Another quarantine-ish weekend. Lame. We did have some friends up for a nice happy hour Friday I guess. A little dinner, a few games of pool, that kind of stuff. It’s hard to get people to come out here to the boondocks very often, but we enjoy our infrequent visitors when they come. It must have really taken the wind out of us though, because Saturday we didn’t do a thing. Well, we did go out to lunch I guess. On a whim, we decided to roll over to “downtown” Placerville to kick around a bit, and decided on Cascada for lunch. We’ve been there several times, it’s pretty solid for around here anyway. The only downside is the whole current outdoor-dining thing. C’mon, it’s 100 degrees out. I guess at least I wasn’t shuttling hot plates around like the poor wait staff, but geez it was hot. They put up some tents for a little shade, but that’s just stifling. Oh well, I guess we enjoyed some tasty enchiladas at any rate. It really knocked us out for the rest of the day though. The remainder of the afternoon and evening was spent on the couch watching B (maybe more like C- or D) horror movies and several 70’s Kung-Fu flicks. Quality entertainment.

Sunday we went over to a friend’s house for a big pool party. She’s only 7, but knows how to throw a pretty good bash. Plus, there was free ice cream and cake and stuff, so we weren’t about to miss it. There was swimming, tattoos, and a photo booth, so we were amply entertained. It was another hot day, but the pool definitely helped out. Not a bad way to spend a Sunday afternoon.

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We made a little go of things this weekend, but for the most part we remain on the dreaded “lockdown.” I’m not entirely sure this isn’t by choice more than anything else. We mixed things up a little though. Friday, for instance, we headed over to a friends house for what was intended to be a swimming party. It was just way too hot though, so we ended up grilling some dinner and hanging out in the a/c. Wow, it is hot.

Saturday, exhausted from our wild Friday out, we locked back down at the ranch. Eh, I had to work that night so probably for the best. We renewed our mlb.com subscription as always, so at least we have bad baseball to keep us occupied at home. Or, at least as much as we can watch with our sketchy Internet service. Ugh. We actually had to bump our service up a tier because it wouldn’t even work at first. Insult to injury. If you’re keeping track, I am now paying exactly twice as much, for 1/30th the speed I had at the last house. Ouch.

Sunday we declared an official Sunday-Funday. In the not-so-distant past, this was effectively a weekly event. Recently though, between work and the black plague, they’ve been few and far between. Time to jump back in the saddle. Well, maybe ease back in would be more accurate. Some friends picked us up and we went out on a little local wine tasting. We ended up at three places, none of which we’d been to before. Just really expanding our vino horizons. It was hot, yeah, but not miserable. They all had decent shade, and we made do. The “rules” are still a little off-putting; You have to have a reservation, and of course the masks when paying and stuff. It was good to get out and about all the same though.

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I gotta say, this weather just sucks the life out of me. It’s wicked hot. The evenings are “OK” I suppose, but the afternoons are very nearly unbearable. Guess it’s here for the summer, according to the extended forecast (sunny and hot, one day after another,) there won’t be a change in the near future.

The house project continues, very very slowly. We actually hung a TV finally, although it’s not actually connected to anything. The little “quirks” continue to pop up also. The A/C drain plugged and ran through the ceiling. The A/C itself is barely keeping the house cool, and at a price I don’t care to discuss. (I will say, as a little teaser, our monthly bill was TWICE our annual bill at the last house. Yes, you read that right.) The well pump tripped a breaker and left us without water for an evening until we figured it out. Probably more, I’ve just buried it in my subconscious. However, I continue to thoroughly enjoy my shooting range out back, and we’ve been wearing out the billiards room downstairs.

And now I guess I’ll just throw out a few pictures. Quite a bit of food, as usual. I guess we eat a lot. We also joined a meal service, and we’ve been enjoying that. Believe it or not, it is significantly cheaper than our grocery bill so it’s been working out pretty well.

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Well, we are still unpacking, cleaning, painting, hanging drapes & pictures, and the rest of the extreme drudgery associated with moving. Really, I am not sure there is anything worse. Maybe working while you’re trying to do it all I guess, yeah that makes it even worse. Has to get done though, I suppose. This weekend our project of choice was hanging a “proslat” wall system out in the garage. I bought this thing on a whim quite a while ago, and the large boxes sat on the garage floor of the last house ever since. How long ago? Well, my Costco order history goes back two years and I couldn’t find it. We figured we might need it here so we threw it in with the “move” pile. Sure enough, it is much needed. It took us all day Saturday and part of Sunday, but we got it done and it came out looking like the pictures; Can’t ask for more than that, especially where me and tools are involved. Also had a service guy come out and look at the dishwasher, and an electrician came to quote a generator hookup. Oh boy. Good times. We celebrated the relative victory of our proslat install with a little time on my back porch shooting range to wrap up the weekend. Now that, I must say, is a good finish to the weekend if nothing else.

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Well we are back up and running, albeit in a rather degraded manner. As feared, my new Internet service is, by no small stretch, what I am used to. For the first time since the inception of pkenagy.com way back in the Texas days, my site is remotely hosted. Not cool. It keeps me up at night. But, I guess that is just the way it is, at least until a new provider comes into the neighborhood. (And by “neighborhood,” I mean 3 houses on a gravel road. Yeah, not gonna happen.) I had no small amount of trouble getting it to work on the new host either. It seems to be geared towards creating a new website, and there was no skipping through their not-so-helpful scripts. I finally did have to create an all new site, then deleted it all and moved mine to the remaining folders. No bueno.

If the Internet was the worst thing about the move I guess I could just suck it up, but I am not sure it really is. There are considerable improvements to be made to the house itself, and the bills are mounting rapidly. A lot of big-ticket items are looming: The house needs painted, the a/c is just barely keeping up, the lawn is non-existent… What have we done. Oh there are pluses also, to be sure. It is super quiet… No more redneck cars racing up and down the street behind us. And, despite being only about 20 miles from our last house, it is noticeably cooler. I think it may just work out for the better, if not in the next week or so.

Despite the long down time, I really don’t have a lot of material to work with. Moving is just not interesting subject matter, even by my low standards. More like tortuous, actually. We did enjoy our holiday weekend over at a friends house, swimming and sunning. Everybody needs pool friends.

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