I like to begin my posts with an immediate excuse as to why I’m (still) boring this week.  Get it out of the way early.  So, for this week, I’ll quickly throw out the qualifier that I was oncall, so I had to sort of stay close to home base most of the time.  Friday, case in point, we did one whole lot of nothing.  And on a holiday to boot, tsk tsk.  I thought about crossing the county line and bootlegging some firecrackers in, but it seemed they were taking the ban rather seriously so I nixed that idea.  I really can’t say I saw or heard so much as a single firework go off the entire weekend.  A little eerie, honestly.  We did cruise down to check progress on the house, which seemed to be going just swimmingly.  We’ve got drywall, all taped and mudded, and one layer of stucco on the outside.  The way it’s going it doesn’t seem like it should take them two more months to finish, but I guess the slow part is coming.  That was about it for our big Fourth.  We picked up some tuna steaks at the grocery store and grilled those for dinner.  Not even a very Fourth-ish kind of meal, but it was on sale and it sounded good. (And, matter of fact, it WAS good.)

Saturday, determined to leave our circle for at least a short while, we decided to drive up the hill a bit to Placerville and visit Jodar Winery.  This was sort of a random destination, based mostly on location and the fact that they served tasty-sounding food.  It turned out to be a nice place, we killed the better part of the afternoon there.  We split an enormous gorgonzola burger and fries, had a glass of wine, and sat in the shade listening to a couple of entertaining guys play harmonica and guitar.  Cheap entertainment to be sure, which seems to be in short supply around here.  We stopped by K-Mart on the way home and picked up a kiddy pool for Teagan, and spent the rest of the scorching afternoon playing ball with her in the back yard.  (Poor girl isn’t smart enough to stop chasing the ball when she gets too hot, but she’ll cool off in the pool if it’s there.)

Sunday was roughly the same, but we headed the opposite direction on the freeway to Device Brewing.  I’d heard positive reviews from a few co-workers, and it didn’t disappoint.  Like nearly every other brewery we’ve visited here, it was located in a warehouse.  Not exactly big on “character,” but effective I guess.  We sampled some very nice brews there, and passed the time playing Jenga.  They had a food truck outside serving sausages, so we picked up a few of those for lunch.  Honestly I’d have enjoyed them a lot more if I hadn’t just got a huge cheeseburger and fries for the same price the previous day, but it was OK.  It seems the only food trucks we ever run into here serve “gourmet sausages” too;  Could we hit the taco or BBQ truck once in a while?  (Maybe they don’t exist, who knows.)