We are slowly but surely getting moved into our new house.  Very slowly, maybe not so surely.  I somehow imagined having all kinds of free time out here;  Not really working out that way in practice.  Always some good football game on, or the weather is too nice to sit inside, or other similar monumental events.  It’ll get there.  (Won’t it?)

Friday I made an attempt at keeping up my end-of-week happy hour tradition.  I had a fine evening I guess.  I sat on the back patio at the house and pondered the deep question:  “If you sit alone on your back patio, can you really call it happy hour?”  I didn’t come up with a decisive answer.  If you sit at the Brooksider with a table full of people but don’t talk to anyone, is THAT happy hour?  Heavy thoughts man, heavy thoughts.  I know I enjoyed the 70 degree weather, the fire pit, and a short cigar.  Grilled up some rather nice mahi mahi on the ol’ Weber for dinner, then played a few rounds of Wii with the wife to round out the day.

Saturday never quite got off the ground for some reason.  The Missouri game came on at some unholy hour of morning… 9:00 if I remember right?  This PST is sort of inconvenient in some respects, sporting events being one of them.  We tuned in though, it made for a good start to the day I suppose.  It was evident they had the game well in hand by half time, so Teagan and I strolled up the street and played some ball at the nearby park.  After that the day kind of just went by.  We watched several more college games that we had only marginal interest in, I washed the motorcycle, slept intermittently on the couch…  And that was about it.

Sunday we had a bit more energy, or at least got a bit more accomplished.  I put a little effort into my new home network, with absolutely no progress.  (The temptation here to go on a detailed tangent of my Uverse issues, possible fixes, and past failures, is almost overwhelming.  I shall refrain though.  You’re welcome.)  Given the lack of a Chief’s game, we headed out to get some shopping done.  We are definitely doing better about eating at home now, (mostly because we can barely afford our rent,) but haven’t quite settled on whether to grocery shop day-by-day or once a week.  Both approaches have their own advantage.  At any rate, this week we bought most everything at once.  My major purchase (or at least most interesting) was a tri tip roast from Costco.  I’ve been searching in vain for a brisket since we got here.  I’m not sure they can be found.  Urban legend has it that they occasionally show up at Costco, but I sure haven’t seen them.  Apparently when in California, the beef consumer is relegated to the “tri tip” cut.  Hmmm.  Color me skeptical.  They look sort of like a brisket, but that’s where the similarity ends.  One major difference is they only take about an hour to cook.  What the heck are you supposed to do with the rest of your day??!?!?  Gone is the excuse, “Sorry, can’t do that today, got to keep an eye on my brisket.”  Lame.  Oh well, I guess this is one more major cultural difference I’ll just have to overcome.  (It came out pretty darn tasty though.)

Well, we’ve been here two weeks and we’re already taking vacations. That’s alright, I think we earned one with the move. (Which, incidentally, still isn’t completed. The second truck should show up later this week. If I was to guess, most likely while we’re still out of town.) Anyway, I’m compelled to keep things brief for a few reasons: 1. I’m on vacation and have better things to do. Actually I don’t but I probably should. 2. I’m relying on our Verizon hotspot to post this, and we’re teetering on the edge of data overage.

So, as it happens, we’re in wonderful South Lake Tahoe for a bit. At an hour and a half from our new house, I imagine we’ll be making short trips up here quite a bit. So far I don’t have any exciting ski trips or anything to relate; We’re just kind of checking things out this time. We arrived Saturday, threw our stuff in the hotel room, and hiked to a nearby place to watch the Missouri game. Sunday, we walked all the way to Nevada (about a mile) and found the Chiefs game on a big screen at Harrah’s. We ended up next to a couple from Overland Park, so we made for a nice cheering section. The smoke in that place drove me out though, I watched the second half by myself at a different place nearby. After the game we wandered around the lake for a bit, then spent the rest of the day at the resort watching football.

