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The bachelor party was a great success, quite a time was had by all and it was super relaxing. The short version is I picked up Cannata and Alan Thursday night around 8 at the Sacramento airport. We drove to the store to pick up some supplies - which was easier said than done. Despite the massive MASSIVE strip malls we found, we couldn't find any grocery stores. We eventually found and bought as many groceries as we could fit in the car with us, and headed back to the airport to pick up Archibald. At which point we actually had to find the house, which wasn't too bad with our multiple GPS units, but still harder than you would expect. For instance having two "Feather River Blvd"s within a few miles of each other that both intersect the road we were one was a bit of confusion to say the least - particularly when one led into a dead housing development project where they had built the roads but no houses. The directions once we got to the lake were a little dubious and some slight mis-turns ensued, driving down random dirt roads near midnight is all sorts of fun. We did make it to the house, and while poking around after midnight discovered someone else inside. If that doesn't sound like the start of a horror film I don't know what would! Turns out he is the tenant of the apartment in the house who as part of his agreement with the owner doesn't stay around when the place is rented out and hadn't heard that we were going to be there. A bit creepy but acceptable. We hung out on the deck and caught up, had some drinks and snacks and Cannata made friends with the local cat.

A decent lay in the next day and then some breakfast and exploring around the grounds. Had a lovely swim, cold but OK once you get used to the temp, and the plants grabbing at your feet. ;) Had some chicken jalapeno pepper jack sausages for lunch number one, sadly one of the sausages exploded melted white cheese all over Cannata's eye and face. Luckily he shut his eye in time and no lasting damage was suffered - expect, perhaps, to the sausage involved, which was savagely consumed moments later. A little while later Mike and Steve showed up and we had lunch proper and continued our relaxed plan of hanging out around the house. My cousin, Matt, made it up in the early evening, at which point we were only one car load of people short. That car load had been delayed by the construction on 5, all the entrances and exits were closed so they had to do some serious extra driving. They did eventually make it up and much rejoicing was had. There was plenty of food and booze and even talk of going to the strip club in Smartville labeled 'girls' which thankfully didn't happen (because honestly a strip club in a little town in the foothills has got to be a bit dodgier than most.) We turned in relatively early so we could have time to grab some breakfast before going rafting.

Which is what we did! Despite the desire of the rafting company to have everyone there at a certain time, they were pretty slow in actually doing anything once we were all there at said time. But we did get out on the water, get a few quick instructions from the guide, and head off down the river. It was a great day for rafting, super hot out, with a cold river to dunk into. Very pleasant. The rapids weren't too rough, just good fun! I think we were all amazed by the traffic on the river, tons and tons of rafts! We were in two boats of 5 which was slightly too bad, but given how packed those big rafts were, the two rafts were probably more fun for everyone. There was a pretty good spread for lunch, fancy DIY sandwiches, lemonade, cookies - good work for pulling up on the side of the river. Being the bachelor I got a bag of swag while we were setting up that included a water proof camera so there are some shots of us on the river, though not actually in the rapids because I was required to paddle. Speaking of paddling though I got demoted after lunch from my front position, I was apparently too distracted with the scenery and generally relaxing - ha ha! :) We finished the trip and helped carry all the gear up to the truck, maybe a hundred feet above the river. What was kind of amazing is several years ago the river was actually running almost that high. You can see in a couple of my pictures the large amount of exposed ground from the current river up to the vegetation line. That would have been pretty nuts to see! We picked up CDs of everyone going through the two bigger rapids and drove back to the house.

It was a long day and we didn't get there till about 8PM, luckily James had been guarding the place for us and making sure the hot tub worked - which was also probably extremely good for his back so everyone won! We perked ourselves up with some coffee and started in on dinner and drinks and hung out and chatted till a sold 3:30 in the morning. Up at 7:30 to see off the first wave and get a start on breakfast. After that the trip was basically over, we cleaned, made sure everyone had their commemorative mug, and headed out - all much more relaxed that when we arrived! :) An excellent bachelor party for sure!

