Yeah, dropped off the earth for a few weeks. Been busy! Or maybe lazy. Maybe a mix of both. I had another birthday come and go last week. Ain’t getting younger, that’s for sure. Had a nice dinner out with friends, got lots of birthday wishes, and some excellent gifts. So happy birthday to me and all that.

Also had a camping trip in that quiet stretch, on the weekend of the 13th. We took the motorhome out to a nearby campsite for a quick weekend “boy’s trip.” Had a great time, and the campground was quite nice. Unfortunately it cost a bit more than our “regular” spot, but that one got flooded out this winter and still isn’t fully open. For the most part we just hung out at the site and ate, and swatted mosquitos. Pretty much checks the boxes of a good trip for me.

As for this past weekend, we had a good time also. Got a lot of things checked off the “home tasks” list. Yeah, those don’t fall under the “good time” category, but it’s nice to actually get a few done. I got a big section of the yard weed-eated. (Weed-ate? Weeded? Mowed? Not sure the right word there.) That’s a nasty, dirty chore to be sure, but it sure looks better. Never got it done last year and it looked pretty sketchy all summer. Didn’t get any complaints from the neighbors, because there aren’t any, but hey, we have to look at it. We also got a good start on the garden. We tilled it up a few weeks ago, and made a few rows of mounds to plant in. Last year we had a few raised beds in there, but they were kind of falling apart so we just tore them down. Then on Saturday, we ran some drip lines for watering and got the majority of the plants in. The drip lines seems to be working out great. The last few years we’ve just thrown a sprinkler in there. It works, but it also waters a lot outside the garden. That makes the grass/weeds grow and then I have to mow them. Ohhhhh, the agony. Anyway, it seems to be coming along nicely. Just have to get a few more things planted and then start picking all our delicious produce.

After we got all that done, we rewarded ourselves with a trip to one of our favorite lunch spots, Solid Ground in Diamond Springs. (It might not qualify as our favorite if there were more than a few options nearby, but lets just overlook that part. It’s not bad, to be sure.) I have two standard orders there; The chicken sandwich, or the chicken nuggets. (Yeah those sounds like kids meals, but they’re really very good.) This particular day, I guess I was feeling a little outrageous, and actually scanned the rest of the menu. Suddenly the word “Rueben” jumped off the page at me, and I immediately went with it. Yep, I’ll have the Rueben please. Shortly afterwards, my sandwich shows up, and the confusion set it. While certainly a sandwich, and certainly on nicely grilled marbled rye, there was a thick pile of what appeared to be pickled beets in the middle. And no meat. Well that ain’t right. By the time my shock subsided and I looked up to voice my displeasure, the waitress was gone. Luckily before I had the chance to stand on the table and cause what surely would have been an unpleasant scene, Donette informed me “Yeah you ordered the Root Vegetable Rueben. Thought that was odd but whatever.” Aw geez. Guess I should have read that a little bit closer. OK, the menu item literally says “Root Vegetable Rueben.” But seriously, who even came up with that idea? Native Californian, to be sure. It really wasn’t bad, or maybe I just tried to convince myself of that. It’ll be back to chicken next time, I know that much.

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We have been enjoying the first stretch of continuous tolerable weather since last year. We have been enjoying it by sitting on patio chairs doing absolutely nothing. While relaxing, this does not leave a whole lot of fun, exciting things to recount from the weekend. If we ever do things meeting those qualifiers, they definitely didn’t happen in the last few weeks. I did fire up the smoker one day, which I always enjoy. I threw on six racks of ribs and a small corned beef brisket, which sounds like a lot o’ meat but it was in preparation for my big party. Unfortunately nobody came, so we have a lot of ribs in the freezer. Attendance likely would have improved had I actually invited anyone, but that detail didn’t occur to me. I’ve been cruising recipes sites ever since, looking for ideas to use up leftover ribs. The options are precious few, it would seem. I’ve got a rib hash on the menu for a soon-to-happen brunch, and that’s about it. (Not gonna lie, I’m pretty excited about that one though.) Other than that day on the smoker… Well… Let’s see: Did some mowing and weed-eating. Re-seasoned the Blackstone griddle, to great success. Got the garden cleaned up and ready for planting. Power-washed the deck and patio furniture. Washed the cars. Played fetch with Quinny. That’s all I can recall at the moment, and I can’t think that any of those items bear further detail.

