Another weekend in the books.  It was sort of a hit-and-miss affair:  A little bit of fun and a little not-so-fun.  Friday night kicked it off with a girl’s-only happy hour for Donette.  Yeah she just hung me out to dry, didn’t look real concerned about it either.  I ran through all my options to come up with a plan for my own entertainment, which effectively consisted of A) Watch the Royals game outside on the patio, or B) watch the Royals game inside on the couch.  After much deliberation I decided on A, and so went Friday night.

Saturday started slow but ramped up nicely.  We did some random stuff around the house, then later in the afternoon headed down to the big Town Center for a little Fall festival.  Our friends Michael and Alaina were volunteering at it, and I think sort of heading up the whole deal.  Indeed, I think a good 50% of the crowd had been invited by them.  We had a good time in a NorCal sort of way…   Sipping a few wines and chatting, and even enjoyed some passable ‘Que.  It was a great night to be outside, as hopefully it will be for several weeks to come.  The event ended early, around 7:00 or so, and our friends circled up to watch the Oregon game.  We took the low road on that one and headed home as it was our bed time, or close enough to call it a day.

Sunday we kicked the day off with a solid 7 mile stroll.  Wow, those long walks are pretty punishing on me.  We were supposed to go 8 miles, but when Doni turned into our subdivision at 7 I wasn’t about to say anything.  My ol’ bones were getting rocked, I was definitely headed for the couch.  As we laid around in recovery mode, it became rather apparent ol’ Kane the kitty wasn’t feeling too good.  We’d been kind of keeping an eye on him for a few days as he seemed even lazier than usual.  Without going into the gory details, yeah he was definitely not well Sunday.  He was bad enough that I took him to the vet, where they ran the usual expensive, useless battery of tests.  They sent him home, but after a very long night he’s back there this morning.  Poor lil’ guy is NOT feeling good!

** RIP Kane, the Big Red Machine.  Quite possibly the best cat ever!  I hope you enjoyed your 13+ years with us.

Yeah I’m slacking, missed another week.  Hey if Ed can go a full month without updates I figure I’m good for a miss here and there too.  We were out of town as it happens, in wonderful Cabo San Lucas.  I don’t really need a reason to go sit in the sun for a weekend, but as it happened we were celebrating my co-worker Josh’s milestone 40th birthday.  Ah to be young.  Good times, but man was it HOT.  Brutal, sweltering, punishing heat.  As soon as I stepped out of the room I’d just start pouring sweat.  Not used to that nasty humidity stuff I guess.  Despite that, we managed to have a great time.  The group as a whole was a bit more “active” than we’re used to, but I guess we got to see lots of stuff that way.  Geez, anybody just want to go lay in the pool?!?!  Some of the group even went to the onsite gym.  Every day.  Come on, that’s just embarrassing.  I’ll be at the buffet if you need me.

Out of like 500 pictures taken in Mexico, I filtered out around half a dozen that are suitable for posting.  The rest will stay safely stored on disc until somebody tries to run for public office I guess.  Other than that, I’ll just jump ahead to this past weekend, boring though it was.  Friday we did…  NOTHING.  We followed that up with a big ol’ day of nothing on Saturday.  We at least thought about doing something, but it didn’t pan out.  I had a lot of work Saturday night and decided to lay low.  Sunday, though, I enjoyed my day.  I got up at the crack of dawn (actually it was pre-dawn now that I think about it,) fired up the smoker and threw on a corned beef I found in the freezer, and a pork butt.  The weather forecast looked pretty good and that just sounded like a good way to spend the afternoon. After everything was all settled in and cooking, we took off on a rather taxing (for me anyway) six mile walk.  That is about 5.5 miles past my limit I think.  My ol’ bones are breaking down.  I’m actually sore today.  Anyway, after that I knocked out a few random chores around the house, (hanging curtains and washing the patio,) then kicked back on the patio and enjoyed the day.  Lots of good sports on the tv, meat on the smoker…  My idea of a good Sunday.  We didn’t even try the beef, but the pork came out quite tasty, if I do say so my darn self.

OK it’s sprinkling, at a rate of about six drops per minute.  There is, in fact, wet stuff falling from the sky however.  This phenomenon has not been seen for well over two months now, it is something to be enjoyed for sure.  As a matter of fact, Teagan and I just went for a two mile walk, it was very refreshing.  The rather unfortunate part of this is that, to read the news, the unexpected precipitation is being caused by the nearby wildfire, which is so large and so hot that it is creating it’s own weather changes.  Seriously, read the weather channel page!  Never heard of such a thing.  Anyway, we are close, if not dangerously so, to the huge Butte Wildfire.  Other than a constant smell of smoke and a loss of solar power, luckily it’s not affecting our day-to-day activities.  Let’s hope it stays that way.

As to our weekend events, it was a full one.  Friday, lame as it may sound, we kicked it at the grocery store.  Whoa, slow down there.  Yeah, we’ve been reduced to that.  They had a wine & cheese tasting, and we were somewhat spent from the work week, so we went with it.  It was, honestly, about as boring as a wine tasting at a grocery store sounds.  We met up with our friend Michael and endured our 4 tasting, then picked up some chicken and headed back to the house.  We threw the hen on the grill, opened another bottle of something-or-another, and enjoyed the evening.  Not much more exciting than the previous venue actually, but at least I was grilling and we weren’t inside a grocery store.