Jake and I entered the 2008 Pacific Cost Brew off with a batch of American Brown Ale we had made about a month ago. The contest was held today, and while we didn't win anything it was a great time. Not to mention we got free t-shirts, tasting glasses, and the opportunity to try a variety of good beers. We are definitely at the low end of the brewers with our very lax production schedule, bottling instead of kegging, and doing partial mash instead of all grain. A couple of brewers had 7+ entries in kegs which was pretty impressive. Everyone was essentially an enthusiast and were all very supportive and encouraging of each others efforts.

The contest was held in Potrero Hill, with tables for the brewers, a couple of tents, a DJ, and surprisingly cooperative weather. We drove over around 12:30 to set up our booth and taste the other entries before the general public started in on them. Molly had made cookies as palate cleansers / bribes and Jake had made a nice label for our bottles so our table area looked pretty good, almost professional one might say. Poured beer till we ran out around 4:30 and the results were announced at 5. Definitely a good experience and hopefully one that we will repeat in the future.

A good day for all. We started letting the cats explore the deck with supervision and Chufi finally found the catnip plant. He was extremely, EXTREMELY, interested. Rachel and I had a nice dinner sitting out on our deck watching the sky change color and get more and more dramatic. Can't beat good food, company, a glass of wine, and an amazing sunset. The pictures speak for themselves I think.

A number of you have been wondering what our place looks like, so at long last I have pictures of a more or less clean apartment. The summary is we are on the bottom floor of a duplex built out over a canyon. It is an 800sf 1 bedroom, with a walk in closet and nice deck that is about 50 feet off the ground. Right in the trees for us!

I recently tried this Pinot Noir from Germany. I now know why the Germans are not renowned for their red wine. The bottle was the best part, with the raised glass painted monkey, a real classic. Sadly the wine tasted kind of like the monkey, which is a tasting note I don't particularly care for in my wine. Alas.

Grilled up a little of the mighty Mike Spencer catfish special. Super easy to do and tastes great. Get yerself some meat rub from whole foods, such as the Blackened Cajun or Jamaican BBQ (in the meat section, not the spice section) or if you aren't into shopping at Whole Paycheck, grab similar products off amazon (Cajun Jamaican.) Get some catfish fillets, which are great because they are cheap, environmentally friendly, and taste great. Lightly butter the fillets then totally cover in seasoning and grill on full heat 3 minutes a side. Very tasty. I tried to use tongs to get flip the fish which was a bad idea, you really want a spatula or more specialty fish grilling equipment. Thanks again to Mike Spencer!

I recently read The Kite Runnerafter hearing it was a good read from my friend Molly. Definitely not disappointed. It is pretty easy reading and I cruised through it in a couple of days, the characters were great, with good pacing and plot. I have no basis for deciding weather any of the portrayals of Afghanistan were accurate or not, but I did enjoy reading them as I know very little about that part of the world and even the fictionalized version is probably a step in the right direction for me. Anyway, a good read, recommended.

Last Thursday Rachel mentioned she was itchy from various bites. I too had noticed I had been bitten a few times. I thought it was fleas given the kind of bites I had. Having just moved to the 'country' in Sausalito it didn't seem too improbable that the cats had gotten fleas, even though they are indoor cats. A quick combing revealed that they hadn't a flea on them. However I did get a tiny little bug about the size of a spec of dust off Wooderson. Looking around on the internet we found there are a variety of mites that bite humans, most notablely rat mites and bird mites. Our cat Wooderson has taken to sitting near the bathroom staring at various spots on the walls and we have heard some scrabbling noises in the past, so we assume we have rats or mice in the walls. Thus we must have rat mites. Gross! While trying to press my ear up against the wall to listen for rodents I found another mite on the wall. Needless to say we stayed up way too late looking up stuff about mites on the internet.

Friday Rachel took our captured and frozen mites to work with her for hopeful identification by the entimologists she works with. However, none of them are mite specialists and there are something like 45,000 known mite species so it is a bit hard to pin down. They did however image the mites for her, so as you can see in the gallery we have a lovely picture of them. All the evidence did point to rat mites though, and a specialist I emailed the pictures to definitely thought it was a rat or bird mite (they are quite similar) after a quick glance at the photos. Great, we have biting mites in the house.

