I’m shooting for an on-time post this week!  Gotta set your goals high.  Since I didn’t really do anything all weekend, that should be pretty attainable.  Case in point, Friday night Donette went to a play with friends, so I sat home on the couch and watched the Royals game.  Boring, but not as boring as that event usually is.  It helped immensely that A) the weather was finally nice enough to watch the game on the back patio, and B) it was a quite exciting game for once.  (At least the ending.)  It was sort of the perfect crime too:  The weird water-break issue thing flooding the outfield caused just enough of a delay to keep me up until a respectable time, so I could actually say I was up past 9:00 on a Friday.

Saturday, I’m not too sure what we did all day, but it led up to an eventual epic dinner.  We went over to a friend’s house in the neighborhood and threw a 3+ lb tomahawk steak on the grill.  Now that was a hunk of steak.  It took at least 30 minutes to get it cooked.  We threw on some shrimp & scallops to go with it, and a few potatoes and salad just for looks.  Great dinner.  Any minor quibbles?  Oh, but of course.  I will say, I’ve caved to the whole gas grill scene.  I use mine 90% of the time I cook outside.  But for a nice steak, I have to say I still prefer a charcoal grill.  We tried the “smoke bomb” technique on his grill, but I couldn’t really detect any smoke flavor at all.  I have been wanting to try them though…  And now I can say I have.  The steak was delicious all the same.

Sunday, as the case has been of late, I sat around and waited for work, which is generally at 6:00 in the evening.  I occupied my time fiddling with my new DVR set up, which is going quite nicely.  I am pretty sure I’ve rambled about this before, but the current status of our TV entertainment is an antenna hooked up to pull local channels.  It works fine, gets everything I need.  I added the Plex Pass recently for the reasonable cost of $3 a month, and that gives me recording ability.  I had about 15 episodes of Gunsmoke queued up so that passed the time nicely.  My work went as well as could be expected.  (I think I can safely say that now without jinxing myself.)  So well, in fact, that there was still enough time in the day left for dinner.  After a brief consultation among some amigos, we decided on the recently opened Boulevard 41 just around the corner from us.  So recent that they were only sorta-kinda-almost open actually.  They’ve still got some kinks to work out, but our pizza was very good and I guess that’s all that really matters.  They also brought us out a few plates of complimentary appetizers to try, all of which were excellent.  (I think they noticed my ample belly and profiled me as a potential high-value customer.)

Things have been quite busy out west, and not in the “fun” sense.  I need to squeeze out ten minutes to update this every week though.  Priorities, blah blah.  We’ve had a decent run of activities too.  A few concerts, a few cookouts, and a few trips.  This last weekend was all in my “two mile circle” though.  Friday we ventured up to Slingshots to play a few games of pool.  I should probably add that place to our regular list of entertainment.  It covers all my criteria nicely:  Cheap, entertaining, and cheap.  The rooster walking around the place doesn’t hurt either.

Saturday we took the pups to the dog park for some exercise.  They seemed to enjoy it, and it was a nice day for us to be outside too.  Afterwards we all went to the Saloon for lunch on their patio.  We picked that spot because the pups can go there, and they even have a dog menu for them.  They enjoyed their plates of scrambled eggs and chicken.  Matter of fact, it looked better than my sandwich, I was slightly jealous.  Later in the day we took them home and went to a fund raiser at the dog rescue up in Shingle Springs.  I guess the idea was to bring your dogs to the event, but they were worn out, and it was far too hot for them to be walking around the parking lot.  Matter of fact, it was too hot for me to be walking around a parking lot, but we stuck around for quite a while.  They had all kinds of junk for sale, (yes we ended up with some of it…) and a decent blues band to entertain everybody.  Felt a little bad for the band, it was easily 100 degrees out, but they held up well.

Sunday the usual suspects went out wine tasting at some of the nearby favorites.  I opted out though.  I enjoyed a peaceful afternoon on the patio with the dogs, listening to some tunes and smoking some pork.  Not a bad day to waste a Sunday.  Everybody came over for dinner, and that wrapped up the weekend.

I will do my level best to add some text soon.

Good weekend out west.  We took a few days off and headed up to Tahoe for the annual Celebrity Golf Tourney.  Our friends go up there every year and have always come back saying how much fun it was, so we decided to give it a go.  That pretty much covered the whole weekend, we went all four days.  Honestly I was a little over it by the end, hampered by my lack of interest in golf and celebrities in general.  But, it beat staring at a computer monitor all day by a long shot, so I ain’t complaining.  If I was going to pick a highlight of the weekend, it would probably be the Pitbull concert Friday night.  Given my relative disdain for his music that might seem a little odd.  As it happened though, we lucked into some VIP passes and ended up 10th row center.  I don’t necessarily have to be a huge fan of the music to enjoy a good show, and he put one on.  It adds a whole new dimension when you’re that close.  One of those dimensions was that I still have greatly reduced hearing in both ears, but you can’t have it all.  For added entertainment we sat next to Doug Flutie and his family, and regaled them with fascinating stories of our life during intermissions.  I could tell he was into it by the pained grins and nods.

We got back to our regularly scheduled “nothing” this past weekend.  For that I am thankful.  I just can’t keep the pace in my old age.  I might have taken it to the extreme though, I was very nearly bored.  Not quite though.  Friday night we just hung out on the back patio and watched a movie, which was nice.  I believe “Snatched” was the selection if I remember correctly.  Eh, it was OK.  The list of movies we can both tolerate at the same time is a very short one, so at least it passed that test.  And of course the dogs were happy to have us around, or at least they didn’t run around tearing up the furniture like they do when we’re gone.

Saturday we went to Amador to pick up a wine shipment.  They’ve been sending us increasingly hostile emails about picking up our 3-month-old shipment.  Geez people, lighten up, we’re extremely busy people.  It was really kind of a nuisance because it’s so flipping hot out and I didn’t feel like driving, but we headed out anyway.  We dropped the top on the convertible and blasted the air and I would say made the best of it.  On the way we stopped in Plymouth at one of our favorite spots of late, Marlene & Glen’s Diner.  This place is definitely a “diner,” or “greasy spoon” if you prefer.  It’s hard to find a place like that around here, so it’s a nice change of pace now and then.  I had a pretty awesome chicken philly sandwich, and Donette enjoyed a huge green chili burger.  We’ve only been there twice but have been more than happy both times;  It’s definitely on our “list.”  From there we went on to Wilderotter Winery to pick up our shipment.  We weren’t really feeling “wine” and planned to just pick up and bolt,  but as it happened they were doing a special vertical tasting of their Syrah.  Being the highly sophisticated wine connoisseurs that we are, we know you just never pass up a vertical, so we pulled up a chair and enjoyed a few sips.  We are so fancy.  For dinner we went over to a friends house and enjoyed a tri tip dinner.  They’d picked up the meat at a local butcher shop we’ve always wanted to try, and now I know I really need to get there.  It was just far and away above the grocery store offerings, even my beloved Nugget.  After dinner we actually watched two entire movies.  I mention that only because of the unusual occurrence that I did not fall asleep.

Last night we went on something of a “date night.”  Yeah, I guess you can call it that.  We went to dinner at Pete’s (based solely on proximity to the movie theater,) then headed to the early showing of “Jurassic World.”  I can say with some confidence that I saw more movies this past weekend than I’ve seen in the past three months.  This was probably my favorite of the four, recommended.