Ahhh, I needed a week off from the extreme rigors of updating this page.  Be prepared for a real treat, as I have fourteen entire days of excitement to regale you with.  Or, not so much.  We are in the final stages of getting our new house wrapped up, and that has been eating up a fair amount of time.  Wow, they move slowly out here.  We actually closed on the house last Tuesday.  Closed.  As in sat there with the title company and did the whole two hours of signing papers bit.  Sweet, gimme the keys!  Oh no, we have to wait an additional week to actually take possession.  It doesn’t seem there is a real reason behind the extra delay, all the title lady could offer was “Welcome to California.”  Oddly, this is the same response we’ve gotten from the DMV, the utility companies, the tax people, and various other entities.  Whatever, we’ll get it some day I suppose.  I just went on my “final, final, FINAL walk through” about an hour ago as a matter of fact, and it looks move-in ready to me.  We are supposed to get the keys tomorrow, and then everybody is cordially invited to fly out and help us move this coming weekend.  Pizza included.  (Single topping only, we’re on a strict budget.)

You’d think I would have some fascinating tales to relate after a two-week hiatus.  Alas, we’ve been hunkered down preparing for the move.  Donette did have a bunch of friends come into town a few weeks back, and they had some fun, but I wasn’t included in the festivities.  A few weeks later and we would have actually had a place for them to sleep, but they made do.  They made it up to Tahoe for a night, which sounded fun.  Other than that…  Well…  Slow times.  We went to a few local breweries with a friend yesterday, mostly just for the sake of getting out of the house.  A thrift shop sent a truck out the other day and hauled off a good part of our furniture, so the ol’ rental house isn’t exactly too comfortable at the moment.  We’ve been eating out a lot.  By this time next week, hopefully I’ll be posting pics of our furnished new house, and we’ll be out of the rental.  (Optimism springs eternal.)

All-in-all, a rather non-eventful weekend.  Donette spent a good amount of time off with “the girls,” leaving me to my own means of entertainment.  That translates into “watching Royals games and playing catch with the dog.”  Rather relaxing and enjoyable actually, it just doesn’t make for very good weekend recaps.  Friday I met her at the new house for a quick check of the progress, then we headed to Ruff Haus for a quick happy hour.  After that I headed home to watch the Royals game on the patio, while she went off to Folsom to meet up with a small group of friends at some-place-or-another.  I was fast asleep by the time she got home, as any normal person would be.  Out running the streets of Folsom after dark like a bunch of hoodlums, tsk tsk.

Saturday was typically unproductive.  I think we might have gone to Folsom on a shopping trip or something, then my day was marred with a few hours of work.  I was rather looking forward to a night of checkers with the wife, but Ms. Socialite again headed off to dinner with friends, and I again watched the baseball game on the patio.  There are worse ways to spend an evening, the weather is getting quite nice here.  I grilled some chicken to pass the time while I was at it, and threw Teagan’s ball a few (thousand) times.

Sunday we got up rather early, and headed for the never-before-visited town of Woodland, to meet some friends for breakfast.  The Greers & Martins had been in Napa for the weekend, and were heading to the airport to fly back to KC.  We met up at a place called Don’s Diner, courtesy of a random google search.  Apparently they are much better at choosing new places to eat than myself, because it was quite good.  I’d go so far as to say it was without a doubt the best breakfast I’ve had since moving here.  Unfortunately it was a good 45 minutes from the house so it’s not like we will be frequenting it though.  We enjoyed our delicious meals and listened to the rather fascinating tales of the earthquake that hit while they were in Napa that morning.  I’d just glimpsed the headlines before we left that morning, but had no idea how much damage there was until I saw the pictures they’d taken.  Wow, it is quite a mess.  I’m here for a year and don’t feel any quakes, they visit for a weekend and get rocked, figures.  (And, just like tornadoes in Missouri, that’s just fine with me.)

Here’s a few last pictures of the house, we do our final walk-through this week.  (OK, I’d bet I post more during the move fiasco.)

A few pictures of the house status, as requested.  It’s coming along nicely!

