We participated in the Arthritis walk on Saturday.   Well, I do use the term "participated" loosely...  we showed up and put in the money we "raised" (as in Laura donated money) and got our official t-shirts and then left because it was raining and nobody in our group wanted to walk in the rain.  Hopefully we'll have a picture from the event too (supposedly will show up in email soon).  At least it was money for a good cause.  Here is the event page.

I really wish I had taken a video of her, but then that's kinda mean.  CB had her teeth cleaned yesterday.  Doesn't sound like a big deal to us humans, but apparently it is to a cat.  They put her under (might be more for the safety of the person administering the cleaning) so she was groggy when we got her home last night.  In addition to her normal hobbling around, occasionally her back end would go the opposite way from her front end.  Quite sad.

The one good thing from this is we found out she appears to be in perfectly good health, just is quite old.

We had our last soccer game on Sunday.  Turns out it didn't count toward the standing.  Sadly, we couldn't remember how many we won or lost this season, but we're pretty sure we are at .500 or above.  Yay.  Sadly, that's a first.

It's time to send out another group of cat pictures.  I have good ones of everyone but CB (Grandma).  I'll wait around to get a good one of her with her tongue out.

I think the one of George pretty much sums up how I feel most afternoons.

I've been wondering for the past several weeks now why there were two parking spaces at work taken up by two traffic cones.  Seemed odd, but they were right next to a tree, so maybe they needed to do tree maintenance and didn't want someone to block their access to the tree.  That would have made sense had it just been for a couple days.  This has gone on for weeks.  Finally today I parked near them to take a look:

S co-worker that gave me the scoop.  It's actually a goose nest.  And apparently Mama Goose would give people the evil eye, even if they parked a couple spots away and walked around the reserved parking spaces.  Now I wish I had gotten a couple pictures of her on the nest.  I'll remember for next year since I'm sure they'll be back.

So this season has been a mess for me so far...  I've missed a few games while traveling, etc.  We're pretty close to .500 we I don't know exactly.

I do know that the game we played yesterday in the rain (and mud) was a good one.  I think we played as a team and despite not having our goalie, we managed to do ok.  4-2 us.  Yay.  Especially against a team that usually runs the score up on us like 6-0 or 8-0.  Maybe it'll be a monsoon the next time we play them.

Chris (brother-in-law as opposed to the zillion other Chris's I know) has started up a new web site mainly for the Tuscaloosa area, but plans on expanding it one city at a time.  The general premise is to find cities where the larger restaurant guides missed (like Tuscaloosa, AL) and put up a guide for that city.  I think he's done an excellend job so far.  Check it out and click on an advertisement as that is the way he plans on getting revenue from the site.

http://www.eattuscaloosa.com/

Yesterday we went to the Magic City Art Connection.  This is our second time going to the art show, but our first time to attend the Corks & Chefs Food & Wine Tasting Event.  I must say it was a pretty good display of what some of the local catering companies can crank out.  Our friends Amy & Nick joined us along with brother-in-law Chris.  And you know what that means...  while we were out enjoying ourselves, Wilson was at home terrorizing Grandma.  Poor grandma.

This is so sad...  apparently someone in our neighborhood had their box fall off the post (or had it ripped off).  Not being an easy thing to replace, they took the mailbox and lashed it to the pole using duct tape.  Funny how it ends up looking like a makeshift cross.

For any of you that have ever seen the movie Sideways...  I thought this was a very amusing site:  http://www.merlotfightsback.com/

On our last trip out to San Francisco (New Year's), we were introduced to a new phenomenon...  The "enjoy!" pack.  Delta is apparently trying to make its passengers happy:

The one thing to note is the back of the shortbread:

Yes, you read it right, 31% butter!!!  How can they possibly expect to have any more customers when we're all in the hospital?

This is George:

This is up close on what's in the bottom right of this picture:

So as you see, George made a new friend.

Where are Bud and Emilia do you think?

Laura and I were in PetSmart buying some more fish and happened by the cat pens.  There was a single cat sitting there by herself.  Neither one of us could get her out of our minds, so the next day we talked and Laura called the Shelby County Humane Society about her.

That night we went down and adopted her.  She is a 15 year old cat whose owner had to give her up because she was going into a nursing home.  She is a bit crazy (what cat isn't), but very sweet.  And she always seems to be hungry.  Not sure what that's about, but we might should purchase stock in Fancy Feast.

Here she is in all her glory:

Yes, you saw it right....  here is a closeup:

I'm not quite sure why she'll walk around with her tongue sticking out, but it is very amusing to me. 

She has her own heating pad as a bed on our couch.  This is pretty much what she does when she isn't begging for more food:

Laura and I went up to Nashville to see Caitlin skate in a competition up there.  We woke up the next morning to this view:

Caitlin and Michelle did quite well in their competition.  Here are a few pics of them in action:

So how redneck do you have to be to seal two of the doors in your car shut with Great Stuff?

On our last evening in Healdsburg we decided to grill out.  Everyone made fun of my hamburgers, even my lovely wife.  I made modest sized hamburgers and apparently we had gotten the jumbo sized buns.  Mike, being the oh-so-funny guy that he is thought it'd be fun to see how many hamburger patties he could fit on the bun:

After dinner, we all waited the obligatory 30 minutes before swimming and got in the hot tub:

And what I think is a very fitting picture to end the New Year's sequence...  a sunset from Pier 39:

What is this fruit that Rob's neighbor is lining up so nicely in the gutter for the trash people to pick up?  They're about the size of grapefruit but don't quite look like them:

The one that got away:

So now the tragic part of our journey...  on the day that Rob "had" to go back to work, we got a call from him explaining why he couldn't come back out and see us...  apparently there was a police chase that lasted several hours.  It ended right in front of Rob's house.  On Rob's vehicle:

And the truly tragic part of it...  Rob just purchased a brand new bed and was bringing it home for his fancy place.  The cardboard  box in the pictures above?  His bed.  With the wheel of his truck on top of it.

They even called out the CSI to investigate:

The remainder of our trip we spent up in Healdsburg, CA.  We stayed at a rental house more or less on top of a vineyard:

I would highly recommend Healdsburg Country Gardens to anyone that was planning on going up to wine country.  Speaking of wine, over the next few days we visited quite a few wineries, quite a few of them we hadn't even heard of before.

We visited Mill Creek, Dry Creek Vineyards, Clos Du Bois, Seghesio, Jordan, Silver Oak, Geyser Peak, Ridge, Simi, and Mondavi.

Here are some pictures from Mill Creek:

Here are a few pictures from our favorite, Jordan: