Napa Valley

We were out in Napa Valley last week visiting David. He showed us a good time. We went hiking in a little coastal town called Mendocino. It had a nice little downtown area where we ate lunch. Lot of hippie stores out there but it was nice to see. They had a store where they only sold green products, a lot of which I have been reading about lately. Then we hiked along the ocean. There were some really great views. The trip there was a little long but again the scenes were well worth it, it was a 2.5 hour drive through a redwood forrest.

We also went to Santa Cruz and met up with some college friends. Santa Cruz has a great downtown area too, but it's definitely more of a surfer town, which was cool. We ate lunch at a restaurant downtown (outdoor seating of course) and then made our way to the beach where we watched a surfing contest. It was definitely nice to see the surf culture up close. After the contest we went to the Bonny Doon Winery. This turned out to be one of my favorite wineries and it wasn't even in Napa. I think the main reason for that is that it is a very artsy winery. They have different artists create their labels. The label for their wine "Original Zin" was created by the artist who drew the cover for Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas. The winery itself had a very relaxed feel to it too.

We did a couple of days of the Napa wine tasting and visited many of the Napa wineries. We got a nice insiders look at Grgich Hills, which is where Dave works, and then let him lead the way to some other wineries in the area. Some notable ones were Paradux, Clos Pegase and a sparking wine winery. In the evening we attended a party at the Steltzner vineyard. We met a lot of interesting people, the food was great, and we had a great view of the sunset out by the pool. The Stelzners sure know how to throw a party.

We also met some of Dave's friends. His friends were all very hospitable and generous with us. They prepared meals for us, invited us to their homes and parties, gave us a hefty discount at the wineries they worked for, and also showed us around town. We came back with a great impression of the people of the area.

One of the little things we enjoyed a lot about our trip was atmosphere of the place. They had a lot of local grocery stores and market type stores which were very enjoyable. They had a lot of prepared food, olive bars, organic foods plus your usual groceries. We picked up breakfast there a few days as well as some stuff for a picnic. We also grew an appreciation for cheese. They had all kinds of cheeses there but the nice part is that you could try it before you buy to see if thats something you'd like. Since we've been back we've been trying to find similar local grocery stores in the area, sure we have Trader Joe's and Whole Foods over here but we've visited some smaller stores like Caputos and Fruit and Produce Market nearby. We still haven't found our Sunshine Foods though.

Pretty safe to say we came in love with the area. We will have to make it back there again soon.

Sink the Boat

See my Tabblo>

Some of my friends from college rented a cottage last weekend. So I thought that was a good opportunity to try out this new tabblo website. Basically its a way to share pictures in a scrapbook form. What I like most about it is that you don't need to sign up to see a page - at least that's my understanding. Unfortunately I didnt take many pictures this weekend and they're not the best pictures, but I think I really like the program. I'm sure i'll use it more in the future.

As for the weekend itself, it was a lot of fun. It was great to see these guys again. I hadn't seen some for a long time. And its true that a lot things change but some things stay the same.

Ragoo Festival

As I mentioned earlier, I went to see State Radio a few weeks ago. State Radio is one of my favorite bands. They played a cover song which was really catchy. I had to go home and look it up. Turns out it was "The Harder they Come" by Jimmy Cliff. I didnt recognize who Jimmy Cliff was but I researched him anyway and bought the song off of Itunes. Turns out I did know another of Jimmy Cliff's songs, you probably do too - "I can see clearly now". Anyway as I kept reading up on him I came across an article on NPR. There was also another article there that caught my eye. It was talking about Dubside of the Moon, a remake of Pink Floyd's classic album. You can here a few songs on the website, I was hooked. I usually don't care for cover cd's but for some reason this one sounded like they really did it justice. Definitely a good summer cd. I asked around with a few of my friends to see if anyone knew about this and to my surprise a large majority had heard it and enjoyed it. Anyway this set me off on a reggae spree. I remembered a few songs I had heard on Pandora that I liked - Old Tattoo by Culture and Ring the Alarm and a few others, so I looked them up and got them from Itunes. Now I have to work on making a reggae compilation to take out to California at the end of the month. 

Earth Day

Saw a dear crossing the road today on my way to work. I was stopped at a light and about 50 feet in front of me the deer decided it was a good spot to cross. The first thing I thought of was "where there's one there's bound to be more". I've heard that many times, but have never seen more than one deer cross a road at the time. Still as the light turned green I approached the spot very cautiosly - and sure enough all of the sudden another one appeared and darted across. I was still driving slowly and was far enough away where it wasn't a big deal. But it was a nice thing to see this morning. I wonder where they were coming from, nothing but houses on either side of Ogden there in Hinsdale. It's weird to think that deer live so close to us.

Earth day was last Saturday. I can't say I did much to save the environment that day although I did get outside. Anyway as a way to do my part i've decided to buy a terrapass for our cars. The folks at terrapass have calculated the average amount of CO2 that your car emmits. Your terrapass purchase goes toward the technology that reduces the same emmission from plants and factories, therefore your car emmissions are neutralized. Every little bit helps. Please check out their website and consider buying a terrapass for your car.

I also bought a reel mower two summers ago. I hope to use it as much as possible this summer. I live in an apartment so I dont really have the use for it, but I'd like to be able to mow my parents yard with it this summer, that would also cut on the emmissions from the gas powered lawnmower. I'm sure you've heard that reel mowers are difficult to use. I found that they're really not that bad, sure if your grass gets very tall then it is a struggle, but it is doable. If you keep up with the lawn then it turns out to be easy and enjoyable.

