I’m not entirely sure what the phrase “Indian Summer” refers to, but I think we may be experiencing one.   Maybe I’ll just get on the google and check that out.  It’s hot, I know that.  The 3-day weekend was nice and appreciated and all that, but the weather really took away from it.  And, right on cue, the dog chewed holes in our low-rent pool so we didn’t even have that option for relief.  We made the most of the situation though, or at least tried.  We kicked it off on Friday by inviting our friends Michael and Alaina over for dinner.  I had a tri tip in the fridge that needed to meet the grill, and that sounded like a nice sociable option.  Well, as it turned out they already had plans.  They’d invited family up for a nice dinner.  Hey, sounds fun, what time should we be there?  What can we bring?  Sometimes you just have to jump in there and invite yourself.  We took our tri tip up and threw it on their grill, and it  came out delicious.

Saturday we went over to a friend-of-a-friend’s house for dinner.  This was edging just a bit out of my social comfort zone, but they live like a block from our house so I figured what the heck.  It turned out to be a wise decision.  The guy was a bit of a foodie and had all kinds of cool cooking toys to talk about.  He made a short rib ragout for dinner, and it was awesome.  I did leave a little earlier than everybody else, which may have been rude, but it was past my bedtime and I figure sleeping on their couch might have been even ruder.  Not sure what time Donette wandered home but she said she had fun too.

Sunday the heat wave topped out, and I had to work for a bit.  That combination of factors led to a pretty lame day.  We drove up to Auburn and picked up a wine shipment at Mount Vernon, and then I napped the afternoon away.  I had to work at 6:00, and it went as well as could be expected.  When I got done I checked in with Donette and she was up in Cameron Park at a friend’s house, so I bee-bopped on up there to join them.  We spent a few hours playing beach-ball in their neighborhood pool which felt great, then played cards to round out the day.

Monday not too much went on.  We had the bright idea to order a late-night pizza up at our friend’s house the night before, and both of us were feeling the effects.  It ain’t easy getting old.  We recently bought a new computer desk, so we just kind of puttered around the office all day putting that together, as well as dismantling the two old ones it’s replacing.  I like the new desk, it’s big enough to fit both our computers on and is actually made of wood.  It’s older though, and was apparently made before the proliferation of huge dual monitor setups.  Her dual 22″ setup works OK, but my 24″‘ setup, not so much.  I am thinking of going to a single 32″ instead.  This is considered a huge “life event,” and must be given way-too-much thought over the next several weeks.  Anyway, we got the office put back together pretty well, and were able to give away our two old desks so we don’t have to figure out how to get rid of those.  After that it was off to the couch for the evening.  Donette played on her ipad all evening, and I watched “Creep” on the patio.  (Odd movie, and more than a bit disturbing.)

Oh man, I forgot the obligatory post of the car temperature display. That is HOT. And my car is out of gas.

And now, for something completely different.  This weekend, for reasons unknown, we headed up the hill (over the hill?) to the city not-so-affectionately known as “Dirty Reno.”  Hmmm, yeah, sounds like a place I’ve always wanted to visit.  It’s a consistent moniker though;  Pretty much everyone around here refers to it as Dirty Reno.  So much so, that when checking the weather forecast I actually typed Dirty Reno in the search field, and then was briefly puzzled why nothing showed up.

