I suppose I am obligated to do some kind of cursory update, if only because I paid for a whole year of this domain name.  No sense wasting Internet bits.  The simple fact is though, I’ve not really done anything.  A few less than inspiring bike rides, a couple of random dinners, and a lot of boring Royals games on my patio.  The wife is out of town, and I really don’t do well at entertaining myself.  Work has been beyond hectic too, but I’m sure that’s even more boring subject matter than what I’ve watched on TV lately.  Part of my ongoing boredom is due to the weather also;  The monsoon rains have continued pretty steadily.  I think they may have stopped, with the possible exception of this coming weekend.  (Why always on the weekend??!?!)  I appreciate your continued patronage here at the website though.  You never know, one day you might randomly check in for a read and find I’ve done something absolutely fascinating.  Yeah, keep holding your breath for that.

I’m officially sick of the rainy, cold weather.  And, much like before I was officially sick of it, my opinion doesn’t seem to make much difference.  Geez what a year.  I don’t know if it’s ever going to warm up.  Actually what I imagine will happen is, it’s suddenly 105 out every day and there will be no stretch of 70 & sunny I look forward to every year.  Guess that’s the way it goes.

My weekend entertainment was severely hampered by said weather conditions.  We had friends over Friday and tried to watch TV on the patio, but the driving rain hammering against our aluminum cover made it impossible to hear anything.  We stuck it out though, at least until the heater ran out of propane.  That was the final straw, we called it an evening.

Saturday we never really got out of the gate.  The rain continued, and just made everything a mess.  Can’t take the dog out, can’t watch baseball on the patio, can’t go cycling…  WOE!!!  We did go out to a birthday party that night in Old Folsom, which provided some much-needed entertainment.  It only improved slightly on Sunday.  I did go out for a ride around 10:00, but cut it short because I was freezing.  Just couldn’t get warmed up.  I told myself a short ride is better than no ride;  Hopefully that’s the case.  After that we tried to watch the debacle that was the Royals game.  My mlb.com subscription is off to a rough start this year.  The video quality is so choppy it’s nearly unwatchable.  I did catch the last inning though, which effectively ruined my entire day.  After that we rolled over to a friend’s house for dinner and a little doggie play date.  Once again it was freezing out, cutting into my patio enjoyment.  (I may have exacerbated the situation by wearing shorts…)  But, dinner was delicious and the puppy got worn out so I call the evening a success.

Well that was actually a busy weekend.  As a matter of fact, I took off Thursday & Friday and stretched it out into a 4-day.  This was triggered by a visit from my ol’ buddy James from KC, AKA Munkirs, who flew up for Thursday & Friday.  It’s been so long since I’ve seen him we actually had things to talk about.  Maybe not two whole days worth, but if we rationed the subject matter and kept the chatter to a minimum, we stretched things out pretty well.  He actually rolled into town on Wednesday night, which allowed for a nice early start on Thursday.  We started off with a solid hike up in Auburn, at Hidden Falls Park.  (Random side note:  I’d originally planned on Horsetail Falls as a destination.  On a whim I checked the forecast:  30 degrees and heavy snow.  Time for plan B.  If you’ve seen one Falls you’ve seen ’em all.)  I’ve been to Hidden Falls, but only on my mountain bike.  There is, I found, a reason for this.  Hiking is slow and hard.  Hills that are challenging on my bicycle are downright torturous on foot.  Oh well, the scenery was nice and they didn’t have to fly me out in the medevac.  After our hike we dropped by Mt Vernon winery, where I had a club pickup to make.  Hey, it’s a long drive out there, gotta make the rounds.  We then wound over to Auburn Ale House for a quite passable lunch on their patio.  Not quite done yet, we made the somewhat long drive to Folsom, and visited the Folsom Prison Museum.  It’s small but interesting, I usually take visitors by there.  After a quick stop by the house to clean up, THEN we drove up to Shingle Springs and met some friends at the recently opened Breakroom.  We’ve been there quite a few times and it’s growing on me.  If that sounds like more activity than I usually have in a given day, well, it is.  Heck it’s more activity than I have in a given week.  Guess I need house guests more often.

