I’m on vacation, which by all rights means I should be doing something besides updating this.  But, it’s early and we haven’t gotten around yet, so why not.  We kicked off our little vacation on Friday by going up to a friend’s house for dinner.  The usual sorts of things occurred:  A tasty dinner followed by an episode of Sopranos and me nodding off on the couch.  Standard issue.

Saturday I’m thinking we didn’t accomplish a whole lot…  Nothing I can remember anyway.  It was the kickoff of Sacramento Beer Week, so I felt obligated to at least make a cursory effort at participating in that.  They were doing a tasting at Sellands, which is just down the street from us.  It was packed though, and I wasn’t even familiar with the brewery, so we just had a taster and took off.  Feeling a little let down, we walked over to Hop House, only to find they weren’t even running anything “special.”  C’mon, you bill yourselves as a “tap house,” put some effort into it.  Oh well, what can ya’ do.  We headed back home and turned on some crappy TV instead.  For evening entertainment, our little 3-year-old friend came over and we baked cookies!  Boy I’m getting old.  Older?  Something.

Sunday we packed up the car and rolled down the hill a bit to Napa for a week of…  Whatever it is we’re going to do here.  We don’t have very firm plans.  The weather was pretty shaky yesterday so we just kind of got our bearings and walked around a little, followed by an evening in the hot tub.  We’ll see what the rest of the week brings.  At least I should have some pics to post next week if nothing else.

Sorry, I just ain’t got it in me today.  Taking the week off.  All I did all weekend was screw up our Internet and re-screw it up, and I know nobody wants to hear about that.  (Boy my new router is really cool…  I just need to quit making “adjustments” to it.)  So, I’ll just post a few pics and go on my merry way.

My new AT&T service is getting hooked up today, so my site will be down for “a while.”  I guess I could have timed that a little better, but I got caught up in the excitement of the moment and didn’t even think about it.  Three years after nearly getting Google Fiber in KC, gigabit service has come to my neighborhood here finally.  It’s been here for a while actually, but the price has been a bit exorbitant.  They finally came down to the point where it’s nearly the same price as my 18 meg service, so I made the jump.  I’m sure there’s a load of hidden fees they’ll dump on me or some mysterious thing.  It’s been proven on numerous occasions that AT&T actually has a personal vendetta against me, yet I keep giving them more and more money every month.  Shame on me I guess.

Not a bad weekend I suppose.  The rain is really getting old.  I think it’s moved past old and well into maddening.  There’s just not a whole lot to when it’s pouring outside but spend money, or so it seems.  So along those lines, we went out wine tasting once again.  Honestly I just don’t get tired of doing the wineries.  They’re fun, at least for me.  And if you keep the purchases to a minimum, it’s a relatively cheap way to spend a rainy day too.  Therein lies the problem I guess.  We usually feel obligated to pick up a few bottles in return for the tastings.  Next thing you know we have a closet full of wine that we rarely drink.  (And I mean “full” in the most literal sense.  It’s full.)  So be it I guess.  After a few wineries, the group went to Smith Flat House for dinner.  That’s definitely one of my favorites out here, I don’t pass up many chances to go there.  I had lamb shanks Saturday and they were delicious.  Can’t say I’ve ever had anything bad there.

Hey, a few days without rain!  As a matter of fact, a few very nice days of weather.  It’s not going to last if you’re to believe the weatherman, but we enjoyed a couple of days of respite from the monsoons.  Friday we had some friends over for a little steak taste test.  Very fascinating experiment, if perhaps born of sheer boredom.  I stopped by the store on the way home from work and got a tenderloin and a ribeye, as close to the same thickness as I could.  I then seasoned them identically, and grilled them to the same internal temp, over the same part of the grill.  I then sliced them up and passed them around.  Somewhat to my surprise, the tenderloin was the unanimous favorite.  My Valentine’s Day menu has been thus altered by this earth-shattering  bit of scientific polling.  Tomorrow night it shall be filet mignon and lobster, instead of our usual annual ribeye and lobster.

Well it’s hard to top that bit of steak madness, but we got out a few times more over the weekend.  Saturday night we walked over to the neighborhood clubhouse for a comedy show they were putting on.  I may have mentioned that Donette is a member of the “Social Committee.”  If I haven’t, well now I have.  Remarkable as it may seem, I am not a member of said committee.  At any rate, they had put together this fine evening of entertainment, complete with a comedian that had come in from out of town.  He was pretty darn funny, it was a good show.  He must have been good, because we stayed until the unheard of hour of 10:30, gasp.

Sunday we participated in our weekly “Sunday Funday” activities.  We kicked things off with a quick drive up the hill to a few wineries.  Sunny weather has been long overdue, and it just sounded like the thing to do.  As it happens, it usually sounds like the thing to do when it’s rainy and crummy out too, but we’ll overlook that little fact for the moment.  We hit one new spot, and one “favorite,” which was just about right for the day.  After that we headed over to a friend’s house nearby for one of his kid’s birthday parties.  He has a lot of kids, it seems we go to one over there at least once a month.  (That’s barely an exaggeration.)  I’m not even too sure which one was actually celebrating the birthday this time, I just showed up for spaghetti and meatballs, which was delicious.

Missed a Monday update.  Just when I was off to such a good start this year.  Oh well, I made it a month, I’ll call it a victory.

Friday was a no-show for us.  I was a few hours away in a class, getting all learnt up on some horrible subject matter.  After the long, slow drive home in traffic I just didn’t have anything else in me.  Actually I should say, the long, slow “ride,” I didn’t even drive.  Oh well, it was taxing all the same.

Saturday was a fine day.  We got around a little slowly, then headed out by ourselves for a little wine tasting.  It’s rather rare that we do the wine loop by ourselves, but we had a few specific stops we needed to make and didn’t want to get all caught up in the logistics of a group trip.  We started off at Scott Harvey, pretty close to our house.  They were having an “event” I wanted to go to, mostly because there was food involved.  Other than the sketchy weather, it was a good time.  They had five or six tastings, and each was paired with a food.  Don’t know why but I have fun at those.  Not to mention one of the stations was oysters, and I don’t get those very often.  I circled back to that one a few times….  “Nah I’m good on the wine thanks, I’ll take a few more of those oysters.”  There’s one in every crowd.  From there we moved on to Cooper, one of our “original” favorites.  That’s one of the first wineries we visited when we moved out here, so we like to go back there for a “ahhhh remember when…” trip.  Their wine is pretty darn good too.  For our evening entertainment, we went to a wine tasting party of all things.  Whew, the ol’ taste buds were a little shot by then but we gave it a go.  We had a great time faking the scores like we knew what we were doing.  Yeah we’re pretty fancy.

Sunday we had a Super Bowl party on the calendar, but it just didn’t come together.  Two parties in one weekend?  Madness.  Instead we invited another couple over and just did some grilling on the patio.  It was warm enough to move the TV back outside for the game, but that sounded like work so we watched it inside.  Good times all the same, and it started dumping rain once again so it was probably for the best.