kerewin's whine cellar

Monkey See

I took that picture Fall 2002 on our first anniversary at the Yamhill Valley Vineyards. They have a beautiful koi pond. Their colors are so intense that they look almost see-through in that inky dark water. I call them the Ghost Koi.

Tonight I went to my first night at the sensory evaluation course I signed up for a few weeks back. It is a wine education class taught by the buyer at one of my accounts. I consider this person to have the best palate in all of Seattle (as far as I know) so I was kind of excited, kind of nervous.

Always awesome to learn after several years a new way of looking at a thing, or just to find there are things that make it refreshing and new. This is going to be a good class, which should make it worthwhile to use up 3 hours a week, in an evening, on a weekday. This is cutting into my non-existent television watching time.

The Husband Does Not Like This Photo

I took it when I was in Disney World with my parents in '99. I woke up early and went outside with my camera. Apparently Disney can not only control all their staff to say Shiny Happy People Things, but they can also make the water clear and your shots look like mirrors.

Nice work if you can get it.

Don't Go Chasing Waterfalls

For 36 hours or so I was going to New Zealand in January for a wine event. A few months ago a New Zealand winemaker was in town and told us all (at work) about it. I went home and told the husband how I wanted to go.

Fast forward to Friday night. We get home from a progressive dinner that I took us on for our anniversary. Sitting on my computer chair was a travel guide for New Zealand. He was going to pay for me to go and even got permission from my boss! Then I had to go and spoil it all by looking at the website today and seeing the registration cost.

Now I have to figure out what I want to do instead. Bummer. I just looked at the list of the participating wineries and I sell wine for seven of them.

You Load Sixteen Tons, What Do You Get?

I spent over 6 hours today editing webpages from my regular site. The result? The pages are white with black type. They used to be black with white type. I didn't revamp anything like I intended, although I did delete some things and change some wording. There just isn't the payoff I was hoping for. Instead I am secure in the knowledge that I have a lot more hours of work ahead of me to make any sort of real change.

An upside is that I looked at a lot of pictures I hadn't seen in a long time.

i carry your heart with me

i carry your heart with me(i carry it in
my heart)i am never without it(anywhere
i go you go,my dear;and whatever is done
by only me is your doing,my darling)
i fear
not fate(for you are my fate,my sweet)i want
no world(for beautiful you are my world,my true)
and it's you are whatever a moon has always meant
and whatever a sun will always sing is you

here is the deepest secret nobody knows
(here is the root of the root and the bud of the bud
and the sky of the sky of a tree called life; which grows
higher than soul can hope or mind can hide)
and this is the wonder that's keeping the stars apart

i carry your heart(i carry it in my heart)

e.e. cummings

happy anniversary, my love, i carry your heart(i carry it within my heart)

Bohemian

It might start a little slow, but the pay off is grand:

Random and Odd.

found in the comments of blurbomat

VT Is For Learners!

I found out a couple of things last night here in Vermont.

1. Jägermeister is much, much better cold.
2. That doesn't make me feel any better this morning.

Obsession, What?

This is a very embarrassing thing to admit. I have put it off for a long time. When I sit down to read a book if I am there for more than 20 minutes or so I get this compelling notion in my head. Once it is there I can't get away from it. My mind will return over and over until I do what I am thinking about.

I have to clip my fingernails and toenails. Then I have to take the "file" part of the nailclippers and scrape under each nail. Since I have a habit of leaving the nailclippers wherever I used them last there are times when it is a hunt to fill this compulsion*.

The most embarrassing part of this confession is that there are other things I am completely compulsive about. They are more embarrassing than the requirement that I clip every nail on my body.

*UPDATE - This is one of the reasons that I own at least two pairs of nail clippers. Once upon a time (when I was single and this habit was easier to keep private) I owned at least four pairs of nailclippers so I would know where to find a pair at any time. I also own two pairs of eyebrow tweezers for the very same reason (um yeah, to tweeze my eyebrows, not clip my nails).

Wedding of Summers, or How Not To Check Your Bag At The Airport

We just flew in from Oakland from a wedding. We decided before leaving that we didn't want to wait upwards of an hour for our luggage out of baggage claim, either direction. This meant travelling without any sort of liquid in our bags. No shampoo, conditioner, lipstick, mascara, foundation, liquid eyeliner face soap, deodorant, haircare products, or lotion. I decided to be creative. Hopefully this little guide can help YOU when you need to travel without checking your bags.

