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.

The weeks continue to fly by.  No way is it February already.  That’s what happens when you’re keeping busy I guess.  That, for instance, wasn’t an all-together boring weekend.  Friday was of moderately poor weather outside, so I defaulted to the Hop House for my after work entertainment.  It was about on par for Friday entertainment too;  Served a purpose.  Saturday we made a half-hearted attempt at running some errands.  Those plans were quickly derailed when I got frustrated with the traffic though, as usual.  We got absolutely nothing done, but we did have a nice lunch out I guess.  I bailed out for the safety of the house, and spent the rest of the day working on my tired old computer.  It’s getting a little on the aged side.  I believe I’ve had this one roughly 8 years, which makes it about 500 in computer years.  In a last ditch effort to speed it up a bit, I dropped a snappy new SSD drive in it and cloned my old spindle drive to it.  As advertised, it is noticeably more responsive.  It should easily get me through a few more years like this.  However, I’ve pretty much already made up my mind that it’s time to upgrade so we shall see what comes of that.  The new drive would make a fine base for a new PC for sure, so it won’t be money wasted.  (No more so than any money spent on a pc is wasted anyway.)

Sunday the oddly poor weather continued.  Actually I guess it’s not that odd…  It is, in all fairness, winter time.  A few inclement days are to be expected I suppose.  Man it wouldn’t let up though;  torrential downpours, one after another.  At least it’s fairly warm out, which takes the edge off a bit.  We were getting a little bored of sitting around the house, so we headed out for an afternoon showing of American Sniper.  Good movie, I think we both enjoyed it.  After the show it was still dumping rain, putting me in the mood for some comfort food.  We stopped by the grocery and I picked up some short ribs, which I’ve been wanting to cook lately anyway.  (Mostly just for the joy of using my fancy Staub cookware, it makes me happy.)  I used a recipe from Anne Burrell, and I was quite happy with the results.

Today and tomorrow I am enjoying a few days off.  I spent my morning today renting a trailer and hauling my broken-down scooter to Sac-town.  What a nuisance.  Had to be done though, that’s my main form of transportation and it hasn’t run in months.  The drive down there was nerve-racking to be sure.  My tie-down job left something to be desired apparently, and it kept sliding all over the trailer.  I don’t know how it didn’t tip over, but it never did.  I was hoping they could fix it and I could haul it back home, but of course nothing is that easy, they estimated a week.  Sigh.  It remains to be seen if I trailer it back up the hill or just ride it home…  I think I’d rather ride a scooter on the freeway than make that arduous journey with the trailer again.  (Not to mention it wasn’t particularly cheap renting it.)  Tonight we’re going to head down to a friends house to spend the night, then get up at the crack of dawn (pre-dawn actually) to queue up for a glass of Pliny the Younger beer.  I do not find the idea of standing in line six hours for a beer particularly appealing, but I’m going anyway, just to say I did.  Something tells me it will fall quite squarely in the “not worth the wait” category, but I’m trying to keep an open mind.

I’m sure I’ve mentioned more than once that I should move this “weekly status” to something other than Monday.  I’m just too tapped out at the beginning of the week for this.  Oh well, I’ve got some pictures to post at least.  The majority of the photos are from a wine tasting trip we went on last weekend, mostly just because the weather was so nice out.  We visited several nearby places, I’d say all were within 20 miles or so of our house.  I think you could go wine tasting every weekend and never hit them all, it’s pretty crazy.

This weekend was semi-fun also.  In an effort to expand our social circles, we went to a few parties at the neighborhood clubhouse;  A wine tasting event Saturday night and a Superbowl party Sunday.  My feeble efforts at socializing failed miserably of course, but I suppose it was fun at any rate.  I entered the chicken wing contest Sunday, and took home the first place ribbon.  The judges declared the slightly piquant flavor profile easily the best of the entries, it was really no competition.  Actually it really was no competition, I was the only entry.  They were pretty darn good though.  There were considerably more entries in the chili contest, which I found rather odd.  It’s sixty degrees out, who wants chili?

