‘Bout got them holidays licked for another year!  I think I can, I think I can…  Ah, we’ve had a rather good time of it actually.  Very busy though, as evidenced by my lack of attention to my updates.  In case you couldn’t guess what we’ve been doing with our time, we celebrated Christmas.  Sort of the same as the majority of the rest of the world, duh.

It all kind of ran together, but I’ll skim the highlights.  For it our pre-Christmas Friday, we went over to a friend’s house and made tamales.  Festive!  I guess they do it every year, but we missed out last year for whatever reason.  Apparently I should have watched some youtube videos prior to going, my tamale skills were roundly ridiculed.  Hey, they don’t have to be pretty, people.  It’s some meat in a pile of dough, it all tastes the same.  Sheesh.  After that, at Doni’s design, we went out Christmas caroling.  Hmmm.  I was skeptical of the plan at best, sounded like a good way to get shot.  In fact, I had already devised my perfect way out, by declaring that I would only go if his 16 year old son would go.  What are the odds of THAT?  Backfire, he went, and even pretended to enjoy it.  It was a fun time after all, and we didn’t get shot.  Most people seemed to thoroughly enjoy it.  And, some didn’t.  You can’t please everybody all the time, as they say.

Christmas Eve we stayed home for a quiet evening.  Still stinging from my merciless taunting at the tamale festival, I resolved to hone my skills.  So, I dug some leftover brisket out of the freezer and went to rolling again.  (After watching countless youtube clips, of course.)  I can say with conviction that this batch turned out significantly better.  I’m not really sure what we’re going to do with 3 dozen brisket tamales, but that’s an issue for another day.

For Christmas day we got up early-ish and had a nice little celebration.  We opened our presents from our families, and worked in some good facetime chats too.  We had festive video chats with both our families, and later in the afternoon we heard from Johan also, our friend in Sweden.  After that we headed back over to the scene of the previous tamale crime, and enjoyed another big Christmas.  They’re nice enough to let us weasel in on their family Christmas;  We even participated in the gift exchange.  ** Edit:  Wait a minute…  The facetime calls were the day after Christmas I believe.  Geez, it’s all a big blur.  I’m not retyping the paragraph, close enough.

For a post-holiday wind down, we headed out wine tasting with some friends in nearby Sutter Creek.  (That’s what triggered my razor-sharp memory…  We went wine tasting right after wrapping up the video chats.)  We hadn’t been to this area before, so it was a nice little exploration trip.  It was quite the quaint downtown.  Actually, I was surprised to learn it was even older than our old Brookside haunts, by quite a bit actually.  Good times, and I believe a bit easier of a drive than Amador;  We’ll have to get back there soon.

Two weeks without an update, tsk.  I’ve been out of town, which is very stressful on me, most likely unnecessarily so.  We did a quick fly-by of KC, then off to Chicago for Doni’s office Christmas party.  Eh we had fun, it was just tough to try and squeeze everything in.  I took a lot of pictures, but going back through them it looks like they were all of food.  I guess I was a little excited to get some good cuisine.  I’ll post them anyway, because I’m not inclined to detail seven whole days of travel.

Holidays are just way too busy for an old man like me.  I can’t hang.  That weekend was nothing short of exhausting.  We came out of the gate strong on Friday with an afternoon trip to some nearby wineries.  We haven’t made the rounds in a while, I’ll grant you that.  A few tastings were overdue at best.  We kept it pretty short though;  I think we totaled three stops.  Much more than that and my attention span starts fading rapidly.  We wrapped up the day over at our house, dancing to the Mickey Mouse Club show with the two-year-old.  Pretty sure I pulled a hammy.

Saturday we killed the better part of the day around the house, saving our energy for our friend’s annual “blind beer tasting” party that night. Our friends Michael & Alaina host this annually, and it’s a great time.  We got in on the action last year, mostly because it was held at our house.  This year it was at their house, and luckily we scored an invite again.  Grandfathered in, I guess.  I guess it grows in size every year;  I can say it was definitely bigger than last year.  I think there were like 40 people?  Way too many different beers, I can tell you that.  I had the worst case of heartburn ever.  Oh, the perils of old age.

Sunday I was about 1/2 done for.  That’s usually the case on Sundays, no big change there.  I was feeling extra worn out though.  I didn’t even cover Thanksgiving in this update, that was an event in itself.  (But, as it didn’t fall on the weekend proper, I’m technically not obligated to rehash it.  It was fun.  Done.)  Anyway, back to Sunday, I fired up the smoker and spent the afternoon watching a turkey cook.  Excellent use of a day, I must say.  I was most pleased with the results too.

