No wineries this weekend, rats.  (Whew.)  We had plenty of fun though I suppose.  Friday night we kicked things off with a short happy hour at Ruff Haus.  Hmmm, happy hour at the hotdog joint, times are bleak indeed.  I branched out with a scotch egg this time, which is roughly 18 times tastier than it sounds.  I also enjoyed discussing the (de)merits of the local Chicago dog.  I maintain that, while certainly tasty, their $10 offering is not significantly better than the two-fer-$2 build-your-own at QT.  My esteemed coworker insists that oh yes they are.  As he has never actually experienced a gourmet QT dog though, I feel I have a better grasp on the matter.  I win, hmph.  After that we headed home for a round of Wii Sports.  Of all the games we’ve collected, you just can’t beat a round of the free sports games that came with the console.  Plus we’re rather evenly matched;  I usually win tennis and baseball, she wins bowling and golf.  (We don’t box, after one time when she got a little too carried away and…  Never mind.)  After a few rounds of that, we got all melancholy and started dialing up people on Facetime.  It was fun, although that thing still kind of freaks me out for some reason.  We did sort of get carried away and forgot about the time difference.  For that, I sincerely apologize to my KC friends.  Oh, and Cincy.  Oops, and Texas.  I’m so embarrassed.

Saturday went rather oddly.  We had a lot of plans, and actually got in the car and set out to execute said plans.  Somewhere along the way, we noticed an open house sign, and popped in for a tour.  Pretty interesting, so we drove to another.  Several open houses later, we were hungry and went to lunch at El Dorado Saloon, which proved to be a rather lucky guess for a meal;  Quite tasty.  After that we just kept rolling to more open houses.  By the time we were done looking at houses (none of which we could actually afford, not to mention we’re in a year-long lease) it was so late we just cancelled all our to-do’s and headed home.  A day wasted indeed, other than perhaps the delicious turkey-burger.

Sunday was the big game, which we both were thoroughly disinterested in.  Not to miss a chance for a feed though, we threw on two slabs of ribs, a pound of chicken wings, stuffed jalapenos, and assorted other appetizers.  As predicted, the game was entirely lame.  Man them chicken wings were good though.  The ribs…  eh.  Still need some practice there.  I’d have probably done well to fire up my smoker instead of trying to cram everything on my grill.  They were passable I suppose, especially after a liberal basting in Smokehouse sauce.

Another fine weekend in the books.  Looks like it’s a good thing too, they’re actually predicting clouds next weekend, gasp.  Not the case this last weekend though, it was awesome.  Friday, as a matter of fact, it was so nice out that we met up for a pseudo-date on the patio at 36 Handles, one of the few places near our house that we sort-of-kind-of-almost like.  We weren’t there for much besides the weather though, so it was fine.  We had a flat bread appetizer (which honestly was quite good) and some kind of fried jalapenos, and enjoyed the sun for a bit.  On the downside, due to their location we ran out of sun pretty quickly.  We’ll have to take that into account next time, maybe move down the row to Relish Burger.

Saturday was a rather productive day, as our days go.  We were actually expecting company on Sunday;  Big news for us.  The best news was, this finally gave us the much-needed impetus to finish unpacking from the move.  Actually, “unpack” might be a bit of a stretch:  We just moved everything to a spare room, out of sight.  For that matter “We” might be a bit of a stretch too, Donette did most of it.  Meanwhile, I headed to the regular round of stores (Costco, Petsmart, and The Nugget) to do the weekly shopping.  All-in-all, a thoroughly exhausting afternoon.  It’s nice to finally see the living room floor though…  Turns out it’s actually a quite nice room, even if we don’t ever use it.  We decided the house was in passable shape, so we headed out for a late lunch around 3:00 or so.  Based on a recommendation, we landed at Ruff Haus, which opened recently near us.  I was pretty dang happy with our lunch.  The ‘dogs were really quite good, and the fries probably the best we’ve had here.  But, at the end of the day, my deep-seated cheapskate nature just can’t get past the fact I paid $35 for a hotdog lunch.  Not sure it’ll get worked into our rotation, no matter how good the french fries.

Sunday I started the day off with a good long round of fetch up in the park with Teagan.  Gotta get that girl good and worn out now and then.  That afternoon our friends Mark & Barb from KC swung by on their way back from Napa for a visit.  After a weekend in Napa they well may have seen enough wineries for a while, but we couldn’t think of anything else to do so that’s where we headed.  We’d heard good things about a place called Too Good (catchy name huh,) so we started our day there.  It was indeed a pretty fun place.  I’d call it more of an “event” than just a wine tasting, we spent our whole dang afternoon there.  I’m sure we’ll get back there soon, even if it is a whole 30 minutes from our house.  By the time we finally left there, it was actually quite late in the afternoon and we were starving.  We stopped at Village Toscano for our second stop, mostly because we’d been there before and knew they had some good food available.  We absolutely killed a couple of delicious pizzas, which effectively ended our day.  We went from starving to miserably stuffed.  We decided to call it a day, and headed back home.  Fun times though;  The wineries are a good (cheap) way to pass the days out here!