Happy back-to-school week!  That event doesn’t mean a whole heck of a lot to me, it’s just all I could come up with for a title.  In other big news, we had a fun weekend.  Friday was kind of busy and slipped away before I knew what happened, so I’ll skip that day.  Saturday, for whatever reason, we spent the afternoon shopping.  Oddly, it sounded like a fun thing to do, so I went with it.  We kicked off this momentous event with lunch at Rubio’s in Folsom, which I’d describe as an upscale Taco Bell.  Pretty good, really, at least for around here.  After a tasty meal, we drove across the street to Academy Sports, to indulge my odd urge to shop.  I’d never been in one of those stores, it was quite a place.  We scouted some kayaks, various pairs of shoes, pellet guns, camping gear…  Little bit of everything.  That all culminated with the purchase of absolutely nothing.  It did however sate my shopping urge, that was all I could take.  Headed home for good nap.  For evening entertainment we headed down the street to a car show.  I’ll tell you what, we are really reaching for things to do out here.  I can’t recall that I’ve ever been to a car show in my life.  It passed the time though, and the cars were pretty cool.  There were a bunch of classics for the most part, with a few exotics and customs thrown in the mix for variety.  It was a nice night to walk around outside if nothing else.

Sunday, Donette headed out to the pool, while I decided to work on cooking “something.”  After probably way-too-much debate, I settled on smoking a pork butt and making a batch of verde sauce.  I’d happened to notice that butts were on sale at a nearby Food 4 Less, so that was my first stop.  Indeed, they were on “sale,” if for the not so impressive price of $2.50.  Hey, it’s cheaper than beef I guess.  Roast in hand, I ambled over to the produce department next, for what would be a most unfortunate conversation with the produce guy.  My inquiry as to the availability of Hatch chiles was met with a blank stare, then he says “Why do people keep asking for those?”  Uhhh, because they’re in season?  Because it’s an event?  Because they’re friggin’ awesome?  Because you’re in a grocery store?  He then proceeded to helpfully inform me that they did have anaheims, and they look just the same.  Ouch.  Yeah you’ve got a bunch of apples over there that all look like apples too.  Probably a few kinds of potatoes that all look remarkably similar to potatoes.  Tsk.  I took my pork and indignantly stomped off, never to return to that poor excuse of a grocery again.  I headed off to the good ol’ neighborhood Nugget, where they thankfully did have genuine Hatch chiles, if in precious short supply.  My misfortunes of the day would continue when I later noticed the checker rang them up as pasillas though, at twice the price.  Have these people no sense of pepper-pride at all around here????  I spent the rest of the day on the patio, tending the smoker and roasting various veggies over the Weber.  The overall cook went pretty well, I was reasonably happy with the end product.  The pork came out better than average, but the verde came out so doggone spicy I can barely eat it.  Might need to tone down the peppers just a bit next time…

Here’s some pictures from the car show.  My apologies if all my id’s aren’t correct, I’m not that much of a car-guy.

If you didn’t happen to catch Donette’s brief Facebook posting two Fridays ago, we spent the last week in (brutally) sunny Jamaica.  Ahhhh, the beach life, can’t beat it.  It wasn’t just a random trip, we headed out there to meet five other couples whom I’d met during my brief foray into the US Army.  Full half of the group were celebrating wedding anniversaries during our stay, so we were able to have a reason to celebrate pretty much constantly.  For legal reasons, I am required to keep the description of events rather brief.  And, to be honest, as we were at a nice all-inclusive resort, the events WERE rather brief.  Eat breakfast.  Lay on beach.  Eat lunch.  Lay on beach.  (Sometimes we substituted the previous two with “Eat lunch on beach,” for variety.)  Eat dinner.  Sleep.  Repeat.  Pretty solid itinerary, really.  We mixed in a few activities, but tried to stick to the aforementioned plan as much as possible.  We went on a snorkeling trip early in the week, which degraded into an unmitigated disaster.  They took us out on a small boat, and early into the trip the wind picked up and started rocking that thing like crazy.  The inevitable result was the majority of the group getting seasick, myself right at the head of that bunch.  Wow, it was miserable.  I never actually got sick in the literal sense, but I probably would have been better off if I had.  It knocked me out of service for a good part of the afternoon.  We went out on two more boat trips during the week which were infinitely more successful, likely due to much larger boats, calmer seas, and a hefty dose of Dramamine.

I’m still trying to get reoriented to the Real Life, so that’s all I feel like posting right now.  I haven’t had the opportunity to sort through all my pictures yet, not that I really have many, but I’ve got a few to put up here.