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.

We hit a first in our time here last week;  Two good dinners out!  Our first hit was at Sutter Street Steakhouse on Tuesday.  We’ve been meaning to get there for a long time, and rather randomly decided Tuesday was as good a night as any.  I’ll have to say, after all our restaurant fails here in the last three years, I went in with a large amount of skepticism.  Luckily it lived up to its billing though, we both had great dinners.  Actually, we both had the same exact dinners;  ribeye steaks.  I had no doubt the quality of the beef would be up to par, but I did have serious reservations about anyone in this entire area cooking it as requested.  They were spot on though, we were both quite happy.  Overjoyed, even.  Elated.  Ecstatic.  Euphoric.  OK you get the idea.  Good meal.

Thursday night we joined our friends Michael & Alaina at Rudy’s Hideaway in nearby Rancho Cordova.  The main attraction here was their Thursday evening lobster special, and I’d made up my mind on that before we even saw the menu.  I’m pretty sure I’ve never ordered a whole lobster before, so that was my excitement for the meal.  Luckily it wasn’t nearly the dining challenge that I’ve always feared, it was actually pretty easy to deal with.  Quite delicious too.  I’d definitely go back to either of these restaurants if the opportunity came up.  The only downside is, neither of them were exactly “every day priced” menus, at least not in our book.  Heck, I’d like to go to one of them every week, but the checking account wouldn’t hold up very long.  At least it’s nice to know there is something good available if a special occasion comes up though.

As for the weekend, we stayed relatively occupied.  We took it easy Friday night, in preparation for our big garage sale on Saturday morning.  It was a “community event,” the one sale a year our hoity-toity HOA allows, so we figured we better take advantage this time around.  It was, in short, absolute mayhem.  We were very quickly overrun by hordes of bargain hunters, and it didn’t slow down for several exhausting hours.  Our goal wasn’t so much to make money as to get rid of stuff, and we did a pretty darn good job of that.  Our motto was “No reasonable offer refused,” and for that matter we didn’t refuse any unreasonable offers either.  Get that stuff outta here.  I was definitely overwhelmed by the turnout though, it was stressful for a while.  Donette was running around the yard yelling “YUP!!!” like an auctioneer, and people were throwing cash at me faster than I could keep track.  When the smoke cleared, we had an extra $750 in our pockets.  That sounds like a lot for a morning’s work, but the downside is our house is completely empty.  As in nowhere to sit.  Nowhere to eat.  No area rugs on the floor.  Oh well, mission accomplished.  After that debacle, we headed over to the clubhouse where Donette was hosting the monthly “Friends of the Vine” wine tasting.  Our friend Michael had hooked us up with a local winery, and they graciously provided a lot of wine for the event.  Usually she just invites people to bring a bottle of wine and an appetizer, and come meet your neighbors.  That’s usually good for one other couple showing up, sometimes two.  Man, you offer a few free sips of wine and the entire neighborhood shows up.  Funny how that works.  It was a great time though, everyone seemed to enjoy themselves.

Sunday we turned it way down.  That big day before took it out of me.  I found the Chiefs game on the TV, and then after that watched the other random games all afternoon.  It’s starting to cool down a little bit, so it was a fine day to waste time on the back patio watching the season openers.  For dinner we headed over to a friend’s house for a delicious tri tip, and watched a few episodes of The Sopranos in their back yard.  We’ve started up the whole series with them, gives us something to do on otherwise quiet Sunday nights.  We’ve made it to Season 1, Episode 4, we’ll see if we can keep it up.

On a whim, I decided to take off last Thursday & Friday and call it an extra-long weekend.  It worked out for the better, although for whatever reason I don’t really feel ready to work again.  I’m sure I’ll hit my groove soon.  Yeah, soon.

Despite the extended break, we didn’t do anything too crazy.  For one thing, Donette was still working so she couldn’t join me.  I took a short mountain bike ride on Friday…  Besides that I mostly binge-watched Gunsmoke on the back patio.  I spent my day Thursday smoking a few pork butts, which was pretty exciting as my life goes.  We had a bunch of people over and tore up one of them, and threw the other in the freezer.

Sunday we headed across town and joined some friends for a post-cabo-trip party.  Granted, our Cabo trip was some time ago, but we sorta needed a reason to get together for a fiesta I guess.  Apparently it was a little cool for swimming because nobody got in the pool, but we had a fine time just sitting around enjoying the day, not to mention 5 pounds of delicious carne asada.  And it enjoy it we did, we actually stretched things out well into the evening.