Anyway, it wasn’t really for reasons unknown.  I wanted to attend a festival up there called Canfest, and by either good or bad fortune that’s where it was.  We went with another couple also, who can’t seem to get enough gambling, so there was something for everyone.  First though, we had to make the arduous drive up I-80 to get there.  That, people, is a miserable drive.  It’s technically two lane, but with the large number of semis plodding over the mountain at 20 mph it’s effectively reduced to one lane.  Slow, tedious, frustrating drive.  We got there though, albeit with no small amount of grumbling.  Friday night was kind of a bust for me.  Everybody just wanted to stay in the casino (we stayed at Circus Circus) and throw their money in the air, so I joined them for dinner and then snuck off to the room to watch TV.  (Not an all-together unusual scenario actually, even without the gambling circumstance.)  Saturday they continued with their gambling ways, so I just kind of people-watched around the city until the real fun started.  And, by the way, the people-watching was top shelf entertainment.  Wow.  There are some hard people in that town.  I didn’t lack for material, I’ll just say that.  (Bonus side note:  The Sporting KC farm team was in town, staying at our hotel.  Enjoyed talking with a few of them.)  When the miscreants were done gambling, we headed off to the canfest.  It was… A festival.  A good festival, I must say.  I thoroughly enjoyed it.  I’ll go so far as to rate it “worth the drive.”

As for the “Dirty Reno” title?  Eh, I don’t know, it was actually pretty darn nice.  The casinos were all very clean, and didn’t have the horrific smell of the Vegas places.  The restaurants we visited were all very nice too, not to mention reasonably priced.  Heck, everything there was reasonably priced, more so than at home.  I’ll go back if there’s a good reason.  (And that reason excludes gambling.  Not my thing.)  They’ve got a rib-fest coming up, a balloon fest….  All kinds of good stuff.  Done travelling for now though.  We’re back home in good ol’ El Dorado Hills, enjoying the scorching 108 degree weather.  Thought we were done with the heat for a bit, sigh.

We got out of town for a short while last weekend, it was a much-needed break on several fronts.  Work, weather, you name it.  We rented a motor home and rolled down to the Russian River area for a few days.  In some ways, it’s not unlike the Ozarks area.  Rivers, lots of forest, and…  uhh…  different people.  I’ll spare the details.  Just…  Different.  I guess another little difference is, if you get on the river and float a few miles downstream you end up in the ocean.  Anyway, good times.  We played lots of cards, ate lots of good food, and just sort of “camped.”  We took the same trip last year and slept in a tent;  The motorhome was a welcome upgrade.  Still not ready to buy though, the rental seems like the way to go to me.

I won’t even feign interest in this past few weeks.  Go to work…  Go home… repeat.  BLAH.  Bringin’ me down.  Here’s a few pics.  Enjoy.  Or don’t.

Good times this weekend.  Our friends the Martins came out and joined us for a few days, and we did our best to entertain them, in our non-entertaining kind of way.  I’m rather focused on the Royals game at the moment, so I’ll just touch on a few of the highlights and then add a bunch of pics for filler.  Solid strategy.

Aside from our standard-issue wine tasting outings and restaurant visits, we actually mixed in a few genuine “activities.”  While a real rarity for us, we knew they liked to exercise occasionally so we tried to accommodate them.  Our first outing was a hike to Horsetail Falls up near Tahoe.  I guarantee that every single time we’ve driven to Tahoe I’ve said “Man I want to hike that some day,” both on the way out and back.  Well, I guess now I’ve done it.  It was a moderately difficult hike, and least for me, but well worth the effort.  I hope to go again soon as a matter of fact, maybe when it’s a little cooler.  Still a good hike though, despite being a bit on the warm side.  I like my hikes to have a “destination,” and the falls at the end was surely something to see.  I about filled up the memory on my camera taking pics along the way.  The hike took us about three hours, then we decided since we were so close to Tahoe we might as well drive on up for a late lunch.  That decision was mostly based on the fact that it was 100+ back in El Dorado Hills, and about 82 in Tahoe.  We enjoyed a tasty meal at a beach-side pub, then made the inevitable run back down to the scorching heat at home.

To close out the weekend, we took a 3.5 hour float down the American River.  I’ve “floated” on this river a few times before, but at a much higher elevation where the water is a lot rougher.  This time we were down near Sacramento, where the flow was very mellow to say the least.  We kicked back in tubes and just kind of bobbed down the river for a few hours.  The water was quite icy, but it felt good in the 100 degree heat.  A nice little diversion to be sure;  We’re planning on hitting it again this coming weekend if we have time.