My upstairs neighbor Kevin and I went poking around under the house Saturday to see if we could find any holes the rats could get in. Given we are built out over a canyon this is actually quite an undertaking as you end up on scaffeling 10-30 feet up in the air. I went out and found a variety of animal crap on the scaffeling (cat or racoon) and a good sized hole under our tub with various chew marks on it. I took a bunch of pictures (including jamming the camera up the hole) which indicated there was at least one rat living there, possibly under our tub. We put a rat trap by the garbage thinking that was were they were getting food, but no luck. Unfortunately I managed to get myself and my clothes covered in mites and didn't figure that out for several hours so got super bit up and got lots of mites in the apartment. I sprayed with RAID but Rachel and I slept in the livingroom anyway that night.

Sunday Kevin took the fight to them, we went back under the house with a gallon of spray and lots of mesh wire. He got up on the scaffeling this time and sprayed all over the place, up in the holes, the piles of animal dung (and swept said dung off the scaffeling) and then went and stapled metal mesh over all the holes. I was there for moral support, suggestions, and to call 911 if he fell off the scaffeling. ;) Quite an undertaking! Afterwards I went and sprayed some more in the bathroom in a hole by the toilet and under the baseboard by the tub which also has a hole behind it. I've only squished 4 or 5 mites since then, so hopefully we managed to wipe most of them out. They can't live without their host rodent for more than a couple of weeks so if we keep killing them and the rodents can't get in we should be good. If not, well, I think the landlord will have to call in the professionals.

Quite the weekend.

I'm happy to announced that Rachel and I are engaged to be married. I proposed Saturday in the Marin Headlands and Rachel said yes and we are wonderfully happy about the whole thing.

The longer version is that Rachel had to work Saturday morning, after she got home we had some lunch and she passed out on the couch. I packed a backpack with some snacks and drinks while she slept. I woke her up, and we took Chufi on his first exploratory walk in his harness out on our deck. (Quite the successfully trip out for him.) Despite it getting on in the afternoon and Rachel being super tired I talked her into going out to the Headlands (which is really just a few minutes away from our place in sausalito.) We tried to go to the lighthouse, but it turns out to only be open a total of 9 hours a week. We drove along to Rodeo beach, parked, and walked up and down the beach in the intensely bright sun. We moved the car down to the far lot where the surfers all park (and the restrooms are located) and despite some grumblings started hiking along the coastal trail there. We made it away and set out our picnic blanket and sat our selves down with the Pacific in front of us and coastal scrub and grass and little flowers all around.

We enjoyed our snacks and chatted and admired nature. Which was all well and good - but I was having a hard time getting Rachel to look away from me long enough to get the ring out and get to one knee. I tried getting her to roll down the grassy hill we were on since it would be a funny kind of thing we would do. That almost worked, she just scooted up the hill a little bit and rolled once and no opportunity presented itself. I was pushing for a bigger roll, but apparently there were spittle bugs all around our little grassy spot on the hill. Sensing an opportunity I tried to get our favorite entomologist to find one. She did get up started up the hill away from me, so I pull the ring box out of my pocket and just managed to get it open before she started turning around. Not being quite ready or at one knee and hoping she would quickly get back to the bug hung I stuck the ring behind my back and asked about the spittle bugs. No additional spittle bugs had been found but she started in on what was behind my back, and my clever reply of 'nothing' wasn't believed. However I took charge and pointed out some birds off behind her and in the time it took her to turn and look for the birds and say something to the effect of 'what are you talking about, there aren't any birds over there' I had managed to open the ring box and drop to one knee and when she turned around I proposed. She said yes, and thus we start the adventure!

For you ring afficanados, the engagement ring is a platinum band with channel cut diamonds and a bezel set piece of black Australian opal from Lightning Ridge, lots of color in the stone. It took quite a while to work out the ring as my basic restrictions from years of being together were: No big diamond, no gold, and no idea what the ringsize is. I worked out the kind of opal Rachel likes, but picking out the opal was still hard, they all look different, and I have a hard enough time buying things when I have total knowledge of a product. Eventually after a might search I found one that was great. Working out the ring size of someone who doesn't wear rings on a regular basis was pretty tricky too, I ended up a tiny bit big, but easy enough to get it sized down.

I think the best reaction award goes to my Mom who did a happy freakout, than ran off and in a flash had grabbed a sealed card that was addressed to us. We opened it to discover it was a congraluations on getting engaged card - dated 2005 - that she had been saving for us since then. Classic.