One more weekend has rolled by.  And not a bad one, at that.  If nothing else it was in the mid-to-high seventies all weekend and and we spent the majority of it outside.  Good stuff.  Honestly the weather was probably nicer than on our recent Hawaii trip, just didn’t have the view or the beach.  Another in the long line of “just can’t have it all” situations.

The weekend had a very repetitive, if enjoyable, theme to it.  “Get up, get outside, enjoy.”  That scenario was prefaced by an unfortunate bout of work Friday of course, but thanks to the time change there was plenty of sunlight to be had after that.  We ended up over at a friends house for a taco dinner, which was a fun time, not to mention tasty.  It was so warm out their kids were actually in the pool, where they discovered that just because the air temp is warm doesn’t necessarily mean the pool water is warm.  To their credit they stuck it out though, purple lips and all.

Saturday we traveled Over The Hill to Folsom, to attend a “bike and sports” expo we’d read about.  It was more or less a bust, other than to get us out and about.  They really didn’t have anything of interest for us, it seemed to be a more kid-oriented event.  I think we walked though in about 15 minutes, then it was off for alternate forms of entertainment.  I’m not sure it filled the “entertainment” bill, but we ended up at the hardware store shopping for various home projects.  Got some irrigation fittings for the garden, some fertilizer for the fruit trees…  Exciting stuff.  That evening we headed over to another friends house and once again mooched a free meal.  They had a nice barbecue gathering, it was quite fun.  I was excited to try the wild salmon he’d caught in a nearby river.  I was then disappointed to find I much prefer Costco salmon.  Life is full of such letdowns I guess.

Sunday was another fine day.  When the local grocery ad came out last week, I noticed there were honest-to-goodness whole beef briskets advertised, if at a somewhat inflated price.  Hey, beggars can’t be choosers, I ran down and snatched a few of them up.  I will say there was something of a difference of opinion as to the definition of a “whole brisket,” but be that as it may they certainly were serviceable slabs of meat.  I got the smoker fired up around 10:00, and proceeded to enjoy the day.  Needing a bit of a reason to celebrate, we declared it to be Teagan’s birthday, and invited several people over for the festivities.  I’m not sure if it was the dog or the brisket (I suspect the latter,) but we ended up with a good sized crowd.  Among them were roughly 100 kids, which pleased Teagan to no end.  (That might be a slight exaggeration, but not much.  They were quick little buggers, it was hard to get an accurate count.)  At any rate they were pretty impressed with her fetch skills, and she was more than happy to show them off.  The kids had the numbers on her;  As soon as one would wear out another would take over.  She pretty much chased the ball until she couldn’t go any more, which was a rather epic session.  Poor girl missed the end of her own party, she was passed out on the couch.  The brisket was a hit too, we had a fine dinner.

Nothing like a Monday after vacation.  Just doesn’t get much worse than that.  I’ll post a few pictures and get back to trying to dig out from under this horrific pile.  Woe.  WOE!!!!

A brief post for the sake of it being Monday.  We are on vacation in Kauai and every minute counts, I need to get outside quick-like.  We started our trip Wednesday, driving down to Oakland for the evening.  Our flight was at 7:00 in the morning Thursday, so it was a solid plan.  We got there around dinner time, checked in, and headed out to see the sites.  Just kidding.  It’s Oakland, there are no sites.  We locked ourselves in the room and watched TV all night.  The big benefit to the plan was a direct flight to Kauai.  Five hours later and we were at the resort, ready to relax.  Heck we couldn’t even get the first hop out of the way from KC in that time.  Since then we’ve done some hiking, some snorkling, some shopping, and no small amount of just laying on the beach.  Today we’re going out to look for whales.  Haven’t seen a whole lot of them so far, I think we might be a bit late.  Hoping for the best though.  Here’s a video of some turtles I ran into yesterday while snorkeling.  It’s a bit long, sorry, but I think they’re cool.

I am pleased to report that I’m back to riding my trusty scooter.  Rollin’ carefree down the road, wind blowing through my hair, waving at the other cool kids….  Or not.  Getting it back from Sacramento was a much less harrowing experience than getting it down there.  Thankfully the mechanic took pity on me and lashed it down to the trailer in a much more efficient manner than I did.  Those stupid ratchet straps seriously baffle me, I never can figure them out.  Of course then I almost never figured out how to get the stupid things released once I got home.  I was contemplating just cutting them when one finally let go.  Seemed a shame since I just bought them at the uhaul store, but I was desperate.