We’re here until (maybe) Wednesday, so we’ll see what other opportunities come up. There isn’t much of a schedule involved so we’re just kind of winging it. The one place we found so far to board the dog is rather exorbitantly expensive so we might head back and bail her out early. (Her per-night boarding rate is more than our condo in Tahoe. Seriously. Something is wrong there…)

I apologize for the extended (2 week?) down-time.  We’ve been in the process of moving, and I had no idea it would take this long.  More on those painful details later I guess.  As to the move, we are now in the process of getting settled in at a temporary (rental) house in El Dorado Hills, CA.  Not to be confused with the more glamorous parts of California, this is still a great place so far.  And, it’s CLOSE to lots of them there fancy places.  We’re a mere hour and a half drive from several great places like Lake Tahoe, San Francisco, and Napa/Sonoma.  No need to drive to Napa though, there are several (hundred) wineries right here in El Dorado County if that’s your thing.  The drive here was rather arduous, if pleasantly uneventful.  I cannot, in good faith, recommend driving 1,800 miles with a cat in the car though.  Poor little guy, he just sat in Donette’s lap and moaned.  For three days….  Ugh.  He’s adjusting well to the new house though, better than I expected.

Once we finally arrived at the house on the afternoon of the 21rst, we were relegated to living with what we could carry in the car with us, as the truck with our stuff wouldn’t arrive until Friday.  That consisted of a few towels, an air mattress, and some sheets.  Sort of like an indoors camping trip.  It was a longggg week.  Our stuff did finally arrive Friday though, and mostly (but not entirely) intact.  So far there haven’t been any big losses discovered.  There are a few outstanding issues:

1.  All our stuff couldn’t fit on the first truck, so it was loaded on an “overflow” truck.  No big deal.  When is that one coming?  Saturday?  Monday the 28th maybe?  Friday.  Not THIS Friday, Friday the 8th of November.  Ouch.  Had I known this to start with, there would have definitely been some adjustments made.  There are some must-have items on the second truck that are driving me nuts.  (At least we HOPE they are on the second truck.)

2.  They lost one of the “feet” off our dryer, and wouldn’t hook it up without it.  So, they ordered a replacement from LG.  No biggie.  Well, it still hasn’t come in, and we are coming up on two weeks without doing laundry.  Things are getting critical.  I’m quickly coming to the decision of propping it up with whatever I can find and hooking it up myself.  (Much like all the furniture I ended up having to reassemble myself because they lost all the parts from the disassembly.)  It might not have gone any better, but I definitely wish I would have selected the other moving company when I had the chance.

3.  Me and my new Uverse service aren’t getting along too well thus far.  I found my Surewest service in KC to be very flexible and accommodating to some of my more “unique” arrangements.  Uverse, not so much.  They force you into using their router, which naturally they make as difficult as possible to muck around with.  But, muck around I did of course, and lost our DVR services in the process.  I am pretty sure this router will become the bane of my very existence.  It’s about the size of a small refrigerator, and has four 10/100 ports, one of which is taken up by their odd external wireless access point.  All this would be fine if  this was, say, the year 2001.  My only hope is that I can somehow figure out how to daisy chain my personal routers off the back of it.  (That is, if they ever actually get here!!!!!)

That’s enough typing for now I suppose.  I broke down last night and plugged my webserver into that evil router of theirs, and eventually managed to navigate their cryptic menus enough to get it up and running for the time being.  I will be sure and keep everyone abreast of the status of my home network as more equipment arrives.

I’d have to say the highlight of that weekend was a trip to Jack Stack for dinner with the family.  Not one of the foo-foo locations either;  THE Jack Stack Martin City location.  The other locations have their own perks, mainly being close to my house, but at the end of the day the Martin City location has consistently better food.  I’d already made up my mind on the rib dinner before we got there, and stuck to my plan.  I did switch from the 1/2-slab plate to the “dinner,” which worked out favorably as they gave me the short end anyway.  Definitely one of those dinners that made me want to work on my ribs at home, they were delicious.  My home-cooked ribs have been an unprecedented disaster as of late;  Time to get serious.  I do believe at some point pork spare ribs supplanted brisket as my favorite ‘que, but for whatever reason I find them hard to cook.  Tips????  Anyone????

