kerewin's whine cellar

Castellano

My father calls me periodically to give me little facts and information. Sometimes I am busy and he leaves voicemail with whatever he intended on saying. One day recently he called to let me know that he heard that Arizona had the highest per capita Latino population (although I am sure he said Hispanic, which incorrectly means that their heritage is from Spain, but I digress). I didn't bother to verify his claim, because I was too busy being annoyed with his next thought.

"Why Arizona? What can they do there? I would have thought California, or even Washington because of the large agricultural industry," he said.

I am glad I wasn't able to take this call because it likely would have ended in a fight. I might have said something like, "Do you suppose it is because that used to be part of Mexico? Maybe it is because we used to be the immigrants there, not the Latinos."

With all this talk of immigration reform this has been running through my head. The whole idea of integration, us vs. them, and what langauge we/they should be using. Seems to me that we didn't bother to learn their language when we came here. As usual, I dropped the ball in saying that. Then someone went and said it much better than I would have.

Religious Tolerance

I thought you were supposed to love your neighbor as thyself. You don't see me getting my friends to sign a petition against religion. Maybe I would state that people who don't go to church on a regular basis are more loving to their fellow man than the people that do.

Focus

I have noticed that my life tends to have stages. Stages that can be explained with a word or a short phrase. A good portion of my life from high school past college until about now would be the, "Fear is the only thing stopping you," phase. Currently, my main focus has been, um, "Focus."

When businesses go wrong I see they lost focus. When I try to explain why I do well at work, the word "focus" comes up a lot. Is this focus on focus misplaced? Or is it just the word du jour? Is everyone seeing how FOCUS changes their life?

Come on people, focus.

Played

I fell classic to one of those parental blunders Saturday and it really ticks me off. The wedding shower was great fun and the food was great but weddings make people nuts especially bridesmaids for some reason. After most of the people left I was talking with a dear friend in the backyard. Bridesmaids took it upon themselves to clean up, although I had said that I would take care of it (which is nice). Suddenly Bridesmaid #1 comes running out, "Karri, Bridesmaid #2 is in the house loudly popping all the balloons!"

I have these cats, they are lovely. But they were once homeless and tend to be sketchy around company. Popping balloons sounded like the kind of thing to freak them out, especially on top of a bunch of strangers being in the house for the last few hours. So I went storming in, and yes, loud popping noises were coming from my living room. "Hey, hey, hey Bridesmaid #2, please don't do that! It isn't good for the cats."

Of course, it turns out that BM #1 told BM #2 to pop the balloons. When BM #2 did it in a manner unpleasing to BM #1 she went running to Mommy. BM #2 also left the house shortly after, apparently with "hurt feelings." Now, I don't mind being the bad guy where applicable but this is a case of a few people who aren't working well together, taking it out on the messenger. I wonder if I had kids if I wouldn't have fallen so easily into the trap?

Privacy, Wha?

I was visiting with my friend Monya the other day. She had to cut our visit short because she had to go do a "Woman's Doctor Visit" and get a mammogram. She told me that it turned out to be this cool thing. A van that visited parts of the city and allowed woman to get their mammograms easily.

"That's so great. It is private, of course?" I asked.

"I am not sure," she replied, "I would hate to go up there, and walk into this highly marked van right outside of my regular grocery store."

"Why would they have big emblems on the side of the van? I am sure they want people to feel comfortable."

Two minutes after I left I drove past the van in question and decided to call her. "You might want to call your Doctor and see if you can reschedule without any penalty."

I mean, WTF? Why not put a huge sign on the side that says, "WE SQUASH WOMENS' BREASTS HERE"?

I should probably go and get a mammogram since I just turned 35 (Jesus I am old) but I would never willingly step into a vehicle that advertised the treatment. Hell, why not have a vaginal inspection van?

I forgot to ask Monya if she did go on her "visit" and of course, how it was.

