Busy Winery Weekend

So Thanksgiving is one of the biggest weekends in the wine industry up here.  That is certainly not the case for the wine regions in California, and I don't know when that tradition started in the Willamette Valley, but Eddie and I both had rather busy weekends at work.  The best part?  Being invited to the annual industry event at The Joel Palmer House.  There was so much free wine and food.  I had a blast chatting with other industry members - especially catching up with a few familiar faces.  Eddie and I both really enjoyed the old bottles of wine that our hosts, Chris & Mary, opened for the occasion.  And Eddie loved the mushroom-centric food.

The rest of the night was quiet for me.  Once we got home, I opened up The Glass Castle to finish reading.  About a month ago, one of my friends on Facebook posted a status update about dreaming of glass castles.  I knew it was referring to a book, but I didn't know anything about it.  I debated heavily before ordering the book though because I had never heard of the author, Jeannette Walls, but the story sounded interesting.  I was shocked by the first two opening scenes and was wary that they were 100% factual.  But just because I cannot understand a life filled with such hardships does not mean that no one has had to endure a life like that.  I really enjoyed the flow of this book because it's written in very short segments - each highlighting a different memorable event from Walls' childhood.  I have already added Walls' Half Broke Horses to my Powell's wish list so I can read more about her grandmother who makes only a small appearance in Glass Castle.

Gobble Gobble

A very short entry tonight...  Eddie and I had a fairly quiet Thanksgiving.  Aunt Mary invited us to have dinner at her house so we arrived shortly after noon for an early meal.  I made macaroni & cheese and enjoyed Aunt Mary's pumpkin pie for dessert.  We watched some old home movies after dinner and then we played a fun team game of Trivial Pursuit.  Our teams were evenly matched so it was a very good game!

Unfortunately we got home later than planned so we did not have time to watch Planes, Trains and Automobiles - a classic must-see on this holiday.  You can be sure I'll make time to watch this in the next day or two.  "You're going the wrong way!  You're gonna die!" ...  "How do they know where we're going?"

Reading Fun Day

Nothing fancy today, but I wanted some me-time so I decided to visit a few wineries.  I started out at Rex Hill because someone who works for them keeps sending customers to me at Soléna and I wanted to let them know that I appreciate that.  I also wanted to check them out so I can return the favor and send people up their way.  Then I stopped for lunch at Abby's Legendary Pizza in Newberg.  It totally has that old-school Round Table Pizza feel.  I sat at the big fire pit in the middle of the restaurant and got a lot of reading done.  My next stop was visiting Eddie at Sokol Blosser to deliver half of my pizza leftovers for his lunch.  And finally I visited Domaine Drouhin (where I skillfully managed to spill chardonnay in my eye) and Archery Summit.  Not a shabby way to spend the day.

So the book I finished reading today is one that Stacy recommended a few months ago.  I ordered it from Barnes & Noble with some gift cards I received last year and decided it would be fun to read now.  China Lake is the first novel in the Evan Delaney series by Meg Gardiner.  The opening scene in the book features a crazy religious group protesting at a funeral of an AIDS victim.  This got me all hot and bothered with all of the protestors of the recent gay suicides.  I enjoyed reading this mystery and definitely look forward to the next in the series.  And I really enjoyed that half of the book is set in Santa Barbara so it was fun reading about the area since I know it fairly well.

Date Night, Part 2

Tonight's date was only possible because I am so fantastically awesome.  Shortly after moving up here, I discovered Sip With Me's wine blog, which gave me some fun insights to the Willamette Valley wine industry.  Several weeks ago, Tamara announced she would be going on hiatus from her blog in order to focus on her new career in the wine industry...  But not before offering her blog readers a chance to win tickets to the Northwest Food & Wine Festival.  I submitted my name for the contest and was happily shocked to discover that I won the tickets!  I was so excited to treat Eddie to an event like this since this is obviously not something we could normally afford.  We tried wine, beer, and spirits from so many local companies and Eddie really enjoyed the food too.  Toward the end of the evening, we spent a fair amount of our time with the rep from Rex Hill, which was a ton of fun.

And once again my media mention will be boring and lazy.  I just haven't had the time or interest to keep up with my reading.  I watched two episodes of Bridezillas today which is one of my guilty pleasures.  I really can't explain why I enjoy this show since the women always drive me nuts.  Especially when the girls confide in  the camera that they are worried that their soon-to-be husband might not show for the ceremony.  Umm...  Why are you marrying the man if you are seriously concerned that he's gotten cold feet and might actually back out?  Weird!

No Skinny Pants Allowed!