Friday we huddled up over a delicious breakfast of boiled eggs to plot the itinerary for the new day.  His first suggestion was “Work out and bike ride.”  The conjunction in the phrase threw me off.  I’m assuming you meant “Work out or bike ride.”  Alas, my hearing was correct the first time.  So we got ready and took the walk over to the gym at the neighborhood clubhouse.  Full disclosure, I badged us in the door, waited until he got started, and walked right the heck back home.  That’s just too much exercise for one day.  By the time he finished up, I’d enjoyed my umpteenth cup of coffee and was ready to go riding.  So, we loaded up and drove to the nearby American River bike trail.  It’s a nice paved trail that follows, not remarkably, the American River.  We rode for quite some distance.  Not sure how far, let’s just go with “Farther than most normal human beings are able to travel on a self-powered two-wheel vehicle.”  Yeah, that far.  In addition, we were bucking a 20 mph wind.  Not sure where THAT came from, but it was rather defeating.  Luckily that finished my physical torture for the day.  We finished the day back at the house, on the patio grilling a tri tip.  Much more my speed.

Nice and quiet weekend out here in the west.  I’m not necessarily sure I mean that in a good way either.  I don’t mind a slow couple of days, but sometimes we get a little extreme.  Oh we had a little bit of fun I guess.  Friday, as a matter of fact, was quite fun.  The weather was sort of crummy but we had friends over and grilled some nice lamb chops for dinner.  OK that might not sound super exciting, but it was for me.  I cannot count the times I’ve been at the store and thought “Man I sure would like to get those nice looking lamb chops.”  And then I buy a steak or chicken or whatever else might catch my eye.  This cycle has been going on for years, if not decades.  Well, some time ago, (Thanksgiving, as it happens,) we were out wine tasting at one my favorite places and ended up purchasing a rather special bottle, or at least as our wine collection goes.  We asked the owner what would pair well with it, and he said “lamb chops.”  Boom, it’s been stuck in my head ever since.  Lamb showed up in the weekly grocery ad last week and it was game on.  I must say, I was really happy with the dinner.  I followed this recipe pretty closely, pesto and all, and I thought it came out great.  And, by the way, it DID pair very nicely with the wine.  After that we broke out the long-dormant Rock Band game for a while.  I was having fun until I got kicked out the band for sucking at guitar.  In my own house.  Tsk.

Saturday, the highlight was probably Costco.  Yeah, one of those kind of days.  As a general rule of thumb it’s a bad idea to go to Costco (or Folsom on the whole) on Saturday, and this day was no exception.  But, I had a MAJOR PURCHASE to make, and got caught up in the excitement.  I was in the market for a new soundbar (for the living room TV) and they’ve usually got some nice ones for good prices.  Indeed, after a good bit of staring and reading online, I made my choice.  Unfortunately, as is too often the case, when I got home I found it just didn’t quite work the way I wanted it to.  I was right on the verge of boxing it up and taking it back, as it was by no means the cheapest option available, but decided to keep it a bit and see if I can make it work.  How do you make it work?  Well, you spend even more money.  I’ve got some more parts showing up from Amazon this week and we’ll see what happens.

Sunday was once again pretty quiet.  I’m on a medium-to-large project to set up our home automation, and spent probably way too much time on that.  Not sure why…  It’s kinda fun I guess.  Spent no small amount of time working with the puppy too, as was the case the other days also.  He’s….  “a handful.”  I like to tell myself he’s making progress though, and for that matter it’s only been a week.  A long, frustrating week, but a week.  For evening entertainment, we went to a friends house for their kids birthday party.  Not “kid’s” but “kids,” they’re twins.  For some reason every year it surprises me that their birthdays are on the same day.  Sort of slow that way I guess.