Happy new year to all!  We had a fine time of it out here.  Since it coincided with our 25th wedding anniversary this year, we made the 1.5 hour drive down to San Francisco to celebrate.  A little on the wacky side for us, but it was a great time.  We met up with some friends when we got there, who coincidentally were also celebrating their anniversary.  Popular day to get married, I guess;  Likely because it’s easy to remember.  We sort of kicked around all day, pretty much killing time until our (gasp) 9:30 dinner reservations at Wayfare Tavern.  We called them every 30 minutes or so to make sure they didn’t have anything earlier, never worked out.  I deemed it worth the wait though, it was fantastic.  As an added bonus, it gave me something to keep me occupied until midnight, so we actually got to ring in the new year for once.  Matter of fact, we stepped right out the front door of the restaurant and had an excellent view of the fireworks show over the bay.

The next day we got up somewhat early, and headed back up the hill.  Traffic was blissfully light, and we made some seriously good time getting home.  Once there, we effectively shut down for the rest of the weekend, exhausted.  We did go over to some friends house for pizza and to watch the debacle of a football game that was Oregon.  We had a fun time and no serious allegiance to the Ducks, so it didn’t ruin our day.  Then Sunday we went to see Star Wars finally, which I thought was great.  We’re not exactly huge Star Wars fans, but I liked the movie at any rate.  That led right up to the Chiefs game, then we had friends over for a tri tip “experiment” at dinner time.  I got a fancy new thermometer for Christmas, and that was it’s maiden voyage.  I used it in an attempt to California-ize my tri tip, which is to say cook the life out of the poor thing.  Unfortunately I couldn’t bring myself to do it, it was still pretty rare-ish.  I gave it a good try though, next time I’ll take it up another five degrees or so.  Sigh.  Just don’t seem natural.

‘Bout got them holidays licked for another year!  I think I can, I think I can…  Ah, we’ve had a rather good time of it actually.  Very busy though, as evidenced by my lack of attention to my updates.  In case you couldn’t guess what we’ve been doing with our time, we celebrated Christmas.  Sort of the same as the majority of the rest of the world, duh.

It all kind of ran together, but I’ll skim the highlights.  For it our pre-Christmas Friday, we went over to a friend’s house and made tamales.  Festive!  I guess they do it every year, but we missed out last year for whatever reason.  Apparently I should have watched some youtube videos prior to going, my tamale skills were roundly ridiculed.  Hey, they don’t have to be pretty, people.  It’s some meat in a pile of dough, it all tastes the same.  Sheesh.  After that, at Doni’s design, we went out Christmas caroling.  Hmmm.  I was skeptical of the plan at best, sounded like a good way to get shot.  In fact, I had already devised my perfect way out, by declaring that I would only go if his 16 year old son would go.  What are the odds of THAT?  Backfire, he went, and even pretended to enjoy it.  It was a fun time after all, and we didn’t get shot.  Most people seemed to thoroughly enjoy it.  And, some didn’t.  You can’t please everybody all the time, as they say.

Christmas Eve we stayed home for a quiet evening.  Still stinging from my merciless taunting at the tamale festival, I resolved to hone my skills.  So, I dug some leftover brisket out of the freezer and went to rolling again.  (After watching countless youtube clips, of course.)  I can say with conviction that this batch turned out significantly better.  I’m not really sure what we’re going to do with 3 dozen brisket tamales, but that’s an issue for another day.

For Christmas day we got up early-ish and had a nice little celebration.  We opened our presents from our families, and worked in some good facetime chats too.  We had festive video chats with both our families, and later in the afternoon we heard from Johan also, our friend in Sweden.  After that we headed back over to the scene of the previous tamale crime, and enjoyed another big Christmas.  They’re nice enough to let us weasel in on their family Christmas;  We even participated in the gift exchange.  ** Edit:  Wait a minute…  The facetime calls were the day after Christmas I believe.  Geez, it’s all a big blur.  I’m not retyping the paragraph, close enough.

For a post-holiday wind down, we headed out wine tasting with some friends in nearby Sutter Creek.  (That’s what triggered my razor-sharp memory…  We went wine tasting right after wrapping up the video chats.)  We hadn’t been to this area before, so it was a nice little exploration trip.  It was quite the quaint downtown.  Actually, I was surprised to learn it was even older than our old Brookside haunts, by quite a bit actually.  Good times, and I believe a bit easier of a drive than Amador;  We’ll have to get back there soon.

