I’m gonna make it through the holidays, I can feel it.  That might be overly optimistic, but things are looking good.  We don’t have any plans for NYE (a.k.a. our anniversary…) so we should be in for a quiet week.

Christmas was a bit busier than anticipated, thanks to some friends.  They invited us over for Christmas Eve, and I guess we didn’t embarrass ourselves too badly because they invited us back for dinner on Christmas Day too.  We had a good time watching the little ‘uns tear it up.  I think there were about eleventeen of them;  The buggers were moving so quickly it was hard to count them all.

As for the weekend?  Quiet and boring, just the way we like it.  Saturday we went shopping, which was much less stressful than the last time I tried such a foolish venture.  I nailed some pretty good after-Christmas bargains at the local nerd store, then we headed to one of our favorite wineries to wind down and enjoy the wonderful weather with a little picnic on their patio.  (Which has since faded considerably…  Saturday nicked 60 degrees, today will be lucky to hit 50.)  When we got back home I hit the biggest bargain of all, a new doggie door for Teagan.  (And Kane I guess, although so far he’s refused to use it.  And why should he, when he can just meow loudly until somebody comes and holds the flap open for him?)  Anyway, I’ve been seriously shopping for this one particular doggie door since we moved to CA.  For reasons I cannot fathom, they don’t stock the “extra-tall” patio door kind in the stores, only the shorter version.  This strikes me as a bit odd, since absolutely no patio doors around here fit the shorter ones.  I worked around this problem in the rental house by duct-taping a beer carton to the top of the one I brought from KC, but Donette labeled that some kind of decorating faux-pas at the new house, not to mention it wasn’t a particularly energy-efficient solution.  So, I’d had the correct size in my Amazon shopping basket for a year plus, patiently waiting for them to knock a few bucks off.  (The specific model I had picked out was exorbitantly expensive, at least in my book.)  Well, if it hadn’t dropped after a year, I was starting to get the feeling it never would, so I braced the checkbook and got ready to pull the trigger.  At the last minute, on a whim, I decided I should at least try good ol’ Craigslist, so I pasted in the model number.  What do you know, I actually got one match, and it was even in my city.  I went ahead and shot the guy an email, despite my “too good to be true” feeling.  A few quick emails later I was at his house, which was like a mile up the road from mine, picking up his nearly-new door for well under 1/2 the price I was just about to pay.  Ding Ding!  Heck I might go ahead and get that new lawn mower I need with all the money I saved!

We’re back from a nice vacation.  Well, I was on vacation, Donette was working.  We were in Chicago all week, aptly named The Windy City.  Less commonly used, but uttered several times by myself during the week, The Windy Unlivable Cold Unfit For Human Habitation City.  That probably would be a more familiar nickname if it rolled off the tongue a little easier, because it is certainly a fair description.  Well, it was fun anyway.  We snuck in some fun even with her work schedule, and then had a big Christmas party Thursday & Friday downtown, which was a good time.  I’ll just share some pics, as I’m rather out of sorts being back to work today.

Just a brief(er) update as to our going-ons, as I am on a pseudo-vacation.  Last Thursday, we spent a rather arduous day flying to good ol’ KC.  We (Donette) had intentionally selected Las Vegas as our mid-way point, having no direct flight options, because of the certainty of avoiding weather-induced delays.  Well, what do you know, there was heavy fog in Vegas and no flights were getting in or out.  Only us, I swear.  I don’t really mind getting up at 4:30 to catch a flight, it’s just one of the unfortunate aspects of travelling.  But when your flight doesn’t actually leave until 11:00 in the afternoon it does add a little insult to injury.  We ended up going to Phoenix instead, but our evening plans in KC were long shot by the time we finally got there.  We did get to stop by her parents and visit for a while, before heading south and checking in at the hotel.

The rest of the weekend was something of a blur.  I worked a good amount of the time, while Donette took care of some Christmas shopping, visited with friends & family, and generally enjoyed a little down time.  We got out to my Mom’s for an early Christmas celebration and got to see the whole family for a few hours.  Martin the socialite put together an MU watch party so I got to see a few friends there too, which was fun despite the dismal game results.  We also made it by a good majority of our favorite haunts, none of which disappointed.  Apparently my stomach isn’t up to large quantities of good food anymore though, I spent no small amount of time in severe discomfort.  Granted, it stands to reason that inhaling a slab of ribs in 3.5 minutes is going to result in a tummy-ache, but it didn’t used to.

Now we’ve moved on to the Chicago area, where the roles have reversed;  Donette will be spending her time working and I’ll be sitting in the spa getting my hair and nails done.  We were delayed coming out here also, but were handsomely compensated this time so it’s all good.  I’m not looking forward to much activity outside the hotel room though;  It is COLD here!  Bone-chilling, unfit-for-human-habitation, unbearable COLD.  Brrrrr.  Get me back to CA!!!  It may not be exactly tropical at our house right now, but at least you don’t have to wear 6 layers to go out and get in the car.  Off to the hot tub.

I am traditionally bad about updating this site during the holidays, and I didn’t want this year to be any exception.  I’m off to a bang-up start as you can see.  What can I say, I get distracted.  And this SOUNDS like a lame excuse, but I got a new cell phone and it has taken an inordinate amount of my free time lately.  Nothing is easy, at least for me.  For instance, I can’t get my pics to upload properly from it;  What’s the point of updating my website if I ain’t got any new pictures?  Not much, I say.