Any hotel will give you soap, face soap, shampoo, and conditioner. Nicer ones also include lotion. The one we were staying at didn't have the lotion and annoyingly had a shampoo/conditioner blend. All you need is a nearby drugstore and their handy sample size aisle. You will need to buy lotion (if not included in the hotel set), toothpaste, deodorant (or like the husband, get a small version of one of those crystal things and you can actually take that back on the plane), and chapstick.

Some decent lotion will do you good, you can use it not only for your face after you use the crappy face soap (or if you have sensitive skin, use the shampoo to wash your face) but also for a quick styling product before a blow dry (seriously, it works! The more control you need the heavier the lotion needs to be). For lipstick bring your matching lip pencil and buy a cheap chapstick, outline your lips, put on a light dose of chapstick and use the pencil to fill in, dab lightly with kleenex. Voilà, no one threw away your expensive lipstick.

Now what to do about foundation? At first I was going to just go with the pressed powder I only use over the foundation and just use dry pencil for eyeliner. However, at the drugstore I saw a stand I hadn't paid much attention to for many years. Wet n' Wild (So cheap they don't even have their own website!). The haven for poor pre-teenagers. I was able to buy liquid foundation for just $2.99! I could have gone in for some liquid eyeliner and some lipstick, too but I thought my substitutions would do nicely. Also I hated leaving so much stuff at the hotel that probably just got thrown away.

All of it worked really well and for only $11! Eleven dollars to not have to wait at both airports for over an hour each to get our bags. Well worth it. I am going to utilize this technique next weekend when we fly to Vermont for our 6th and (hopefully) last wedding of the Summer. Now if I could just devise a technique for turning the server back on automatically when the power goes out.

It Hurts A Little In My Heart

Before I met my husband I shared a house with a good friend, her husband, and their child. She had great taste in antiques and one day found a wonderful coffee table.

We had lots of room, so a round table, four feet in diameter wasn't any big deal. After I moved out, my friends bought a smaller house and decided to get rid of it. I loved that table and wanted it, so we worked out a little trade. I watched her son a few times while she worked cleaning houses twice a month (I actually watched him for two years, but the first year I did for free and the second year she felt guilty so she gave me some money. It was just a couple months at the end that I worked for free for the table).

I have a pretty small house, but the table is extra cool so we made room for it. A few years back a different friend who sells antiques and works on furniture saw it and said, "Hey, that's a Gibbings, if you ever want to sell it, let me know."

We just moved some furniture around in the house which involved removing two bookshelves in the living room. When those were gone I saw how much extra room we had and looked at the HUGE coffee table and said, "That has to go." Every day after I said that, I reconsidered. Anyway, the thing is huge, our house is small, it really has to go. We invited antique friend over, he just got rid of his shop and didn't have room. He suggested Craigslist.

After that I did a little research and found that a TH Robsjohn-Gibbings for Widdicomb is actually worth some cash. Not so much in Seattle but NYC, or Chicago, or L.A. However, I don't live in any of those cities so I priced it fairly reasonably for a sought-after antique, but pretty hefty for a used 54 year-old table.

I got two responses, one from a local modern furniture dealer (he didn't tell me that, I just googled him instead) and from a furniture dealer in Chicago (again with the not telling). Seattle dude was fast, thirty minutes after the posting. Mr. Chicago was a little slower, the next day, but also wanted to buy it sight unseen (minus pictures) and have a friend from Seattle come by to ship it out. He offered to PayPal me the money RIGHT AWAY. I gave Seattle dibs out of courtesy. He just finally came by tonight (schedules clashing). I thought he might haggle, or even look at it and change his mind, but he brought cash and told me it wasn't even a consideration.

Guess I underpriced it.

He wondered where I got it, just out of curiousity and told me how Seattle isn't a good Gibbings market but he found a cool tripod corner table for $60 at a rummage sale. He also said he would likely ship this off to L.A. Still, I wasn't in the mood to deal with shipping a large, heavy object several states away, let alone the hassle of eBay.

Now I just need a new coffee table. Any ideas?

Amusing

Occasionally we would round a bend in the trail and find a full-scale melee in progress around the running path. Upon seeing us, one of the combatants would shout “Reality!” and everyone would lower their weapons and step aside, allowing us to pass. (The idea of shouting “Reality!” during one of our staff meetings at work has occurred to me more than once.)