Well that weekend was a big bummer. It had a few mentionable moments, but for the most part I was down sick-ish. What is sick-ish? Well, I had a tummy ache. It kicked in hard Friday, right on queue to ruin my weekend, and lasted until Sunday. What a drag! I tried to get in a little fun, mostly because I can’t stand the thought of wasting a weekend. Friday night, some of our friends had some of THEIR friends come into town, so we went for that big meetup. It was all a surprise though, (on our friends that live here,) and we were deeply entangled in their web of lies covering it all up. The details are far too intricate to go into, but the setup has been going on for weeks now. It was quite exhausting honestly, as I am not used to such wanton deception in my daily routine. (Could have been the root cause of my belly ache? Hmmmmm, it bears consideration.) Anyway, the whole scheme was pulled off rather admirably, and now I can resume my standard, wholesome life.

Saturday was just a complete loss. Write it off. I got up at an unholy hour, unable to sleep, and watched TV from the couch all day. I mean ALL day. Lots of the basketball tourney, which thankfully featured some pretty entertaining matchups. The weather was chilly and rainy anyway, so not a complete loss.

Sunday, I managed to limp to the car and we took a drive out to Gorilla Rock Tacos in Lotus. It’s a seasonal restaurant we go to when we have the RV at the campground next door to them. Well, we didn’t have the RV there this weekend, but we’ve been craving the tacos, so we drove out there anyway. Probably burned $20 worth of gas to enjoy $12 worth of tacos, but it was worth it. They are really good tacos. (Burrito actually, in my case.) I won’t go into the authenticity or “how a REAL taco is made” blah blah, I just know they taste good. It’s a distinction I find quite important, yet many people are unable to make. The weather had cleared up nicely from the day before, so we had lunch on their nice outdoor deck, then drove back home for more TV-time. Unable to provide any exciting moments of my own, I’ll mention some friends texted us from the nearby casino, and they’d hit a $11,000 jackpot on a slot machine! Now THAT’S exciting. I’ve certainly never hit that much at a casino. Neither have I been to the casino, which might play a role in that. Then, while they were waiting for all the paperwork, they hit another $1300! Geez I’m missing out. Can’t win if you don’t play.

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Another weekend in the books, and not a bad one at that. Saturday the weather was fantastic, so we put the top down on the convertible and went wine tasting. We didn’t actually do much tasting, more of just driving and enjoying the weather. We cruised over to Sutter Creek, which is about an hour drive down winding roads. Normally I despise that trip, but the day was so nice it made the slow drive rather enjoyable. We had a great lunch at the Sutter Hotel, then popped by Baiocchi and picked up a few bottles to take home. After that, we met up with some friends in Amador, to kind of break up the drive home. Finished up the day on a high note with a soak in the hot tub.

Sunday, we had a sort of impromptu St Patrick’s party. Yeah, a little early, but the odds of us doing something during the week are pretty low. I’d picked up a few corned beefs at Swingles the day before, so I was ready to do some cooking. Alas, one thing I didn’t count on was the meat being completely frozen. That kind of threw me off my game, but after a little ciphering I decided to throw it in the Sous Vide cooker. That solved the meat dilemma, but screwed up my usual method of throwing cabbage and potatoes in the pot. More ciphering ensued, and eventually I decided on a big pot of steamed potatoes, parsnips, and carrots, and then I shredded up the cabbage and did it outside on the griddle. It all came out pretty well! Forgot to take any pictures, so you’ll just have to take my word for it.

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I suppose that was a pretty good week, as weeks go these days. We rolled the RV down to Napa and stayed eight nights at a campground right in the downtown area. It’s actually the same one we stay at for our big BottleRock Festival we go to every year, but during this time of year (i.e., not BottleRock weekend,) it’s $300 per night cheaper. Yep, they gouge you a little bit on the festivals. It’s a great campground in a great location though, and we’ve always said we were going to stay there when the festival wasn’t going on. Well, now we have. I had to work all week, but the view from the motorhome was a lot nicer than from my “office,” so it made it marginally more tolerable. Some friends visiting from Texas joined us the first weekend, and we went out for the obligatory wine tasting one day. That would be it for the wine tasting for the whole trip. It gets a little repetitive quickly, not to mention pricey. The rest of the time was spent just enjoying the town, keeping the dogs occupied, and I did manage to sneak in one mountain bike ride. I could see us getting back down there for another week in the not-too-distant future. There were several trails I didn’t get to ride, endless restaurants we didn’t get to visit, and of course more wineries. They even have free wifi at the campground that seemed to work just fine, so working from the motorhome was no trouble at all. All in all, a successful trip.

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It snowed again last night! What in the heck. Last weekend I was driving around in the convertible, enjoying the mid-seventies, and now this? Further evidence of the universe’s conspiracy against me. I was warned against getting drawn in by the “Fool’s Spring” season, but I bought into it anyway. It’s a harsh switch, to be sure.

Yes, I missed updating this yesterday. This was a valid miss, as it was a national holiday. I’m not sure what that means, since I didn’t get the day off, but I’m gonna roll with it. Another reason might be that I just forgot. I don’t have much to work with anyway. If I go all the way back to Valentine’s Day, we joined two other couples for a great dinner at home. We had probably the fanciest charcuterie plate I’ve ever seen to kick the meal off, then fantastic salads, then a prettied-up short rib Shepard’s pie. Great dinner. Then, this past weekend we had friends up for dinner at our house. Monster-ribeyes were on sale, so I went with that. The one I picked out came in at a gluttonous 3 pounds, it fed the four of us easily. We rounded out the weekend with a little wine tasting at some local spots. Seemed like a great idea with the sunny, warm weather, and the end of football season. Apparently, everybody else had the same idea though, it was a little busy for my liking. We actually bailed out of one of our favorite spots, felt a little sorry for the staff. They were just getting crushed, and it was obvious it was going to take longer than we cared to wait.

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So, I missed a week there. It wasn’t even pure laziness this time, my laptop broke. I got it going again on Tuesday, but figured by then it was far too late to bother. I thought it was trashed actually, and had started shopping new ones, but once again the google came to the rescue. Amazing times we live in, I tell ya’. The screen wouldn’t come on, just kind of a white light which slowly faded to black when you turned it on. After some searching, I found a page that said, “hold down the power button for 30 seconds.” Well, that plan sounds like a reach. Whaddya know, it fixed it. It’s somewhat remarkable that I didn’t ruin it before finding that, I had it all taken apart to take out any salvageable parts. I never have trouble taking things apart, putting them back together is usually an issue though. So, anyway… Here I am again.

Not an extremely exciting weekend in the NorCal area. We did go out to dinner in big Downtown Placerville on Saturday, which is always a big event. (For us.) We decided on Steamers, which I always like. It was tasty alright, but on the way home we decided we need to branch out a little more. They have a pretty limited menu, so we end up ordering the exact same thing every time. I guess that way you know you’re going to like what you order, but there is more out there to explore. Actually, I’m not sure there is, but we’ll look around.

Sunday, of course, was the Big Game. We made a whole day of it by tuning into the Puppy Bowl at 9:00 in the morning, and proceeded to waste the entire day staring at the tube. (Actually, I did sneak out for a nice bike ride, so the afternoon wasn’t a total waste. It was 75 degrees out, too nice to sit on the couch ALL day.) We grilled some wings, made some queso dip, and tried to get in the Super Bowl spirit, despite having rather limited interest in the game. My team lost, for the record. Sigh.

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