The storage caves at Too Good winery

We got mildly more adventurous this weekend.  The weather helped I think;  It was simply too nice to sit around inside.  Friday, for instance, it was a solid 72 degrees after work.  I wasn’t too particular about what we did, but it was gonna be outside.  We ended up just hanging out on the patio at the house, listening to some music.  Hey, works for me.  A few neighbors were drawn over by my impeccable taste in tunes and joined us for a while.  We sat around until it started getting dark, which is entirely too early these days.  After that we headed “to town” and had dinner at Casa Ramos.  That place reminds me a lot of our neighborhood Mexican-food place in KC:  Don’t really care for it, but it’s cheap and close so we go there.

Saturday we got so crazy we actually left the city limits.  Whoa, pump the brakes there, Kenagys.  Indeed.  We headed “up the hill” to nearby Camino to check out some of their numerous wineries.  I tried taking copious notes on the trip so I could relate the day place-by-place here.  Alas, all I ended up with was a bunch of meaningless (and not particularly interesting) photos on my phone.  Have to work on my documentation techniques I guess.  Here’s a pic of Doni tasting a glass of wine…  I don’t know when or where it was taken but I’m nearly certain that’s what she is doing.

Somewhere in Camino, CA

We ran around for a while, probably enjoying the weather more than the wine.  It was fun though.  After that we somehow ended up at some casino.  I despise casinos so that wasn’t exactly the highlight of my afternoon.  It pretty much matched the profile of every other casino in the world:  Smoky, noisy, and boring.  I feigned interest for a while though, and actually DID enjoy watching a poker game for a short bit.

Sunday we both had quite a few things lined up on our calendars.  Predictably, that means we did a whole lot of nothing. I headed up to the park with Teagan and played an extended game of fetch, as she’s been a bit bored lately.  Then, we both took a short, if physically exhausting jog around the neighborhood.  After that, well, it was football games on the couch.  As good a way as any to wrap up the weekend I guess.  I fired up the grill and threw on what I felt were a quite passable attempt at burnt ends, ALSO a fine end to a weekend.

I think I need a hobby, I’m getting a little stir-crazy out here.  Yeah, the weather is nice and all, but I’m bored.  Ah, we had a little fun this weekend I guess.  Friday night we both worked semi-late, then watched Miss Congeniality 2 together.  This is not so much a summary of my Friday night as a thinly veiled cry for help.  I’m not going to look back and see what I did on Friday night a year ago, but it’s a safe bet I wasn’t watching a Sandra Bullock movie.  Somebody entertain me.  Now.

Saturday there weren’t any good chick-flicks on the tube, so we decided to go watch the football games.  Out of familiarity, we headed to The Purple Place, a.k.a. “The Purp.”  It’s a decent place to watch a game I guess;  It ain’t no Brooksider.  The food, while passable, isn’t quite on a par with the good ol’ Sider, nor is their patio.  And, like most other places around here, it’s priced about twice as high too.  Hey, whatever, it was fun to get out for a bit.  Maybe I’m just being negative today.

Sunday the Niners game came on at 10:00 in the morning, an unfortunate byproduct of living out west.  (Man, I ain’t got ‘NUTHIN good to say.)  Seriously, football at 10:00?  Whatever.  We watched both games, then of course the Golden Globes were on, didn’t want to miss that.  I’m going back to bed now.

Wow, my days are ALL messed up.  Mostly because of all the days off work I guess, which is a good thing.  It just now struck me that it’s Monday again, hence the slightly tardy update.  We’ve done so much over the holidays I don’t really know where to start, so I’ll fall back on the “random rambling” technique.

One notable event was my first bicycle ride of the year.  Matter of fact, my first bicycle ride since I’ve moved.  I sure can’t blame the weather for my lack of riding, I just haven’t gotten around to it.  And, honestly, I’ve been a little psyched out by the hills around here.  Back in the good ol’ days of riding in KC, my nemesis-hill was Belinder road on the Thursday night Brookside ride.  It was towards the end of the route, and I usually spent the entire ride dreading the inevitable.  Heck, a few times I even just rode around it.  Then we move out here, and I have to ride up a hill at least that big just to get out of my subdivision.  Just gets worse from there, too.  No amount of foul language can adequately describe the hill I have to ride up to get back home, so I’ll just label it “imposing.”  You see several other riders tackling it day after day, but to be fair I’ve got 10 years and (conservatively) 50 lbs on most of them.  Tackle it I did though, and I made it.  Sure, I zig-zagged back and forth like a little kid on a single speed, and I puked in the bushes at the top, but I made it.  Next time it will be a whole lot easier, I’m sure.  (Because next time I’ll park the car at the bottom of the hill.)

Let’s see, what else…  I covered our fine rib-roast dinner on New Year’s Eve, below.  I haven’t done “what I got for Christmas” yet, but that might take too long.  Uhhh…  How ’bout them Chiefs???  We went to a local establishment to watch the game, proudly sporting our red shirts.  Thank goodness we left at half-time.  Maybe I should adopt the 49er’s, at least they won ONE game.