Hola!  Como esta usted?  And now, having exhausted my complete Spanish vocabulary, I will switch back to English.  Tsk, four years of classes down the drain.  That was my best attempt at referencing our activities for the weekend, which included a mighty fine Cinco de Mayo party on Saturday night.  Our friends Michael and Alaina hosted, and as usual they went over the top.  Me, I prefer theme-less parties.  Just come over and have a party.  That is, if I ever had a party, that’s what it would be.  These guys though, they had a full bar setup, a taco truck, festive mariachi music, the whole nine yards.  Hey, as long as I don’t have to put on any special type of clothing or help with any crazy decorations, I’m game.  It was a great time, I was particularly fond of the taco truck.  The guy put out a huge spread with 5 different fillings, all of which I tried at least once.  It was “all you can eat,” and I took that phrase to a possible extreme.  The lady’s house they held it at was pretty awesome too.  I should say, the back yard was;  I never actually went inside.  I had outdoor-kitchen-envy to be sure.  Every time I think I’ve got the ideal setup, I have to see something like this lady had.  Somebody just always has it a little better I guess.

Sunday was no slouch of a day either, especially considering we didn’t have any plans to start off.  A few quick texts later, we joined a few couples at Sienna for a fun brunch.  We haven’t been to their brunch in a long time, but it didn’t seem that much had changed.  We scored a great table on the patio, and proceeded to massacre the buffet line.  It was all good, I left feeling I got my money’s worth.  After that the day was just too nice to be inside, so we headed up to the scene of the crime from the night before and spent the rest of the afteroon hanging out in the aforementioned awesome back yard.  Once again, I never went in the house, but I’m not sure why you’d really need to.  The back yard had pretty much everything you’d ever need.  As an added bonus we took the puppies with us, and they absolutely ran wild.  They seemed a little overwhelmed with so much space to run around in, but once they figured it out they definitely took some laps.  Of course, as they usually manage to do, they found some disgusting pile of “something” in the yard.  And of course, they rolled all over in it.  We closed out the day with puppy baths.

Hey, we had more visitors last weekend.  Always fun.  At least it’s fun for us, I have to imagine our house guests usually leave feeling rather….  Underwhelmed.  As long as I am entertained, that’s all that is important I suppose.  So, anyway, our friends the Martins made it down for a weekend of fun.  Granted, they weren’t really here to see us, just passing through on the way to see their real friends.  That’s just semantics though.  We kicked things off on Friday with a short trip up the hill to Chateau Davell Winery.  Their new place is great, I’m glad to see them doing well there.  We enjoyed a few sips and then headed across the road to one of our favorite restaurants, Smith Flat House.  Always good food, and the place is just cool.  After that we headed home and got into a rousing game of 10 point pitch.  I do miss that game, the local savages out here refuse to engage in such high-brow entertainment.  I’ll mention that the boy’s team won handily, although I suppose that goes without saying.

Saturday was slated for a quaint afternoon of wine tasting in the convertible.  Because, well, it’s just fun.  Alas, the weather did not cooperate.  I won’t say it was COLD, per se, but it was maybe “chilly.”  Not an ideal day for zipping around with the top down, at any rate.  So, we made a last minute change of plans and did a little brew tour instead.  We started out in Auburn, visiting the venerable Moonraker and Knee Deep locations.  I must say, these are my two favorites out here.  They are great spots, and I’d put the beers up against anything.  Luckily for my belly they are pretty far away, so I don’t get to go there very often.  After that we made a quick stop at Goathouse Brewing, mostly out of curiosity.  I wouldn’t say the pint I had was anywhere close to the one from KneeDeep, but it was OK.  The main draw was, they had goats.  Lots and lots of goats.  I don’t really know why, but it was fun to watch them.  We rounded out the day at the new Out of Bounds back closer to home.  They’ve still got a few more chances left, but they are sort of struggling getting the kinks worked out.  We planned on having dinner there, but eventually gave up and left.

Sunday we got up early-ish and rolled down the hill to the Napa area.  Martins were meeting up with their Fancy Friends for a day of wine and food, so we kicked them to the curb and headed out on our own.  Actually, we met up with Michael & Alaina, who happened to be in the area, and took a little tour of our own.  See, we’ve got Fancy Friends too, so there.  We enjoyed a great lunch at an outdoor cafe, hit a few wineries, and then suffered a miserable traffic jam all the way home.  I still declare the day a success, despite the sketchy drive at the conclusion.

