We’re snowed in out west! OK not really, but there is a dusting on the ground, and it is inhumanly cold. I’m sure I’ve mentioned this, but just to reiterate, we moved too high. I don’t even remember where we’re at; 2,000’+ I believe. All I remember is the listing advertised it as “below the snow line.” Another lie, tsk. Could be worse I suppose, but at the same time I am absolutely sure it could be better. Since our last move, I’ve come to know we are now considered “West Slope” dwellers, whereas our last house was “Valley.” Lessoned learned, too late I guess.

Not much to do last weekend, too dang cold to go outside. I did finally get the top put on the Jeep, so at least we have the option of travel should it be needed. Case in point, we took it up to Bones Friday for our regularly scheduled “end of week” celebration. Didn’t stay too long, but it was nice to get out of the house. After that we scurried back home and Donette made a tasty cheese tray, which we snacked on while watching “Bullet Train.” Seemed like a reasonably exciting move, but I fell asleep half way though.

Saturday I again hopped in the Jeep and headed west to the local butcher shop. They had a shipment of A5 Wagyu beef in, and I had my eye on a bit for our upcoming New Years Eve celebration. What ensued would be the reference to the “stay in school” title. Man, I don’t know if it was the exorbitant price or what, but I got a bit rattled. I told the girl I wanted “8 oz.” After a brief discussion on when we were eating it, how many people was it for, blah blah, she picked out a piece and threw it on the scale, which read “.5 lb.” She seemed pretty pleased, while I said, “I think I need a little more.” Well, she says, you have to be careful, it is very rich, 8 oz is about right for 4 people. Yep, right, I need some more. (Did she not hear me right, and why is she giving me that funny look?) Somebody else asked her something, and I jumped on the chance to ask another girl if she could put another piece on the scale. She obliged, and it says “.8 lb.” Perfect, thank you! Grabbed a few pork chops for good measure, and drove home in my blissful ignorance. It was a few days later when it finally struck me that, due to the idiosyncrasies of the stupid imperial measurement system, .5 lbs is, in fact, 8 oz. I inadvertently ended up with just over 13 ounces. I am an advocate for the metric system myself, I like the round numbers. Next time maybe I’ll order .2 kg, or maybe 200 grams, etc, and see what they say. (I would likely be asked to leave and come back when I could talk proper.) For evening entertainment, we put on Bullet Train again. I fell asleep again.

Sunday we got up to the beautiful snow blanketing our yard, and still coming down hard. Blech. Double-blech. It was deep enough that I had to get out and shovel a path for the pups, which Quinn seemed appreciative of. (Nacho, not so much. She ain’t getting off the porch, path or no.) After that it was an afternoon of football and the aforementioned pork chops. Pretty much a standard Sunday, so the snow didn’t affect us too much. Still a little bit out there too, but it’s melting, if not quite fast enough.

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I guess it’s that time of the year again. Hopefully everybody had a good Thanksgiving, I know we did. We went to a large gathering “down the hill” and enjoyed a huge meal with a bunch of friends. Outstanding meal. My favorite was the smoked turkey I believe. Remarkably, there are several in the group that intentionally avoid it. I will never quite grasp that bizarre trait, but hey, more for me. Other than that, well… We have watched a lot of football and done some shopping and… Yeah not much. We were supposed to be out camping this week, but called it off last minute due to the rain. There is only about two weeks of rain per year here, and of course it happens to coincide with our trip that’s been planned for months. Go figure.

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We didn’t do anything this weekend. I worked Saturday night. We watched football Sunday. The dogs barked at some stuff.

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It got cold up here! (Over here, out here, down here, whatever… I’m not a geography major.) Our poor garden went from big healthy plants, full of tomatoes and peppers, to a bunch of dead sticks. Time to open the gate and let the deer feast I guess. Supposedly the tomatillos will come back next year, but I am guessing not. They certainly don’t look like they survived. We have grand plans of tearing down the beds and replacing this winter anyway. (Yeah, we’ll see how that works out.)

Well, my scheme of jotting down a few notes during the week to remember the highlights didn’t really work out. Not only can I not remember the highlights without notes, I can’t even remember to take notes. Tsk. Luckily this past weekend we didn’t do much, so it really ain’t that hard to recall. The weekend kicked off Friday with an appointment for family Christmas photos. Yeah, really. The rescue we got our little ‘uns from does an annual fundraiser, and it’s kind of fun to get the dogs in for some portraits. And when I say “kind of fun,” I mean an anxiety-filled 30 minutes of complete mayhem and chaos. Yeah, you can tell Quinn & Nacho to “sit, stay,” all you want; They’ve never heard those words before so it doesn’t have a huge effect. Put a few little holiday costumes on them to confuse them even more, and you’ve got a real recipe for mayhem on your hands. Quinny didn’t bite anybody, and Nacho didn’t faint, so I declare it a victory. Hopefully they snuck in a few good shots, we’ll know in a few weeks. Their buddy Renfield joined in the fun also, so we went over to his house afterwards to decompress for a few hours, then back up the hill.

