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Elliott ablidged and rather than going home after a great dinner last night, Friday night, we went to the new Buffalo Wild Wings in Dublin.  Let me say again though how great dinner was.  Elliott picked the place and he did a fab job finding just the perfect spot, over looking the bay on the Oakland side, and fit my craving for a burger and a beer.  It was a tad chilly although we had a nice dinner.  We siliently saluted the crewers if thats what you call them rowing in the bay as we relaxed our week away.

Then on the way home we decided why not extend the fun.  We went to Buffalo Wild Wings which was busier than an atm on pay day.  We were lucky to find a seat at the bar.  We ordered two cold ones and eventually I asked the guys next to us what the blue Electric Bingo Dauber type machines were that they had.  They said it was a trivia game and that we should play.  I quickly explained that I was terrible at trivia, I actually fundamentally hate Trivial Pursuit and would chose only to play the kiddie version if forced.  Eventually though we decided to play, I was inspired by Dave and Tank who continually placed in the top 5 on the reader board displayed above the bar.

I was unaware of this new bar trend, the company which provided the one we played was buzztime.  I sucked as expected and Elliott kicked butt, which figures.  Although it was fun.  We will difinetely go back and I think it would be fun to go with a group, so we will see if we can rally a few people to go with us, otherwise we will just make new friends if only temporarily like Dave, Tank, and King who sat on the other side of Elliott and killed it, she was the winner the game before we left.

Dare I say we had an epic weekend.  Friday night… I think we even started the weekend by going to dinner Friday night, that is so long ago now I really had to think about it.  Although its true we went to one of our favorite places in Lafayette, called Chow.  I enjoyed a Dead Guy Ale, Elliott had a Heffe, we ate a noodle dish and a burger and we split the smartest pairing for dessert.  The ginger cake is amazing.  The cake is a soft version of a ginger bread man, perfect caky-ness.  Served with pumpkin ice cream or gelato with an intoxicating carmel sauce that includes something like amaretto or bourbon, I don’t know but it is the best mix of sweet and sour, definitely on the list for my last meal.

Do you have a last meal?  What you would request if you were given a choice as to your last meal to enjoy here on earth?  In high school my last meal for a long time was a roast beef sandwich from Arby’s, curly fries and a jamoca shake, yum!  Now I think I would go with something very similar to my Friday dinner although rather than the noodle dish I think I would have gotten the pasta dish I like. 

Saturday we got up early and got our 3 miles in.  Then we drove to Auburn to see our friends Carie and Josh who we haven’t seen since our wedding.  They have 2 little girls, ages 2 and 3 months and they are adorable! Maddie played a little shy for awhile although quickly warmed up to us.  Mel or I think also known Mo is still so little and I had a great time making faces at her!  We got to see there beautiful house, spend time catching up and we went to the zoo to ride the train although unfortunately it was closed.  We had a wonderful time, and it was so great to see Carie and Josh.

Then we met up with our friend Brad and his friend (becoming our friend too) Emily and had dinner in downtown Sacramento at a cute Mexican restaurant which was fun.  Then today we went kayaking in a lake/river with them which was lots of fun and we still managed to stay on track with our running schedule by running 7 miles this evening after we returned home.  The run was a bit slow, all my fault, my excuse is my stomach was bothering me a bit from the milk I had this morning, in case I wasn’t sure yes I am still lactose intolerant!

Tomorrow is another big day, Elliott is taking the car to Tahoe for a work site visit and as we are sharing one car I am going to bike to work, which is not a big deal, and then I am going to bike 11 miles to my haircut in Danville!  Which I am really looking forward to.  There is a great regional trail so I will be safe and I only feel bad that my head may be sweaty and my hair will be helmety for my haircut, although over all I am still looking forward to that.  Only thing is my computer is at home and needs to get to work.  Elliott told me if I was really “urban” I would strap it on my back and bike it to work.  That is true, although it is 12 pounds (may be a slight exaggeration) and I have 9 other things i need carry to work.  So he is going to drop it off at the office for me so I don’t need to lug it to work on my bike.  My bag is a rolly bag so I kind of think it would be funny to rig it up and tow it behind me although I think our IT guy may have a different opinion on that being a good idea.

One of our best recent experiences was a trip to HangarOne in Alameda, a vodka producer and distributor that has a tasting room at the front of their old army base warehouse.  It was a SWE (Society of Women Engineers) event although we let the men in our lives who so enjoy joking about SME attend.

They have a flight of small shots similar to wine tasting although the menu instead includes mostly vodka with some brandy and whiskey to mix it up.  I didn’t know what to expect other than to bring food because they don’t serve any and it works out to be a few shots so it is not an insignificant amount of alcohol for a Wednesday night, at least for us married types.

We had a tasting tour guide who shared facts about the distilling process and tasting tips.  Our favorite factoids included that the making of the pear vodka, for one bottle, required 15 pounds of pears, and also that breathing out after your sip helps with the experience – boy is that true.  There is something that happens when the alcohol mixes with oxygen which is why we were informed not to swirl the glasses like you would wine tasting.  He also said the reason why your throat burns when you shoot vodka is because the oxygen mixing, so he said sip and exhale…  For me what happened on the flavored vodkas is with the exhale the flavors filled my mouth with a fresh exhilaration.  There was a floral flavored vodka that made you feel like you were exhaling a garden for the short moment of breathing out.  We had a lot of fun, we will definitely take other people back there when we have visitors.

