A brief post for the sake of it being Monday.  We are on vacation in Kauai and every minute counts, I need to get outside quick-like.  We started our trip Wednesday, driving down to Oakland for the evening.  Our flight was at 7:00 in the morning Thursday, so it was a solid plan.  We got there around dinner time, checked in, and headed out to see the sites.  Just kidding.  It’s Oakland, there are no sites.  We locked ourselves in the room and watched TV all night.  The big benefit to the plan was a direct flight to Kauai.  Five hours later and we were at the resort, ready to relax.  Heck we couldn’t even get the first hop out of the way from KC in that time.  Since then we’ve done some hiking, some snorkling, some shopping, and no small amount of just laying on the beach.  Today we’re going out to look for whales.  Haven’t seen a whole lot of them so far, I think we might be a bit late.  Hoping for the best though.  Here’s a video of some turtles I ran into yesterday while snorkeling.  It’s a bit long, sorry, but I think they’re cool.

I am pleased to report that I’m back to riding my trusty scooter.  Rollin’ carefree down the road, wind blowing through my hair, waving at the other cool kids….  Or not.  Getting it back from Sacramento was a much less harrowing experience than getting it down there.  Thankfully the mechanic took pity on me and lashed it down to the trailer in a much more efficient manner than I did.  Those stupid ratchet straps seriously baffle me, I never can figure them out.  Of course then I almost never figured out how to get the stupid things released once I got home.  I was contemplating just cutting them when one finally let go.  Seemed a shame since I just bought them at the uhaul store, but I was desperate.

I guess that was sort of a hit-and-miss weekend.  Friday was something of a letdown.  Determined to enjoy my afternoon, I headed up to nearby Ruff Haus to celebrate the end of the work-week.  A rather boring experience, as it turned out.  I had a mug and some french fries, then gave it up and headed home.  As I should have already been aware, I was just as happy sitting on my own back porch watching TV.  Heck of a lot cheaper too.  Grilled up a pizza and enjoyed the nice weather until the sun went down and it got too chilly.

Saturday was a bust.  I was scheduled to work that evening, so the day was spent pretty much waiting around for that.  We did take a nice long walk, four miles to be exact.  We’ve been trying to get some strolls in, and that was our longest yet.  Teagan is enjoying our new-found past time for sure.  She does enjoy a nice walk, and I think she’s slowly getting a little better with her leash manners.  As long as you don’t pass any other pups, or see a lizard, or a leaf blows by, or any other type of distraction, you can pretty much manage her.

Sunday we somewhat made up for the previous day’s boredom.  Donette was hosting her first Oscar party, and she had quite a bit of work to do before her friends came over.  She spent the better part of the day cooking and cleaning, while I somewhat ineffectively tried to help out.  We managed to travel up to a friend’s open house party in the middle of it all, if only for a short bit.  We actually could only stay ten minutes and had to race back to our house.  Sure enough, her first guest showed up right as we pulled in the drive;  Perfect timing.  The boys were banned from the event, so several of us met up at 36 Handles and played darts for a few hours. I’m not much of a dart player, but it certainly passed the time.  Eventually we got a little bored (and hungry) though, so we crashed the party and ate up all the leftovers.

As a bit of left-over news from last week, I did indeed try out my new paella pan Monday night.  I thought the results quite passable indeed.  If nothing else, I had fun cooking it.  I put together a step-by-step photo-album of the fun, or at least I tried.  I ordered the pictures chronologically, but for some reason if you click through the full size ones they are all mixed up.  Oh well, it’s the thought that counts.

Speaking of pics, I’m somewhat short on them this week.  Here’s, uh, a shot of Doni’s new curtains in the dining room though…

Donette hung new curtains in the dining room

It occurred to me this morning that I haven’t heard from the scooter shop in quite some time.  Uhhh, are you still working on it?  Odd.  I’m not nervous yet though, because for one thing I’m dreading getting it back home, and I rather enjoy the extra garage space.  Hopefully they didn’t just sell it for parts though, it was a rather sketchy looking place.

The weather is shaping up quite nicely here, we made good use of our back patio area this past weekend.  Friday I was heading to the Hop House by myself, when it struck me that I might as well just sit on my own back porch.  Indeed, I think I enjoyed it much more than the Hop House.  I could watch whatever I wanted on TV, do a little grilling, and generally enjoy the evening, all while saving a considerable amount of change.  All good things.

We had plans with some other couples for Valentines Day, but when it came down to the wire nobody felt like fighting the crowds.  (At least with us…  Maybe that was the case…)  By late afternoon everybody had expressed their general disinterest, so I headed up to the grocery and bought my own feed.  It was pretty much a duplicate of our New Year’s Eve dinner;  ribeye steak with lobster, and asparagus.  I thought the lobster came out much better this time though, I’m getting the new grill figured out.

