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.