The rest of the weekend was a wash.  Watched football all day Sunday, didn’t do anything Friday.  That is all.

Well, I do believe the last American Royal BBQ for team TFB is officially in the books.  Never say never, though.  If it was the last, I think we got our money’s worth;  I know I did.  I headed down Thursday afternoon to get things started.  Thursday is kind of our “team-building” night.  We hang out, catch up with team members we haven’t seen since LAST year, and go over our respective cooking plans for the weekend.  Honestly, I’d say a lot of the first two items, not so much the last one.  It was, as is usually the case, my “late night” for the weekend too.  I don’t know what time I called it a day (morning) but it was later than common sense would dictate.

Friday is the big party day of the weekend.  We all spend most of the day decorating the spot, preparing all the side dishes, putting on the tablecloths, etc.  I must say, the guys who did the centerpieces this year really went over the top, they were breathtaking.  Our first guests arrived around 6:00, and it was all downhill from there.  I won’t rate it our best party in the 10-year history of the team, but it was a good one.  And, while nobody will say it out loud, the rain storm around 10:00 was a blessing;  It effectively cleared out most of the riff-raff and left only a handful of people.  The second storm that rolled through around midnight got rid of the stragglers, and we had the spot to ourselves.  Perfect crime.

Saturday is usually a rather brutal day.  Generally there are only a few of us left onsite, left to deal with a sea of half-full plastic cups, broken glass, discarded plates, and other assorted trash.  I stumbled out of the trailer early in the morning to find that this year would be no different.  In his last declaration as acting CEO though, Martin declared that the remaining four of us should take the day off and go get some rest.  Hey, no need to tell me twice, I was on the phone with Donette in about two seconds.  She was so overjoyed to hear from me at 7:30 in the morning she could barely form a sentence.  Once she got past the excitement of getting to see me, she rushed down to pick me up and took me home to a hastily prepared breakfast of smoked salmon and bagels.  I then took a hot shower and crashed for about three hours.  (That last sentence is actually true;  The ones before that, not so much.  She DID actually come get me though.)  After catching up on some sleep, we headed up to The Well for a tasty dinner, then I loaded a few bare essentials and headed back down to the BBQ.  It was with much delight that I arrived to find the site pretty well cleaned up, courtesy of Schmidt.  There were still only four of us Saturday night, and we all were a little worse for wear.  We had the good fortune to find the MU game on TV and watched that, then everybody kind of dozed off where they sat.

Sunday started off around 4:00 with the smokers getting fired up, food prepped, and detailed plans drawn up.  All went well, or at least as well as it ever does.  To tell the truth, there was at least an 80% chance of chicken and brisket not even being turned in, as Martin and I had already discussed the fact that since we had no plans of returning in 2014 there was no reason to bother with it.  But, in the interests of the team members who may or may not choose to carry on the tradition next year, we grudgingly decided to at least submit them.  Judging from the results this morning, we’d have been just as well served to stay in bed, but at least we didn’t get disqualified.  (Barely.)  Actually, chicken turned out to be our team’s best-scoring entry, although it was certainly nothing to brag about.  Brisket…  Well…  Again, we didn’t get disqualified and that’s what is important, right?  I had a good day of it though, it was certainly a lot more relaxing not really caring how our entries did.  Part of this was the due to our arch-rivals, The Red Gloves, not showing up this year for the contest.  In the grand scheme of things, we historically have only cared how we did against them anyway.  (And it might be worth mentioning, we historically whup them too.)  Without them to compete against, we didn’t really have any motivation.