Being as I shammed out of last week’s update, I should have lots of material for today, right?  Well not so much.  We were supposed to go camping with our friends Michael & Alaina this past weekend, but it just didn’t happen.  We spent the whole week changing our minds back and forth, justifying each swing in direction with solid reasoning.  But, as the weekend got closer, we had to call the ball and the final decision was “no camping trip.”  The worst part was, (for me,) eating the cost of the campsite we’d pre-paid, but we saved a lot of money on other fronts by not going.  It’ll happen another time, hopefully.

So what did we do with our new-found free time?  Eh not a whole lot.  I spent all day Friday assembling our new breakfast room table and chairs.  Exciting, want me to break that down for you chair-by-chair?  Man I really hate that stuff.  Countless little bolts and washers, all to be slowly tightened down with the crappy 2″ long hex wrench they give you.  Blah.  It really was a long process, and of course me being me I even managed to screw a few of them up.  They are sort of together though, you just want to be sure and sit down carefully on them.  Then, I got to get rid of the enormous pile of cardboard and styrofoam left behind.  Luckily the recycle center is right down the street so I just had to cram all I could in the back of the car and go.

Saturday I started my day off with a decent mountain bike ride.  It was a nice morning out for a ride, even if I did loaf around a littlelong and let it get almost too warm out.  I’ve found a trail near the house that, while maybe a bit on the tame side, lets me build up my confidence for the harder ones.  That’s my big scheme anyway.  I hope to ride it again a few times this week, but the days are getting short quickly.  After that bit of fun, I took a some time to wash the ol’ bike, then our camping compadres came over to watch TV on the patio with us.  Hey, we didn’t want to just totally give up on our weekend plans.  We were, uh, outside anyway.  We watched “31” which was sort of a Disney off-shoot.  OK maybe not so much.

Sunday we continued our camping trip with our friends, once again on the patio.  We cooked up a big breakfast to get things started, even using the camp stove for effect.  After that we set out to try a few new places nearby.  First was Cielo winery, which is about 15 minutes from the house.  It was a hit, if nothing else just for the convenient location.  Nothing wrong with the winery either, we enjoyed it.  On the downside, we were just a bit rushed and had to sort of run out to make our 3:00 tour of Dry Diggings Distillery.  We’ve been curious about this place for quite some time, mostly because it’s located in the business park right across the street from our house.  It was an interesting tour.  They’re big into local history and had a lot of info on that, and had even created a sort of “old time saloon” room for their tastings.  We were there quite a while, then headed back to the house/camp to grill some dinner.  Ah, yes, the great outdoors.  We wrapped it up with an episode of Sopranos, then broke camp and called it a weekend.