kerewin's whine cellar

The Party Rundown

That small, impromptu party I threw together? HUGE. Forty people in our tiny little house, huge. I have planned parties that had fewer people show up. Early party? Hey, if you start at 6, it should end by 10, no? No. At 1 a.m. when I thought the house was empty I saw a small jacket hanging on the door to the basement.

"Oh crap, Honey! M. forgot her jacket."

"No, I didn't," came a little voice from the basement.

The man of the house decided to hook his PS2 to the tv downstairs and put on the DDR a friend gave us. So M. and her man, S. were dancing and grooving in the basement. So, even though I was tired I went down and kept them company. Until about they time they tried to convince me to try drunken DDR (I'm a DDR virgin). So, I gave them the subtle hint of starting to clean up. What a good idea that was! M. then came upstairs and helped.

Therefore, when I finally woke up the next day (that first wake up at 7 a.m. for a pint of water didn't count) I only had to rinse off every plate in the house to put in the dishwasher and hand wash all the crystal wine glasses. Apparently we have at least 25 crystal wine glasses (there were a couple more ugly strays up in the cupboard I am glad we didn't get into). There would have been 27 but fot the 2 that were broken the night before. I stared at those glasses with a pounding head, wishing more had broken the night before.

Two things are clear to me. We have too many dishes and crystal glasses, and we just threw one hell of a party. I might never recover.

Fear of Girls

Everything was fine, until he was slain by an elf. (required watching)

This definitely puts a new light on those guys I used to see under the freeway in full body armor, dueling with large swords.

Bizarre

I dreamed last night that Sarah Jessica Parker announced she was pregnant with her second child. Then she announced she was getting divorced from Matthew Broderick. Apparently the beer I drank last night was laced with something.

**Update: I was at a coffee shop with a friend and saw that SJP is on the cover of Parade magazine today! Neither pregnant, nor divorcing (as far as YOU know).

Party!

So sometime this afternoon, I decided we should have a party. Tomorrow. This might seem a bit off the cuff. And it is. However, I have two appointments tomorrow that will involve opening about a dozen bottles of wine all told. Friday is a notoriously difficult day to get appointments with people, so I won't be showing the wine to that many people. Leaving me with a lot of open wine. Therefore, we have to have friends over to help us polish it off.

Of course, today I worked until 6:30 and with traffic didn't get home until 7:15. Then shopping, cleaning, cooking. I wasn't going to really make anything difficult (you know, chips, dip, store bought crap) until my chef friend said he was coming. That means that I am making black bean quesadillas, babaganoush, guacamole, mango salsa, garlic bread, and tzatziki. Yeek! I don't think I am going to bed for some time now. I also suspect that we will all reek of garlic for days after. What was I thinking?

Should be a blast!

Oh, The Places You'll Go

Somebody needs to tell this person that that "vase" is actually a FRICKIN' BEER MUG.

Killing Me Softly With His Song

I realize that there is absolutely no way I can use the bathroom this week. Taking a leak: that's okay, but I decide that no crapping will take place over the next 5 days. Its a drastic measure, but I'm thinking that if I eat light and avoid any sudden, jarring movements, I might be able to make it.

This proves to me, beyond a doubt, that EVERYONE has a good poop story. Some people have more.

*ADDED* After you pick yourself off the floor, exercise your stomach muscles reading through this: It started innocently enough yesterday. I went to get my teeth cleaned, as I do three times a year, since I am a smoker with a frankly kickass dental plan.

Sick

Why is it that when you don't feel well that everything is so damn difficult to accomplish? Even when you realize what it is that is keeping you from doing things correctly, it doesn't fix itself? Just an FYI when sick, do not attempt to make bread (or do any baking which requires exactness), because you will not heat the liquids before putting them in, and you will dump the very carefully measured baking soda (for which you made an extra trip to the store) into the salt container, or just generally mess up. Therefore, I am going to bed before 8pm tonight and hopefully I will recover in time for the ungodly 7am meeting tomorrow.

Good Times

Life or something completely, exactly like it. Clicking the strip takes you to Ucomics which sponsors the strip.

Said by a Man Who Doesn't Spend His Day Getting In and Out of a Car

"This is not activity-stopping rain," he said, comparing it with the "wet rain" in other parts of the country that drenches the innocent in the time it takes to cross the street.

By the 27th day in a row of rain, I have to say I was feeling a little drenched. A little over it. You drive around for an entire month dealing with rain, bad drivers due to rain, foggy windows, noisy windshield wipers that make you want to kill yourself, and professional dress and hairstyles that aren't wind/rain resistant and tell me you just love the rain.

Like A Shiny Copper Penny

A couple of years ago I received a set of copper-bottom pans for my birthday. They looked absolutely fabulous until I cooked with them, then the copper turned dark and dull. I don't like to use harsh chemicals so I never went in for any of that polishing stuff (plus it makes my head all woozy). I heard once that salt would clean your copper so I set out with a scrub brush, a lot of dish soap and salt. No go. So I resigned myself to having copper pans that looked used. There's nothing wrong with that, right?

Today I was on google and decided to look up how to use salt to polish copper. Pretty simple, really. Just take a lemon, cut it in half, dip in salt, rub. After 30 minutes in my kitchen, three lemons, and less than a cup of salt (yeah, that's all), all of my pans are back to their glorious shiny penny state. What's more, it makes the stainless pretty damn shiny too! Hooray for non-toxic, organic solutions to cleaning in the house.

How It Feels

Do you know how it feels to take out some beautiful Chablis and have some wine steward totally school you on what he thinks you don't know and then follow it up with complaints about the wine? That feels a lot like shit, but you just have to suck it up.

