We ventured ever so slightly out of our standard circle this weekend, just to mix things up a bit.  Not Friday though;  Friday we just sat on the back patio with the neighbors and enjoyed the sun.  Quiet, but fun.  Not Saturday either…  Saturday we didn’t do much of anything.  I fired up a batch of homebrew, which between getting everything ready and cleaning up afterwards can take the better part of a day.

Sunday, though, we actually left the house.  We met some friends early-ish for a tasty breakfast, then headed to Placer County to check out their “wine trail.”  We mixed in some crafty sort of stops along the way, for the sake of variety.  I think we ended up checking out three wineries in all, although the names escape me already.  Since we’d made the trip anyway, we stopped in Knee Deep Brewing too and played a few rounds of cornhole.  That pretty well killed the day, so we met up with a bunch more people at a Mexican restaurant, scarfed some dinner, and called it a day.  A more thorough blogger would add a stop-by-stop synopsis of the day, with details on the tastings at each winery.  I ain’t got it in me.  Maybe next time I’ll take notes or something.

Well the weekend is over.  Time for the rain to clear off and the sun to come out.  Sigh, ain’t it the way.  We made the most of our weekend around the sketchy weather though, and as everybody is more than happy to tell me, “We need the rain.”  Friday was a bit dicey out so we ended up at good ol’ Ruff Haus.  Can’t go wrong there.  They had some new appetizers on the menu so we enjoyed a few snacks and then headed over to the grocery store to pick up some dinner.  Ahhh, another wacky Friday night in the Hills.  Our well-laid plans went slightly askew when we entered the grocery and I was drawn to the irresistible sound of accordion music on the second floor.  We headed upstairs and found a little wine tasting going on, courtesy of one of the local purveyors, and a small band providing entertainment.  As if we weren’t already nearly worn out from our raucous time at the hotdog shop, then we ended up kickin’ it at the grocery store for a few hours!  Good times, people.

Saturday, at my own ill-conceived suggestion, we headed over to Roseville to check out the Galleria mall.  It wasn’t just some insane notion I came up with when I got out of bed that morning;  I needed a pair of sunglasses worked on and they had a shop there.  As my luck usually goes, they couldn’t fix my glasses, but at least they gave me the contact info to get them to the factory.  After that we spent what seemed like an eternity wandering around aimlessly through the other shops.  They had some interesting ones I guess…  Mingled with a plethora of really, really, uninteresting ones.  The only real purchase we made was at the AT&T store.  We’d been meaning to go in and see if we were due any upgrades.  Indeed, after an hour or so Doni walked out with a brand new phone, double the monthly data plan, and $15 off our monthly bill.  How’s that work?  Hey, go with it.

Sunday started off rainy, then burned off into a moderately pleasant afternoon.  We kicked things off right with breakfast down at a place called Early Toast.  Ever the slow learner, I ordered the biscuits and gravy platter.  Maybe I need to write “I will not order B’s & G’s outside the Midwest” on my hand whenever I go to breakfast to remind myself of that strict rule.  Eh, they were ok;  Just so far from what I consider the proper preparation to be that it threw me off.  I considered pulling up a few photos on my phone and taking them to the kitchen, in the interests of being helpful, but Donette convinced me they might think it rude.  Meanwhile she had the juevos rancheros, and proclaimed them quite serviceable.  As an added entertainment bonus, there was a criterium going on outside, so we loitered there for quite a while watching the riders.  It was pretty interesting;  Had it been a little nicer outside we probably would have stuck around and watched them even longer.  We went home and watched the baseball games to waste the afternoon, then made a big pan of lasagna for dinner.  I’ve been craving lasagna for some time now, so I got that one out of the way finally.  And, I remembered why we never make it:  What in the world are two people supposed to do with a five-pound pan of lasagna?  Oh, and in other random news, we went by our new home site and found they’ve moved the construction trailer off our lot.  On the upside, I guess that means they are nearly ready to start our house.  On the other hand, I guess it means they have declined my offer of moving into the trailer.

Man, my little website has been getting an absolute deluge of spam lately.  It all gets filtered to a trash bucket by the super-duper Askimet plugin, but it sort of annoys me all the same.  Last week when it got up over 300 comments per day, I finally started blocking whole ranges, mostly in Latin America and Asia.  A few still come in though, and every now and then I’m so bored I like to give them a quick scan to see if there are any that particularly amuse me.  (And there always is.)  Some of my favorites today:

“The purchases I make are entirely based on these articles.”

“Well done article that. I’ll make sure to use it wisely.”

And my personal favorite, from my good friends at “Senior Life Insurance No Exam” in Florida:  “I can’t hear anything over the sound of how awesome this article is.”  Man they got good taste, I’ll give ’em that.

Well that was a waste of a weekend.  Instead of going on my annual Easter Float Trip, I stayed home and did one whole lot of absolutely nothing.  Sulked a bit maybe.  Donette, meanwhile, was in KC yucking it up with family and friends.  It looked like she had a good time, and the weather looked great.  (I’ll take the credit for that.  Had I gone on Float Trip I’m sure it would have been miserable as always.)  When she got back Sunday night we went to dinner at Burgers & Brew in Sacramento.  Good hamburgers simply are not available in our neighborhood, so I try and stop by this place every time I go to the airport.  Worth it every time, too.  Other than that, I honestly didn’t leave the subdivision all weekend.  Lots of park-time with Teagan, an epic battle with the Roomba (which I won,) and several hours listening to the baseball games on the patio while grilling.

Donette’s home, normalcy has been restored

Ahhhh, the weather continues to improve out here.  That was one fine weekend, and I’d like to think we actually got some mileage out of it.  Friday we kicked it off with happy hour on the patio at Relish Burger with a few acquaintances.  We didn’t stay long, just wanted to sit in the sun for a bit.  After that we headed home to catch the Royals daily drubbing.  For dinner Donette whipped up some nightmarish concoction of Skyline Chili and chips.  It was actually quite good, at least until midnight or so.

Saturday was so nice out we decided to go for a hike.  We got Teagan all harnessed up and headed out relatively early, there was still a bit of a morning chill when we started.  We began with our standard 3-mile route, but were enjoying the weather so much we ended up veering off the usual path.  That took us on a scenic trip past some ridiculously nice houses, and with some nice views of Folsom Lake too.  We ended up with a total of 5.5 miles, which totally exhausted us for the rest of the day.  (And Teagan too, remarkably.)  When we’d rested up a bit, we headed over to a friend’s house for some delicious grilled fish tacos.  Solid dinner, then we put in some patio time for the rest of the evening.

Sunday once again brought a sunny and 70 forecast.  After not a whole lot of thought, we decided to head out on a motorcycle ride.  The wind was a bit uncomfortable when we took off, but once we got off the mountain-top we live on it was quite tolerable.  We headed out to Villa Toscano winery, which is about thirty minutes from our house.  They do a nice (and more importantly, free) pasta lunch on the weekends, so this made for a very nice destination.  We loitered there for a few hours, soaking in some sun and checking out the grounds, then enjoyed the ride back home.  Once there, I (again) ignored my ever-growing task list and sat on the back patio for the rest of the afternoon.