That weekend was spent celebrating Donette’s birthday. Yep, the whole weekend, starting Friday. It was often, and annoyingly, interrupted by work, but we did what we could. We kicked it off on Friday at our standard haunt, the Foothill Beer Temple. Hey, what can I say about that? Sort of like last Friday, and the one before, and the one before, and… You get the idea. After that we headed back home, but stopped at another almost-regular spot, the Little Italian Place. It was only 5:30 so we were able to score a table and enjoy a nice pasta dinner. After that, back home to the couch to suffer the carb-coma.

Saturday, we drove all the way out to Roseville, to try the Top Golf place with some friends. I’ll admit I wasn’t too supportive of this idea. For one thing, I don’t enjoy golf. Secondly, I had to work all night, so I had that looming over my head. Both counts worked out ok though. As it turned out, everybody I bothered to watch was (nearly) as bad as myself, and work… well just not much to do about that anyway. I even managed to win one of the games, albeit the one where you just blasted the ball and hoped for the best. The “skill” games, I didn’t fare quite so well on. I may have been suffering from my extreme lack of an attention span by that time too. Eh, I’d go back for sure. It was fun and certainly something different.

Sunday, of course, was football and couch day. We did go out to a tasty breakfast at El Dorado Cafe, which I believe was the first time since moving to this house. Hasn’t changed much, thankfully. I’ll have to say, I didn’t think the chicken fried steak was as good as the Diamond Springs Hotel entry, but I cleaned my plate so it must not have been too bad. After that we rolled (literally) back home and watched the games. I threw together a pot of Green Chili that came out passable, and that wrapped up the day.

Monday was the actual birthday. This, of course, was rather limited in scope due to that silly work thing. I did make an effort to multi-task though, starting with a breakfast frittata. That went over pretty well, I’ll have to file that one in the “keeper” section. After a day of fun at my desk had concluded, we headed “downtown” to the big Placerville to see what was happening. As usual, not a whole heck of a lot. Mondays are even slower days than most down there. We kicked around in some of our favorite spots, then looked around for a dinner spot. First choice was the Thai spot we’d never been to, but a quick glance through the window indicated that was a no-go; Too crowded. We thought about a few other familiar places but ended up getting back in the car and driving a little bit to Smith Flat House. Worth the drive for sure. I don’t think we’ve been there since my mom visited last year; we should make an effort to put it in the main rotation. Can’t really go there too often though… It’s a small menu and I’m pretty sure it hasn’t changed since we last went there. I can only eat so many steaks. (Just kidding, I could eat steak every night.)

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