I suppose that was a fun weekend, despite an unusual amount of rainfall.  The worst part about wet weather here is listening to everybody you talk to say, “Well we really need the rain.”  Every…  Single…  Person.  And, I guess at the end of the day it’s true, but I don’t know why the ten rainy days a year always have to fall on the weekend.  Plenty of time for rain when I’m stuck in my cubical all day.  It’s not like it really ruined my weekend anyway I suppose.  I kicked things off Friday at the house.  I couldn’t get anybody to play with me, so I just sat on the patio by myself and watched the baseball game.  Perfect Fall weather;  Had the heater fired up and the patio cover kept things dry, it was really a pretty nice night out.

Saturday was the big Halloween Spooktacular at our neighborhood clubhouse.  Yes, things have to come to this.  Donette is on the social committee, so she spent a sizable amount of her day over there setting up.  The event started around 6:00, and you could tell right off it was going to get kind of crowded.  Indeed, I think they said by the end of the night nearly 500 people had showed up.  Way too many really;  I think next year they are going to pare things back a bit.  But, luckily the rain held off and it turned out to be a lot of fun.  Crazy costumes and sugar-crazed kids…  Good scene to observe from a safe distance.

Sunday we slept in a bit, then our friends Michael and Alaina had the bright idea to go out wine tasting.  It really was a bright idea as it turned out;  The rain had apparently scared everybody off and we had all the tasting rooms to ourselves.  We ending up hitting four spots, and then heading back to their house for grilling and Sopranos reruns.  Fine day of entertainment.  Tonight we’re having a few people over to hand out candy, we’ll see how that turns out.  Looks like it might rain again, leaving us in the house snacking on 10 pounds of chocolates.

That was a nice little unplanned 3-day weekend.  I kicked it off Thursday night, going out with a few guys after work.  As we sat around discussing the state of world affairs, the topic somehow swung to weekend plans, and one of the guys mentioned he took the day off Friday to go fishing.  Well, I just so happen to have more vacation than I know what to do with, so I took the day off and weaseled my way onto his boat too.  I’m not really much of a fisherman, as the other guys on the boat found out pretty quickly.  I’ve never even used a baitcast reel before, and when I heard what they cost I was somewhat afraid to try.  I couldn’t figure out the magical loop system used to put the bait on either, so they had to bait my hook for me every time like a 3rd grade girl.  Oh well, that way I didn’t have to touch the icky bait.  I ended up getting skunked on the fish, which was no surprise really.  As a matter of fact, the fishing was pretty slow for the whole boat, the group only caught two salmon and one steelhead over the six hours we floated around.  You can bet it was funner than sitting in my cubicle all day though.

Saturday we attended the fifth annual blind beer tasting up at our friends Michael & Alaina’s house.  This was the third time we’d been, and it just keeps getting bigger and better every year.  This year even featured official commemorative tasting glasses;  Fancy!  They had three stations set up, and we enjoyed several hours of sampling. When all the entries had been tried, everyone marked down their scores and a winner was determined.  Some lame cider-ish brew won, blech.  Oh well, different tastes for different folks I guess.  It was a good time at any rate.

Sunday we met Michael & Alaina at the El Dorado Saloon for a late breakfast.  Late as in lunchtime, but luckily they still had their breakfast menu on.  It was a solid breakfast, maybe not as good as The Purple Place but the outdoor seating was a draw for us.  I enjoyed a quite passable plate of eggs, hash browns, and biscuits & gravy, and Donette had a big southwest omelette that she said was delish.  I expect we’ll be back to try a few more menu items in the near future.  After that it was a typical Sunday on the couch watching my fantasy football team once again spiral downward into a painful defeat.

On a somewhat random note, one of my home pc’s crashed and burned over the weekend, and it’s the one I use to store all my pictures off my phone.  Bummer.  Waiting for some parts to come in, but in the meantime I don’t have my super-duper photo app to easily get my pictures.  I managed to pull off a few to share though.

I expect anybody that actually reads this knows we lost Teagan to cancer yesterday.  I’m a medium-to-high level hot mess, so I’m taking a short break on my website.  Oh, I’ll start it up again though.  Get some rest lil’ Teagan, we’ll play ball again some day.

