Weekend Reporting

Time for weekend reporting again.

It was a 3-day weekend in this country, well for some people. My dear hubs had to work, they never get Martin Luther King Day as a holiday.

Here's how the weekend went:

Saturday:

• Lunch at China House with Mother.  This is one of her regular go-to places to dine.
• Drove out to Vallejo to get some supplies, like empanadas and puto bumbong from Valerio's Bakery and a stop at Andrea's for some cooked food for Mother. 
• When I finished running errands with Mom, which included stops at a shoe store and grocery store, my hubs and I went food sampling at Costco .  Oh we did some shopping too.

Sunday:

• Church in the morning.   Lunch at a little Cambodian/Vietnamese restaurant in San Pablo where I had to make sure my stomach was full for the sake tasting at Takara Sake.  I particularly don't find sake tasty and only have it when I'm in a Jap restaurant and sake is free with the meal, but I scored this really good deal from one of them (Travelzoo, I believe).  So we bought an extra voucher so we could have  dear friends come with us.  What was very fascinating about this whole deal is that I would not be persuaded to come here otherwise; therefore I would have missed learning about sake making (video show was informative and interesting) and looking at all the instruments/utensils needed in the tradional sake making process.  The sake tasting part itself is pretty educational.  They have menus on what to taste and of course I chose to taste the sweeter variety of sake.  While I enjoyed one or two kinds of sake from the tasting, I don't think I would be buying a bottle soon.  Also included in the package is a set of 3 little bottles of three different sakes.  All in all what a wonderful experience.
• The sake tasting took up most of the time that we're supposed to watch the football game on tv, it being a conference championship and all.  By the time we got home, it was 9 minutes left in the 4th quarter.  Fortunately, the local team, the Forty Niners emerged victorious, which means they'd be playing for all the marbles in 2 weeks at the Super Bowl.  Hubs is thinking of hosting a viewing party for that.  No concrete plans yet, but we'll see.  We're not even avid fans, just casual onlookers, but a party is fun.
• Plans for watching The Hobbit went down the drain after the game, as I felt a bit sluggish after all the sake I tasted/ingested.  Spent the rest of the afternoon and evening in front of the computer.

Monday:

• Our church had a Clean-Up The City program in the morning in connection with the MLK Day as well as the National Service Day (?).  Members of our church as well as high school kids from the neighboring town's High School (the same high school kids that helped with our Tenderloin Project over Christmas and then some) came to church at 10 am and by 10:30 we were all signed up and have our routes mapped and with gloves in hand and the other carrying a trash bag, we walked away from the church to our clean up route.  I was with three lovely ladies from church - Chris, Susan and Margaret.  We chose to clean creekside and the levee side.  But it was really clean, hardly anything was picked up except for cigarette butts.  It was a lovely upper 60s day with lots of sunshine that we felt a bit guilty about not filling our bags with trash because well there wasn't any in our route.  So we decided to veer from our route, which according to the leader of the program is okay, and headed to the little park by the waterside.  I told the ladies that I have spied a group of kids going that way earlier.  I was right, the park was clean as well.  We chose to return to church and see if there are any routes that needed more cleaning.  We chose another one that we had in previous clean up programs picked up the most trash. It was clean, must be another group had finished collecting trash.  Back at the church, our lunch consisting of hotdogs, cole slaw, cookies and potato chips was ready.  The firetruck came that moment to the delight of the children.  The firefighters were very accommodating to the children, they let them climb up the truck, ask many questions, begged to fire up the siren (which they did eventually ONCE).  With food in hand, we all trooped inside the nave and watched MLK speech, which was introduced by our deacon, who was at there when the speech was made.
• Came back home to see the kitties sleeping in the master bedroom (where else?) and decided I'd join them.  Planning on napping with them, but I wasn't too sleepy or tired, so I switched on the tv and decided to check out what's ON DEMAND and thankfully I did because I saw there's a new epi of my show, SMASH.  The new season is in February. 
• Hubs came home from work to say, "Let's go to Happy Hour."  I wasn't really feeling it because I think I may have eaten more hotdogs than I could handle (2), but he was insistent and so we did have a little drink and some nibbles at La Revolucion.  While we had high hopes for this restaurant, Latin/Spanish fusion in this part of the Bay, we were disappointed.  Only judging by the bar bites menu, we will not be in a hurry to return. 

I just realized after writing this down that I ate too much this weekend.  The month is halfway over again, way too quickly, isn't it?