ADVENTURES IN WINE COUNTRY

I live about an hour from Napa but I rarely go there. It involves a bridge toll that I normally am too lazy to go get cash to pay for. Plus… I do not love wine. It’s all right but not my fave. So going on wine tasting tours and whatnot is not my jam. BUT I recently made plans with an old coworker who was up for her birthday to go to a winery and do some wine tasting.

Mission San Francisco Solano in Sonoma, CA

We first stopped in Sonoma at the R2 wine tasting room and had a round of tasting. They were pretty good. We then headed to downtown Sonoma (the square) to check out a chocolate tasting place (Wine Country Chocolates I think) and I noticed there is a mission right there – I haven’t been to a mission in years! This one was cute. We didn’t go inside but I have made a mental note to go back and check it out.

The chocolate place was really delicious – I got a boysenberry one and a cinnamon honey one and my friend got rocky road – and everything was so good! I would definitely go back.

After that we headed into the hills to the Hess Collection Winery which was totally beautiful. They were setting up for a wedding or some kind of event. On the upper two floors of the main building was a very nice art gallery which I enjoyed viewing.

Wine barrel room at Hess
Some art and interiors
Stairs they wouldn’t let us climb
Me and Nohemi

After Hess we were all hungry so we wound up at Downtown Joe’s in the town of Napa and were seated outside. It was a beautiful day, not too hot (the previous week/weekend was like 113° so the weather in the 80s was so much nicer). At the restaurant I had chili cheese fries and they used homemade spiralized potatoes that were super delicious. I’d randomly been to this restaurant with the parentals a year or so ago and it was good then too.

Napa River view

Anyway, it was a nice day out with good people. Always good to get out of town for a bit even if it’s just a day trip.

RENO / TAHOE PICS

Here’s a few choice pictures from my and Abby’s recent (well, two months ago now) trip to Reno with a stop at Tahoe.

IMG_0217-002 IMG_0221-002 DSC04633 DSC04616 IMG_0236-002I had forgotten how pretty Tahoe is. I hadn’t been there since a friend got married there in 2001.

I just remembered – at one point on the evening we went out to dinner with our dad at the Basque restaurant, we were all driving along to go to the Silver Legacy when a skateboarder latched on to the back of the car and helped himself to a ride. It was a little crazy!

First two pics courtesy of my sister. 🙂

High Tea Etc.

(I could swear I posted this but APPARENTLY NOT… this draft was written and has been sitting in the draft folder since August 13. Oh well.)

LIFE UPDATE:

So this weekend, the Nice ladies headed to Lovejoy’s in SF for an afternoon high tea! Lovejoy’s is where I went for Malvina’s bachelorette tea back in April. This time, my cousin Amanda arranged for the ladies of the family to meet up and spend an afternoon catching up – some of us hadn’t seen each other since Christmas so that was nice. Since my grandpa died we haven’t had our monthly birthday dinners so we don’t see each other as often.

We mostly ordered the Queen’s Tea (the biggest, fanciest tea with two sandwiches, a scone, fruit, salad, crumpet, a butter cookie, and petit four plus lemon curd, raspberry preserves and DEVON CREAM my favorite), but my aunt January and mother ordered the high tea and ploughman’s lunch respectively. The high tea is basically a smaller Queen’s Tea (sans crumpet and petit four) and I’m not too sure what exactly was the ploughman’s lunch except it had chutney (ew) and stilton cheese. I know about the stilton cheese because my mom gave me some to try – it’s kind of like bleu cheese. With my Queen’s Tea my two sandwich choices were Asparagus Hummus (super delish) and Cream Cheese & Mandarin Orange.

Anyway, we were a noisy bunch and it was fun to catch up with everyone. It was a nice day in the city – we even opened up the front window of the restaurant to let in the breeze.

Some pics, stolen shamelessly from Janelle’s Facebook:

Anyway, we had a lot of fun and then went over to Abby’s house afterwards, as nobody had seen her house yet. While the aunties were touring I sat in the living room with Amanda and Lauren and we professed our disdain over Fifty Shades of Grey, the erotic novel that has taken the nation by storm.

I personally have not read it because I picked it up at Target and flipped through it and it’s written in first-person-present, a literary tense I find 98% unreadable. I loathe it so much you don’t even know. It has prevented me from reading many popular books, such as The Hunger Games, some of Meg Cabot’s work, etc. I LOATHE FIRST-PERSON-PRESENT IT IS THE WORST.

Also notable: Fifty Shades of Grey started out its life as Twilight fanfic. So, just know that you are reading the (former) erotic adventures of BELLA SWAN and EDWARD CULLEN!

Say it with me now: ew.

Lauren was pretty adamant how terrible it was. Amanda was disappointed they were terrible, as she had just bought all three. Knowing what I know about it (that’s it’s basically beefed up fanfic and first-person-present) I shall not be reading it. I just can’t with fanfic, guys. I know a lot of people write it, read it, and defend it, but I am just not one of them. It’s like stealing and I just can’t get behind it. If it’s your thing, that’s great – but it’s not mine. I’m not going to argue with anyone about it, and I’m not going to judge you if you like it and you write it or whatever, but I don’t want to know about it or read it. And I sure as f*ck am not going to pay money for something that lived a previous life as (bad) BDSM Bella/Edward drivel.

(Yeah I said it) (Yes, I am judging something based on not reading it and making assumptions. Whatevs! :P)

Anyhoodle.

So, then we went home and got stuck on the San Mateo Bridge for an hour just getting over the incline, and by the time we got to the accident site, it was not worthy of that sort of backup! Pulled off to the side, some flares, some damaged cars… When you’re stuck in that bad of traffic I want to see ambulances and flipped cars and maybe a fire or helicopter. Sadly, it was two sad damaged cars and a highway patrol car. NOT WORTH THE DELAY, FOLKS.

But then we finally got home and on Sunday I went to the reservoir with my dad where it was hot and gross but I managed to not get a headache. Yay!

 

CRAFTING

Next up (if I get around to it) I have resurrected the Willow Afghan from UFO purgatory. I’ve made six new squares and finished the first batch of 24 squares – with my color combo, there are 24 individual squares with their own unique color sequence. I’m thinking I need three batches of 24 squares for a total of 72. I laid the 24 squares out on my queen sized bed and it definitely looks like 72 squares will be a good size – it’ll be bigger than my regular sized woven afghans that I like. However, I’m thinking that I might want it to be even bigger (more of a bedspread size?). Sooooo I’m either 1/4 of the way or 1/3 of the way done. [Since I wrote this on 8/13 I’ve finished a few more squares and have 30 squares finished and am working on the next batch of 6. Once I finish these six I will be half done with the squares. I’m still not sure about if I want extra squares, but having laid it out on the bed again, I do think 72 is a good number, however I might add one more row  for a blanket that is 9×9 squares for a total of 81 squares. Boo.]