Wow, the forecast today is calling for 107 degrees.  That’s just flat kooky.  And don’t give me the “dry heat” qualifier either, that’s just hot.  Bone-melting, gasping, stay inside all day, HOT.  I guess it could be worse.  I don’t know how exactly, but I’m sure it could be.  (I could be mowing lawns?  Striping parking lots?  Digging a ditch?  All kinds of ways, now that I think about it.)  Anyway, the weather over the weekend was quite a bit nicer than today, and we got some good use out of it.  Maybe not so much Friday, but we had a little fun that day too.  I had to work a bit later than expected, so we ended up just heading to the weekly wine tasting at the good ol’ grocery store.  If nothing else, the sheer lameness of going to the grocery store for entertainment on a Friday night amuses me.  And, it’s sorta fun too.  They have a decent band, usually throw out some good pizza, and you get to taste a few new wines;  Good stuff!  We hung out there for an hour or so, then picked up a few groceries and went home to cook up a tasty shrimp pasta.

Saturday started off a bit slow.  We spent a decent amount of time out looking for new patio furniture.  Wow, that was a shock, or disappointment, or something along those lines.  I had a few numbers floating around in my head for a budget, and I don’t think they covered the umbrella stand on most sets we found.  Good grief, when did outdoor furniture start costing more than good living room furniture?  I might well just be sitting in my Cabela’s folding chairs on the back porch, ’cause I ain’t paying that much.  After that waste of an afternoon, we headed “up the hill” to Placerville, to attend the 14th annual Bell Tower Brewfest.  We’d heard good things about it from a few people, and indeed it was a fine event.  It was a bit different than the usual setup, in that the different distributors were located inside several shops along the town’s main street.  It was pretty cool;  You could check out the shops and sample some good local brews at the same time.  It was also in the evening, so it was considerably cooler than the recent one we attended in Folsom.  Good event, I’m sure we’ll return next year.

Sunday was moderately productive.  We again headed up the hill, even further to Tahoe this time.  It’s really not a bad drive, and has the added benefit of dropping 10-15 degrees in temp.  We timed our trip for a lunch stop, and had our spot all picked out, but when we got there we found it was inside a day-use area and they wanted $8 to park.  For lunch?  No thanks.  We headed over to the south side, which we’re a bit more familiar with anyway, and ended up at a place called Steamers.  In something of a rarity, it worked out well for us, it was a solid lunch.  Their menu was just what we were in the mood for (sandwiches) and it was remarkably inexpensive too.  Donette got a turkey melt, which was great, and I let the waitress talk me into the taco special.  The tacos were…. “different.”  Like several other dishes around here, if you can get past the fact that they call it a “taco,” they were really pretty good.  The corn tortillas were coated in parmesan cheese and lightly fried…  weird.  Yet tasty.  Hmmm.  They also had about three heads of iceberg lettuce shredded up on them, which I’m not particularly fond of, but the spicy shredded chicken under that made up for it.  After lunch we headed to our favorite fine art gallery to pick up the painting we’d purchased several weeks ago.  Our first piece of “fine art,” how exciting.  I was a little excited, honestly, I’m rather fond of it.  In an added bonus, the artist was there doing a show, so we got to meet him.  I’ll admit he wasn’t exactly what I expected.  (Just like the tacos.)  Let’s see, 1) goes by one name, and 2) artist; just those two qualifiers pretty much scream “WEIRDO” to me.  On the contrary, he was really an interesting guy, quite personable.  If I was the least bit personable myself I’m sure we would have had a great conversation.  We hung out there for quite a while, mingling with all our new art collector friends, then headed back home and went to a friend’s house for dinner.  All-in-all, a fine weekend.

I got nothing from this weekend.  In an unfortunate twist to my usual revelry, I had to work all day Saturday, which in turn left me too worn out to do anything Sunday.  I guess we did leave the house briefly Sunday.  We drove to Fry’s, the geek mecca of the west, to pick up a few necessities.  Since we made the long drive we hit a few other spots too, namely Harbor Freight, Office Depot, and Yard House for lunch.  Anddddd that’s my weekend.  I have to hope our next one is slightly more entertaining.