There are several other things you can do around the house to do your part for the environment. The people at treehugger have set up a list that shows the 25 best things you can do. In an effort to keep the momentum generated by the Earth Day celeberations around the world, I encourage you to try to do something.

Easter Weekend

Easter started with a great Sojourn led Maundy Thursday service at CCOB. I really enjoy being a part of the band in that community. We then went up to Michigan for the weekend. Just spent the time realaxing. The weather was great - a nice spring weekend. Went golfing for the first time on saturday, went with my father-in-law and brother-in-law. They were very patient with me and it was a lot of fun. I'll need to hit the driving range a lot this summer so I can play next time we go up to Michigan again.

Also saw State Radio at the Beat Kitchen on friday. It was a great show. This is the second sold out State Radio show that I somehow manage to get into. Well worth it though. They even played one of my favorite Dispatch songs, Time Served.

work

Some cool changes at work. I got a new office, its nice. Kind of isolated but I like it that way, I'm not much of a small talk guy anyway so this suits me just fine. With the new office I also got some new furniture so that's nice. I do have a lot of work these days though, but I rather be busy than sitting around trying to make up things to do. Also got a new coworker here. Josh started working here last month, so that's been exciting. Josh also lives only a few blocks from our apartment so we've been car-pooling to work, which saves us on gas money and its nice to ride with someone on the way to work.

goodbye flip phone

I got a new phone at the begining of February, so I thought it fitting to post an homage to my first camera phone. I created this collage of some of the pictures I've taken with this phone. I was able to save most of these my pictures, unfortunately there are some like the ones used for my caller id pictures, which I wasn't able to get, which is upsetting because I had some quality pictures. So here's a small montage created with Picassa. Sure the phone came in handy more than once, but really camera phones are just a novelty. I enjoyed it though so I'll honor it. I look forward to taking some cool pics with my new phone, the motorola SLVR.

MLB Championship

So the White Sox made it to the "World Series". Good for them, I'm not officially jumping on that bandwagon though. I'll root for them because it's been a long time since they've been there just like I rooted for the Red Sox last year, but I didn't watch any of the games last year and most likely won't watch any this year either. I guess I just don't like baseball - there I said it, call me unAmerican if you must. Now I do enjoy going to a game with a group of friends, its fun, but I rarely pay attention to the game.

Why does every professional sports league in this country believe that they are it as far as the sport goes? It's called the "World Series" yet the only teams that have the possibility of getting there are all teams from the US and one from Canada. It's not just baseball, all the sports do that, the "World Champion San Antonio Spurs" or the World Cup in soccer, well no I guess that's ok.

like a good neighbor

Went to the grocery store after work today. Had to pick up two things , well actually just one thing but two of them, should have been an in and out trip. I grab the items and head to the self checkout area. Two of the four machines are "out of order" and another is being used by a man with two grocery carts full of merchandise which leaves one machine for the 3 people waiting in line in front of me. As I wait in line the lady in front of me turns around and asks me "do you have your savings card with you?" I realized I didn't have it on me, I stopped carrying my wallet a few weeks ago, just carry a card holder with my lisence, debit card and some business cards. This upsets me for two reasons : one being that I would not benefit from the savings and two is that here is a chance to be a good neighbor and help someone out. I had been informed earlier that it was "be kind to your neighbor" day and also we had been bombarded with "the good Samaritan" lesson from a few different sources in the past two weeks. Alas this would not be my time to help someone out. Finally it was the lady's turn at the checkout machine. She rang up all her stuff and then hit the "help" button. We had to wait for about 3 minutes for someone to come and swipe their card for her. She paid and was on her way. Finally my turn, I step up to the register and notice that she left her bags there. So I got my chance to help out afterall. I chased her out and gave her her bags. Of course when I got back the man behind me was just about to start his check out, but let me have my place back.

mini-urinals and musical abstinance

We recently had the bathrooms at work remodeled. New bathrooms look great except that there are only two urinals and one urinal is like a foot and half shorter than the other one. Now technically this really shouldn't matter, but it messes with your head. I tried using it once and I found myself bending my knees and trying to balance in order to use it - again not necessary but it just seems like something you need to do. The scene in Billy Madison comes to mind when he has to use the bathrooms in the grade school. Anyway I never understood why we would have such a urinal installed at work - I mean no one uses it maybe except for the first novelty use but after you get that out of your system it really has no use and I didnt understand it...until today. "Bring your son or daughter to work day", the receptionist brought her son, and all I could think was I hope he has to go to the bathroom today then the mini urinal will finally prove useful.

Been listening to some Kings of Leon lately - good stuff. In case your not familiar, KOL is composed of 3 brothers and 1 cousin any way, this got me to thinking : if KOL would have been thrust into their musical careers at an early age would they have the same quality music and therefore the respect they have now, or would they just be another Hanson? Who knows maybe Hanson is now capable of producing some quality tunes. Anyone have the latest Hanson disc?

2 months

In two months I'll be a married man. Am I nervous? No, not yet at least. I think that buying a house has kept me too busy to get nervous. Maybe once all this house buying hoopla dies down nervousness will start to creep in, until then full steam ahead.

Well you can all sleep soundly at night because immigrations is doing a fantastic job of controlling immigrant traffic. My grandma was denied a visa to come to my wedding even though she has a roundtrip ticket and has absolutely no intention of staying here any longer than two weeks. At least our borders are secure, maybe we can get grandma a computer so I email her some pictures.