I guess that was sort of a hit-and-miss weekend.  Friday was something of a letdown.  Determined to enjoy my afternoon, I headed up to nearby Ruff Haus to celebrate the end of the work-week.  A rather boring experience, as it turned out.  I had a mug and some french fries, then gave it up and headed home.  As I should have already been aware, I was just as happy sitting on my own back porch watching TV.  Heck of a lot cheaper too.  Grilled up a pizza and enjoyed the nice weather until the sun went down and it got too chilly.

Saturday was a bust.  I was scheduled to work that evening, so the day was spent pretty much waiting around for that.  We did take a nice long walk, four miles to be exact.  We’ve been trying to get some strolls in, and that was our longest yet.  Teagan is enjoying our new-found past time for sure.  She does enjoy a nice walk, and I think she’s slowly getting a little better with her leash manners.  As long as you don’t pass any other pups, or see a lizard, or a leaf blows by, or any other type of distraction, you can pretty much manage her.

Sunday we somewhat made up for the previous day’s boredom.  Donette was hosting her first Oscar party, and she had quite a bit of work to do before her friends came over.  She spent the better part of the day cooking and cleaning, while I somewhat ineffectively tried to help out.  We managed to travel up to a friend’s open house party in the middle of it all, if only for a short bit.  We actually could only stay ten minutes and had to race back to our house.  Sure enough, her first guest showed up right as we pulled in the drive;  Perfect timing.  The boys were banned from the event, so several of us met up at 36 Handles and played darts for a few hours. I’m not much of a dart player, but it certainly passed the time.  Eventually we got a little bored (and hungry) though, so we crashed the party and ate up all the leftovers.

As a bit of left-over news from last week, I did indeed try out my new paella pan Monday night.  I thought the results quite passable indeed.  If nothing else, I had fun cooking it.  I put together a step-by-step photo-album of the fun, or at least I tried.  I ordered the pictures chronologically, but for some reason if you click through the full size ones they are all mixed up.  Oh well, it’s the thought that counts.

Speaking of pics, I’m somewhat short on them this week.  Here’s, uh, a shot of Doni’s new curtains in the dining room though…

Donette hung new curtains in the dining room

It occurred to me this morning that I haven’t heard from the scooter shop in quite some time.  Uhhh, are you still working on it?  Odd.  I’m not nervous yet though, because for one thing I’m dreading getting it back home, and I rather enjoy the extra garage space.  Hopefully they didn’t just sell it for parts though, it was a rather sketchy looking place.

The weather is shaping up quite nicely here, we made good use of our back patio area this past weekend.  Friday I was heading to the Hop House by myself, when it struck me that I might as well just sit on my own back porch.  Indeed, I think I enjoyed it much more than the Hop House.  I could watch whatever I wanted on TV, do a little grilling, and generally enjoy the evening, all while saving a considerable amount of change.  All good things.

We had plans with some other couples for Valentines Day, but when it came down to the wire nobody felt like fighting the crowds.  (At least with us…  Maybe that was the case…)  By late afternoon everybody had expressed their general disinterest, so I headed up to the grocery and bought my own feed.  It was pretty much a duplicate of our New Year’s Eve dinner;  ribeye steak with lobster, and asparagus.  I thought the lobster came out much better this time though, I’m getting the new grill figured out.

Yesterday I had big plans of shopping all day, but it was just too nice out.  Instead of running errands, we went to Relish Burger and enjoyed their nice patio for quite a while.  I’m not sure when you pass the time-frame for “leisurely lunch” and cross into “loitering” but I’d say we were pretty close to that fine line.  Oh well, we didn’t get kicked out.  I did manage to make it Over The Hill (as it’s commonly referred to) to Folsom and hit the World Market.  Dangerous place, they have all sorts of cool looking stuff.  I stuck with my target items though;  A new paella pan and a few groceries to go with it.  I was quite excited to put together my first paella effort last night, but Doni wasn’t behind that idea so it’ll have to wait until this evening.