Turkey Day is coming!  I’m feeling particularly thankful this year so I’m ready to feast.  So much so, in fact, that I bought two turkeys.  That’s one way to insure I get some leftovers I guess.  As far as the weekend went, well it was rather uneventful.  I was geared up for a big happy hour Friday, but nobody was buying into my plan so I ended up on my back patio as usual.  Hey, it was a nice evening out, nothing to complain about there.  I ended up with a big fat cigar and my feet kicked up on the coffee table, listening to some good tunes and enjoying the weather.  We did make it out to dinner at Selland’s a little later, which was tasty as always.  I’ll admit I go there for the very reasonable price though; Their $25 special cannot be beat, at least not around here.

Saturday I actually got outside and got a little yard work done.  My citrus trees, which I was just certain were going to produce a little bit of fruit this year, got all broken up in the neighbor’s landscaping project, so I tried to salvage them the best I could.  I think they’ll make it.  They offered to replace them but eh, no thanks.  I don’t so much mind buying new ones, I don’t want to dig the stinkin’ holes to plant them.  The so-called dirt out here is no joy to dig in, that’s for sure.  I got them all repaired, we’ll see if they heal up.  I trimmed a few of the rosemary bushes too, those things are ridiculous.  Definitely in the “drought tolerant” family.  They’ll take over your whole yard if you let them.  After I got done with that, we headed up to the AT&T store, presumably to get our monthly bill lowered a bit.  Several hours and a sizable sum of money later, we walked back out in a fog.  My head is still swimming, I don’t know what happened exactly.  Hopefully my monthly savings are enough to cover the out-of-pocket expenses over the next decade or so, but I rather doubt it.  Good grief.  Note to self:  Conduct all AT&T business online next time.

The majority of Sunday was spent on the couch, as has been the tradition as of late.  We got out to the grocery store and bought our turkeys, and that was about it.  I did spend a good deal of time fine-tuning my home automation setup that I’ve been working on.  I’m pretty happy with the door locks and lights and that generic stuff, but I was trying to program the thermostat schedules with it too.  The little voice in the back of my head kept saying “The thermostats have built-in scheduling, what’s the point?”  And the other voice would answer “Because it would be cooler to have it in your automation setup.”  Well, I woke up about 2:30 this morning and it had set the temp upstairs to 62, and downstairs to 70.  Not too bad, except I’d wanted 62 degrees on both.  Unfortunately though, the stupid thing had set the upstairs to “cool” and the downstairs to “heat.”  So yeah, the heater was rocking downstairs trying to get the house up to 70, while the air conditioner was trying to cool the upstairs to 62.  I shut it all off and turned the thermostat scheduling back on for the time being…

Well that wasn’t exactly a weekend at Tahoe but it was livable.  Friday night Donette went out with a bunch of people to happy hour.  I was pretty excited to meet some new people, so I rushed home from work and got my going-to-town clothes on.  I was warming up the car when she told me I wasn’t invited.  Again.  Sigh.  Well, fine for them, I had my own happy hour on the patio with Teagan.  Grilled some chicken and watched a movie, and played a little fetch.  And we had FUN.  More fun then her group I bet.  Yeah.

Saturday started off a little slow.  If we did anything all day long, I can’t really recall what it was.  We had a big dinner party to go to, so we spent the day resting up for it.  Donette tried to convince me I wasn’t invited to it either, but I called the host and he told me I WAS.  (Or he was caught off guard and panicked, I got to go at any rate.)  It was some sort of a Thanksgiving warm up I guess, and it was a good time.  There was a big turkey with all the trimmings, and I ate way too much in the spirit of the holiday.  It was all so good, I couldn’t help myself.  I was borderline miserable after dinner, so I hung on as long as I could then we took off.  Just in time too, I heard the board games came out shortly after we left.

Sunday held all the excitement and joy of a typical Monday.  No Sunday-Funday for this kid.  I had to go into work in the evening, and it just kind of ruined my day looking forward to that.  Indeed, I didn’t even get dressed until around 5:00.  Sucked the life right outta me.  As it turned out work wasn’t really that bad;  We got out of there in a reasonable time and still had time to watch a bit of the Sunday night football game.