We made a quick run up the hill to Tahoe last weekend, mostly because we didn’t have anything better to do.  Haven’t been there in a few months either, and it’s always good for a fun weekend.  Granted, we may have wanted to check the weather before we took off Friday afternoon;  It dropped a full 25 degrees over the 1.5 hour drive.  We arrived at the resort in our shorts and flip-flops, and were greeted by a rather crisp 40 degree temp when we got out of the car.  Oh well, we weren’t alone, there were plenty of people in the same boat.  By the time we got checked into our room and changed into more climate-suitable clothes, it was getting towards dinner time, so we headed up to the State Line area and found a table at The Lucky Beaver for some burgers.  A rather cheesy place to be sure, but man do they sling a mean burger.  I had a delicious blue cheese burger, it was over the top.  Doni went with a gut-bomb chili burger.  Both were crazy-good, but definitely night-enders;  We rolled back to the room and turned in for the day.

Saturday was a long day, in a good way.  We headed over to our standard breakfast spot, the Red Hut Cafe, but they gave us a 50 minute wait time.  That would have put us pretty close to lunch time, so we regrouped and drove over to the North side of the lake to check things out.  Indeed, by the time we changed clothes and got to the other side of the lake it was time for lunch, so we stopped in at The Beacon.  We shared a turkey club, which was a good call as it was an enormous sandwich.  After that we drove a bit further, and with no small amount of trouble found a parking spot around the Emerald Bay area.  We have wanted to hike down to the beach where the Vikingsholm house is located for a long time, and declared Saturday “the day.”  Due to our inconvenient parking spot, we actually worked in a few short, scenic hikes on the way to the Vikingsholm trail head, maybe we should have just called it a day at that point.  Nah, we decided to head on down.  It was a short walk, a little over a mile I think, and well worth it.  There were several short hikes to waterfalls and other scenic locations at the bottom too, so we took a few of those.  The only downside was, the actual house was closed to tours for the season.  Whoops, guess we should have read all those signs at the trail head a little closer.  It was still worth it, very cool.  A little tip though;  A one-mile hike down a hill is much easier than a one-mile hike back up the same hill.  Whew.  We had spent several hours there, and by the time we got back to the South side it was getting towards dinner time.  So, it was back to the State Line area, where the first order of business was to cash in Doni’s winning tickets for the Royal’s ALCS and World Series victories, woot!!!  We scurried over to a table with our cash and pondered our options:  Retire early?  Put it towards Teagan’s college tuition?  Buy a vacation home?  After much debate, we decided to just blow it all on a nice dinner.  Even that was a hard decision, but we finally agreed on Riva Grill back by our hotel.  A fine choice to be sure.  I labeled it “the best meal I’ve had out in CA,” and I’m standing by that declaration.  I opted for the 10 oz. filet mignon, and swapped out my mashed ‘taters for crab risotto.  Doni went with a massive slab of prime rib, which was the special of the evening.  Both were absolutely fantastic.  As an added bonus, we somehow scored a sweet table right by the huge fireplace, in front of the TV that was playing the Nebraska game.  A good day, all in all.

Sunday we got up early-ish and scurried back down to El Dorado Hills.  Not much news to go on for that day.  According to my step-counter watch, I racked up a record-low 1089 steps for the day.  Apparently that is how many steps it takes to get from the hotel room to the car, and the car to the couch.

Happy Halloween!  We must be hitting our stride, because the time out here is flying by.  I swear we were just at a Halloween function not too long ago.  Must have been about a year ago though.  Funny how that works.  We didn’t go to any big parties this year though.  We were pretty heavily invested in the baseball games, plus I kind of miss just sitting home and passing out candy.  We did head down to the nearby shopping center to watch our little friend Harper do some trick-or-treating, then headed back home for the big game.  We put a radio on the front porch and sat out there with Teagan passing out candy, and had just a fine time of it.  I’d guess we had about 75 kids come by, just by doing some rough math on the candy we got rid of.  Lots of interest in Teagan, not so much in the baseball game.  I’m not sure the majority of them even realized what was going on.  Not a big sports town, good ol’ El Dorado Hills.

