Back home, and back to reality…

March 11, 2008
Peoria, AZ

We’re back in Peoria and, wow, reality sets in quickly!

We wrapped up our trip to wine country with another tasting session and a dinner at Los Olivos Café on Friday. We tasted at Foley (Chardonnay and Pinot Noir) and found that they had hired away the winemaker from Sea Smoke, so it’ll be interesting to see how each changes over the next few years. We also hit a new tasting room in Solvang, run by the same winemaker and her significant other; we’d met them last year and had a nice chat. Dinner was OK but a little disappointing, since we’d remembered better food and service from past visits. We did have a warm root vegetable salad with gorgonzola that we’ll try to recreate at home.

We originally thought that we’d stop overnight in Indio with Wayne and Eva on the way home, as that would break up the trip nicely. The more we thought about it, though, it made more sense to leave Buellton a little earlier and push to get home early, so that’s what we did. Even though it was disappointing to not see our friends, but we were able to use the extra time to get the coach unloaded, cleaned, and back in storage on Sunday. It would have been a rush to get everything done on Sunday afternoon if we’d taken our time on the return trip.

This week will be pretty busy, and it’s already started. Geri was pushing through the laundry pile, and spent yesterday afternoon with hair and nails. I cleaned up the spare room (since it was my mess of cables and parts from when I was installing the DirecTV system) and powered through the remaining loads of laundry while she was out.

This morning, we’re up early as Geri gets her first dental implants (lower right); we’re at the periodontist’s office as I compose. She’ll be “out of it” for the rest of the day, I’m sure. Tomorrow, she’s back to the prostodontist for work on the upper left crown. It’ll be like that for the next four weeks, as both dentists work to get all the work completed before we head out for the summer. All in, she’s got eight appointments between today and April 3rd!

Later this week, Rick and Annette will be arriving for a short visit, which will be fun. We’ve got a couple of things planned (baseball game, Sedona day trip). I’ll make a to-do list of things we need to do before they arrive today.