We managed to stretch that out into a four-day weekend, which felt much needed.  The highlight of this little vacation was definitely the Bottlerock festival on Friday.  I’d say probably our favorite thing to do is hit music festivals, and we don’t get to do it nearly enough.  Between the cost, the travel, the vacation…  They’re just hard to attend.  We went to this one in ’15 though and had a great time, so we went ahead and bought tickets to the Friday event this year.  And, once again, had a great time.  A full day of great weather listening to some great music, what’s not to like.  The highlights of my day were Frightened Rabbit and Silversun Pickups, while Donette liked the headliners, Maroon 5.  All great shows, and we made hotel reservations for next year as soon as we got home on Saturday.

Speaking of Saturday, it wasn’t exactly a bad day either.  We had reservations at the Rutherford winery for a nice tour, and it was well worth the 90 minutes.  There were only five couples in the group, so it was a nice little semi-private event.  After that we headed to Soda Rock winery (which was much further than I thought,) for another quick tasting, then wound our way back up the hill to pick up the puppy over at our friends’ house, and enjoyed a delicious bbq while we were at it.

Sunday & Monday, we dialed it back quite a bit.  Worn out.  That’s not to say we didn’t have fun, just more of the “bbq at home” kind of thing.  There were some ribs involved, and lots of Royals games and sunshine time.  Enjoyable relaxation.

And a quick clip of Silversun Pickups playing.  I videoed the entire 6.5 minute Lazy Eye but I’ll spare you that one.

Alright alright, I’ll update my stupid web page.  It seems like I’ve been entirely too busy to spend time on such things, but ask me what I’m doing at any given moment and I’ll invariably answer “nothing.”  Maybe it’s the old age.  Anyway, the major event of recent history was my birthday, woot woot!  Exciting!  Or, as it happened, maybe not.  As a matter of fact I got sick and didn’t really do anything but lay around and blow my nose constantly.  As whatever-it-was slowly passed, I ramped up my celebration accordingly though, culminating with having some friends over for a barbecue on Sunday.  I spent all day smoking a brisket and then we had people over to eat it.  One of my favorite ways to spend a Sunday, to be sure.  I even mixed in a little experimentation with the brisket.  Instead of my tried-and-true (but flawed) foil wrap, I used the trendy “butcher paper” technique.  (I didn’t follow that recipe, but that’ll give you some idea what the paper is all about.)  I was well pleased with the results.  The outside stayed nice and crispy as advertised, and I thought the texture was better overall.  The downside was, I cooked that sucker for 13 hours.  The foil definitely gets the edge there, I bet I would have shaved at least 5 hours off that cook time.  Luckily I woke up early and had it on by 6:00 in the morning or dinner would have been a disaster, instead of just a little late.

So what other fascinating endeavors did I enjoy over my birthday week?  Well, I spent no small amount of time on my new raspberry pi that my Mother-in-Law got me for my birthday.  Mind you, she doesn’t know that’s what she got me, or probably what a pi is, but that’s neither here nor there.  I got a new toy, that’s what is important.  I don’t know why, but I just have a good time playing with those little things.  I already have one, which I made into a sweet little game console that plays all the old Nintento games.  Fun stuff.  I didn’t want to mess that one up, so I got a second one for my birthday to do more super-neato stuff with.  After many dorky hours, the new one now runs my home wireless controller, as well as the good ol’ Kodi media center.  No clue or interest what I’m babbling on about?  Well, it’s really cool, just take my word for it.  You’re jealous, I know it.  I’m even giving some consideration to moving this website to it, under the “Because I can” theory.  Can’t decide if I want to spend that kind of time.

After this weekend, I’m thinking about possibly quitting the IT biz and going into home improvement.  Those of you familiar with my “skills” might find humor in this notion, but after some of the work we’ve had done out here I think I’ve got a future in it.  We just haven’t had good luck with contractors at all.  Every single project has had some issue, with varying levels of successful resolution.  This last one takes the cake though, at least in my book.  We had a patio cover put up a long time ago, like 2.5 years, and the guy installed two ceiling fans on it.  They’ve never really worked right.  They make so much noise we hardly ever used them, which stinks because A) they weren’t particularly cheap and B) it gets hot out there.  So, this weekend I saw a nice fan on sale at Costco, and actually had a pair of them in my basket.  But, they weren’t that cheap either, so I figured “Eh, I might as well at least try and figure out what’s wrong with the ones I have.”  So, I drug out the ladder and in about 30 seconds noticed all the blades were flopping around, they were barely attached at all.  Now, actually fixing it took me quite a bit longer.  I found a copy of the installation instructions online and started at the end, taking everything back apart until I got to the “Assembling the Blades” page.  The error here was so incredibly stupid I couldn’t grasp it for quite a while.  I’ve got to add a picture to even try and describe it.

Put the two screws through the two holes and screw them into the motor.  Yep, looks pretty straight forward.  Well, this guy had actually put the blade through that small space right above the plate where he was supposed to attach them, and then run the screws up through the holes.  The holes in the blade aren’t threaded, so they were just sitting on top of the screws, kept in place only because that space is too small for them to totally fly off.  Good grief.  For a while I told myself, “Eh, I do plenty of dumb stuff, I might have done the same thing.”  And then the more I thought about it, I concluded that for one thing, there is no way that even on my stupidest day I would have done that and then thought “Yeah that seems right, the blades are probably supposed to flop around on this fan.”  Even if I HAD made the same mistake, it was brutally obvious that it was wrong. And on top of that, THIS IS WHAT THIS GUY DOES FOR A LIVING!  IT’S HIS JOB!  I PAID HIM FOR THAT!  Yes, I was a little upset.  But, looking on the bright side, I enjoyed a nice cooling breeze from my new-ish ceiling fans while watching the Royals game outdoors that afternoon.  I’m still going to be mad about it for a while though.

I suppose I am obligated to do some kind of cursory update, if only because I paid for a whole year of this domain name.  No sense wasting Internet bits.  The simple fact is though, I’ve not really done anything.  A few less than inspiring bike rides, a couple of random dinners, and a lot of boring Royals games on my patio.  The wife is out of town, and I really don’t do well at entertaining myself.  Work has been beyond hectic too, but I’m sure that’s even more boring subject matter than what I’ve watched on TV lately.  Part of my ongoing boredom is due to the weather also;  The monsoon rains have continued pretty steadily.  I think they may have stopped, with the possible exception of this coming weekend.  (Why always on the weekend??!?!)  I appreciate your continued patronage here at the website though.  You never know, one day you might randomly check in for a read and find I’ve done something absolutely fascinating.  Yeah, keep holding your breath for that.