Saturday was a full plate, such as our plates go.  We started off with an hour trek north to Mt. Vernon Winery, just because we haven’t been there in a while.  I’m gonna say it is probably our favorite winery out here so far;  I just wish it wasn’t so far away.  We took a cooler full of picnic feed and enjoyed a glass on their nice patio.  As luck would have it there was some kind of tour group there too, and they had a musician playing tenor sax and singing for our entertainment.  He was so bad I actually enjoyed listening to him.  He was….  “enthusiastic” if nothing else.  I’ll give him style points, and he gave me hope that my chances of an alternative means of employment might not be out of the question after all.  After that we headed back to the home circle, and met up with some friends at the newly opened EDH Brewing.  Honestly, I don’t hold a lot of hope for the future for that place.  But, it was their first day, I’ll easily give them a pass on that one.  They only had two of their own brews on, and the one I had was less than remarkable.  On the possible upside, they do have a nice patio and a few familiar rotating taps.  We had one pint, assured them it was the best thing we’d had in ages, and headed across the street to Mraz for a few of their always-enjoyable products. As if THAT wasn’t enough excitement for one afternoon, we left there and went over Michael’s house to watch the Oregon game.  It was a great time, I felt almost like a sports fan for a while there.  Unfortunately their team lost, but we had a good time.  Actually I slept through most of the second half, but it sounds like they had fun.  Once the game was over I rallied a bit, and joined in on a rousing game of Just Dance 4.  We won’t elaborate on that unfortunate event.  I just don’t know if I’m going to fit in here.

Sunday was a day that will live in infamy, for at least another week or so.  I took my fancy new kayak rig for the inaugural trip down a river, and I was quite nervous and excited for the event.  It ended early, and quite poorly.  There were many rapids involved, along with some moderate to severe skin abrasions, bruises, and a permanently damaged ego.  I will not, at this time, go into details, as much as I’m sure Munkirs wants me to.  I will live to fight another day, if not on that particular river.  Maybe I’m more of the lake-kayak kind of guy.  A delicious carnitas burrito at a nearby restaurant soothed some of the pain, if not the ego part.  Stupid river.

Hope everyone had a fine, relaxing holiday.  We did I suppose.  The “relaxing” qualifier is a bit of a stretch, but I need more activity in my life anyway.  We sort of kicked off the weekend by driving down to the airport to pick up Doni’s sister Jackie on Friday night.  It was pretty late by the time her flight got in so we didn’t do much (if anything) that night.

Saturday we got up early-ish and headed up the hill to Tahoe.  That was a good time as always.  We started off on the south side as usual, with a little shopping and a little relaxing.  After that we branched out from our usual haunts and drove around to the other side of the lake.  It was worth the horrible traffic and long drive I’d say.  The views are really something from over there.  You can look down on Emerald Bay from the road, it’s quite a sight for sure.  If I had to choose between driving up there and looking down on it or taking the boat cruise around it like we did with my family a few weeks ago, I’d probably recommend the boat ride.  Tough call though.  After a bunch of picture-taking and site-seeing, we stopped at a recommended place for some lunch, then headed back.  We took I-80 back to the house, which I’d never done before.  I think it’s faster, if not nearly as scenic.

Sunday the girls hit the outlet malls for a little light shopping, after first dropping me off at nearby Lake Natoma for a little paddling.  I got a new inflatable kayak a few weeks ago, and this was my third or fourth time out on it.  So far I’ve stuck to the nice calm lake water, playing it safe.  I do enjoy it, quite relaxing and makes me feel like I’m doing at least some form of exercise.  The other times I’ve gone the water has been pretty sparsely populated;  Not so on a Saturday.  Either due to the holiday or just the weekend, it was pretty darn crowded.  Manageable though, I definitely enjoyed it.  This weekend I might take it out on the river and see how I do.  If no update next Monday you might want to be mildly concerned.  We wrapped up the day at the house with some tasty ribeyes on the grill.

Monday we met up with some friends in nearby Plymouth for a “progressive picnic.”  It was sponsored by several of the local wineries, and sounded like a good way to spend the holiday.  Apparently everybody else thought so too, it was a bit crowded for my liking.  It effectively consisted of hopping from winery to winery doing some tastings, and each one had some type of food for the “picnic.”  It was a good time, and we got to visit a few new wineries in the process.

We seem to have been experiencing some technical difficulties here on pkenagy.com.  I laboriously type in lengthy, scintillating weekend updates and for some reason they are not showing up.  The primary reason could be because that’s a complete lie, but I’m still investigating.  May be a code bug of some type.

Another perfectly valid reason is that we’ve done nothing of note, followed closely by some odd issue with my picture storage system.  I generally figure, even if I don’t have anything post-worthy, I can at least throw a few pictures out here.  Alas, my super-duper cloud storage system is being a bit temperamental and my photos aren’t sorted right.  The combination of the two issues leaves me uninspired to post anything at all.

Given the lack of a post last week, I suppose I’m somewhat obligated to throw some nonsense out here though.  I can say, without reservation, that weekend was a complete and utter fail.  Just never quite got out the gate.  It started off rather mediocre, ramped up a slight bit Saturday, then slowly and rather painfully fizzled out.  In the words of the great luchador Nacho Libre, “You can’t win ’em all.”  Indeed, Nacho…  Indeed.  By mid-Sunday I’d effectively thrown in the towel, but in a last ditch effort to salvage some kind of a decent day I rolled down to the grocery and picked up some nice looking thick-cut pork chops.  Nothing like a little grilling to turn things around.  Alas, just didn’t have it in me;  They’re still in the ‘fridge.  Ever looked forward to a Monday?  Pretty rare statement right there.

Nacho