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Fun weekend out West. I cannot lie, I was a bit down on missing both Float Trip with friends, and Easter in KC with families. Usually the logistics overwhelm me a bit and I just bow out of both events, and I guess I did this year as well. But, this time around I found myself WISHING I would have made the trip. I even thought about loading up my car and driving it last minute. (A quick check of Google Maps proved that idea quite impractical; 2,000 miles and 30 hours drive time each way. Um no.) So, instead we threw together a quick trip down the hill to San Francisco to take the sting out of it. As it happened, the Royals were in town playing the Giants, so we grabbed some tickets for Saturday, a hotel room, and rolled down there. Had a great time of it! The Royals actually won in a rather exciting game, we ate some great food, and met lots of great people. (Yeah, that last one is actually serious; I talked to strangers! And enjoyed it!) We made a one night trip of it, which is about right for that city. On the way home Sunday we stopped by a friends house for an awesome Easter brunch, then picked up the pups and headed back home to recover before the work week. Soon I will start making my travel plans for NEXT Easter so it won’t sneak up on me again.

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Hey, nobody has to listen to me complain about the weather this week! Finally! Oh it’s still rainy, cold, and generally horrible out, make no mistake. I just really don’t feel like bringing it up. I’ve accepted it as a fact of life that I am never going to enjoy nice weather again. Instead of the weather, I think I’ll whine about my house for a bit. The constant repairs here are wearing thin. OK, they done WORN thin. Tired of it. We have a few “cosmetic” updates we’d like to do inside, stuff we would actually enjoy and make it feel a little more comfortable. Instead, all we do is get broken things fixed. New HVAC. New gutters. New paint. New this, new that. This time around, the bill-of-the-month was a new water softener. Ohhhh, how exciting is that! You are correct, it’s not. But, the water here stinks. Bad. It’s been an issue since we moved it, and it wasn’t getting anything but worse. After trying several DIY fixes, we finally gave up and called the water people. Predictably, this visit ended up with “Your water filter system isn’t working, it’s old, you need a new one, blah blah blah.” Same as always. I have come to believe that those who think well water is cheaper than city, have never been on a well. Yeah the water is free. All the junk required to actually use it, not so much. The good news I guess, the water doesn’t stink any more, at least for now, thanks to the fancy sulphur-removal system they also installed. How people lived here for the last 20 years without one, I do not know. Blech. And the bad news? (There’s always bad news.) The bill. They installed all this gear down in the well house at the bottom of the drive, where I park my Jeep. I mention that because they were roughly the same price. Now every time I go down there, I look at the Jeep, then at the water tanks. I dunno, I get a lot more enjoyment out of the Jeep for the same money. But, now we get to check that box off, sit back, and wait for the next thing to break.

While we watched our savings account get drained once again, we figured we might as well do a few fun things too. Saturday we went to fancy birthday party down the hill. (I guess that’s redundant… If an event is “down the hill,” it goes without saying it’s also “fancy.”) It was over at a friend’s house, and he put on quite the opulent dinner. Made me a little stressed just watching him put it all together. He pulled it off flawlessly; I am quite sure I would not have. It was really quite the meal. I couldn’t help but compare it to the rather upscale dinner we went to with them a few weeks ago; this was WAY better. I couldn’t quite pronounce all the dishes, but they sure were good. It probably would have been polite to ask whose birthday we were celebrating, but I was too busy eating.

Sunday was filled with food, basketball games, and nerdiness, not necessarily in that order. To get the nerdiness out of the way, I woke up at some unholy hour of the morning and decided it was time to switch my adblocker from Pi-Hole to AdGuard. As is usually the case with me, there was absolutely no compelling reason behind this idea. I’ve used Pi-Hole for several years, and it works great. Just felt like wasting a few hours I guess, and to that end I was very successful. The ol’ home network is now blissfully ad-free. Just like it was before I threw away several hours of my Sunday, but… errrrr… faster? Nope. Cheaper? Nope, both free. Easier? Eh, arguably. Whatever. It was sorta an interesting little project. After getting to a medium-good stopping point on that, it was breakfast time. Corned beef hash has been on the list for a while now, so I got busy on that. I went with Alton Brown’s recipe, can’t ever go wrong with him. (Minus making the corned beef part… Already had that covered.) Came out delish! I’ve been on a run of food-fails lately, so it was encouraging to get a success in the books, even if it was just hash. We spent the rest of the afternoon watching the basketball tournament, which we both enjoy. Most of the games were pretty exciting, if not quite the results we wanted. For dinner it was back to Food Network browsing, and we decided on chicken piccata. Came out half-decent also; Two successes in one day! (Three if you count the AdGuard project!)

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