Ah, a fine holiday weekend.  Left me a bit battered but I’ll recover.  Said recovery tends to take a little longer than usual since I passed the 1/2-century mark, but I believe there are more factors at work there than just my advanced age.  My memory is sketchy these days too, but I’ll recount the weekend activities to the best of my ability.  Lately I’ve been given to mixing up the days during which an event occurred, much to Donette’s dismay.  Three-day weekends are particularly taxing on me.  I figure I’m doing good enough just to cover things, the time and/or day on which they occurred is secondary.

Friday, (or was that Saturday?) we kicked things off “up the hill” with our friends Michael & Alaina.  I’m not entirely clear who scheduled the events of the evening, but I don’t get too caught up in the planning phase.  I was, as they say, “along for the ride.”  The weather had cooled considerably, making for a pleasant happy hour of sorts at Chateau Davell winery.  They have a nice patio with a great view, if you can ignore the fact that you’re looking out over a highway.  We enjoyed a bottle of wine and a nice meat & cheese tray, then moved on to downtown Placerville to check the progress at Outbreak Brewing.  They’re not officially open yet, but they sell tasters one or two nights a week.  We dropped by a while back and liked the place.  It didn’t appear to me they’d made much progress on the building but they said it was coming along;  I’ll take their word for it.  After tasting a few of their new brews, we headed out for dinner at nearby Smith Flat House.  This was, we decided, our official “best dinner yet in CA.”  I’ve probably used that label a few times before, but I can assure you they’re few and far between.  This place also boasted the rare quality of an actual “atmosphere!”  It was a really cool historic building, it was a nice change to not enjoy dinner in a strip mall.

Saturday morning, Michael & Alaina joined us again for a brunch at our house.  We’ve been on something of a brunch run lately, trying the menu at several local places.  To date, we’ve been left with the general impression of “mediocre & overpriced” at all of them.  (The possible exception is The Purple Place, and it is perilously close to the latter of those two qualities…  But at least the food is good.)  So, I decided to work up a brunch menu of my own.  Honestly I was basing this entire idea on an urge to make eggs benedict using my new sous vide cooker.  I’ll admit a bit of disappointment at finding out nobody liked eggs benedict, and especially with soft-poached eggs.  The most popular menu requests were biscuits and gravy and canned corned beef hash.  Hmmm, didn’t see that one coming.  Well, I can do those I suppose.  I don’t think I’ve had canned hash since I was a kid, and I must say it was a sodium-laden delight.  (I don’t know in what alternate universe the contents of that can qualify as “corned beef hash,” but whatever it really is was pretty tasty.  I thought it best not to read the label.)

Sunday the highlight of the day was a pool party over at a friend’s house in Folsom.  We went to the same event last year and had a great time, it was definitely on our “not to be missed” list.  Matter of fact I was planning to come early and help with the pre-party bbq’ing this year, but that part didn’t work out.  It was a great party once again, if you could overlook the constant barrage of country music.  Hey, not everybody likes non-stop Dave Matthews Band I guess.  Matter of fact I don’t think anybody does, but that’s what you’re getting if you come to my house.  (Say, maybe that’s why nobody comes to my house…  I’ll take that into consideration.)  Anyway, we enjoyed the day, including the great bbq.

For the holiday, we headed up to our friends Michael & Alaina’s once again.  They are likely tiring of our company but our other friend was out of town so options were extremely limited.  They’ve got a nice neighborhood pool, and for whatever reason it is simply not used.  This was the second time we’ve been to it, and the second time we’ve had the whole pool to ourselves.  We set up a volleyball net, fired up a grill, and had a great day of it.  Both Donette & I managed to lose track of time and are now sporting some heinous sunburns, but other than that slip-up it was fine day.