I’ll limit the scope of my rambling to Turkey Day, although we had a generally packed schedule this weekend.  Some friends of ours took pity on our lonely situation and kindly invited us over for dinner on Thanksgiving.  Probably more accurately, they’d invited so many people over I think they took a “what’s two more” attitude.  Fair enough, I just want some feed.  And indeed, feed we did.  My buddy smoked two birds on his new Weber Bullet, his father-in-law did a huge one in the oven, and my contribution was a fried 13-pounder.  Lest you think we’re simply gluttons, there were over 40 people there for the meal.  He had my sympathy for sure, there is an awful lot of work that goes into hosting a meal that size.  It was a feast of impressive proportion, to be sure.  Everything came out great too, I overloaded a few plates.  Matter of fact I was so miserable I was thoroughly unable to stay around for the 49’ers party, I was suffering.  I watched it at home though, and it only added to the misery, so it’s probably for the best.

So, two of the pictures below are sideways I see.  Tsk, another glitch with my fancy new phone I guess.  I’m entirely too busy (lazy) to fix it right now.  Just sort of cock your head to one side, it’ll be fine.

Another one in the books, and not a bad one.  Rather busy actually.  Friday afternoon I got a text from a buddy I used to work with in KC, since relocated to Denver, that I hadn’t seen in many moons.  He was in town, so we headed out to lunch and then met up again for happy hour.  I didn’t see any reason to diverge from my usual schedule of events, so I recommended Hop House for the festivities.  (Which, despite my weekly patronage, continues to maintain the slowest website in the universe.  Are they running that thing over a 56k modem or something?)  We hung out there for a few hours, then as it got predictably loud and crowded we moved on to dinner at Relish.

Saturday he was scheduled to head west to visit other friends, so I tried to come up with something to do in that line of travel.  After no small amount of cipherin’, I decided on Lagunitas Brewery in (sort of) nearby Petaluma.  I’d been wanting to go there since we relocated, but it’s a bit of a stretch on the mileage.  Having company and being in need of entertainment though, it made sense to make the trip.  Well worth the drive, as I’d heard from many others.  It was definitely a popular destination, all the tables were full shortly after they opened.  (By some lack of planning on my part we showed up 45 minutes before opening time, so we didn’t have much trouble finding seats ourselves.)  They had a great outdoor seating area, tasty food, and of course fresh beer to sample.  We enjoyed the sunny afternoon for several hours, then he continued westward and we headed back up the hill.  As the day went on, I’d been having a running text conversation with my amigo back in EDH, regarding a smoker purchase.  I’ve cooked up several hunks o’ flesh since moving here, and he was easily swayed towards the KC smokin’ hobby.  As Thanksgiving nears, we’ve been discussing the logistics around getting my smoker over to his house for the turkey cook, and apparently he woke up Saturday with the wild hair to just get one himself.  He’d been doing his research and came up with the wise decision of a Weber Smokey Mountain, a solid choice in my book.  Being very free with other people’s money, I tried to steer him towards the 22.5″ model, but he settled at the midsize 18.5″.  Like any new toy, he headed directly home, fired it up, and threw on some ribs and pork butts.  I was driving down the freeway at the time, which precluded an in-depth conversation, or I would have filled him in that a 2:00 starting time on pork butts results in a roughly midnight dinner time.  Eh, no matter, his family was out of town and he was just playing around anyway.  When we got back in town we headed over for some delicious baby backs;  Didn’t stick around for the pork though.

Sunday was chore day once again.  Ah, the tribulations of home ownership.  One major (for me) undertaking was to replace the filters in the air vents.  I’d checked them a few weeks ago and they were absolutely disgusting.  Not something I really expected on a two-month old house, but it’s probably from all the construction going on in the area, as well as having the windows wide open with the air conditioner max’d out when they were building it.  I’d prepared for the project by carefully notating the sizes stamped on them, and ordering a lifetime supply of each off Amazon.  The first went fine, then when I got to the one in the bedroom upstairs, trouble struck.  No matter which way I oriented the new one, it simply would not fit.  I kept going down the ladder, getting the old one, re-installing it, verifying the size on it, then I’d go back up the ladder with the new one.  Nope, still didn’t fit.  I’m quite embarrassed to say how many times I repeated this exercise, always with the same result.  After my legs finally gave out from climbing the ladder, I resorted to my long-dormant junior high geometry skills, and was able to ascertain that a measurement of 14″x20″ would doubtlessly result in a rectangle, whereas the object I was holding in my hand was most certainly a square shape.  This baffled me so much that I actually walked all the way down to the garage and got a tape measure, took it all the way back upstairs, and checked it out.  Yep, that’s a square alright, the proof is in the tape measure.  Upon closer inspection, I finally found that some evil-minded low-rent contractor had lopped six inches off one side.  Sigh.  Anybody want to buy a huge box of 14″x20″ filters, cheap?  I guess that project lends credence to the “buy local” theory if nothing else.  Bah, nothing a pair of heavy-duty scissors and a roll of duct tape couldn’t fix.