Happy Father’s Day to all.  It was a fine weekend indeed.  While I’m not technically in the Father category, I tend to go with any excuse I can to celebrate.  We kicked things off on Thursday with a little warmup in Sacramento.  We’ve talked several times about driving to Raley Field to watch the River Cats.  They’re the AAA team affiliated with Oakland, and the closest thing to watching a baseball game we have around here.  We were talking about it again Wednesday night, and when we looked up their schedule we found the Omaha Storm Chasers were in town!  Closest thing to a Royals game we are gonna have for a while, so we put on some team gear and made the 30 minute drive.  Since we were making the drive to the Big City, we decided to try a new dining spot, and after some research came up with River City Brewing.  As far as dinner goes, we were both rather underwhelmed.  It wasn’t terrible, but with so many other new places to try it didn’t have anything to bring us back either.  The game was a great time though, we’ll be back there.  It wasn’t watching the Royals at Kauffman by any stretch of the imagination, but it was a nice stadium and the seats were cheap.  Guess it’s going to have to do, because I have no intention of driving two hours to watch the Giants or A’s.

Since we had an outing Thursday, we sort of laid low on Friday.  We headed over to Folsom and went to a pseudo-wine-tasting at a lawn and garden center I guess.  I didn’t have much interest in the wines, but they were demo’ing a few grills I wanted to see.  Our gas grill didn’t survive the move, so I’ve been lightly shopping those for a while.  Might just stick with the good ol’ charcoal for a while, we’ll see.  They did have a very nice one I was impressed with, but it had an impressive price tag to match.  After that, it was back home to enjoy the nice weather on the patio, and watch the baseball games.  Quiet night.

Saturday we spent the better part of the day back in Folsom, at the second annual Rhythm & Brews festival.  I’d heard horror stories of last year, I guess they weren’t quite ready for the size of the crowd that showed up.  I was hoping that would keep everybody away this year, but that didn’t seem to be the case, it was plenty crowded.  It was a good time, we’ll probably put that one on the list for next year.  Of course we got a little lucky with the weather, it was quite a bit cooler than it has been.  We actually stayed for the whole thing, which surprised me.  After that we stopped for a light dinner at Bistro 33, then called it a day.

Sunday was a quiet one.  We were a little slow getting around, but finally got up and went for a nice bike ride around noon.  It was a fine day for a ride, and we managed to get in nearly 12 miles of mixed on-and-off road.  For dinner I made myself a Father’s Day Feast;  Grilled ribeye and lobster tail.  Man, it came out good.  Unfortunately I managed to about lop off the end of my finger working on the lobster tails, dang it.  Sure was good though, even if I’m typing with a sore finger tip for the next week.

Oh boy, where have I moved to.  Early June and it’s 105 degrees already?  Whew.  Time to pay for that extra-mild winter everybody kept talking about I guess.  At least it’s a dry heat.  (One-oh-five is HOT, I don’t care how dry it is.)  We didn’t hunker down in the a/c ALL weekend, though.  Just most of it.  Friday, as it happens, that was exactly the case.  I couldn’t even bear the back patio, so I just sat in front of the TV.  Predictably, that led to falling asleep about 7:30.  Big Friday at the Kenagy’s.

Saturday we headed to Folsom Lake to try the beach again.  Since our trip a few weeks ago, we’d refined our plan of attack a bit.  We picked up a cheapy ez-up to give us a little shade, drove a bit farther to a spot that was less crowded, and found a location where you could drive right down to the beach.  Granted, there weren’t a lot of other passenger cars there, mostly four-wheel-drive trucks and Jeeps, but the ol’ Honda did just fine.  We took Teagan with us this time too, having determined that, on the whole, the lake is pretty dog-friendly.  For once, our plans went relatively flawlessly.  Teagan got so tired I thought I was going to have to lift her in the car to go home, which was one of the primary reasons for going in the first place.  We were shaded and comfy under our tent, and most importantly I didn’t sink the car in the sand.  All good things.  We were there three hours or so, then headed home and fired up the grill.  Tri-tip was the flavor of the evening, and it came out well if I say so my darn self.  Might have gotten it a bit too smokey…  Jury’s still out on that one.