Yesterday I had big plans of shopping all day, but it was just too nice out.  Instead of running errands, we went to Relish Burger and enjoyed their nice patio for quite a while.  I’m not sure when you pass the time-frame for “leisurely lunch” and cross into “loitering” but I’d say we were pretty close to that fine line.  Oh well, we didn’t get kicked out.  I did manage to make it Over The Hill (as it’s commonly referred to) to Folsom and hit the World Market.  Dangerous place, they have all sorts of cool looking stuff.  I stuck with my target items though;  A new paella pan and a few groceries to go with it.  I was quite excited to put together my first paella effort last night, but Doni wasn’t behind that idea so it’ll have to wait until this evening.

The weeks continue to fly by.  No way is it February already.  That’s what happens when you’re keeping busy I guess.  That, for instance, wasn’t an all-together boring weekend.  Friday was of moderately poor weather outside, so I defaulted to the Hop House for my after work entertainment.  It was about on par for Friday entertainment too;  Served a purpose.  Saturday we made a half-hearted attempt at running some errands.  Those plans were quickly derailed when I got frustrated with the traffic though, as usual.  We got absolutely nothing done, but we did have a nice lunch out I guess.  I bailed out for the safety of the house, and spent the rest of the day working on my tired old computer.  It’s getting a little on the aged side.  I believe I’ve had this one roughly 8 years, which makes it about 500 in computer years.  In a last ditch effort to speed it up a bit, I dropped a snappy new SSD drive in it and cloned my old spindle drive to it.  As advertised, it is noticeably more responsive.  It should easily get me through a few more years like this.  However, I’ve pretty much already made up my mind that it’s time to upgrade so we shall see what comes of that.  The new drive would make a fine base for a new PC for sure, so it won’t be money wasted.  (No more so than any money spent on a pc is wasted anyway.)

Sunday the oddly poor weather continued.  Actually I guess it’s not that odd…  It is, in all fairness, winter time.  A few inclement days are to be expected I suppose.  Man it wouldn’t let up though;  torrential downpours, one after another.  At least it’s fairly warm out, which takes the edge off a bit.  We were getting a little bored of sitting around the house, so we headed out for an afternoon showing of American Sniper.  Good movie, I think we both enjoyed it.  After the show it was still dumping rain, putting me in the mood for some comfort food.  We stopped by the grocery and I picked up some short ribs, which I’ve been wanting to cook lately anyway.  (Mostly just for the joy of using my fancy Staub cookware, it makes me happy.)  I used a recipe from Anne Burrell, and I was quite happy with the results.

Today and tomorrow I am enjoying a few days off.  I spent my morning today renting a trailer and hauling my broken-down scooter to Sac-town.  What a nuisance.  Had to be done though, that’s my main form of transportation and it hasn’t run in months.  The drive down there was nerve-racking to be sure.  My tie-down job left something to be desired apparently, and it kept sliding all over the trailer.  I don’t know how it didn’t tip over, but it never did.  I was hoping they could fix it and I could haul it back home, but of course nothing is that easy, they estimated a week.  Sigh.  It remains to be seen if I trailer it back up the hill or just ride it home…  I think I’d rather ride a scooter on the freeway than make that arduous journey with the trailer again.  (Not to mention it wasn’t particularly cheap renting it.)  Tonight we’re going to head down to a friends house to spend the night, then get up at the crack of dawn (pre-dawn actually) to queue up for a glass of Pliny the Younger beer.  I do not find the idea of standing in line six hours for a beer particularly appealing, but I’m going anyway, just to say I did.  Something tells me it will fall quite squarely in the “not worth the wait” category, but I’m trying to keep an open mind.

I’m sure I’ve mentioned more than once that I should move this “weekly status” to something other than Monday.  I’m just too tapped out at the beginning of the week for this.  Oh well, I’ve got some pictures to post at least.  The majority of the photos are from a wine tasting trip we went on last weekend, mostly just because the weather was so nice out.  We visited several nearby places, I’d say all were within 20 miles or so of our house.  I think you could go wine tasting every weekend and never hit them all, it’s pretty crazy.

This weekend was semi-fun also.  In an effort to expand our social circles, we went to a few parties at the neighborhood clubhouse;  A wine tasting event Saturday night and a Superbowl party Sunday.  My feeble efforts at socializing failed miserably of course, but I suppose it was fun at any rate.  I entered the chicken wing contest Sunday, and took home the first place ribbon.  The judges declared the slightly piquant flavor profile easily the best of the entries, it was really no competition.  Actually it really was no competition, I was the only entry.  They were pretty darn good though.  There were considerably more entries in the chili contest, which I found rather odd.  It’s sixty degrees out, who wants chili?