Sunday morning and the
cat feels it necessary to get up
. I just started using an RSS newsreader, Feedreader, to track topics discussed on web and in certain news sources. For instance, I track food industry news from Moreover and this article was one that showed up today. You can also set up searches on specific words using this site that your newsreader will pick up. For instance, If you want to seach for any news where "Mimi's Cafe" and "dive" show up in the same article you can do that :). Anybody else using newsreaders and can point me in a better direction?
Forgot to mention yesterday that at the crab feed I sat across from the regional sales person for J Lohr Winery. Since I've been to almost every wine shop in the SF Bay area (that's not as sad as it sounds, wait, yes it is) we compared notes on the wine shop owners. There is one that is infamous among wine sales guys as being owned by 2 of the biggest *ssh*l*s ever. I mentioned the shop to this guy and he just rolled his eyes and went off with his horror stories. I'd heard others. This is the shop I called up and asked if they had a David Bruce Petite Sirah. They didn't and replied (insert heavy German accent here) "you don't want that, you want a real syrah" (refrerring to the grape, not the winery). No I didn't, and I went somewhere else. The best story I heard about these people was when they went into a restaurant owned by someone I know and brought their own wine. They asked my friend for a decanter for their wine. He brought it out and the husband makes a great display of sniffing the decanter and says (insert heavy German accent here) "this decanter is dirty, bring me a new one." So my friend heads to the back, curses them, and brings out the SAME decanter, Husband makes great display of sniffing decanter and pronounces, "Much Better".
So people hated the
Titanic... That was my least favorite too.. although
TCM is showing many of the best picture winners and I have to say I caught part of
Around the World in 80 Days and it wasn't good....
Continuing with the "why I hate George Bush" theme, I found the transcript of then President elect GW Bush's
speech to Congress. From it I quote, ""I was not elected to serve one party, but to serve one nation." He's a f*ck*ng liar. My latest piece of evidence is
this article. If he was serving a nation he'd actually allow for differing views on this issue than what his right wing, oh let me get my **** out of your mouth, cronies tell him to believe. God I hate him.
Finally, went to the
Half Moon Bay Wine and Cheese Shop today to taste
Loring Pinot Noir. Damn that was good. We followed that by an all you can eat crab feed in Mountain View. I felt like Homer Simpson, "mmmmmmmm crab". Life is good.
New Poll. I'm trying to put together a wine site dedicated to Pinot Noir, since that's what we drink 90% of the time. Need help with a domain name. Let me know what you think.
So the poll results for the question, "Who will make the dumbest draft move in our upcoming Fantasy Draft?" are in and Jim H topped out at 56%. Now the only surprise here is that I had looked at this poll as if I'd asked "What color is an orange?" "Orange" would have gotten a hell of a lot more than 56%. Let's try another, less obvious one. I liked the
article John sent. What do you think was the worst best picture ever?
(Warning -- this paragraph is rated PG-13) In other news, I see
George W is using the Constitution as
this. God I hate him. The Constitution deserves a little more respect. If
George W would stop giving
this to his right wing cronies long enough to govern...
I'm baaaaaaack! I know you're all relieved, you don't have to wait any longer for my posts. Sunday in
New York was a blast. We went to Ellis Island on the
ferry. We passed the
Statue of Liberty on the way. I got a nice shot of the Manhattan
skyline from Ellis Island. I couldn't find any family records searching
here, but I didn't know what first names to use. Had dinner at
Remi Sunday night, quite the step up. Followed that with cheesecake (more about that below) at
Lindy's.
Speaking of delis, I have this photo of the
Pastrami on Rye at
Carnegie Deli (here's
Adrienne, Betty Lou and Steven in line to eat there). I also got a picture of the
cheesecake there. Damn that was good. In fact Steve and I took it upon ourselves to check out the cheesecakes at various delis in Times Square area. Of the 3 we tried, Carnegie was the hands down winner. Ben Ash was very good and Lindy's was far back in third.
I loved New York. We had a great time visiting with Steven and Betty Lou all weekend. They were headed back to
Haddonfield New Jersey today. I hope we can get back there soon.
I'm in New York and sadly I find myself at
Kinkos posting the events from yesterday so people have a reason to get out of bed. Working backwards,
Wicked rocked!. We had third row center seats at the
Gershwin Theater.
Kristin Chenoweth was great as "Guhlinda" - "thats Glinda with a 'Guh'" and
Idina Menzel was terrific as Elphaba, the Wicked Witch of the West. We had seen this in SF and the one major cast change was to replace
Robert Morse as the Wizard (he did a fine job in SF), with
Joel Grey. He was fabulous!. All in all, fun fun fun.
Dinner at
Ben Benson's Steak house however was disappointing. They didn't get any order right and they missed on one filet mignon 3 times! Don't go there. However the
Carnegie Deli was fabulous for lunch. The hot pastrami on rye was to die for (how touristy am I, I took pictures of our food, I'll post those tomorrow) and the cheesecake, yum.
We're off to Ellis Island today, having a great time, wish you were here!
So the poll results are as expected, with
Rosie clearly ahead.
Desi is making an unexpectedly strong showing (nice try) while
Clawdia's parents are having computer problems. Expect her votes to increase above 0 soon.
Apparently Joan's picked for jury duty. Joan, I'm guessing you didn't show up to court dressed liked
this as I suggested. I think it would have worked.