Sunday we actually got in a bit of physical activity, which is an increasing rarity.  We loaded up the bicycles and headed to Folsom, where we got on the American River Trail (a.k.a. Jedediah Smith Memorial Trail) for a ride.  It’s a very nice resource, we plan on getting back there soon.  The cycling was nice and easy, and relatively flat considering the surrounding areas.  We kept the distance down to ten miles since 1) neither of us have ridden all year, and 2) it was 100+ degrees out.  I must admit, the kayaks down in the water looked like they’d chosen the better recreation for the day, but we enjoyed ourselves all the same.  After that we headed home and cleaned up, then went BACK to Folsom (whew, that’s a lot of driving,) to see a show at the Harris Center.  The Hit Men were on stage, and they weren’t terrible.  The guitarist and drummer were actually very good, I just despise that type of music so it made it a bit harder to enjoy.  Let’s just say it looks like it will be more difficult to find an enjoyable show since we made the move to the ‘burbs.  What can ya’ do.

After that enjoyable week off, we got back into our normal routine of “nothing” this past weekend.  I dropped comfortably back into my normal Friday happy hour schedule at Relish, with a few hours on their nice patio.  After that we went home and ordered delivery from Mountain Mikes pizza, which I’ve wanted to try since we moved here.  I’d say it was just as marginal as any other pizza we’ve had here, with the added bonus of bringing it to my door, so it’s officially in the ordering rotation now.

Saturday was the dreaded “shopping” day.  Gotta do it sometime I guess.  We’d effectively emptied the fridge before leaving town the week before, so we needed a full restock.   That, of course, meant the dreaded Costco trip, ugh.  After we circled the aisles a few times, though, we decided there was no way we were going to wait in the checkout lines so we ended up just leaving.  Guess we’ll be eating out or making nightly grocery runs this week, which actually we usually do anyway.  After that we took a trip to Lowe’s, again buying nothing, then went by the new house to check up on the progress.  After all that pointless driving, we decided to stop by this Farmer’s-Market-looking place just outside of town.  We’ve driven by this place countless times, but never stopped, preferring to just pick up our produce at the store.  Well, we didn’t feel like going to the store, so we decided this was the day.  Alas, the one day we finally made it a point to go there, they were having their annual “Strawberry Festival.”  Apparently it’s a semi-big deal, as we had to park out in the middle of some distant field and hike all the way to the grounds, only to find a bunch of vendor booths selling jewelry and stuff once we finally go there.  Any produce they may have had earlier in the day was long gone.  Sigh, off to the good ol’ grocery store.  We picked up some Copper River salmon for dinner, and fixed it on the grill.  First time I’d ever plunked down the extra coin for this supposed delicacy, and it was indeed a tasty piece of fish.  Worth the 3x premium over the Atlantic salmon right next to it in the case?  I’d probably be hard-pressed to go that far, but at least I can say I’ve tried it now.  After dinner we settled in for a movie night.  Bad Grandpa was the selection for the evening.  I guess I must found it at least moderately entertaining, as I actually stayed awake through the whole thing.

Sunday looked like some particularly nice weather, so we decided to head out on one of our local brewery tours.  After negotiating some nasty construction tie-ups, our first stop was at Rubicon Brewing.  We hadn’t actually been to the brewery itself, but we’ve had their brews before, so our main focus was the lunch menu.  It was definitely delicious, but their portions were a little over the top.  The first thing we ordered was a large guacamole, to tide us over until the food arrived.  I guess it’s our fault for not asking how big a “large” was, but I swear it came out in a mixing bowl.  I’ve never seen so much green goop in my life.  We should have just called it a meal and been done, but of course we then ordered sandwiches too.  We were so full by the time we left it nearly ended our entire day, but we fought through the adversity like troopers, and headed off to Track Seven.  This one featured the seemingly popular format around here of opening a brewery in a warehouse row, then throwing the overhead doors open and pouring some pints.  Hey, it works for me, even if the surrounding scenery is a bit bland.  At any rate it was a fun place, but we were so stuffed it was definitely a one-and-out stop.  After that it was on to New Glory brewing.  We’d been to that one before, but it’s a nice place (another warehouse) and is right on the way home, so it made the list.