Hope everyone had a fine, relaxing holiday.  We did I suppose.  The “relaxing” qualifier is a bit of a stretch, but I need more activity in my life anyway.  We sort of kicked off the weekend by driving down to the airport to pick up Doni’s sister Jackie on Friday night.  It was pretty late by the time her flight got in so we didn’t do much (if anything) that night.

Saturday we got up early-ish and headed up the hill to Tahoe.  That was a good time as always.  We started off on the south side as usual, with a little shopping and a little relaxing.  After that we branched out from our usual haunts and drove around to the other side of the lake.  It was worth the horrible traffic and long drive I’d say.  The views are really something from over there.  You can look down on Emerald Bay from the road, it’s quite a sight for sure.  If I had to choose between driving up there and looking down on it or taking the boat cruise around it like we did with my family a few weeks ago, I’d probably recommend the boat ride.  Tough call though.  After a bunch of picture-taking and site-seeing, we stopped at a recommended place for some lunch, then headed back.  We took I-80 back to the house, which I’d never done before.  I think it’s faster, if not nearly as scenic.

Sunday the girls hit the outlet malls for a little light shopping, after first dropping me off at nearby Lake Natoma for a little paddling.  I got a new inflatable kayak a few weeks ago, and this was my third or fourth time out on it.  So far I’ve stuck to the nice calm lake water, playing it safe.  I do enjoy it, quite relaxing and makes me feel like I’m doing at least some form of exercise.  The other times I’ve gone the water has been pretty sparsely populated;  Not so on a Saturday.  Either due to the holiday or just the weekend, it was pretty darn crowded.  Manageable though, I definitely enjoyed it.  This weekend I might take it out on the river and see how I do.  If no update next Monday you might want to be mildly concerned.  We wrapped up the day at the house with some tasty ribeyes on the grill.

Monday we met up with some friends in nearby Plymouth for a “progressive picnic.”  It was sponsored by several of the local wineries, and sounded like a good way to spend the holiday.  Apparently everybody else thought so too, it was a bit crowded for my liking.  It effectively consisted of hopping from winery to winery doing some tastings, and each one had some type of food for the “picnic.”  It was a good time, and we got to visit a few new wineries in the process.

We seem to have been experiencing some technical difficulties here on pkenagy.com.  I laboriously type in lengthy, scintillating weekend updates and for some reason they are not showing up.  The primary reason could be because that’s a complete lie, but I’m still investigating.  May be a code bug of some type.

Another perfectly valid reason is that we’ve done nothing of note, followed closely by some odd issue with my picture storage system.  I generally figure, even if I don’t have anything post-worthy, I can at least throw a few pictures out here.  Alas, my super-duper cloud storage system is being a bit temperamental and my photos aren’t sorted right.  The combination of the two issues leaves me uninspired to post anything at all.

Given the lack of a post last week, I suppose I’m somewhat obligated to throw some nonsense out here though.  I can say, without reservation, that weekend was a complete and utter fail.  Just never quite got out the gate.  It started off rather mediocre, ramped up a slight bit Saturday, then slowly and rather painfully fizzled out.  In the words of the great luchador Nacho Libre, “You can’t win ’em all.”  Indeed, Nacho…  Indeed.  By mid-Sunday I’d effectively thrown in the towel, but in a last ditch effort to salvage some kind of a decent day I rolled down to the grocery and picked up some nice looking thick-cut pork chops.  Nothing like a little grilling to turn things around.  Alas, just didn’t have it in me;  They’re still in the ‘fridge.  Ever looked forward to a Monday?  Pretty rare statement right there.

Nacho

We sort of took that week off, on the entertainment front anyway.  We needed to wind down a bit.  Plus all our friends (errr, both of them,) were busy so we were kind of hung out to dry.  We had a moderately entertaining weekend of it anyway though, or so it seemed.  Friday Donette was out of town, so I sort of hung out at the house.  I did crash a dinner party (with both of my friends) and had a good time of that.  Called it a night early, which is by no means unusual.

Saturday the wife was flying in, so I straightened up the house a bit, then drove down to Sacramento to pick her up at the airport.  I had big lunch date plans in mind for us, at Pizza Rock.  We’ve been there once and really liked it, so I decided to seize the opportunity to hit it again while we were “downtown.”  Alas, a few loops around the block indicated parking was going to be more of a hassle than I cared to put up with.  So, we headed to our old standby, Burgers & Brew.  Pretty much the only place we go down there.  Hey, it’s good, what can I say.  We came to regret our decision to sit outside on the patio, but other than that it was a fine lunch as always.

