One of my friends who is old enough to know better has filled my mind with naive thoughts of taking a hike this coming Fall.  With that in mind, I decided to start some light (very light) training.  Luckily there are numerous trails within walking distance of our front door.  The weather was quite nice Monday so Teagan and I kicked things off with a 3.5 mile hike down a nearby path.  (Or, rather, UP and down.)  Can’t beat the views!  This path is about 1/4 mile from our house.  You can barely see the Sierra Nevada range on the horizon.

Taking a hike with Teagan

Fine weekend indeed.  The Martins flew in Friday night and we spent the weekend catching up with them.  Not a whole lot of catching up to be done, as we just saw them two weeks ago.  We had a good time though, always nice to have visitors.  The weather cooperated too, and we were able to get in a copious amount of patio time.

Saturday the flow of the afternoon was interrupted a bit when we had to meet with our Realtor and finalize the purchase of a house.  Remarkably, after last week’s little setback, things came together and we ended up with a better deal than the original, at least in my mind.  It’s the same exact house we wanted, but I like the lot much better.  It’s right by the entrance to the subdivision, and closer to the clubhouse pool;  Definitely a short walk, no drive required.  The lot is quite a bit larger too, and the best part is (for Teagan and her loathing of dogs on the other side of fences) we will only have one neighbor.  The only bad thing I can come up with at all is that we got stuck with the fire hydrant.  Eh, no big deal.  We lucked into this spot because the construction trailer is currently sitting on the lot, and they didn’t want to sell it because people will be hounding them to hurry up and get started.  Hey, another bonus for us, as we’re in a lease until later this Fall, take all the time you want!  We headed home and celebrated our purchase with a grilled tri-tip roast.  It came out much better than my last try, I’m getting the hang of them.  (Sorry Aushermans, you got shorted.)

Our new trailer

Sunday we took the Martins out for short tour of a few nearby wineries.  The weather started a bit on the unpleasant side (relatively speaking) but it warmed up quickly and the clouds burned off.  We kept the tour short;  Just went to Too Good and Belle Piazza.  After that it was back to the house to sit on the patio, where Donette treated us to a fine dinner of Rotel dip.  We had a grand time;  Who’s coming next?

After last weekend, I feel a little content-challenged.  Errrr….  Friday I went to happy hour.  I’m still not entirely sure you can call it “happy hour” if you’re all by yourself, but the general idea was there.  I went to Ruff Haus, my place as of late.  Nothing particularly singular about it that stands out really.  It’s on my way home and it’s rarely crowded.  Works for me.  This week I branched out from my usual Chicago Dog and went with the Sonoran.  Holy smokes was it good.  Bacon, pinto beans, and cheese, mmmm.  I’d say it displaced the Chicago as my favorite.

Saturday we hooked up with our Realtor and went house-hunting.  He’s been rather patient with us I think;  We’re having a tough time finding something.  We looked at several more Saturday but they didn’t quite do it for us either.  We went home to do some fancy cipherin’, and finally concluded we could just buy the house we’ve been wanting for quite some time.  Other than the mildly exorbitant price tag, it had everything we are looking for.  Whew.  We called our Realtor back, let him in on the big news, and agreed to meet there Sunday to take care of the paperwork.  Quite relieved to have THAT out of the way, we took ourselves out for a little celebration dinner at Chicago Fire Pizza.  That’s probably one of our favorite places we’ve found to eat here so far.  I’m sure I’ve mentioned it, but it’s a bad sign for the new hometown when your favorite restaurant is a pizza joint.  Oh well.  It IS good.

Sunday we got up early and hit the gym.  Got home, cleaned up, and then got a cheery phone call that, while we were out celebrating our new home decision, somebody else was buying it.  You gotta be kidding me.  That thing has been sitting there for at least two months, the thought didn’t even cross our mind.  Then for a little added insult I got to waste 45 minutes listening to this @)*(&^ agent (not ours, the one selling) try and convince me that the one across the street was the same thing.  Yeah, I guess maybe it is, except for the fact that IT’S DIFFERENT!!  Knucklehead.  I don’t like the way it looks, I don’t like the yard, I don’t like the direction it faces…  Eh, but you sold mine so yeah I’ll just take that one.  Idiot.  What can ya’ do.  Think long, you think wrong.  There’ll be another.  Oh, wait, no there won’t, it’s full.  #$)*(&^*.  Least I got an awesome pizza dinner out of it.

** EDIT:  Said agent just sent me an email that he is trying to get us another lot.  Doni already blames the last “issue” on bad karma due to my negativity, so now I have to take back all the aforementioned bad things about him.  He’s now the greatest person ever, definitely the best real-estate agent ever.  Yeah.

Whew, that was one exhausting weekend.  Punishing, even.  It started early on last Thursday when we flew to KC for Martin’s sort-of-kind-of-not-really-surprise 50th birthday party.  The very fact that I went to school with people who are now turning 50 troubles me deeply, but I’m just to avoid the issue for the time being, and stick with a brief overview of the festivities.

