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.

We at least made some kind of effort to leave the house over the last few days, despite the stifling heat.  Friday wasn’t really by choice though, I had to go pick up Donette at the airport.  She was coming back from two weeks of traveling, which we (I, at least) decided was far too long.  Since we don’t get all the way to Sacramento often, we decided to eat dinner while we were down there.  Through a random google search we ended up at Fat City in the Old Sacramento district.  We had minor trouble finding a parking place, which is about par for the course every time we’ve been downtown, but once we found a spot it turned out to be a pretty fun, walkable area.  Before we went into the restaurant we strolled around for a bit, and saw several more places to put on our “to visit” list.  We had a decent dinner, if not outstanding.  The building itself was as cool as anything, and they had a way-old, elaborate wooden bar and lots of stained glass to check out while we were eating.

Saturday we headed down and checked on the house project, which appeared to be coming along just swimmingly.  We’ve got a bit of tile on the floor, cabinets in the kitchen, the solar panels are on the roof, and the interior doors are all hung.  They were in the process of putting in the sprinkler system when we were there, which looked a lot more complicated that I expected.  It’s tied into a recycled water system so there were trenches dug everywhere for that, not to mention the ground is a bit rocky out here so the trenches themselves looked pretty hard to dig.  Looks like they are on schedule for September though, I can hardly wait to pack up and move again.  (Ugggghhhhh.)  After that we did a light bit of shopping, then went over to a friend’s house for a nice pasta dinner.

Sunday we got all crazy and left El Dorado Hills for a little bit.  We spent most of the day lazing around, then in the late afternoon we drove out Hart to Hart winery for a tasting.  A friend of ours was working, and we were darn near bored out of our minds, so it seemed like a good diversion despite the 30 minute drive required to get there.  Indeed, it was a nice place to hang out for the afternoon, and most importantly it was well air-conditioned.  We spent a few hours there, then drove to nearby Cool Beerwerks for a light dinner.  Pretty nice little brew-house, although I think the best part about it was being in the town of Cool.  Every single business there was named “Cool Something-or-another.”  Kind of hard to go wrong with a name like that.  The drive back to EDH was just as arduous as the drive out, and effectively wore me out for the rest of the day.  I was relegated to the couch watching Netflix for the remainder of the evening.

Another in my lengthy stretch of lame weekends.  The wife is still out of town, carrying on with all her friends and family.  Somebody has to stay here and tend to the pets and keep up the house.  (Both of which I am doing an admittedly horrible job of.  Luckily Teagan is pretty easy-going, I can’t remember to feed the poor little girl to save my life.)

I did stop by Ruff Haus on Friday, mostly out of respect for keeping up my usual routine.  Wasn’t really feeling it though, so I didn’t stay long.  I popped in the grocery store instead, and bought a few lamb chops.  Mmmm, they came out good.  I don’t recall ever grilling lamb chops.  I did some blade chops not too long ago and they were a gamey, greasy disaster so I was pretty skeptical.  There was a world of difference in them though.  Maybe there’s something to the difference in price between the two, hmmm.

Saturday I went for a short bike ride, mostly out of sheer boredom.  Didn’t really cure it though, so I drove to Costco to kick around for a while.  As usual, it was sufficiently unnerving an experience as to send me to the couch for the rest of the day.  Man, that place is crazy.  I went last week and they had a great deal on some cat furniture (yes, I said cat furniture) that I wanted for Kane.  Well, by the time I got back there Saturday they were all gone, and after trying to navigate the aisles for a bit I decided it wasn’t worth the trouble to get the rest of the items on my list.  Leaving Costco empty-handed, a rare occurrence indeed.

Sunday I got a text from good ol’ Todd down in Houston, looking for some rib-cooking tips.  (I didn’t tell him I’m about the last person to ask for rib advice…  Shoulda probably sent him to Martin.)  It got me thinking though, man ribs DO sound good.  So, I headed down to the grocery, looking for the standard two-pack of St. Louis cut spares.  Alas, they didn’t have them.  After a short discussion, the accommodating butcher DID offer to split a slab of baby backs for me though.  Well, how perfect is that!  Truthfully, the thought never crossed my mind, but after he said it, it occurred to me that one person doesn’t really need two full slabs of ribs.  Pleased with my purchase, I headed back home and fired up the Weber, put the Royals game on my iPad, and commenced to cooking.  It was a generally unremarkable cook, with the exception that it actually rained on me for a while!  I know there hasn’t been a single drop of rain here in July, and I’m pretty sure none in June either.  If there was any in May, it was scant.  It was an event, to be sure.  And, luckily, it wasn’t coming down hard enough to affect my ribs.  Quite an enjoyable way to pass the afternoon actually.  The ribs came out well, I was pretty happy with them.  I ate them up, then it was back to the couch to play Rock Band for the rest of the evening.

I’m in quite a way.  The wife has left for parts unknown, leaving me to fend for myself.  I think I started slipping into a somewhat feral state mere hours after her flight took off.  I’ve been huddled at home on the couch for three days now, subsisting on fried egg sandwiches and a bag of stale corn chips I found in the back of the pantry.  I’m down to my last dozen eggs too, things are looking grim indeed.

Honestly, that describes my weekend for the most part.  Sunday a friend took pity and invited me down to cook, always a good diversion.  He’s got a large gas grill, so we set it up for indirect cooking as best we could, threw a box of chips on it, and commenced to pseudo-smoking some pork butts.  Honestly it did a pretty fair job.  I will say I prefer a bit more smoke in my ‘que, but it was certainly an interesting experiment.  We were shooting for a batch of chile verde, so I roasted some veggies on my Weber before heading down there, and that lent a bit more smoke to the dish too.  If nothing else, the propane burners provided a much more low-maintenance day of cooking.