Two weeks without an update, tsk.  I’ve been out of town, which is very stressful on me, most likely unnecessarily so.  We did a quick fly-by of KC, then off to Chicago for Doni’s office Christmas party.  Eh we had fun, it was just tough to try and squeeze everything in.  I took a lot of pictures, but going back through them it looks like they were all of food.  I guess I was a little excited to get some good cuisine.  I’ll post them anyway, because I’m not inclined to detail seven whole days of travel.

Holidays are just way too busy for an old man like me.  I can’t hang.  That weekend was nothing short of exhausting.  We came out of the gate strong on Friday with an afternoon trip to some nearby wineries.  We haven’t made the rounds in a while, I’ll grant you that.  A few tastings were overdue at best.  We kept it pretty short though;  I think we totaled three stops.  Much more than that and my attention span starts fading rapidly.  We wrapped up the day over at our house, dancing to the Mickey Mouse Club show with the two-year-old.  Pretty sure I pulled a hammy.

Saturday we killed the better part of the day around the house, saving our energy for our friend’s annual “blind beer tasting” party that night. Our friends Michael & Alaina host this annually, and it’s a great time.  We got in on the action last year, mostly because it was held at our house.  This year it was at their house, and luckily we scored an invite again.  Grandfathered in, I guess.  I guess it grows in size every year;  I can say it was definitely bigger than last year.  I think there were like 40 people?  Way too many different beers, I can tell you that.  I had the worst case of heartburn ever.  Oh, the perils of old age.

Sunday I was about 1/2 done for.  That’s usually the case on Sundays, no big change there.  I was feeling extra worn out though.  I didn’t even cover Thanksgiving in this update, that was an event in itself.  (But, as it didn’t fall on the weekend proper, I’m technically not obligated to rehash it.  It was fun.  Done.)  Anyway, back to Sunday, I fired up the smoker and spent the afternoon watching a turkey cook.  Excellent use of a day, I must say.  I was most pleased with the results too.

Turkey Day is coming!  I’m feeling particularly thankful this year so I’m ready to feast.  So much so, in fact, that I bought two turkeys.  That’s one way to insure I get some leftovers I guess.  As far as the weekend went, well it was rather uneventful.  I was geared up for a big happy hour Friday, but nobody was buying into my plan so I ended up on my back patio as usual.  Hey, it was a nice evening out, nothing to complain about there.  I ended up with a big fat cigar and my feet kicked up on the coffee table, listening to some good tunes and enjoying the weather.  We did make it out to dinner at Selland’s a little later, which was tasty as always.  I’ll admit I go there for the very reasonable price though; Their $25 special cannot be beat, at least not around here.

Saturday I actually got outside and got a little yard work done.  My citrus trees, which I was just certain were going to produce a little bit of fruit this year, got all broken up in the neighbor’s landscaping project, so I tried to salvage them the best I could.  I think they’ll make it.  They offered to replace them but eh, no thanks.  I don’t so much mind buying new ones, I don’t want to dig the stinkin’ holes to plant them.  The so-called dirt out here is no joy to dig in, that’s for sure.  I got them all repaired, we’ll see if they heal up.  I trimmed a few of the rosemary bushes too, those things are ridiculous.  Definitely in the “drought tolerant” family.  They’ll take over your whole yard if you let them.  After I got done with that, we headed up to the AT&T store, presumably to get our monthly bill lowered a bit.  Several hours and a sizable sum of money later, we walked back out in a fog.  My head is still swimming, I don’t know what happened exactly.  Hopefully my monthly savings are enough to cover the out-of-pocket expenses over the next decade or so, but I rather doubt it.  Good grief.  Note to self:  Conduct all AT&T business online next time.

The majority of Sunday was spent on the couch, as has been the tradition as of late.  We got out to the grocery store and bought our turkeys, and that was about it.  I did spend a good deal of time fine-tuning my home automation setup that I’ve been working on.  I’m pretty happy with the door locks and lights and that generic stuff, but I was trying to program the thermostat schedules with it too.  The little voice in the back of my head kept saying “The thermostats have built-in scheduling, what’s the point?”  And the other voice would answer “Because it would be cooler to have it in your automation setup.”  Well, I woke up about 2:30 this morning and it had set the temp upstairs to 62, and downstairs to 70.  Not too bad, except I’d wanted 62 degrees on both.  Unfortunately though, the stupid thing had set the upstairs to “cool” and the downstairs to “heat.”  So yeah, the heater was rocking downstairs trying to get the house up to 70, while the air conditioner was trying to cool the upstairs to 62.  I shut it all off and turned the thermostat scheduling back on for the time being…