Not a whole lot to work with today, mostly because in my old age I really can’t remember what went on last weekend.  I know that on Friday we went to a pizza party, so I’ll start there.  We met up with a few other couples after work, and headed up to Hart2Hart vineyards for a glass of wine and a few slices of brick-oven baked pizza.  It was a good time, and the weather was perfect outside.  Naturally, I do have a few quibbles…  For one thing I wish it wasn’t on a Friday.  I do not like “events” on Friday night, I like to sit home and unwind.  It does, however, start the weekend off right.  I’ve noticed whenever I DO go out on Friday, it makes it feel like a 3-day weekend.  Not worth it though, I’ll stick to my routine.  Otherwise, the only other fault was that it is, understandably, impossible to cook pizza for 100+ people with one small oven.This led to an endless line, and it was pretty hard to get food.  Since I’m fundamentally opposed to standing in line for my food I didn’t get a whole lot of pie.  They had a two-slice limit per trip, which was a good idea, but the slices were like an inch.  I think I made it through the line twice and called it good.  The little bit I got was really good though!

Fast forward to Sunday…  (What happened to Saturday?  I know it happened, it always does.  Every single week.  Lost day?)  Donette’s nephew Justin was in Vegas, and he made the 8-hour drive over to visit us while he was sorta-kinda-not-really in the area.  We were excited for the visit, and Doni decided to have a BBQ.  So, I got up and put two pork butts on the cooker early in the morning, and spent the day watching football and cooking on the patio.  There are certainly worse ways to spend a day.  In a not totally unexpected twist, it actually poured rain for a good part of the afternoon.  It’s been months since it rained, and I guess I was having trouble grasping the concept or I would have cooked on Saturday.  Oh well, I just rolled the smoker up under the patio and everything went fine.  We had a good visit with them, and the ‘que came out pretty good!  We sat on the back patio and watched the Chief’s game after dinner, could have done without that.

Being as I shammed out of last week’s update, I should have lots of material for today, right?  Well not so much.  We were supposed to go camping with our friends Michael & Alaina this past weekend, but it just didn’t happen.  We spent the whole week changing our minds back and forth, justifying each swing in direction with solid reasoning.  But, as the weekend got closer, we had to call the ball and the final decision was “no camping trip.”  The worst part was, (for me,) eating the cost of the campsite we’d pre-paid, but we saved a lot of money on other fronts by not going.  It’ll happen another time, hopefully.

So what did we do with our new-found free time?  Eh not a whole lot.  I spent all day Friday assembling our new breakfast room table and chairs.  Exciting, want me to break that down for you chair-by-chair?  Man I really hate that stuff.  Countless little bolts and washers, all to be slowly tightened down with the crappy 2″ long hex wrench they give you.  Blah.  It really was a long process, and of course me being me I even managed to screw a few of them up.  They are sort of together though, you just want to be sure and sit down carefully on them.  Then, I got to get rid of the enormous pile of cardboard and styrofoam left behind.  Luckily the recycle center is right down the street so I just had to cram all I could in the back of the car and go.

Saturday I started my day off with a decent mountain bike ride.  It was a nice morning out for a ride, even if I did loaf around a littlelong and let it get almost too warm out.  I’ve found a trail near the house that, while maybe a bit on the tame side, lets me build up my confidence for the harder ones.  That’s my big scheme anyway.  I hope to ride it again a few times this week, but the days are getting short quickly.  After that bit of fun, I took a some time to wash the ol’ bike, then our camping compadres came over to watch TV on the patio with us.  Hey, we didn’t want to just totally give up on our weekend plans.  We were, uh, outside anyway.  We watched “31” which was sort of a Disney off-shoot.  OK maybe not so much.

Sunday we continued our camping trip with our friends, once again on the patio.  We cooked up a big breakfast to get things started, even using the camp stove for effect.  After that we set out to try a few new places nearby.  First was Cielo winery, which is about 15 minutes from the house.  It was a hit, if nothing else just for the convenient location.  Nothing wrong with the winery either, we enjoyed it.  On the downside, we were just a bit rushed and had to sort of run out to make our 3:00 tour of Dry Diggings Distillery.  We’ve been curious about this place for quite some time, mostly because it’s located in the business park right across the street from our house.  It was an interesting tour.  They’re big into local history and had a lot of info on that, and had even created a sort of “old time saloon” room for their tastings.  We were there quite a while, then headed back to the house/camp to grill some dinner.  Ah, yes, the great outdoors.  We wrapped it up with an episode of Sopranos, then broke camp and called it a weekend.