly.  There were many rapids involved, along with some moderate to severe skin abrasions, bruises, and a permanently damaged ego.  I will not, at this time, go into details, as much as I’m sure Munkirs wants me to.  I will live to fight another day, if not on that particular river.  Maybe I’m more of the lake-kayak kind of guy.  A delicious carnitas burrito at a nearby restaurant soothed some of the pain, if not the ego part.  Stupid river.

Hope everyone had a fine, relaxing holiday.  We did I suppose.  The “relaxing” qualifier is a bit of a stretch, but I need more activity in my life anyway.  We sort of kicked off the weekend by driving down to the airport to pick up Doni’s sister Jackie on Friday night.  It was pretty late by the time her flight got in so we didn’t do much (if anything) that night.

Saturday we got up early-ish and headed up the hill to Tahoe.  That was a good time as always.  We started off on the south side as usual, with a little shopping and a little relaxing.  After that we branched out from our usual haunts and drove around to the other side of the lake.  It was worth the horrible traffic and long drive I’d say.  The views are really something from over there.  You can look down on Emerald Bay from the road, it’s quite a sight for sure.  If I had to choose between driving up there and looking down on it or taking the boat cruise around it like we did with my family a few weeks ago, I’d probably recommend the boat ride.  Tough call though.  After a bunch of picture-taking and site-seeing, we stopped at a recommended place for some lunch, then headed back.  We took I-80 back to the house, which I’d never done before.  I think it’s faster, if not nearly as scenic.

Sunday the girls hit the outlet malls for a little light shopping, after first dropping me off at nearby Lake Natoma for a little paddling.  I got a new inflatable kayak a few weeks ago, and this was my third or fourth time out on it.  So far I’ve stuck to the nice calm lake water, playing it safe.  I do enjoy it, quite relaxing and makes me feel like I’m doing at least some form of exercise.  The other times I’ve gone the water has been pretty sparsely populated;  Not so on a Saturday.  Either due to the holiday or just the weekend, it was pretty darn crowded.  Manageable though, I definitely enjoyed it.  This weekend I might take it out on the river and see how I do.  If no update next Monday you might want to be mildly concerned.  We wrapped up the day at the house with some tasty ribeyes on the grill.

Monday we met up with some friends in nearby Plymouth for a “progressive picnic.”  It was sponsored by several of the local wineries, and sounded like a good way to spend the holiday.  Apparently everybody else thought so too, it was a bit crowded for my liking.  It effectively consisted of hopping from winery to winery doing some tastings, and each one had some type of food for the “picnic.”  It was a good time, and we got to visit a few new wineries in the process.

We seem to have been experiencing some technical difficulties here on pkenagy.com.  I laboriously type in lengthy, scintillating weekend updates and for some reason they are not showing up.  The primary reason could be because that’s a complete lie, but I’m still investigating.  May be a code bug of some type.

Another perfectly valid reason is that we’ve done nothing of note, followed closely by some odd issue with my picture storage system.  I generally figure, even if I don’t have anything post-worthy, I can at least throw a few pictures out here.  Alas, my super-duper cloud storage system is being a bit temperamental and my photos aren’t sorted right.  The combination of the two issues leaves me uninspired to post anything at all.

Given the lack of a post last week, I suppose I’m somewhat obligated to throw some nonsense out here though.  I can say, without reservation, that weekend was a complete and utter fail.  Just never quite got out the gate.  It started off rather mediocre, ramped up a slight bit Saturday, then slowly and rather painfully fizzled out.  In the words of the great luchador Nacho Libre, “You can’t win ’em all.”  Indeed, Nacho…  Indeed.  By mid-Sunday I’d effectively thrown in the towel, but in a last ditch effort to salvage some kind of a decent day I rolled down to the grocery and picked up some nice looking thick-cut pork chops.  Nothing like a little grilling to turn things around.  Alas, just didn’t have it in me;  They’re still in the ‘fridge.  Ever looked forward to a Monday?  Pretty rare statement right there.

Nacho

We sort of took that week off, on the entertainment front anyway.  We needed to wind down a bit.  Plus all our friends (errr, both of them,) were busy so we were kind of hung out to dry.  We had a moderately entertaining weekend of it anyway though, or so it seemed.  Friday Donette was out of town, so I sort of hung out at the house.  I did crash a dinner party (with both of my friends) and had a good time of that.  Called it a night early, which is by no means unusual.

Saturday the wife was flying in, so I straightened up the house a bit, then drove down to Sacramento to pick her up at the airport.  I had big lunch date plans in mind for us, at Pizza Rock.  We’ve been there once and really liked it, so I decided to seize the opportunity to hit it again while we were “downtown.”  Alas, a few loops around the block indicated parking was going to be more of a hassle than I cared to put up with.  So, we headed to our old standby, Burgers & Brew.  Pretty much the only place we go down there.  Hey, it’s good, what can I say.  We came to regret our decision to sit outside on the patio, but other than that it was a fine lunch as always.

Sunday we decided to get out and about a bit.  After running through our options, we decided to load up the beach gear and head to nearby Folsom Lake.  It was a hot afternoon, but not really unbearable, and we’ve got a sun shade.  Things got off to a rough start pretty much from the get-go.  For one thing, there is darn near no water in the “lake.”  The vast majority of the shore access is reduced to steep drop-offs where the water used to be, much too steep to walk down.  We finally managed to get the car to a mostly isolated spot, reasonably close to the water, and parked it.  As soon as we opened the door Teagan bounded for the water and we quickly discovered why the spot was isolated:  It was a gooey stretch of mucky black mud instead of sand.  The dog didn’t seem to care, she blundered right through it and into the water.  Then, no sooner than I got out of the car, I saw a big boxer headed down the shore line towards us.  I don’t really let Teagan interact with other dogs (much to Donette’s dismay,) and I didn’t feel like experimenting this particular day.  Her meet-and-greets have about a 50/50 chance of going bad, and the “bad” 50 just ain’t worth it to me, especially with a beast the size of the one heading towards us.  So, anyway, I kind of panicked and the first thing I thought was to open the car door and call her.  Well, being a good girl, she ran right up the beach and jumped in the front seat.  Then the back seat.  Then the front.  Then the back.  All while dripping mud and water all over the interior.  Yeah, good start to the day.  Things went generally better from there.  She swam until she was thoroughly exhausted, which was the main purpose of the trip.  We sat under the sunshade and enjoyed the afternoon, also a key part of the day.  After that we headed back home and grilled a quite nice ribeye and watched the baseball game.  Not a bad day all in all.  We can get the car detailed another day.

Well now my updates are all messed up, dang it.  Miss one week and that’s what happens.  It’s been crazy-busy though.  The family came out last weekend and did a little NorCal touring with us, which was a great time.  There’s really not a lot to do around here, but we managed to hit what sites there are.  We traveled to Tahoe, Placerville, Folsom, Amador, and the Jelly Belly factory in Fairfield while they were here.  (OK, I sat out the Jelly Belly tour…)  Whew, that’s probably more than we’ve done since moving here.  I don’t have a whole lot to type, I’m still a bit out of sorts.  Luckily I do have some pics to share though.