For the holiday, we joined a group out at a trail in Auburn for some light hiking.  In retrospect, the whole plan was a little flawed.  A) Don’t go to a state park on a holiday, they’re crazy-crowded, and B) Why drive 45 minutes to go on a 30 minute hike?  Hey, it was a cool hike though.  And, despite the insane amount of cars parked up and down both sides of the road, the trail itself wasn’t really that crowded.  We took Teagan with us and she thoroughly enjoyed herself as well.  We passed several dogs and even a few horses without any of her little fits, so she seems to be improving her manners.  After getting in our little bit of exercise, we drove a bit further and enjoyed a pint at my favorite brewery, Knee Deep.  After that it was back to the patio at home, where I endured my first Fantasy Football draft in a longgggg time.  I’ll admit I’ve sort of missed it, we’ll see how this year goes.  I managed to put together what several other members hailed as “The Best FF Team In The History Of The League” so I’m off to a good start.  Or, maybe I just clicked the “auto-draft” button and watched things go by.  One of those.

We didn’t do that much this past weekend, which is good because I don’t feel like typing anyway.  We started things off strong on Friday with a nice happy hour.  Somewhere along the way, more people joined in the fun and it turned into happy hours.  Never a good idea for the old folk.  Oh well, it was fun and we even got to go to a new place.

Saturday I got up early to get ready to go mountain biking with a buddy.  Actually I just paced around the house hoping he’d either A) forgotten about it, or B) changed his mind and didn’t want to go.  He showed up though, right on time.  It was a great idea on paper:  I wanted to know what trails to take to get from our house to Folsom and I’m just not familiar enough with the routes to figure it out.  So we took off from the house, and after about 3 miles on the road we got into some nice easy trails.  And, for the most part, we stayed on “nice easy trails.”  I am just not a very good rider, I get overwhelmed by these trails out here pretty easily.  Towards the end of the 17 mile ride things got a little dicey and I somehow managed to fly over my handlebars and bounce myself off a big boulder.  Pretty easy to see why they call the area Granite Bay, there’s a lot of it.  The boulder definitely came out on the better side of the confrontation, it didn’t look any worse for wear.  I, on the other hand, was flat on my back, scared to move because I was pretty sure I’d broken multiple bones.  (Not to mention, my head was facing down the steep hill and I literally couldn’t sit up.)  Turns out I was relatively unscathed.  Ticked off, a little bloody, and very dirty, but no permanent damage this time.  We’ll see if I wise up and give up the sport.  (My buddy mercifully took me on pavement the rest of the ride, I was too shaken for more obstacles.)

Sunday we headed over to a friends house in Sacramento for a bbq.  I was feeling pretty banged up from my “incident” but the lure of ribs was too strong.  Wise choice, they were delicious and it was a great day to sit outside and enjoy them.  Matter of fact, we ended up sitting in their back yard all day, snacking and cooking.  I’m a lot better at that than mountain biking apparently.

We stayed a little closer to home this weekend, mostly because we spent too much money the last few.  We did get out and enjoy a new place though.  Now that we’ve lived here nearly 3 years we thought perhaps we should try a few different places, instead of just making the same trips over and over.  (OK we just went to a new place two weeks ago, I guess that was the start of this new plan.)  So, for our revered “Sunday Funday” this week, we joined another couple at nearby Sly Park, aka Jenkinson Lake.  All in all, a great facility, we thoroughly enjoyed our afternoon there.  We took our inflatable kayak, they rented a few, and we paddled around the lake for a little picnic lunch.  As a matter of fact, we are considering going back this coming weekend and doing a little camping, but who knows if that will come together.  I only had a few quibbles, most of which related to price.  Yes, I know that seems to be a recurring theme… hmmm.  And, not so much last weekend, but as we look towards camping there.  They got us for $11 entry fee last weekend;  Fair enough.  There were 4 of us and we had a good day of entertainment.  Checking out the campgrounds though, good grief.  Granted, I haven’t tent-camped in a long time, but their tent-only sites are $35 to $55?  And that only allows one car, we’ll need two.  (cha-ching.)  Want to bring Teagan?  Five bucks a day.  (cha-ching.)  Load of firewood? (double cha-ching.)  At the end of the day we’d be better off staying at the Holiday Inn by our house.  Speaking of Teagan, they don’t allow dogs in the water, which I’ll have an awfully hard time explaining to her.  I get it, it’s the drinking water source for the area, but I’d be a lot more concerned with what all those little kids swimming are doing in the water than dogs.  Oh well, we’ll see what comes together.