We then went to Reno for the annual shareholders meeting for work and I had a board meeting the next day.  It was a quick trip as I had to be back Saturday morning so it felt a bit rushed, just Thursday and Friday, and unfortunately that we had little to no time for family and friends.

Saturday, yesterday, I spent all day with ULI and Rebuilding Together helping to repair a school, a wonderful little and unfortunately dilapidated school, in San Francisco.  I had a wonderful day.  I haven’t spent enough time lately giving back.  Two of the contractors we work with helped with the project as well so I felt like I was really able to contribute.  I worked mostly on a new storage area in the back for the teacher to store her materials and new guardrail and handrail at an entrance with a stair that was built out of now rotting wood.  The rest of the group made a variety of other wonderful improvements including cleaning up the second entrance with new pavers and a new door.  New lighting.  All new paint.  ULI secured a huge group of volunteers and it was a mad house, just go go go all day.  Then we went to happy hour to celebrate our good deed.  I enjoyed a couple of ambers and mostly had some laughs with one of the contractors we work a lot with.    One of those guys reminds me of John so much its silly.  He has such a similar personality to John with the same sense of humor of himself and also of others.  And he has the same laugh as John, the one that is higher pitched with a pinch of sarcasm and mischief.

So a great week overall.  Then today Elliott and I went out to breakfast and then sat around all day, did laundry, and watch tv.  It was glorious, and we needed it.  Although don’t feel too envious because we did get back on our schedule after a missing a few running dates last week and ran 6 miles.  So we got our sweat equity in.  Now we are relaxing before bed.  Elliott is reading a sci-fi novel in an effort to seed his creative side and I am going to read a better homes and gardens magazine, that I can’t seem to get them to stop sending (my effort to be more green), in search of recipes.  So, the Goodwin’s are good.

Well my last post made the pre-wedding planning sound a little drab so I thought I would touch on the positive.  Elliott and I have enjoyed some great dates lately.  One night Elliott let my spur of the moment ideas plan the night and it was one of our best dates ever.  I think we ate dinner at home as part of our recent efforts to eat better, eating at home you can eat healthier and we have really enjoyed the time together in the kitchen.

Then I had read about a yogurt place in the Diablo magazine that I wanted to try and I also saw something about a Belguim beer spot so I added both to our places to go list.  Elliott agreed to check out the yogurt place with me which is in Berkeley.  As we were headed to Berkeley we realized we could also go to theatre where we could catch a flick that we haven’t seen yet.  You see we go the movies so often these days that we have seen nearly all of the movies at the neighborhood theatre.   However there is an off beat theatre in Berkeley, Shattuck Cinema that was playing Son of Rambow which looked pretty good.  We drove by the yogurt place on the way, couldn’t find parking and because Elliott insists on getting good seats and seeing every preview we didn’t get yogurt because we were pressed for time.

The movie theatre was totally cute.  Elliott really liked the ceiling in the lobby, .  I really liked the popcorn, they had 4 flavors of powder to sprinkle on top including white cheddar and ranch!  The theatre had no more than 50 seats, very intimate.  The movie itself was really well done, much more enjoyable than some of the bigger name movies we have seen recently – I swear we so many movies I think we should be movie critics.

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Elliott and I fulfilled one on my wishes – to participate in the Muddy Buddy.  I saw an ad for it years ago and always wanted to try it.  This year I finally had a buddy and some mountain biking experience, plus we live 45 minutes from one of the races so we were able to pull it off.  It is a 6 mile race where 2 buddies work together.  One buddy starts out running when the other buddy bikes, at the end of each mile the buddies switch and the other buddy runs or bikes.  At each transition there is an obstacle course, you kind of feel like you are on American Gladiators, which is cool!

We used Elliott’s bike which worked fine except his breaks squeal like a mother so everyone could hear my lame self coming down a hill riding the breaks like a sissy!  I did get off the breaks quite a bit and passed a lot of the girls who ran by me on the running legs.  We tied gold ribbon to the bike so we could find it and it had our number on it too.  Elliott had the misfortune of starting on the bike and had to climb this horrible hill the entire first leg.  He said he stayed on the bike the entire time and didn’t walk it which was impressive.  It got a little hot around the middle of the race which took us about an hour. At the end you have to crawl through a mud pit on your belly.  I had no idea how hard this final piece would be.  We didn’t do it the sally way on hands and knees either, we dug in and sloshed our way through the mud, it was tiring and awesome all at the same time.

At the end we were caked with mud from neck to toe.  We followed the mud stream to the hoses where the buddies washed off.   I felt kind of bad about this part because the wasted water was immense.  But we cleaned off and then changed into our clean dry clothes at the car. 

We enjoyed a beer at the beer garden and enjoyed the line of guys watching the tail end of the girls who were still coming through the pit. They start everyone in waves, guy teams, coed teams and the women teams.  I think this system was designed by a man who wanted to watch all the ladies coming through the mud while encouraging them from the beer garden.  If the girls were crawling hands and knees the guys taunted and yelled at them to get on their bellies, if the girls complied they were met with cheers, it was rather entertaining.  After that we collected some swag and then went our way, what a great way to start a Sunday.

Next year we want to get our friends to do it with us and we can have more muddy buddies.

We posted our pictures here: http://www.flickr.com/photos/elliottgoodwin/sets/72157605506646408/ but we don’t have any of us really muddy because it would have been impossible to hold the camera without ruining it, but hopefully the race photo people can read our muddy bib numbers and send us legit muddy photos soon that we will share soon.