Another weekend of company, we are just entertaining fools recently.  (No comments please.)  I apologize for my lack of posting last week, but we had guests coming in and I was absolutely overwhelmed with preparation chores.  There’s also a strong chance I just forgot.  Shame, because it was a good weekend too.  But, on to this weekend.  Friday our friend Todd showed up, visiting from Houston.  He’d been on a whirlwind trip around the country, starting at Float Trip last weekend, then on to his sister’s in Sausalito, then he drove up and stayed a few days with us.  Hopefully he was worn out by the time he hit our house, as we’re not exactly entertainers.  We put a bunch of food out on the counter so he could survive, and then sort of retired to the back patio like we always do.  Donette did come up with the rather original idea of visiting the Folsom Prison museum on Saturday.  We’d been meaning to go there since we moved, and what better time than when company is in town.  It was a very small display, just a few rooms.  Interesting though, and we could say we took him to a local attraction.  Outside of that we didn’t do a whole lot.  Caught up on all the recent Float Trip stories, and relaxed on the patio for no small amount of time.  Good times though.

We actually had visitors this weekend!  The Martins & Greers made the trip west to stay with us a few days, and we had quite a time of it.  It took a lot out of me though, I’m definitely struggling to get through this day.  That entertaining stuff is hard work.

That was a particularly quiet weekend.  Both of us are still right on the edge of being sick so we’re sort of taking it easy.  That’s not particularly remarkable I guess…  I should probably say “Taking it even easier than usual.”  We had some fun though, such as it was.  Any day not spent in a cubicle is a good day I suppose.

Briefly, we spent the weekend the in the same fashion as countless others, if on a slightly smaller scale.  Friday, if memory serves, I ran by the grocery and bought some store-made burger patties for dinner.  (Good grief, I AM getting lazy in my old age.  The whole thought of buying a package of burger and shaping it into burgers just seemed like way too much work.)  They provided an adequate dinner.  I think I was more interested in grilling something than actually eating it.  After dinner we sat around the patio and watched basketball games until it got too cold, then we went inside and watched basketball games.  Woo hoo, as they say.

Saturday we ran some errands, mostly buying supplies and stuff.  Did a little light housework, mostly in the yard.  Fun fun.  Watched still more basketball, some of the games were actually rather exciting.  I had to work later on in the evening so mostly I just stared at the tv and waited.  Sorta ruins a whole day.

Sunday was a lost cause for the most part.  My sleep was all off (as if it was ever “on,”) and Donette was feeling pretty sickly so she napped a remarkable portion of the afternoon.  I watched a few thoroughly entertaining games, and managed to hang two ceiling fans while I did so.  Efficiency at work. As an added (and not altogether unsurprising) bonus, both even come on when the switch was flipped.  Major victory as my home projects go.  And that was the weekend.  I do have a few pictures from Teagan’s birthday party.  No, those aren’t our kids, we rented them from a local party store so she’d feel like she had friends.  It was a combo birthday/St. Pat’s party, so a few adults came too.  A rather enjoyable time was had, and the dog is still sleeping.

One more weekend has rolled by.  And not a bad one, at that.  If nothing else it was in the mid-to-high seventies all weekend and and we spent the majority of it outside.  Good stuff.  Honestly the weather was probably nicer than on our recent Hawaii trip, just didn’t have the view or the beach.  Another in the long line of “just can’t have it all” situations.

The weekend had a very repetitive, if enjoyable, theme to it.  “Get up, get outside, enjoy.”  That scenario was prefaced by an unfortunate bout of work Friday of course, but thanks to the time change there was plenty of sunlight to be had after that.  We ended up over at a friends house for a taco dinner, which was a fun time, not to mention tasty.  It was so warm out their kids were actually in the pool, where they discovered that just because the air temp is warm doesn’t necessarily mean the pool water is warm.  To their credit they stuck it out though, purple lips and all.

Saturday we traveled Over The Hill to Folsom, to attend a “bike and sports” expo we’d read about.  It was more or less a bust, other than to get us out and about.  They really didn’t have anything of interest for us, it seemed to be a more kid-oriented event.  I think we walked though in about 15 minutes, then it was off for alternate forms of entertainment.  I’m not sure it filled the “entertainment” bill, but we ended up at the hardware store shopping for various home projects.  Got some irrigation fittings for the garden, some fertilizer for the fruit trees…  Exciting stuff.  That evening we headed over to another friends house and once again mooched a free meal.  They had a nice barbecue gathering, it was quite fun.  I was excited to try the wild salmon he’d caught in a nearby river.  I was then disappointed to find I much prefer Costco salmon.  Life is full of such letdowns I guess.

Sunday was another fine day.  When the local grocery ad came out last week, I noticed there were honest-to-goodness whole beef briskets advertised, if at a somewhat inflated price.  Hey, beggars can’t be choosers, I ran down and snatched a few of them up.  I will say there was something of a difference of opinion as to the definition of a “whole brisket,” but be that as it may they certainly were serviceable slabs of meat.  I got the smoker fired up around 10:00, and proceeded to enjoy the day.  Needing a bit of a reason to celebrate, we declared it to be Teagan’s birthday, and invited several people over for the festivities.  I’m not sure if it was the dog or the brisket (I suspect the latter,) but we ended up with a good sized crowd.  Among them were roughly 100 kids, which pleased Teagan to no end.  (That might be a slight exaggeration, but not much.  They were quick little buggers, it was hard to get an accurate count.)  At any rate they were pretty impressed with her fetch skills, and she was more than happy to show them off.  The kids had the numbers on her;  As soon as one would wear out another would take over.  She pretty much chased the ball until she couldn’t go any more, which was a rather epic session.  Poor girl missed the end of her own party, she was passed out on the couch.  The brisket was a hit too, we had a fine dinner.

Nothing like a Monday after vacation.  Just doesn’t get much worse than that.  I’ll post a few pictures and get back to trying to dig out from under this horrific pile.  Woe.  WOE!!!!