Good weekend, if a little chilly. We voyaged east over the mountains to catch a concert up at Tahoe for entertainment. Wow, it was cold up there. Being a mountain town, in the middle of December, I suppose that is probably to be expected. It’s quite a shock to the system though, especially for being only an hour away from our house. There was about 3 feet of snow on the ground too, which seemed to have the local ski community buzzing. Fine weekend, but I have to say I was more than ready to get back down the hill and see temps over freezing.

As for the show, it was great, and I guess the weekend in general. We kicked it off Friday night with a great dinner at a place called The Sage Room. It was in a casino, which I am generally against, but given the weather I was more than happy to keep the walking to a minimum. We split a ribeye, which was fantastic. After dinner Michael and I hit this fancy cigar bar, which was a nice little treat. I very rarely have a cigar these days and wasn’t entirely sure I was up to one this particular evening. But once I read the description of the place as the “newest hip ultra-lounge in Lake Tahoe,” I figured I pretty much had to go, since that describes me perfectly. Meanwhile, the girls gambled away down in the casino, and did pretty fair. Or not bad, at least.

Saturday, we went over to a friend’s house for brunch. They’ve got a fancy house up in the mountains that they just moved into recently, so I finally got to see it. Fancy indeed. Wow they were in some deep snow though, poor guy had to move several feet of that horrible stuff off his driveway, so we’d have a place to park. We had entirely way too much food to eat, so we went back and caught a quick nap, then it was off to the concert. We were seeing a group called The Dead South. It was sort of a random ticket purchase some time ago; I’m not really familiar with them, but the ticket price was good, and we always have fun in Tahoe, so we figured what the heck. It ended up being a great show, I really like them. Not sure exactly how you would describe the music… Power-Bluegrass? Speed-Folk? Got me. They pulled off whatever-it-was very well though. Certainly in the “fast and loud” category, but with their own unique sound. I’d see them again if I get the chance.

This guy opened for them, Willy Tea Taylor. Nice little acoustic set.

And this is a song from The Dead South.

And a few pictures from me.

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Eh that was a wasted weekend. All work and no play make a dull weekly update, as the saying goes. I had Sunday off, but didn’t get home until around 9:30 so I just fell asleep then, even slept through the Chiefs game. Wah Wah. What can ya do. Donette made some delicious curry soup for dinner, and that comprised my weekend entertainment. I took some pics, that’s all I got.

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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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One “major holiday” in the books. Few more to get through. Hopefully everyone enjoyed their Thanksgiving, we sure did. We ended up over a friend’s house, sponging off their family event, as we usually do out here. I’d say it was a pretty standard-issue turkey-day; Far too much food, but all of it so delicious I had to shovel it all in. Even the oven-roasted turkey came out well, if a touch tardy. OK, a lot tardy, but we’ll leave that part out. We enjoyed a smoked bird also, which was my preference anyway.

The rest of the weekend was spent in recovery mode. Our big outing was a drive down to El Dorado Hills on Saturday, to purchase the “special of the week” at my favorite grocery store. Marinated artichokes were on sale, regularly $5.50 per jar, but for two days only they were $1 per jar! WOW!!! We bought the last six jars. And yes, this is what qualifies as excitement in my life these days.

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The nice weather is still holding out in NorCal. It could stay like this all the way through winter and I’d be just fine. Not getting my hopes up for that. I took advantage of the pleasant temps by tackling a slightly overdue outdoor project, hanging some LED string lights around the porch. By “overdue,” I mean we bought these lights at the last house we lived in, and they moved up here still in the box. Hey, I like to put a lot of thought into the install process. As it turned out, and this is very rarely the case, there wasn’t much thought needed. The lights were spaced 2′ apart, and the rafters under the eave where I wanted to hang them are 2′ apart. The light strand is 48′, and from the outlet where they are plugged in to the corner of the porch is 48′. You just don’t see that work out every day in my world. Of course any project, no matter how minor, is not without difficulty for me. The big time waster in this case was the power outlet, which was conveniently located right where I wanted it. It was well located, but it didn’t have any power. Rats. Thanks to my 9 year degree in electricity, I quickly ascertained it was a GFCI outlet. Problem solved, it must have tripped. Except it wouldn’t reset. Well, that happens when they have no power, so I went through the familiar process of resetting all the breakers (and all the clocks, etc) in the house. Yeah, one day I’ll label those breakers while doing that… Another day. Anyway, after that, still no power. The GFCI must have failed, time for a trip to the hardware store. Luckily, just before leaving for the store, I made one more wild guess; The mystery light switch inside the front door that we’ve never figured out. Yep that was it. Turn the switch on, reset the outlet, and I was in business. Geez, who puts a switch on one outlet? Seems a little odd to me. I guess that was before the days of just plugging in a wifi-enabled plug and using that, which is my use case here. From there, it was just a matter of completing the tedious process of drilling pilot holes, screwing in the hooks, and hanging the lights. It would have been a relatively quick job, but it was hampered by my rather extreme aversion to heights. Each step had to be done with one hand, while the other hand remained firmly planted on the nearest structural board. No matter how unlikely, I could not shake the feeling that I was somehow going to lose my balance, tumble off the step stool, over the railing, and end up horribly disfigured on the ground 30′ below. OK, maybe more like 12′, but it looked like 30 whenever I glanced down. It probably took me 3 hours to complete the whole length, which admittedly did include frequent breaks to check the 49ers score. I was so pleased with eventual outcome that I decided to continue on with the second strand we have, down the back side of the porch. That section got interrupted by the Chief’s game, but I’ll get the rest finished soon.

Other than that home improvement project, it was an uneventful weekend. We were pup-sitting our friend Renfield, so we mostly stayed home and kept an eye on him. He and Quinn really go at it, they are quite the pair. They will be outside for so long sometimes you start to get worried about them, but invariably when you look out the window you’ll see them running circles at top speed around the back yard. Nacho, well, not so much. She just stares at them from a safe distance and wiggles in excitement. Can’t quite seem to figure out that she might have fun if she joined them. Oh, Nacho. We made a crockpot full of lentil soup to go with the Chief’s game, which was a success. (I’ll omit the lemon next time, it was overwhelming and kinda weird.) And that was about it for that weekend.

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