Friday was a fun day, at least for me.  I do miss my little self-styled KC pub crawls.  That wasn’t even really the plan, it just kind of worked out that way.  I met up with Kobe around 11:00 at the Blue Line, a place I’d never been to before.  Actually, I’d definitely been there before, but I think it was under a different name last time I was there.  At any rate, it’s now The Blue Line, a self-proclaimed “Hockey Bar.”  Huh, didn’t know KC had one of those, or for that matter needed one.  At least for the day of the US vs. Canada game, it proved a very successful theme though.  It was just crazy-crowded, there was no use even looking for a seat.  We stood around and watched the entire game, which I found oddly entertaining.  After the US loss, the crowd magically disappeared.  They left the TV’s turned up deafeningly loud though, so I decided to walk up to the Phoenix for some lunch.  Ah, I miss that place.  I sat around there for a while, joined briefly by a few coworkers, then Martin picked me up and we headed south to my old stomping grounds.  “The Boys” were all at Hooper’s;  Not my favorite place but hey, I got to see a lot of people in one spot so it worked out OK.  From there, we headed further south to Tommy’s, which our friend Susan recently purchased.  After checking out her remodel of the place (she was out of town so we didn’t get to see her,) we headed back downtown to one of my favorite spots, the Peanut.  I know the one on Main is the original, but I have always preferred the downtown location.  I maintain those are the best wings in the city, I love them.  I generally am a bit self-conscious of eating them in public, as I tend to… errrrr… sweat just a bit.  I figured what the heck though, I was on vacation, so I grabbed a roll of paper towels and tore them up.  That and a double BLT were more than enough for the four of us.

Saturday was the day of Martin’s party, so I was tasked with keeping him occupied while the girls made preparations.  Of course, I can’t even keep myself occupied most of the time, so I deferred to Schmidt.  He put together a little shootin’ party with Lueck, Martin, Brown and myself up at the Brown Ranch in Kearney.  Good times, although none of us were exactly tearing up the clay pigeons.   By the time we got cleaned up it was time for the party, which was down in Westport at Californos.  Much like Hooper’s, I had the benefit of seeing a bunch of people in one spot, so I had a great time catching up with everybody.  After the party, a handful of us headed up the street to Kelly’s to keep the festivities going.  All we did was prove the adage “there is nothing to do after 10:00 but get in trouble.”  That’s all I have to say about that.

Sunday we had carved out for some family time.  We started off meeting my family down at Classic Cup for brunch.  I’d had a cup of coffee there before, but never eaten;  It was quite good!  As usual I ordered rather oddly, in a misplaced effort at being healthy.  I must admit my omelette would have benefited greatly from a liberal dose of sausage gravy like Donette had.  Oh well, there’s always next time, and it wasn’t bad at all; I just had a little gravy envy.  After that we rolled up north to her parent’s house, where we spent the rest of the afternoon socializing while waiting for our flight to Sacramento.  Ugh, the flight home was miserable, we didn’t step in our front door until 2:00 AM, and that’s including the two-hour time change.  Friggin’ Denver.

Whew, the heinous cold snap is over, I hope for good.  I don’t mean to rub it in, but it’s a gloriously sunny 67 degrees out today.  Got a little more rain over the weekend though.  I know CA is in the middle of a 500-year drought, but does it have to only rain on my high-value days?  C’mon people.

We really didn’t do anything of note this weekend.  My romantical side took over Friday and I took my valentine to happy hour with me at the hotdog shack.  Nothing says “love” like a $10 hotdog.  After that we headed home and tried to watch Say Anything, supposedly a recommended valentine’s day flick.  I’ve likely seen it before, but don’t really remember it at all.  Or at least the first five minutes didn’t look familiar, I fell asleep after that.

Saturday we did some light house-hunting, with no “hits” to speak of.  A lot of misses though.  We widened our radius to include Folsom in the hopes of saving a few bucks;  Doesn’t look like that theory is going to pan out.  So far only one house remains on our “list,” and we’re actually keeping the new build option open too.  I said I’d never live in a new house again, but then I also said I’d never live in the ‘burbs again and it does not get much more suburban than this place.  If you break one rule, might as well break them all.

Sunday Donette went on something of cleaning frenzy.  The house was indeed getting a little untidy.  I tried to help out, but kept getting sucked into foreign-language martial arts films.  I took Teagan up to the park for a bit to play ball, which helped in that she is perpetually in the way around the house.  On the downside, she got horribly muddy…  That might not have helped as much.  For dinner we grilled some chicken sausages.  I’ve always wanted to try those, and I was reasonably pleased with them.  Maybe no substitute for pork-fat, but hopefully a bit healthier, although I didn’t bother actually reading the label.  That’s pretty much our weekend.  We wrapped up with a solid dose of Wii games, then Donette turned on a movie and it was lights out for me.