We're off to
New York tomorrow so this will be the last post until Monday. We're staying in Times Square at the Renaissance, having dinner at
Ben Benson's Steak House and seeing
Wicked.
I know how much you've come to rely on this page to provide entertainment, but perhaps you can spend the weekend watching
this or
this.
I removed the
Penguin game results... Anyone who didn't get the max of 323.5 probably has a life. Speaking for those of us who don't and got 323.5, "ha ha".
Sad to see the passing of
Jan Miner. You can catch her work
here. Actually
this is a pretty cool site.
I've added a poll to the site. I am certainly trying to be fair and balanced as to how I ask these questions, let me know what you think. I'm still playing with content on the site... It will change and comments are welcome, especially from the conservative lunatic fringe. :)
I moved 13 cases of wine to
storage yesterday, I still have about 10 cases to go. Work will start on our basement around March 1. We'll take plenty of pictures.
Big news! I won the right to pay $86.00 for
this. Woo Hoo! I'm trying to remember what other toys I had as a child that if I kept I could have retired by selling them on ebay. For instance, I'm pretty damn sure I had
this. And it cost a hell of a lot less than $200.00
. I don't think I ever had
this. But if I did, would it have been worth
$90 to carry this to school when I was 10 and get the crap beaten out of me? Have to think about that.
Adrienne and I drove up to Half Moon Bay yesterday to have drinks at the
Ritz-Carlton. Great
views. I had a Tanquery 10 martini and Adrienne had a Pinot from
Lynmar.
You can catch a picture of our Godson
here.
Finally, I think my favorite from
this list is "More people get their news from us than any other source. And the rest are terrorists." I gotta work on a submission...
I'm now up to 45 emails on
Penguin game. Notice I'm not putting up the scores from the games where the Yeti are
Balco clients. As I said in my email, you have until end of day Feb 16 to play and have your scores tracked on my widely read, widely viewed website.
Other news... I'm now an Amazon.com
whore. You'll notice on the bottom of my home page a banner ad for Amazon.com. If you click on that and order through Amazon, I get a kickback. My goal is to make $10.00 this year (I should do that just with what I order from them) so I can actually report income (and loss, since it cost more than that to host the damn website).
Also, I'm trying out other content on a "
hidden" page. I kinda like the "smirking chimp" cause I am part of the vast left-wing conspiracy. You'll also see an
Amber alert ticker there. Content will change as I find stuff. You can check that page and let me know if there's anything that you think is worth putting on the home page.
Finally, in the category of "why the f*ck didn't I save my toys from my childhood", I am the current high bidder on
this item. Work is paying for it, but still...
It's Saturday morning and since Wednesday night when I sent out my original note about this web site, I've received 40 emails (don't you people have lives?) from my family about
this game. Some have gone on to find other Penguin games (
here and
here are a couple)
some have wisely given up after losing to these
players. I'm still working on changes to the site, as I make them I'll let you know so I can get positive feedback such as
this. As long as we're sharing, listen to this
clip from NPR's This American Life. It's the show about the Little Mermaid saga at Columbia. Billed as "Act Four. Buddy Picture. Producer Jonathan Goldstein with a story about friendship, mothers and sons, and what some have called the greatest phone message in the world."(stuff about the Little Mermaid begins at about 40 minutes into the show and pretty much continues right up until the very end. 20 mins).
So our
art was delivered today. It will sit in the dining room. The gallery owner also brought over this
piece for us to look at. We'll see. Another artist she thought might look good in our den is
Clifford Bailey. I talked to Joan and she told me she just purchased this
piece. Very nice
I know everybody is concerned about
Rosie. The vet called to say the xray showed nothing unusual, but that we should bring her back in 2 weeks. I suggested we change her name to "A/C" because that's where the money for our air conditioner went. Happier news, we met with our contractor today and have signed papers to put in new windows to replace the
ugly, single paned ones in the living and dining room and redo our
basement to make it a functional room. We'll probably add a
wine cabinet in the basement rather than cooling the entire basement. Work should begin March 1 and last a couple of months.
If it's Tuesday it must be the
Wine Vault. Stopped by after work and enjoyed a 2001 Watertower cabernet. It was $30, but rumor has it it's produced from the same grapes by the same winemaker that end up in a $75 bottle of cab. While others may talk of the cherry and licorice nose, I just check to make sure it has an alcohol content. The day started with a trip to the vet for
Rosie. She needed an xray for a lump on her stomach. It's the same xray she needed Saturday when we took her in. To quote the vet on Saturday, "I'm sorry, I couldn't get an xray, I know she's only 6 pounds but it's all muscle and she doesn't want to do it." Gosh that was fun. We'll get results tomorrow.
On Sunday Adrienne and I drove up to Half Moon Bay to check out the
Half Moon Bay Wine and Cheese Shop. They have a great selection, especially Pinots. When we left, traffic was a mess getting out of town so I suggested we head over to
Navio for a drink. We decided not to spend the money so we walked down Main St instead. We noticed
Borsini-Burr Galleries was hosting an artist's reception (free food, free wine, I'm there) for
Thomas Arvid. We had seen his work at the
Vintage Wine Merchants in Santana Row. We liked his stuff, but we ended up BUYING this
piece by Daniel Gerhartz. It would have been cheaper to go to Navio.