Well after four years of faithful service, I updated to a new webserver in the house.  I have a not-so-firm rule that when hardware has been progressed to the point that I can get twice the specs for the same money as what I currently have, it’s time to upgrade.  Well that time arrived.  For those that care, (which if I had to guess is absolutely nobody,) I stayed with the Synology platform, but went from a DS213+ to a DS718+.  You won’t even see the 213 model out there, as they long since stopped making it.  Hey, I can’t afford to stay up with the latest greatest.  The DS213 was relegated to backups, and the old original DS111 was retired all together.  (At least until I can figure out a new use for it…)

Not a bad weekend, I don’t suppose.  The weather was about perfect if nothing else.  Matter of fact, Saturday was so nice out that we busted out my friend Michael’s convertible and went driving around, semi-aimlessly.  Never thought I’d see the day when I got in a car just for the sake of driving, but it was that nice.  We hit a butcher shop about 20 miles away and bought a few interesting cuts of meat, and then worked our way back through various points of interest.  For dinner we hit their house and grilled up some of the afternoon purchases.

Sunday was ruined by the fact that I had to work at 6:00 in the evening.  It just kind of brings down the whole day.  I watched the Royals game on the patio, and I guess we went out to a fairly nice meal at Cascada.  Mostly I just sat around and moped about having to work.

Well, I think we made the push through the last of the bad weather.  It’s been on-again, off-again for several weeks now but the long term forecast looks all good from here on out.  What we do with that lovely weather remains to be seen, but it’s nice to have the opportunity to enjoy it anyway.

So for this past weekend’s debacle, our friend Susan visited us from KC.  Todd was supposed to come in from Texas also and make it a real reunion of miscreants, but, well….  He’s Todd, so he didn’t.  We ran into mildly sketchy weather, but were able to make the best of it.  Friday was actually not TOO bad, but there was a strong wind blowing which was actually quite chilly.  Not that we had an opportunity to do much anyway, what with work and all.  After work we met some friends up at Milestone (probably my least favorite restaurant in the area, but at least it gave me something to complain about) and hung out on their patio for awhile.  After that it was up to Cameron Park where we had reservations at Papa Gianni’s, which we’d never been to before but have heard good things about.  The jury is still out, but I am sure we’ll be back.  Overall I give it a thumbs up.  We had some delicious mussels for an appetizer, but my dinner was a little iffy.  I will readily admit it was a sketchy order on my part though.  I’ve managed to turn “bad ordering” into my own art form.  I can take a huge menu (which was the case at this place,) and after 30 to 45 minutes of over-analyzing can pick the worst thing on the list nearly every time.  I’ve got skills, what can I say.  My victim of choice this time was calamari in marinara, which in retrospect doesn’t even sound good.  It did at the time though, apparently.  But, it wasn’t.  Sigh.

Saturday turned out to be a most glorious day on the weather front, and I feel we really got our money’s worth out of it.  We started off with breakfast at The Purple Place, which has never disappointed.  Come to think of it, they may be the only place in town that I haven’t been able to screw up my order, at least on the breakfast menu.  It’s just solid.  We enjoyed a leisurely meal, and by the time we finished the temp outside had risen to a very respectable 68 degrees with not a cloud in the sky.  We took advantage of the day by popping the top off the car and heading out to the Amador wine area.  Our first stop was at Rancho Victoria, which has been one of our favorites lately.  It’s got a lot going for it on my list of “good places”:  Short drive, fantastic patio with great views, and not usually overly crowded.  As a matter of fact, the patio was so enjoyable we may have overstayed our welcome a bit.  I’m thinking at some point in time, you probably cross over from “customer” to “loiterer.”  If so, we crossed said line.  Hey, they didn’t ask us to leave, and they still got a little money from us.  Geez, it was just so nice out I didn’t want to give up my seat.  Eventually though, we headed over to Wilderotter Vineyards, another one of our staples.  They meet most of my criteria also, except for the crowd part.  They are always at full capacity, and Saturday was no exception.  It was OK though, we still managed to get a nice table on the patio.  We didn’t stay too long though, and rolled back to the house to finish up the day on our own, uncrowded, patio.  Perfect fire pit weather, which has also been few and far between this year so far.