Booo.  I’m in semi-foul temperament, brought on largely by a weekend of work, a stuffy nose, and a Monday.  A dangerous combination to be sure.  I started this doomed day by accidentally breaking my breakfast burrito in half;  A harbinger of bad juju if there ever was one.  I attempted to ease that painful episode by treating myself to an extra cup of coffee, but found the machine out of order.  WOE!!!!

A worthless weekend, by any standard.  I made a valiant effort at celebrating the end of the work week Friday by stopping off at Hop House on the way home.  Alas, nobody would come play with me so I only stayed 30 minutes or so.  The rest of the evening consisted of bad Netflix movies watched from the couch at home.  Lame, if very familiar.

Saturday I kicked the day off with an epic round of geekiness, determined to finally iron out my long-running Uverse issues.  Three or four hours later, I decided to call it a draw.  It’s better than it was, if not without some concessions made on my part.  I suppose everything is finally working adequately, with a hopeless tangle of wires in the garage and so many different wireless signals that we no longer need a microwave oven.  You just hold your food up in the air and it instantly cooks.  After that, we ran some errands around town.  A trip to good ol’ Home Depot, and a few other stops for good measure.  I bought a good size bag of hardware at the Depot, in an effort to finally finish the pet door install from a few weeks ago.  Everything is working great, the patio door just won’t lock.  We’re not exactly located in a high crime area, but I suppose it isn’t recommended to just leave your door unlocked all the time.  Of course you’d think our vicious pitbull would be a sufficient crime deterrent, but unfortunately her bark sounds like a Pomeranian that had it’s tail stepped on, and she thinks everybody that comes through the door is there to play ball with her.  Sigh.  Still didn’t get it fixed though;  Back to the standard 2×4 jammed in the door sill method.  (Which is actually very effective, if not particularly attractive.)

Sunday was pretty much a total loss.  Watched football on the couch all day, and worked the better part of the evening.  Lame.  The weather wasn’t even that nice, despite a promising forecast.  Supposed to sneak into the low 70’s this week, things might turn around yet.

Hey look at that, I made it all the way into the second week of the new year and I’m already late on my updates.  Tsk.  Far worse things have happened I’m sure.  I’ve been busy, what can I say.  OK not really.  I’ve been lazy, that might be more accurate.  Besides that we haven’t done anything of note.  Friday I continued my schedule of hitting Hop House after work.  Fun place, I rather fancy it.  After a few hours there, I decided to call it a day and head home for another night of TV.  I rather quickly decided this was a horribly boring way to spend a Friday night, so I headed over to a buddy’s house to watch TV there instead.  Misery loves company, or something like that.  I ended up sitting on the couch reading Chu’s Day repeatedly to his 1-year-old.  Pretty exciting story really, although it starts to lose a little something after about the 30th time through.  For me anyway, she seemed to still be enjoying it.  I do like the description on that Harper Collins site though.  “A story that reflects…”  Really?  It’s got like six pages.  I don’t think 1-year-olds even do a lot of reflecting.  What do I know though, maybe they do.

Saturday we went over to a friend’s house and watched the football games.  Truth be told, it was the same friends I visited Friday night too.  We’ve only got two friends, and one is out of town, so that kind of narrows down the scope of our social outings.  The football games were pretty entertaining as I recall.  At least I managed to stay awake, which is an accomplishment.  Afterwards they fixed a great batch of pasta with blackened chicken.  A day of entertainment AND dinner, can’t beat that.

Sunday we stayed home, not wanting to wear out our welcome.  The weather was particularly nice out so I turned on the TV on the back patio and watched the games out there.  Man, I can’t wait until Spring, it’s fun just sitting out there watching the tube.  I’m not sure why it’s any more fun than sitting inside, but it is.  I put together the last of the patio furniture while I was watching football, and Doni gave the back yard it’s inaugural mowing.  The mower hasn’t been started since we moved to California, and it put up a pretty good fight.  Might be time to replace that thing, I’ve gotten my $100 out of it for sure.  The stupid pull rope finally broke on about the 5,000th yank.  Remarkably, it actually started on the very same pull, so at least we got the yard cut.