Man Day and Mikes House

Jodi was down in Orange County this week visiting a friend. She was due back late Saturday so I had some spare time. Friday night i headed over to Mike's house to help him and his dad do some wiring. Mike is remodeling his house and has all of 2 rooms that were untouched by his plan. After a a few hours of pig-tailing sockets, Coors Light, and some pizza I called it a Friday.

Saturday my buddy Raven and I had ourselves a lovely little metro-man day in Marin. We started at something called the Bay Model. Back in the 50's the Army constructed a working model of the San Francisco and adjoining bays. Here they could study the effects of diverting water ways in the delta and the impact it would have on the bay. They simulate a full 24 hour day in tides every 14 minutes. The result is a big @ss pool that shows how crazy and dangerous the currents in the bay can be, especially around the golden gate bridge. Today the Bay Model is retired, and they use much more accurate computer simulation to achieve the same effect.

After the Bay model we headed over to Tiburon to check out a winery. The weather was crappy so the town was pretty dead. After some heavy pours at the tasting room we headed over to San Rafael to eat some Puerto Rican food at a place called Sol Food. Raven had been there before and recommended it. I got a shrimp dish over rice with garlic fried plantains that was unreal. We capped off our day at Marin coffee roasters in Fairfax, hippie town USA. There seems to be an economy of selling hippie crap up there. There were about 10 shops that basically had the same theme, some looked like a glorified yard sale behind glass. It kind of reminded me of the Pacific Garden mall in Santa Cruz 25 years ago.

Say Hello to Lola

No we did not get a dog. Ha ha! Now that that's out of the way back to Lola. Lola is a 10 week Boxer puppy that belongs to Jodi's mom and dad. Since their previous Rottweiler decided to help itself to 2 horse steaks.... off the hind quarters of a living horse(no joke), it became a liability to have Duke on the property. One of Jodi's brothers friends was happy to adopt Duke and boy is he living the good life up in Northern California. So with Duke out of the house it was starting to get lonely on the property.

Enter Lola. Lola showed up with Peggy one afternoon to Vics classroom. It took Vic all of 2 seconds to fall in love. Saturday we met Lola at the picnic grounds at the Gundlach & Bundschu winery in Sonoma. Lola has a sweet temperament and loves to play. She's already starting to fetch and Vic says she likes crawl up on his chest then flop on her back to sleep. He also says she snores like a race car.

We had some good wine and a fantastic picnic courtesy of Jodi and her picnic making/packing skills. All and all it was a good mothers day.

Jarrod is the Man!

I'll Post some better pictures later but Jarrod installed 12 canned lights for us this weekend and they changed the whole feel of our dinning room and kitchen. Jarrod is the man.

Hobbies and Construction

This weekend my buddy Jarrod is coming up to install 12 canned lights in out kitchen and dinning room. I'm praying for smooth installation with our plaster ceilings. Jarrod says he has a special tool for cutting holes into plaster.

Today Jodi has a hair appointment in SF. I'm taking Cal Train up right now (while writing this on my BlackBerry) so i don't have a car at Bart. We're going to meet up later for Peruvian food in the Filmore at one of my favorite places.

On the Hobby front i finally picked up a set of golf clubs and have been going to the range. Yesterday i hit 200 range balls and was actually tired when i was done. Who knew?

As for new cool things i found there is a web site called Mint. Mint is for the generation that does not balance a checkbook. In about 2 minutes i hooked mint up to my bank account (it's very secure, and banks have verified it) and mint sucked in every transaction over the past 90 days. Then it categorizes everything into categories like "Groceries," "Gas," "mortgage" etc. It plots everything into slick pie charts so you know what % of your money goes to what. You can then drill into a category and get a further breakdown. Take Food as any example, you can see what is groceries vs. fast food vs. restaurants. Long story short this can help you know what you need to cut back on, and set budgets, another part of the tool. That Hobby category is about to go up a % or two with golf in the picture.

A Productive Weekend

Every once and a while you need one of those weekends where you feel like you got a lot done.  I definitely had one of those weekends.  Not that any of this stuff is all that interesting:

• Mowed and Edged the lawns
• Stripped and pained Parts on the Land Cruiser
  
• Vacuumed Half the house
• Mopped the Floors
• Bought a pair of golf Clubs
• Measured, marked, and crawled into the attic to prepare for the recessed lighting we are installing next weekend
• Hit 110 range balls with new clubs
• Went out to dinner
• Watched Juno and 2 episodes of Lost
• Rode 20 Miles in Santa Cruz with Jodi
• Grocery shopping