Sunday was a non-starter.  I got up and made pancakes for the girls, which proved to be my sole accomplishment for the entire day.  Susan had to leave for the airport after breakfast, and then Donette & I took up residence on our respective couches.  It was a day of (really) bad TV and web surfing.  We’re talking four or five hours straight of “Touched By An Angel” and “The Love Boat” reruns.  Both were so cheesy I wanted to stab myself, but at the same time I was too immobile to walk across the room and pick up the remote.  Sad situation.

Wow, busy times!  So much to cover and so little… errrr… interest.  But hey, you know what, I’m going to type something up.  Because I can.  Or should.  Or something like that.  I’ll start with the new puppy I so briefly alluded to last time I bothered updating this, little Nacho.  She is a small (5 llbs) mixed breed puppy from the same rescue that we got Quinn from.  We like to go up there on the occasional Saturday and check out their new rescues, which they get in weekly.  For people that like dogs, this is of course a monumentally stupid idea.  Honestly, I’m surprised we held out as long as we did, being of rather weak constitution.  Things went all wrong when they posted some pictures on Facebook of a new litter they’d just brought in, which were some little pit bull mixes.  I was fairly comfortably going up and checking these pups out, because in all honestly there is a pretty non-existent chance of me getting a pit at this particular time.  Lots of rationalizations behind that, but suffice to say it just probably wasn’t going to happen.  But, wouldn’t you know it, little Nacho and her twin sister were right next to the pittie pups, looking all sad and lonely.  (OK, they were rolling around like little maniacs, having the time of their lives.  But they were probably lonely sometime.)  Two hours later we were driving home with Nachito in the car.  What happened?  I still don’t know.  Our time together honestly started off almost too good to be true.  We brought her home on a Saturday afternoon, so we had all day plus Sunday to get acquainted.  Things could not have gone better.  Not one single accident in the house all weekend.  Then on Monday, the rain came.  And it just kept coming.  The winter has been unusually dry so everyone was referring to the sudden monsoon season as the “March Miracle.”  We were calling it the “Kenagy Curse.”  I will grant you, I wouldn’t want to go squat in the rain to do my business either, but c’mon.  This little monster would look out the door, then scurry across the room and poop in the corner.  Over, and over, and over.  When the rain finally stopped two weeks later she miraculously turned things around, but not before I nearly went crazy.  I definitely remembered why I said Quinn was our last puppy ever.  Slow learners I guess, but then we knew that.

Other random notes?  Well, our friends the Aushermans came and visited us last weekend, and that was a blast.  We ate some good food, hit the wine-tasting circuit, and did some relaxing.  Good times.  We also celebrated the retirement of a friend by joining her and her family at a very nice dinner at The Kitchen.  I had never been to a place like that, and it was pretty awesome.  It was, I guess, the proverbial “Dinner and a show.”  The head chef was out in front of everybody cooking all the courses, and he’d explain everything he was doing, all the ingredients, etc.  From the seating until we left was nearly four hours, and it went quickly.  Very cool and very entertaining.  And, very pricey.  Hey, cool things cost I guess.  What I thought was funny was that they’re part of the Sellands group, which we go to often and enjoy their “two for $25” dinner.  Suffice to say, this place did not have that option on the menu.  Hey, whatever, it was an awesome dinner, even if we never get to do it again.  My requisite food pictures aren’t quite ready for posting yet, I’ll do my best to get them done tomorrow. (Edit:  Pictures are added!)

Yesterday we wrapped up the holiday weekend with a great brunch at a friend’s house.  It was one of those “extended brunches,” which means the weather was awesome and we wasted the entire day sitting on their patio.  Whew, I needed one of those days.  We indulged in some serious gluttony, which was probably rare for their family but pretty much an average Sunday for me.  Maybe slightly in excess of my usual Sunday, but I do tend to inhale some calories towards the end of the weekend.  It was a fine sunny day filled with ham, cheesy potatoes, many salads, pork verde, cakes…  The list goes on and on.  It also marked the first time we’d left Nacho out of her kennel alone.  This experiment did not go well.  Back to the kennel for the puppy.