Saturday and Sunday were spent out at Hart to Hart vineyards, visiting their annual Christmas fair event. Wait… Two days worth? Yeah, it just sort of worked out that way. A friend of ours had a booth there, so we went out to see her wares on Saturday. The event was pretty well attended, considering the weather was a little overcast and just a bit on the chilly side. I will admit that although I was certainly drawn to our friend’s top-notch selection of totally adorable Christmas baubles, I also held a strong interest in the food trucks that were in attendance. Among them was Cousins Maine Lobster, which I’ve wanted to try for quite some time. I gotta say, I was just a touch underwhelmed. To be fair, I’ve never had a “lobster roll,” so I didn’t really have much of an idea what it was. I’ll admit though, I had built it up in my head to be something a bit more dramatic than some lobster meat on a roll. Live and learn, as they say. Don’t get me wrong; The lobster was delicious, and I’d call it a plenty generous portion, I just thought it was something “different.” (In which case, I would have complained about there being too much filler and not enough lobster.) They did offer two different styles though, maybe I’ll try the other next time I see them.

Sunday we got up ready for our standard day of NFL games on the couch. And, indeed, we watched the early game at 6:30, and then of course the Chiefs at 10:00. We enjoyed the Chiefs win, and then noticed it had warmed up to a nice, 60-degree sunny day outside. It looked so nice out we actually hauled ourselves off the couch, put the top down on the car, and headed out to the Christmas fair again. Effectively just a repeat of our Saturday, but with nicer weather. Oh, and we did buy a few things Sunday. I got some alpaca socks to keep my lil’ feet warm, some cheeses, and a few packages of peanut brittle. Solid event!

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Ah, another pseudo-holiday is upon us. Good ol’ Halloween. One of our favorites in years past, but not so much anymore. Another casualty of moving to the hills; Nobody is going to walk up a 1/4 mile of pitch-black gravel to see if that crazy old couple has any candy. And, they’d be disappointed, because we don’t. We do actually have some rather modest decorations this year, consisting of a single pumpkin somebody gave us sitting (uncarved) on the steps. Shows a little effort, I suppose.

That was a bit of a fun weekend, based on my pretty low bar of “fun” these days. Basically, leaving the house more than once is considered a wild, exciting weekend in my book. And man, did we ever tear it up these last few days! We went out not only Friday, but Saturday & Sunday as well! Surprised I’m not still in bed after all that mayhem. We actually got invited to go over to a friends’ house this evening to pass out candy, but we had to pump the brakes. Four days in a row?!?!? Yeah, I think not. To break down the details of that rather egregious exaggeration, our big night out Friday was happy hour at the place around the corner from our house. Turned out they were gearing up for a big costume party, so we only made it about 30 minutes before scurrying back to the safety of the house. The girl waiting on us was nice enough to say “It’d be a lot more fun with you guys here!” Well, thanks for the misplaced sentiment, but no, no it wouldn’t. Back at the house, we enjoyed a nice fire outside for a while, then Donette made a new pasta dish for dinner. I bought the spicy Italian sausage from Kings for the first time… Holy smokes it was, indeed, SPICY! Way too much for me. I made it through the meal with some help from a dishtowel and a handful of heartburn pills, but I think I’ll stick with the toned-down version next time.

Saturday we exercised our new-found interest in college football games once again. This is mostly the result of having nothing better to do, and it passes the time. Can’t tell you what games we watched other than Oregon, but we saw several. For dinner we traveled down to the big city and met some friends. (“Big City” being Placerville, not Sacramento.) We joined them at the Hangtown Cantina, one of our favorite dining spots when we make the journey all the way into town. (A rather daunting trip of eight miles or so.) Enjoyed some awesome Mexican food, hung out for a while, then headed back home for a few semi-scary movies.

Sunday turned out to be some fantastic weather. It’s going to turn chilly soon I imagine, so given the Chief’s bye week and limited interest in the other games, we decided to get out in the convertible for a drive. It was indeed a fantastic day for a road trip, if there is such a thing. We ended up heading to Sutter Creek, which is about a 45 minute drive down some nice winding roads. When we got there we went wine tasting at Yorba & Baiocchi wineries, kicked around the nice little town a bit, then headed back home. On the way back we took an unscheduled left turn and grabbed an early dinner at a pizza place, which was thankfully rather empty for a Sunday evening. Guess we were a little bit before the rush, but it’s usually packed anyway. We headed back home with best intentions of watching the evening football game, but I fell asleep rather quickly and missed the majority of it. Who won anyway?

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