Adult OCD

Last week I ran into a vendor I worked with at my previous job. She suggested we meet in a couple of hours for lunch and one of my favorite accounts. Who am I to say no? We go, and run into the buyer there. It is great fun sitting at the counter, chatting with all the staff, pouring random things for everyone involved. Because we were at the counter, every time I wanted to pour something different from my bag I had to get up, get my bag, get out the wine, sit back down, pour. Yadda, yadda.

Buyer comes by while I am in the middle of the wine swap out and I am holding my ipod because it was in the way of getting something out of my bag. He has an ipod but not the iTrip thing that allows me to play my ipod on any radio. I suggest to him that he should just use that for his restaurant, since he has been through about 4 different, nice cd players in two years.

He has an ipod. He has all his music on it. He just doesn't get how to separate life music from work music. "No problem," says I! "Simple!"

"Oh really?" he asks.

"Sure. You just create a new folder and ..."

He interupts me, "I have adult ADD and that is just too much for me. Lots of people have tried to explain it to me and I don't get it. It is just too frustrating."

I am the ultimate teacher. Seriously. I have a way of explaining things to every different learning type. So I start in again. "That part on the left when you open iTunes..."

"Seriously, Karri. I can't take this in. I just find it frustrating. Stop."

Ok, even though I am a full glass of wine into lunch I know to stop. However, being the ultimate teacher my mind just whirs and whirs. There HAS to be an easy way to explain!

Hours later it is running through my mind. I wake up in the middle of the night with 2 or 3 different solutions. I am an obsesser. I light upon an idea and can't shake it. Apparently I have an undiagnosed case of adult OCD. Good thing to know that adult ADD trumps adult OCD.

For now.

Lunch was awesome, the company outstanding. No matter the outcome of his disorder vs mine, it is still one of my favorite accounts.

In The Pub

After the every-Monday evening meeting at work, I met the Hub and a friend of his for Chinese food. We then thought it would be great fun to pop into the German-style pub right next door. I was going to do more yardwork tonight but 2 beers in, it was suddenly dark. Oops. I was messing with the camera portion of my new phone since our friend Kent (not his real name) taught me how to email them to myself. It might be the beer but we thought they were worthy of posting.

Sorry for the crappy resolution.

Kent in action. He calls this the "Double Deuce."


This is one of the people at the table next to us. Everyone there decided to put on sunglasses, even though it was well dark outside. The guys and girls seem to have swapped glasses, although you can't really see the chicks in this picture. This is the new wallpaper on my phone. The Double Deuce preceded it for about 20 minutes.


Doorway. Shiny. This picture looks really cool on the phone. Here, not so much.


Kent kept trying to get a picture of the Spaten emblem from the glass that was mirrored in the beer. I finally pointed out that it was from the coaster.

There are a few others but they are just dark, blurry pictures of beer mugs that are half-full. Or half-empty depending on your view point. Cheers!

Spring Time In The City

How do you know it is Spring? At my house Spring comes around when you are busy with work, out of town a lot on the weekends and when it rains during the week but it sunny on the weekend. The weekends you are out of town, so that the grass grows high and you can't mow it. That's how it works for us. However, it clearly doesn't work that way for all of our neighbors. After a few weeks of this I started to slink out of the house in the mornings and hope no one was out to stop me and give me the Spanish Inquisition about the length of the lawn.

Just how long was my lawn? I think a couple of urban safaris went through looking for tigers in the last couple of weeks. Things are back on track, though. I spent the day outside not only mowing things back to their 4 inch length, but also weeding our plant strip*.

My neighborhood embarrassment isn't the only thing spurring this activity. In just under a week, friends are hosting a wedding shower at my house. It is one thing to look ghetto to people I don't know. People I barely know and rarely hang out with, now THEY are the people I need to impress. Or at least not shock.

In other news my mother visited us this weekend. She came mainly to get tech support for her laptop which was no longer working, but also because it was Mother's Day! Yay! She drove over from Spokansas Friday and we hung out. It was a really nice time. We kept it simple. Played a lot of games (including a major marble tournament at my sister's house) and had nice food. This morning the Hub asked for Mom's car keys to check her oil before she got on the road.