Sunday we decided to get out and about a bit.  After running through our options, we decided to load up the beach gear and head to nearby Folsom Lake.  It was a hot afternoon, but not really unbearable, and we’ve got a sun shade.  Things got off to a rough start pretty much from the get-go.  For one thing, there is darn near no water in the “lake.”  The vast majority of the shore access is reduced to steep drop-offs where the water used to be, much too steep to walk down.  We finally managed to get the car to a mostly isolated spot, reasonably close to the water, and parked it.  As soon as we opened the door Teagan bounded for the water and we quickly discovered why the spot was isolated:  It was a gooey stretch of mucky black mud instead of sand.  The dog didn’t seem to care, she blundered right through it and into the water.  Then, no sooner than I got out of the car, I saw a big boxer headed down the shore line towards us.  I don’t really let Teagan interact with other dogs (much to Donette’s dismay,) and I didn’t feel like experimenting this particular day.  Her meet-and-greets have about a 50/50 chance of going bad, and the “bad” 50 just ain’t worth it to me, especially with a beast the size of the one heading towards us.  So, anyway, I kind of panicked and the first thing I thought was to open the car door and call her.  Well, being a good girl, she ran right up the beach and jumped in the front seat.  Then the back seat.  Then the front.  Then the back.  All while dripping mud and water all over the interior.  Yeah, good start to the day.  Things went generally better from there.  She swam until she was thoroughly exhausted, which was the main purpose of the trip.  We sat under the sunshade and enjoyed the afternoon, also a key part of the day.  After that we headed back home and grilled a quite nice ribeye and watched the baseball game.  Not a bad day all in all.  We can get the car detailed another day.

Well now my updates are all messed up, dang it.  Miss one week and that’s what happens.  It’s been crazy-busy though.  The family came out last weekend and did a little NorCal touring with us, which was a great time.  There’s really not a lot to do around here, but we managed to hit what sites there are.  We traveled to Tahoe, Placerville, Folsom, Amador, and the Jelly Belly factory in Fairfield while they were here.  (OK, I sat out the Jelly Belly tour…)  Whew, that’s probably more than we’ve done since moving here.  I don’t have a whole lot to type, I’m still a bit out of sorts.  Luckily I do have some pics to share though.

Geez I can’t believe it is Monday already.  Nothing short of depressing.  The busier the weekend, the faster it goes by it seems.  Sort of makes sense when I think about that statement, I suppose…

Donette’s younger sister Victoria came out and visited us for a quick weekend trip.  She came in Friday, and we started things off by going to a wine tasting party over at a friend’s house.  This likely sounds like we’re getting into the hoity-toity California way of things, but such is not the case.  It was just a nice little dinner gathering, and apparently they felt the need to have a theme.  It was a good time.  We all got scorecards and rated each wine 1-5;  added to the conversation opportunity if nothing else.  As an added bonus, our wine won crowd favorite, woot!  I believe it was an estate zin from one of our favorites out here, Mount Vernon.  I was a bit upset with sharing it, but that was offset by winning a gift card.  All good in the end.

Saturday was a hopeless waste of a day, spent sitting at my pc working.  Unfortunate overlap of scheduling since we had company, but that’s the way it goes I guess.  The girls left me to my misery and went out to a few wineries for the afternoon.  After that they hung out on the back porch and watched taped episodes of “Tiny House Nation” while I kept working.  Thanks for flying six hours to see us, we’re a hoot!

Sunday we had a river tubing expedition on the calendar, but it’s been rather oppressively hot here so we bailed out of that and headed up the hill to Tahoe.  The hour and a half drive gets you 20 degrees knocked off the temp, well worth the time.  We didn’t do a whole lot when we got there really.  We met up with our friends Michael and Alaina, who had stayed the night before, and ate a solid breakfast at the Red Hut, after waiting an hour for a table.  After that we just kind of kicked around the town for a while.  (A while too long, according to the parking ticket we got.  Arggghhh.)  I made the rookie mistake of misjudging the cool weather and burned my bald head, but it was fine afternoon all the same.  Afterwards we rolled back down the hill to the heatwave, and did a little grilling.  Victoria had picked up a fresh salmon in Seattle on her way, and it was delicious.  I think I can declare it the best piece of fish I’ve ever eaten.  I usually try and pick up the high-rent salmon when it’s in season at our local grocery here, and have never really been that impressed.  THIS stuff was awesome though.  Got to go all the way to the source I guess.

I forgot to upload my Tahoe pictures.  I’ll share the weekly forecast instead.  My family is coming out next week, bet they can’t wait for this!

Scorcher