Before I left Irvine for Portland, there was a tradition I had with my friends.  Each year (for the past six years or so) we met a week or two before Thanksgiving to share our own turkey dinner with our group of friends.  I was very upset to realize that after all these years I would be missing this dinner for the very first time.  So I asked Eddie if he would be interested in having us host and start up our own Thanksgiving tradition.  He was on board, so we got our friends together and cooked a great meal.

I was in charge of cooking the turkey (which Eddie named Penis Pump).  I have never had this responsibility so I was pretty nervous.  I just followed Ina Garten's recipe on Food Network and kept my fingers crossed that it would turn out moist and flavorful.  We also didn't want to just copy our Irvine tradition so we quickly decided to make this dinner a theme.  Ours was an Asian fusion meal - except for my very plain macaroni & cheese casserole.

We had turkey.  Homemade drunken cranberry sauce.  Cucumber salad and butternut squash soup. Pumpkin pie, caramel & walnut brownies, and sticky buns.  Brussel sprouts & deviled eggs.  Oh yeah.  We had a feast!  And loads of wine.  Eddie also whipped out his week-old homemade kahlua.  It has too much bite for me right now so I'm hoping it will mellow out during the next few weeks.

I'm really happy to report that Eddie and I were able to make a very successful Thanksgiving meal. And I am already looking forward to next year.  Eastern European, French, Mexican, Indian?...  So many possibilities for the theme.  The media mention is lame because I'm being lazy.  But I'm going with a song that played on our Music Choice TV channel - Marcia Griffiths' "Electric Boogie."  Now this song makes me smile because I had to learn to dance the electric slide to this song during PE in junior high.  I'm glad I learned it then because I think it's helped to make me the awesome line dancer I am today.

Date Night, Part 1

Eddie and I skipped date night last week because I had two of them planned for this week.  I was invited to attend a special event for Yelp Elite members at Henry's tonight, so Eddie and I decided to check it out.  They were pouring New Deal vodka cocktails and Lompoc beers.  They were also giving away free food. We would have been stupid to turn this one down.  It was a two-hour event and we showed up an hour late so we crammed to get our food and drink on.  We also played a few rounds of pool during that hour.  Eddie kicked my butt, but it was a very fun night.

Then Eddie surprised me and treated me to a pretzel and round of beer at Deschutes.  We also took the opportunity to fill our growler so it was a great stop for us.  And then we stumbled out and started walking home.  Silly us thought it would be fun to walk up Burnside - and it was...  BUT...  We couldn't resist the call of Voodoo Doughnut.  Eddie got some plain thing but I branched out and tried the triple chocolate penetration (chocolate doughnut with chocolate frosting topped with Cocoa Puffs cereal).  Yeah.  It was one of the better decisions of the evening.

The rest of the stumble home was rather uneventful.  In fact, I don't remember much of it at all.  But that's the beauty of living within walking distance to all the fun stuff downtown.  So my media mention...  I discovered Hawaii Five-0 On Demand last week and started watching the episodes.  I have never seen the original show, but I tend to like police / crime shows so I thought I would enjoy this.  And I do.  I'm not really involved with the characters yet which is why my media mention is for the theme song and not the show itself.  I just love this song!  As soon as that drum intro starts up I am pumped and ready to hear the rest of the song.  Very cool.  Hopefully I can get more involved with the show as the weeks pass...

These Boots Are Made for Walking

I treated myself to a downtown walking date this afternoon.  I was on a mission to go to the Gap and utilize my 40% off coupon.  I got lucky and found this blazer.  Not normally my style, but for $40 it will make me look good when I go in for my next job interview.  My hope was to find a neat new place for lunch, but I didn't see anything interesting on my way so I headed home on a different street.  I'm glad I did because I found Kettleman Bagels.  I had to wait outside because this tiny establishment was packed with the business lunch crowd.  Unfortunately all the tables were taken, but I found a nearby park and sat on one of the benches to enjoy my bagel.  The tree leaves were all golden and beautiful and the man playing trumpet across the street added to my enjoyment.  I only stayed long enough to read one chapter before returning home.

The rest of my day was a tad on the lazy side.  I unpacked a few more boxes in the new apartment and straightened up a bit.  I had the TV playing the background but wasn't paying attention until my ears perked up at the start of Forrest Gump - one of my all-time favorite films.  Kristen and I watched that movie nearly every day after school.  It drove Nanny nuts because we would quote most of the lines.  I realized there were a few social references my younger self missed when the movie was first released - namely that they allude to Jenny dying of AIDS in 1982.  To this day I can't help but think of this movie whenever "For What It's Worth" comes on the radio.