Sunday was very fine day, at least by my standards.  I kicked it off early with the 6:00 Chiefs game;  OK that was a little weird.  First one I’ve got to watch though, so I wanted to catch it.  After that, I threw some beef ribs on the smoker, more or less just because they were on sale and I wanted to see what would happen.  As they were cooking along, lo and behold it started raining!  And rained, and rained, and rained.  I don’t think they’re going to declare the drought over but it was definitely more rain than we’ve seen all year.  It came down nice and steady all day.  Thank goodness for my nice covered patio;  I just rolled the smoker under it and kept on cooking.  Aside from a very little bit of landscape work, I spent the whole day watching games on the back patio and cooking the ribs.  Definitely one of my favorite ways to waste a day.  (The ribs came out rather marginal if you’re wondering…  Too fatty and I used too much rub, as usual.  Eh, gumbo season is upon us, they’ll get eaten.)

We just got back from a nice Hawaii vacation, hence the late update.  Always an excuse, at least this time it’s semi-valid.  Rather than the “What I did on my summer vacation” spiel I’ll just post some pics.  Some are from Doni’s “good” camera so they’re a bit large, sorry.  Yeah, I could resize them.

That was not a bad weekend, as my weekends go.  A little shaky maybe but I made the best of it.  My weekend started Friday with a day off.  Donette was working though, so I just kind of wasted my day if I remember correctly.  If I was going to guess, a lot of time was spent in the back yard watching Bonanza.  I did leave the house for a short while to take a ride on my kayak, at nearby Lake Natomas.  Interesting learning experience:  When I bought the kayak, I ordered two paddles, as it’s a two-person kayak.  Makes sense.  Each came in two parts, and snap together.  The 4 or 5 times I’ve taken it out by myself, I’ve just snatched two pieces off the shelf in the garage and merrily paddled along.  Not being a lucky person, this brought me to the inescapable conclusion that all four sections were identical.  Well, my luck ran out Friday;  They ain’t.  I ended up with two parts that didn’t fit together, leaving me to rather awkwardly blunder around the lake with a very short canoe paddle.  Hey, whatever, I had fun, or so I told myself.

Saturday was a lost day.  I worked from pretty much the minute I got up until well past my bedtime.  (Hence the day off Friday.)  Not a whole lot of material to work with there.  While I pecked away at my keyboard though, we did get our fancy new doggie door installed.  We’ve long had the kind that fits in your sliding glass patio door, in between the frame and the door.  It’s served us quite well.  The downside is you lose a significant part of your door opening.  I knew this when I bought it, but it ended up bothering me a lot more than I thought it would.  So, we ordered the kind where they actually notch out the glass in your sliding door and fit it in there.  Pretty sweet setup.  I also got one for the screen door, which didn’t turn out quite so great.  Sounded like a good idea;  We like to close the screen and let the air in on nice evenings.  The problem is, when you open the glass door and close the screen door, or vice versa, it effectively looks like you have two dog doors.  This is a bad thing when your 60 lb. dog hits the wrong one with a full head of steam.  I’m confident she’ll figure it out soon.  Mmmm hmmm.

Sunday wasn’t exactly the craziest day we’ve ever lived, but it wasn’t the most boring either.  Somewhere in the middle.  I kicked it off walking Teagan down to the nearby Farmers Market to look around.  Actually I had a certain item in mind, some vinegar-based Carolina style sauce I’d bought up at Placerville a while back when my family was here.  I am quite fond of it, and needed a few more bottles.  Alas, despite the assurances on his Facebook page, he wasn’t there.  Oh well, I’ve wanted to check out the market for a long time anyway, and we got a nice walk out of it.  After that we kind of wasted the better part of the afternoon, then headed down to Casa Ramos to watch the 49’ers game.  We’ve been boycotting them (the restaurant) for nearly a year due to some sketchy dinners, but decided we’d give them another try because we wanted to watch the game on a patio.  Well, despite the beautiful weather, the patio seating was closed.  The boycott is back on.  We headed back home to our own darn patio;  Just as good anyway.

I’ve got nothing.  Didn’t do anything, didn’t take any pictures, worked a lot…  Nothing that makes for any type of update.  I could list out everything I THOUGHT about doing, but that’s not really useful either.  We made pesto yesterday out of our overgrown basil shrub.  Then we portioned it up and froze it, where it shall remain until our next freezer purge.  Uhhh…  Yeah that’s about it.