new year, new opportunities...
but first
I got to see my girl and meet her guy!
she was in the bay area for business, so first we had dinner with Janet at our favorite pizza joint Thursday night. then I brought her home, took off Friday, did a little shopping together and he flew in Friday night! we had dinner at our favorite BBQ & bourbon joint in old Folsom.
Saturday, Craig golfed in the morning while we wandered around Old Sac.
we boarded the Delta Queen, which had more open areas than the last time I visited. we even went below decks and got to see the theatre, which had been roped off previously.
we all met up at the Railroad Museum. before Craig joined us we had a short tour led by our docent Earl, who provided a lot of excellent information about California history and the railroads.
...about the women and minorities' stories that were erased from our history books for so long, or made mere footnotes....
...about the fight to be first and to go farthest, to get the most of the government funding...
after the tour we could go around the rest of the museum and explore the many exhibits and displays, including examples of the beautiful dinner service and the glorious art deco and beaux arts decorations.
the postal car had a docent who explained how mail was sorted and delivered all along the route on every trip! this music cover was very cool, because we do love California!
then the kids came over for dinner where I made my famous beef etouffee, and stuffed corn bread.
the next night Craig grilled steaks and I made the asparagus with Calabrian pepper aioli for the four of us.
Monday morning I drove the kids to the airport, in style in Craig's truck, and said goodbye with lots of "miss you" hugs!!
the following Wednesday I drove down to the bay area for work again, and came back home with what I thought was a wicked allergic reaction from being in a very fragrant conference room. I treated it with allergy meds until I finally had to give up and go to Kaiser, only to find out I'd caught RSV! since it's a virus, there was no medicine I could take to kill it; I just had to endure it and medicate to alleviate the symptoms. it was brutal! all I could do was work half-days, take the knock-out meds, get barely minimal sleep from all the coughing day and night; luckily Craig cooked most of the time.
after watching all the play-off games, we're happy our team is in the super bowl again, finally! 
[these pics from a friend at the game :-) ]
another shuffle cooking opportunity, our next level Chef Tucker led us in a lesson on New Orleans Style Shrimp and Andouille Gumbo. she even gave me a shout-out that my presentation was excellent! of course I still felt weak from the virus, but I masked up, sat on my bar chair while doing food prep, and didn't go on camera for the first time since I started attending these classes.
in my down-time, I put together a table of contents of the last twenty plus years of the events I've captured in the website and blog. You can find it here. this is the list of the trips to D'lands too. and finally, I've gathered in one place the list of all the shows we've done, with links to their locations.