They were missing. Totally gone. We searched high and low, called the Sis's house, etc, etc. Since it was early and we hadn't had much sleep, tempers were high. Dad called to wish Mom a Happy Mother's Day and she TOLD HIM. Duh, why would you do that? So they had this big stressful conversation that consisted of my mom saying, "Yes, I looked there. I looked there. YES, I LOOKED THERE!" Then she did the thing, the ultimate thing. She mentioned that the set of keys that was lost had the one and ONLY gas cap key. Good lord, the sky fell in people. What was the point of that?

This is very uncharitable of me, but because I already knew I needed to spend the day in the yard and doing laundry I thought to myself, "Oh god. If those keys are gone, this is going to be one shitty day. One. Shitty. Day." Thank god we found them soon after that. Where? On the ground near the car. Since the last time Mom drove it was Friday that means they were on the ground the whole weekend. So we were not only lucky that Mom was able to go home without me killing her. We were also lucky that no one "borrowed" the car.

On another tangent, we also bought a new stove and dishwasher today. That we said we were going to buy last September. We are nothing if not tardy. We spent all this money on these fabulous models (come on people, like I know WHICH models we bought) and I am still totally bitchy. Why? Because they won't be here for over a WEEK. Which would be after the party next Saturday. So now I have to use my shitty half broken stove for the party. On the other hand, it is a really old stove with a second oven above the range. The previous owners of this house didn't think they should have to paint the kitchen wall behind the range. So if we got the new one before, we would have this tacky blue spot in an ocean of white.

*It just kills me how neat and tidy those pictures are. Those pictures are from two years ago. The strip I weeded today is the one connected to the yard. The parking strip is not just NOT neat and tidy like those pictures suggest, but also rabidly OVERGROWN. There are no gaps between plants. Jungle. This jungle still needs to be weeded and chopped back.

This is how you know it is way past time to do yard work. Neighbors walk past you while you are tugging weeds and ripping things out, generally red-faced and pissy.

Neighbor: "Nice day."

Me: "Beautiful."

N: "Sure got your work cut out for you."

Me: "Yup."

N: "If only those people living here before hadn't left you such a mess. So just when did you move in?"

Me: "Six years ago."

N: "_______"

Guess we won't be friends after all.

Too Much MacGuffin

I didn't really know what it meant when Ebert and Roeper used the term in their lastest review of Mission Impossible 9,471. After Geese Aplenty also used it, I knew I needed to find out what it meant.

More Than You Would Ever Want To Know.

Hope you can sleep after.

We're All Whores, In One Way Or Another

My newest obsession is reading through the entire archives at The Food Whore. Go. Run. If you have a lemon drop handy, it might enhance the experience.

Brokenhearted

The other day I ran into a friend who told me a story of a mutual acquaintance. New Bride was out all afternoon shopping with friends. When she came home she asked New Husband what he had done for the day. Turns out he rented Brokeback Mountain and stayed in by himself, curtains drawn, kleenex near at hand for the inevitable crying. She was upset that he didn't wait to watch it with her.

Sister, let me tell you, if your husband is watching Brokeback Mountain by himself in the dark, you have bigger problems than that.

Podcast!

I was interviewed today for A Life Of Play a podcast site devoted to, "assorted and amazing ways to have fun in your free time. From biking to travel to events of all kinds, we cover the best ways to use your weekend." Go check it out!

Thanks, Jeff, that was fun. Hope I didn't sound too weird on the phone.

**Update: I just looked through my last few posts and anyone who comes here after hearing me "be the wine expert" on Jeff's site is undoubtedly having second thoughts. It can't all be golden, I suppose. Sorry!

***2nd Update Boekenhoutskloof is the South African winery I spoke about towards the end.

Overheard In A Restaurant

"Today I passed out in the shower. When I got up I thought I had the day off, so I drank a forty."