So then how does it feel to take the same wines to the best French restaurant in town, with one of the most knowledgeable sommeliers (from France!) and have them roundly praised and placed on the list?

That my friend is totally, fucking righteous. Oh, ho ho (said with one of those totally smarmy Fraunch accents)

This Is Something I Need To Remember

McCoy: "I don't think you are a homophobe. Homophobes are afraid of gay people. You are a bigot."

That's fairly succinctly put.

(If I weren't lazy I would look up the actual show this was on and find a transcript and have THAT linked, but, I am lazy.)

Nice Work, If You Can Get It

We have a lawyer friend who does contract work for Preston, Gates and Ellis here in Seattle. When large companies like Microsoft are sued or accused of creating a monopoly, Joe (not his real name) does research for the firm. Sometimes he has steady work, sometimes not. So when I read about Preston, Gates and Ellis possibly being pulled into the Abramoff investigation all I could think was, "Whoohoo! Joe has work!"

White Trash Twelve Step Recovery Program

You might be P.W.T. if:

The main component of your best dish revolves around Campbell's "Cream of..." line of soups (bonus points if served over Rice-A-Roni).
• Your Mother's homemade spaghetti sauce recipe is a pound of browned hamburger (undrained, of course), one can Hunt's tomato sauce, one can Hunt's tomato paste, eyetalian seasoning, and a tablespoon of ketchup, cooked well and served over macaroni.
• Your brother was your babysitter, and since he was seven years older than you, his "watching" you consisted of hanging out in the basement with his friends, getting stoned.
• To your parents, Zippo lighters were the required tool for lighting cigarettes (Bonus points if you used to play with the Ronsonal lighting fluid while your brother was "watching" you).
• Proper storage for cartons of cigarettes was in the fridge.
• Your family owned four or more cars, all more than fifteen years old, only a couple of them running.
• You think parmesan cheese comes out of a green can.
• You make nachos with the "cheese" that comes out of a jar.
• Bologna and american cheese are two of the five main food groups.
• Macaroni and cheese* or Top Ramen is a full meal.

• You have more animals than people.

The recovery process is long and hard. It is different for everyone, but the usual first step is moving to the "Big City." More signs and indications as I recall them, for now I think I am blocking.

*Cheese, the fake variety, is apparently a big glaring sign.

How I Know My Boss Is Totally Straight

On Thursday, when I had a ride-with (industry speak for vendor riding along with you for the day), I also had about 5 cases of wine at the warehouse that I needed to pick up, so that I could deliver them early on Friday. However, my day was so fully booked that I had to ask a co-worker who lives near me to pick them up when she was down that way. We arranged for me to swing by her house when my day was over.

She called me around noon to let me know that she had my stuff and ask me when I thought my day would be over since she was planning on going to Ikea with a friend. That's all she needed to say to me. I knew I needed to get to her house as close to 5 p.m. as possible but I was worried about getting there in time, since it looked like my day was going to stretch a bit longer than I originally expected. So when I had a lunch appointment that included my boss I tried to get him to pick up the wine for me.

"Why?" he asked.

"Because she has to go to Ikea later and I don't know if I can pick up the wine before she wants to go."

"And that would prevent her from driving down to Renton, how?" he asked, in wonderment.

This coming from a man who is SO metrosexual that people are always assuming he is gay, without even checking. When I tell them about his girlfriend they always ask, "Are you SURE he isn't gay?" The fact that he doesn't think of Ikea as a place where you need as much open car space as possible combined with the fact that I have seen the furniture in his apartment allow me to believe 110% that he is not interested in men. In any way.

Expired Tabs

While driving around for work today I realized that my car tabs were expired. Somehow I completely spaced it, even though King County was kind enough to mail me a notice (I blame them for giving me the notice far too much in advance, don't these people understand procrastination?). This would be something I would normally decide to act on the next day as I had a pretty tight regimented day and would have to miss appointments to get tabs. However, tomorrow I will be driving a vendor around all day and one thing my boss stressed with us when we started was, "When you are with a vendor, don't wear logo'd clothing that they don't represent, make sure your car is clean and certainly have a full tank of gas. Most importantly, DO NOT GET A TICKET with a vendor."

Hm, so I cancelled two appointments and headed over to the D.M.V. When I got to the front of the line I got the woman who looked annoyed with having to answer stupid questions all day long. Feeling rather virtuous about my non-stupidity I handed over my registration.

"Why didn't you get your emission checked?" asked Lady Peroxide.

"I read that board over there, it said that in the year 2006 that cars from 2000 didn't need an emission test."

"Yeah, but your tabs expired in 2005."

Oops.

So after going to get my emissions checked I have a question. Do they hire the dumbest people they can at the emissions place, or is it merely all the exhaust fumes they suck up every day contributing to their utter stupidity?"

Let's Remember This For Later, Shall We?

Dick DeGuerin, an attorney for DeLay, said he is not concerned about the Abramoff investigation. "If Jack Abramoff tells the truth, what he'll do is clear the air, and everyone will see there's no connection between Jack Abramoff's money-dealing and Tom DeLay," DeGuerin said.

"What he is reportedly acknowledging doing is unacceptable and outrageous," Mr. McClellan said. "If laws were broken, he must be held to account and punished for what he did."

Isn't that what McClellan said in regards to Valerie Plame so long ago? Yeah, that's what I thought.

Run politicos, RUN!

This is definitely an interesting beginning to the year. It would only be more interesting if Microsoft users faced a serious security gap.