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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What a crappy game. I guess, being a Nor-Cal-ian, I can even go so far as to say crappy games. After the debacle that was the Chiefs/Bengals, I proceeded to watch the semi-home-team 49’ers, only to see it end in a quite similar fashion. Guess I’ll just mow the lawn on Super Bowl Sunday. On the upside, I made a pot of chicken gumbo that came out fairly well. It was definitely the highlight of the day, but that just ain’t saying much unfortunately. Bah.

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I don’t have much to work with this week, outside of some great food and great football. So, the lame update that follows is not really my fault. Or, since I kind of elected to lay on the couch and stare at the TV all weekend, maybe it is my fault. Let’s not play the blame-game here though. Friday night, I can’t think that we really did anything. We even skipped out on our normally scheduled happy hour event, for no particular reason. Just didn’t feel like it. I think we might have tried watching a movie or something, which of course led me to promptly fall asleep on the couch. Saturday evening, we drove all the way down to Folsom for a birthday dinner at a friend’s house. We watched the 49’ers game while enjoying a fantastic meal of short ribs over polenta. Good game, good food… Good evening. Sunday was effectively a full day of football. We were either actively watching the game, or pacing the floor waiting for the game. No food was needed, we were still stuffed from the prior evening. I guess the Chief’s game falls under the “all is well that ends well” category, but I’ll have to keep an extra-close eye on my blood pressure this week.

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