Man, my little website has been getting an absolute deluge of spam lately.  It all gets filtered to a trash bucket by the super-duper Askimet plugin, but it sort of annoys me all the same.  Last week when it got up over 300 comments per day, I finally started blocking whole ranges, mostly in Latin America and Asia.  A few still come in though, and every now and then I’m so bored I like to give them a quick scan to see if there are any that particularly amuse me.  (And there always is.)  Some of my favorites today:

“The purchases I make are entirely based on these articles.”

“Well done article that. I’ll make sure to use it wisely.”

And my personal favorite, from my good friends at “Senior Life Insurance No Exam” in Florida:  “I can’t hear anything over the sound of how awesome this article is.”  Man they got good taste, I’ll give ’em that.

Well that was a waste of a weekend.  Instead of going on my annual Easter Float Trip, I stayed home and did one whole lot of absolutely nothing.  Sulked a bit maybe.  Donette, meanwhile, was in KC yucking it up with family and friends.  It looked like she had a good time, and the weather looked great.  (I’ll take the credit for that.  Had I gone on Float Trip I’m sure it would have been miserable as always.)  When she got back Sunday night we went to dinner at Burgers & Brew in Sacramento.  Good hamburgers simply are not available in our neighborhood, so I try and stop by this place every time I go to the airport.  Worth it every time, too.  Other than that, I honestly didn’t leave the subdivision all weekend.  Lots of park-time with Teagan, an epic battle with the Roomba (which I won,) and several hours listening to the baseball games on the patio while grilling.

Donette’s home, normalcy has been restored

Ahhhh, the weather continues to improve out here.  That was one fine weekend, and I’d like to think we actually got some mileage out of it.  Friday we kicked it off with happy hour on the patio at Relish Burger with a few acquaintances.  We didn’t stay long, just wanted to sit in the sun for a bit.  After that we headed home to catch the Royals daily drubbing.  For dinner Donette whipped up some nightmarish concoction of Skyline Chili and chips.  It was actually quite good, at least until midnight or so.

Saturday was so nice out we decided to go for a hike.  We got Teagan all harnessed up and headed out relatively early, there was still a bit of a morning chill when we started.  We began with our standard 3-mile route, but were enjoying the weather so much we ended up veering off the usual path.  That took us on a scenic trip past some ridiculously nice houses, and with some nice views of Folsom Lake too.  We ended up with a total of 5.5 miles, which totally exhausted us for the rest of the day.  (And Teagan too, remarkably.)  When we’d rested up a bit, we headed over to a friend’s house for some delicious grilled fish tacos.  Solid dinner, then we put in some patio time for the rest of the evening.

Sunday once again brought a sunny and 70 forecast.  After not a whole lot of thought, we decided to head out on a motorcycle ride.  The wind was a bit uncomfortable when we took off, but once we got off the mountain-top we live on it was quite tolerable.  We headed out to Villa Toscano winery, which is about thirty minutes from our house.  They do a nice (and more importantly, free) pasta lunch on the weekends, so this made for a very nice destination.  We loitered there for a few hours, soaking in some sun and checking out the grounds, then enjoyed the ride back home.  Once there, I (again) ignored my ever-growing task list and sat on the back patio for the rest of the afternoon.

It’s warming up rapidly here, I think the summer might be a bit much for me.  Already hitting the 80’s and it’s early April?  Bad sign.  I’ll take it for now though.  Friday, however, was a bone-chilling high of 62 so we had to retreat indoors for our Friday night date.  We met up at Ruff Haus and used our coupons the guy at New Glory gave us last weekend.  Can’t beat a quality hotdog for dinner.  After that we went home and played the “spot the difference” game on Wii.  We are nothing if not easily entertained, I’ll tell you what.  We played that silly game for over two hours, culminating in our second highest score.  A productive Friday night to be sure.

Saturday it warmed up considerably.  Unfortunately we had shopping to do.  I took a solo trip down to the grocery and stocked up on a few items, then Donette joined me and we trekked west to the dreaded outlet mall.  I’ve never been convinced of the actual deals at the outlets, but at least you can get everything you’re looking for in one spot.  We worked in a little exercise too, that’s a heck of a lot of walking.  On the way back to the house we stopped at Relish Burger to enjoy the patio for a bit, then rolled on home.  If we did anything entertaining that evening, the details escape me at the moment.

Sunday the warming trend continued;  We woke to a very pleasant morning.  I decided to lace up my new-ish hiking boots and go for a walk, and Teagan was more than eager to join me.  We took our standard 3-mile route, but in a rather jarring bout of craziness I decided to walk it in the reverse direction.  You can no doubt imagine the excitement this curveball threw into our usually mundane stroll.  All in all an uneventful hike, but I do like the trail.  It has some great views of the area, and we usually come across some kind of wildlife.  This day, for instance, we ran across a big wild turkey.  If it didn’t take every bit of both hands to restrain Teagan, I would have liked to get a video of that encounter.  I think the stupid bird was taunting her, it just kept running in front of us.  Teagan kept looking back at me like “I don’t know what the heck THAT thing is, but it most definitely needs killed.”  She wasn’t the same the rest of the walk, she kept diving into the bushes in search of that huge weird thing.  After we got home, I fired up the Weber and threw on some ribs.  I left them on for 4.5 hours, effectively using up the rest of my day.  They came out quite passable, especially considering my usual rib disasters.

Teagan taking a breather at the top of the hill.

We got all crazy this weekend and actually left the confines of El Dorado Hills.  TWICE.  Let it not be said that we aren’t the Brave Explorers out here in our new environment.  Most of this craziness was due to all the rain we got over the weekend.  Can’t ‘que, can’t sit outside, can’t walk the dog…  Might as well drive.  So, Saturday we decided to go visit some of the local breweries.  One might point out that’s the same thing we did last weekend, but that place was hardly local; That darn near qualified as a road trip.  We started our afternoon at New Glory in Sacramento.  They’re relatively new in town, and not very widely available, but I enjoy their Mighty Eighth at Ruff Haus on my sporadic visits there.  (They were so pleased to hear that, they gave me a few coupons for free stuff at Ruff Haus, score!)  We shared a few samples there, then moved on to Hoppy Brewing.  After some mild negotiating, we convinced the other patrons to switch from the hockey game to the Mules basketball game.  I’m honestly not sure who was more incredulous;  Me, that they were actually watching hockey, or them, that these odd interlopers wanted to take over the TV for a D2 basketball game.  In the end, Donette’s UCM tee-shirt was the trump card and we got to watch the exciting second half of the Mule’s victory.  We also enjoyed some fine grub.  I’d liken this place a lot to my beloved 75th Street;  Very good food, a bunch of regular customers, and “decent” beer.  For the most part we just enjoyed our lunch, then moved on to American River in Rancho Cordova.  This place certainly lacked style points, stuck in the middle of a warehouse district with no windows.  (Hey, what would you look at anyway…  The other warehouses?)  They were nice, informative people though, and I did enjoy the 2x IPA I tried there.

Sunday we once again technically left EDH city limits, but only to do our bi-weekly shopping in neighboring Folsom.  What a DRAG, I despise shopping.  We were perilously low on staples at the house though, so we had to suck it up and make the full rounds.  Trader Joe’s, Bed Bath & Beyond, the pet store, and Costco.  OK that doesn’t sound like much, but it was taxing.  We could have done with stops at Home Depot and the grocery too, but I was spent.